Gwb = Tdk = Wtf?

oooooooooooooooookaaaaaaay

Faustous writes for the Wall Street Journal?

...wut?

the fuck?!

Sorry I'm OCD so I had to finish that, plus this article deserves the full uncensored question of the ages.

However, unlike W, Batman isn't so fucking stupid that he can't figure out how to work a doorknob.

*Shakes his head*

So is bin Laden the Joker? Obama's got to be Harvey Dent. Oh my God, just those two sentences, and my frontal lobe collapsed.

I'm all for hounding the US to the gates of hell. Or was he pretending that you, the torturing invaders, are lovers of freedom?

I like how the apologist has to resort to fiction to justify his choices because there are no real reasons to do so. I'm reminded of the way cowards invoke '24' to justify human rights abuses.

I think Frank Miller was onto something when he started writing Holy Terror!

Well onto or on something.

How does Heath Ledger dying fit into this? The people need to know!

Does this mean that Michelle Obama is W's childhood friend? More importantly, is he secretly in love with her? I'm so confused...

...

It's the Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal, the HIV to go alongside the New York Post's full blown AIDS.

Well, the WSJ editorial board has been filled with hacks for as long as I can remember. Certainly before they joined News Corp.

It's about a man in a rubber suit who fights a clown.

Same could be said about this administration though.

zing! I'd say it's the clown doing the fighting, though.

Let' see... George W. Bush... Batman is really Bruce Wayne, and was played by Christian Bale, who is originally from... Wales.

Oh. My. God. IT'S SO CLEAR NOW!!!! THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!!!! This means that George W. Bush is actually (BANG!!!!!)

...

The Joker is Bin Laden--the terrifying villain who creates anarchy and threatens to perpetuate the cycle of violence forever, then dies offscreen.

I love these well-thought out analogies. Does this also make W a man with a shattered psyche who gets off on beating the shit out of people? Actually...

Also, I'm glad there's "no question" that TDK is a neo-con propaganda film. Those sneaky Nolan brothers!

Hey, maybe.

So in the third installment Batman will take the citizens of Gotham and force them to fight a villian that isn't his problem (perhaps Lex Luthor) and watch them die by the thousands from his penthouse without feeling any remorse or regret?

Then maybe I'll buy into this.

So, these guys must be realted to the guys who said that the war on terror is like the film 300. Or could all of these movie allusions be secretly written by one person?

Compiling Syspect list:
Frank Miller
John Milius
Karl Rove
Donald Rumsfeld
Free Republic
etc.
etc.
etc.

Hey, Dre brought up a related theory in the Don't You Think You've Seen the Dark Knight About Enough? thread, and no one called him crazy.

And, actually, I agree with the general concept that there are aspects of The Dark Knight that comment on the Bush administration and definitely not in unequivocably negative terms. I think you'd have to have your brain completely turned off to miss that in the scene where Batman and Fox debate the morality of city-wide surveillance.

Now, what I think the WSJ editorial misses is that, despite the fact that Batman's surveillance ploy works, he's in very dubious moral waters in his decision to use it. You can see it in Fox's disapproval. So it seems just as likely to me that the movie is making a case that Batman's similarity to Bush is a bad thing. This is given additional weight by the fact that, in the end, Batman disassociates himself from the establishment to continue his work, something Bush would never do.

I absolutely agree. I don't think it's as simple as Batman=W but it's not that off in terms of the themes of the movie and how they're related with topical politics. Also, just because the movie may portray a complicated American administration doesn't make it any less of a success. If anything, it just makes it more fascinating, and certainly more interesting than Batman Begins tired use of "fear" to connect with terrorism.

If there's one thing Batman and George W share, it's a firm belief in an absolute moral code, and both are even willing to break the law to achieve their goals in the face of absolute anarchy.

In the recent issue of EW, Christopher Nolan says Michael Caine summed it up best. "Superman is how most Americans view themselves. Batman is how the rest of the world sees us." In other words, rich world policeman who thinks they're right about everything. Sounds about right to me.

