Sorry, i don't normally do this, you know.

[mrs_ajax]

I saw The Dark Knight recently, which i know does not seem like my type of movie, but i have a soft spot for Batman, and Batman Begins was my second favorite Batman movie after the 1989 one, although i never saw Batman and Robin, which i've heard is the best of them because of the blue glass schlongmobile that Batman low-rides around town in.

Comments

[jonathancadle]

Interesting thoughts on the film. I saw it a bit differently, but I'd rather not go into a lot of detail in a journal comment. Suffice it to say that no, the film doesn't really have a tidy way of making Batman the absolute right. He's just "good enough", and the fact that he is flawed is why he "succeeds" (to some extent) in "saving" Gotham, while Harvey Dent fails. Dent is too good, with too simplistic a view of the world. He suffers in the film through no real fault of his own, and it drives him insane (with some help from the Joker's monologue, I suppose).

I'm going to ignore the questions surrounding the lack of black people for Batman to save, or crimes to bust up, as this is a flaw in nearly ever superhero movie, an indeed in most representations of a city: for whatever reason, Hollywood consistently underestimates the diversity of a random crowd in a modern American city.

Regarding killing versus the surveillance, I think you're oversimplifying. Batman is, by definition, someone who has decided that the goal of cleaning up Gotham is worth stepping outside of the law and the rights of a normal citizen to accomplish. If you're going to start asking what gives him the right to spy on people, you aren't starting early enough; what the hell gives him the right to beat people up? To drive over cars? To fly to Hong Kong and kidnap a fugitive? What gives him the right to redirect corporate funds to pay for his crime-fighting technology? Wayne Enterprises is public; that's money that belongs to shareholders.

Batman is, by definition, a man overstepping his bounds. He is, by definition, problematic from an ethical standpoint. What makes him palatable as a protagonist is that he is self-aware and, realizing that he is already going too far, has set a boundary that he won't cross: killing. Why draw the line at killing? Probably because it's the most basic of "evils", and also because it is irreversible. He can destroy his surveillance equipment, he could pay back the development money from his personal fortune, and someday he could turn himself in for his other crimes, but he can't bring a man back from the dead.

Suffice it to say that I have the opposite opinion. I believe that the film does have a moral center, and that the film, while displaying the ugliness of human nature for much of its length, is ultimately redemptive even the "worst" of people in Gotham (as represented by the unnamed, tattooed, black prisoner) refuses to play along with the Joker. Somewhat telling is that while the decision seemed clear and rather natural to him, the "good" people (white, legitimately employed, middle class) were either conflicted (as his counterpart on the 'good' boat), cowardly (the people at the press conference blaming Batman for the Joker's actions) or actively gave into the Joker's call to madness (the numerous people who tried to kill the accountant earlier in the film).

The film suggests, I think, that while "goodness" does exist in the world, it does not reside where one would assume, and has, at best, a rather tenuous existence.