The Dark Knight Rises

[AshleyO]

Originally Posted by CuckooTuli

Jeez, if the heading of that section is really all he can focus on to the exclusion of the points made right underneath it, I could define hyperbole (and maybe while I'm at it, explain that I don't literally think my 3 year old godson could write a more structured and well-written screenplay). But the fact is, there are elements of fascist apologism. How about presenting "we the establishment reserve the right to lie to the populus whenever we decide they can't handle the truth" as the stance of the good guys? Well-known feature of the totalitarian state that the movie's thesis completely romanticises and defends. Myth over truth is an incredibly dangerous political philosophy, and if you don't think so, I can only invite you to read lots of history. (Bring tissues; you will weep.)

Again, if you think "Fuck it, it's a good movie and I liked it anyway", awesome; I wouldn't agree with the 'good' part, but there are other movies I think are better written that I'd totes have this response to. But identifying fascist elements doesn't mean I'm trying to pretend there are NO left-leaning elements to the movie - just that I didn't think these were convincingly explored, and in fact I think that in his attempt to bring these in, Nolan betrays other, far less leftie and occasionally downright fascistic ELEMENTS of the film. I acknowledged in my response to Despanan that the leftie elements he mentioned do exist; I just thought they were flimsy, and were gradually subordinated to other, occasionally troubling concerns as the story unfolded.

I had a response to this that you would have appreciated covering why the trilogy wasn't even remotely bad and that while I agree with your total assessment, it's also the reason you SHOULDN'T hate any of this trilogy just because you disagree with the thesis. But G.net ate my post.

[CuckooTuli]

Thing is, I don't hate it because I disagree with the thesis. The politically problematic elements I identified are something I'm perfectly able to separate from my belief that the story was full of plotholes and the dialogue poorly written (in fact downright terrible in places). In fact, if I didn't think it was so badly written and structured, I'd be perfectly capable of liking it despite its ideological contradictions. Shit, half the authors I'd rate as favourites were rampant misogynists; if my enjoyment of art depended on my agreeing with its ideology, I'd never read or watch anything besides leftist polemics.

You guys keep accusing me of hating it because I don't like its politics, which just isn't true. I like plenty of movies whose thesis I disagree with (even if I'd still pull them apart for the things I don't like about them, 'cause I enjoy deconstructing art whether I love it or hate it). I thought this one sucked as a piece of art, as well as thinking its politics are confused. The two views aren't mutually dependant. Ironically, in the blog post Despanan is basing his response on, I identified SIX reasons I hated it, and only one of those had anything to do with its politics. (Well, 2 if you count the problems I had with the way Catwoman was presented, but you get the point.)

[Alan]

I'm more with CuckooTuli here. I don't think he dislikes the movie because of its politics, nor do I.
I almost liked the movie. Almost. But I couldn't enjoy it because it didn't go far enough. There were too many things missing that could have been easily fixed, and that makes for a less enjoyable movie than a mediocre one that has no gaps.
I'm not talking about plot holes; I'm talking about the motif.

First of all, isn't Bane supposed to be super smart? I don't feel the movie did enough to show that; Bane stopped giving a shit too soon. Hell, the thing I hate the most about the movie is that they didn't explain why Bane's followers were so loyal to him and how they have no problem dying. That right there would have been the single best thing to characterize Bane and they completely skipped it.
Second, the idea that Gotham could have become that clean in eight years is either absurd or lackluster. They needed to show that is has become a police state, which they only alluded two meager times that most people didn't even pay attention to.
Third, Bane's rhetoric when he takes Gotham falls on deaf ears. He is clearly a Stalinist, or better yet a Maoist, but the rest of the movie doesn't fit it. Again, it was only shoehorned that most of the prisoners were just petty criminals and Gordon-Levitt (the perfect cop who also coached an orphan basketball team on his spare time) reprimands commissioner Gordon exactly three seconds before forgetting all about it and making these petty criminals as violent and angry as Arkham criminals.
Bane was talking about how the worst hell is when one believes one has hope until the last minute. This means the Gotham lowerclasses (who SHOULD have been more evident instead of having just a reference about the lack of work) SHOULD have tried building a makeshift failed utopia, and you know what would have been perfect for that? If they had rounded up the Arkham criminals and also sentenced them to death at the sham trials.
I liked those sham trials, but because of what they could have done with them. Imagine how awesome it would have been if they had sentenced to death all the violent Arkham inmates. Then it wouldn't just look like bloodthirsty people killing off any form of authority but rather a very violent attempt at a new order and that people are still too angry and fired up that they will completely pass judgment without remorse, but not only to old cops, but to people who they believe are genuinely evil. It would mark a difference between Arkham inmates and Blackgate inmates and would show that the people are at least trying to make up a sensible but brutal form of justice, which would also parallel with both the police's sense of justice and Batman's.