Did Nolan talk about it in that screenwriting podcast? I would love to hear a response to this stuff.

Other big points missed by the author:

The repeated mantra that Batman is not a hero.

The fact that those around him pay the price for his failed attempts to shape the world through strong-arm tactics.

That the film ultimately says that no matter how good his intentions were, the public must vilify him to make positive progress.

Everyone is obsessed with The Dark Knight for the same reason audiences flocked to see James Cagney gangster movies back in the day: they want to see the a pentultimate intense villainous performance. I haven't heard a single person talk about Batman/Wayne when discussing the movie, everyone simply wants to talk about the Joker. His insane antics are the new Tom Powers shoving a grapefruit in a hooker's face, it's the same sorta gleeful malice people get out of playing highly-successful GTA games. People didn't head out in droves to see White Heat because they couldn't wait to watch Edmond O'Brien score one for the good guys, they wanted to see this:



Does this sort of cinematic ride-along with nefarious but charismatic bad guys implicitly suggest we're all Osamas deep down? I don't think so, but I'd love to convince Klavan it's true, just to watch him cry into his Jim Beam as he sees his shitty-ass theorem get shredded.

Klavan is a hack. He wrote a similar hymn to David Mamet after Mamet's piece on conservatism some months ago.

I guess the WSJ had some journalistic merit, once upon a time.

Do you have a link for that?

And the fact that he invoked the Joker through his vigilantism, then caused tremendous damage in the fight, and made it very difficult to argue that he had a net positive effect at all.

Which was actually what I liked best about the film, and why I'm perfectly comfortable accepting the parallels he draws and then mocking the conclusions he makes from them.

This story is egregious hackery. Obviously civilizations grapple with the thematic questions posed in The Dark Knight. It's an eternal question of how far is too far, where is the line, and is what you then become then worth protecting. TDK meditates on these themes. That's a far cry from exploiting on the country's most traumatic moments to push through radical policies and line the pockets of your pals in the energy industry and military industrial complex. Bush's morally corrupt policies were in the planning stages well before 9/11. 9/11 happened on his watch, and he said about its alleged mastermind, "frankly I'm not that concerned with him" while turning the investigative lens on fellow Americans and creating secret torture prisons. The movie parallels our times but not this president.

Here.

Might as well add a link to Beaks' blog about it, since it's spot on.

Batman doesn't kill people, and doesn't order others to kill people.

This analogy is stretched enough to become one-dimensional. If you were willing you could make the exact same case for Bin Laden.

Before going on, neither the editorial or my additions are based on Batman in general, they are based on the Batman in this movie.

When I finished watching the movie I thought the Batman = Bush analogy was obvious. And while the surveillance thing might have been a hint, the real meat is elsewhere. The author made the points that support his conclusion but he fails to take them through to my conclusion.

Batman never fully grasps the threat which the Joker poses. The Joker's attacks are made on the physical structure of Gotham but more importantly on its soul. In doing what he does to prevent the attacks on the body, Batman compromises that soul. As has been pointed out, every character in this movie ends up a slightly worse person for having been in it.

Batman is incredibly shortsighted in this movie, always a step behind. His actions cause the escalation, in effect doing more harm than good. His reaction to a threat is to punch it. His reaction to obstacles, shoot them with the Batpod.

I think Batman is analagous to GWB, but I don't think Nolan particularly approves of either. Aside from Fox's objection to eavesdropping, there are two other challenges to current administration policy. Batman uses "enhanced interrogation" on the Joker and what does it get him? Faulty intelligence. And the ferry scene is a scathing commentary on preemptive strike.

It is stunning to me that anyone who actually saw this movie, could point and laugh at that article (deification of Bush aside).

As I read the article I kept picturing George W Bush in the Bat suit (circa 1966) saying in that high picthed voice "yur days are numbered, Jughead!" then tripping over his cape and falling on his fucking face. That had me laughing my ass off.