Also it's bullshit that Batman got better from a fucking broken spine. I don't know how the climax should have happened, but the ending should have had Wayne in a wheelchair being the new Alfred to Gordon-Lewitt. He should have never recovered from a confrontation with Bane and he should have stayed in Gotham and still with an eye of fighting crime while at the same time being forced to move on.


The three things I did like about the movie:
1) I like how for a Batman movie it wasn't really centered too much on Batman himself.
2) I like how there was technically no Catwoman here. There was just a very agile cat burglar called Selina Kyle whose suit kinda makes it look like she has cat ears sometimes.
3) I like how Nolan, for all his faults in his political ideology, still reflects the political discourse of the times even if it's according to his values. Think about it.
Batman Begins, released in 2005. The film is all about decadence and how people are bad and corrupt. The villains are well-intentioned extremists who want to end this decadence while Batman fights to maintain the status quo and faith in it.
The Dark Knight, released in 2008. Now it's the system that is bad and corrupt, and people are just either sheep or part of the corruption. The villain is a chaotic extremist who wants to destroy these structures just because he wants to take them to their logical end. Batman fights to maintain the status quo and maintain his faith in it.
The Dark Knight Rises, released in 2012. Now the system works but by being less forgiving than before. The bad guys talk about oppression and that the people should rise against it for their own rights, even if the leaders don't actually believe in what they're saying. Batman fights to bring back the status quo and the faith of people in it.

Doesn't that approximate countercultural politics really well? Before the crisis, in the Bush era and with the antiwar movement, the cry was a cry that the United States was decadent. The problem wasn't really seen in regards to exploitation or even oppression, it was just seen as that the government was overstepping their boundaries and that wasn't 'proper'. Left and right didn't make demands to justice so much as cries of moral indignation.
Post financial crisis we get bullshit like a rise in popularity of libertarians, anarchists, ultranationalists, even stalinists. Basically people just wanted to take an extreme and had a reactive hatred to the system. They wanted to pretend 'if I claim the ideological polar opposite to the evils I believe caused this problem then I can pretend it was everyone's fault but my own'. You get people being very mysantrhopic, filled with hatred, and not a care in the world about what to do if they were to actually destroy the 'world order' and so on. Hell, this was the period where I called myself an anarchist as well.
Today, 2012, you get the legacy of movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street is part of American culture for better or worse, and most 'alternative' people in regards to politics now tend to qualify their stances, which shows a shift from reactive populism to more specific and splintered utopian hypotheses, again, for better or worse.

TL;DR the Joker is passé four years later, and Raz Al Guhl sounded more like an 80s revolutionary than one of today. Today a villain of the status quo would be a neo-Maoist one or a neo-Fascist one, and had Nolan put more effort into the political undertones he would have come up with the perfect villain, even much more sympathetic than the Joker, but he missed by just the exact amount that Bane still falls on second place.

[AshleyO]

Originally Posted by CuckooTuli

Thing is, I don't hate it because I disagree with the thesis. The politically problematic elements I identified are something I'm perfectly able to separate from my belief that the story was full of plotholes and the dialogue poorly written (in fact downright terrible in places). In fact, if I didn't think it was so badly written and structured, I'd be perfectly capable of liking it despite its ideological contradictions. Shit, half the authors I'd rate as favourites were rampant misogynists; if my enjoyment of art depended on my agreeing with its ideology, I'd never read or watch anything besides leftist polemics.

You guys keep accusing me of hating it because I don't like its politics, which just isn't true. I like plenty of movies whose thesis I disagree with (even if I'd still pull them apart for the things I don't like about them, 'cause I enjoy deconstructing art whether I love it or hate it). I thought this one sucked as a piece of art, as well as thinking its politics are confused. The two views aren't mutually dependant. Ironically, in the blog post Despanan is basing his response on, I identified SIX reasons I hated it, and only one of those had anything to do with its politics. (Well, 2 if you count the problems I had with the way Catwoman was presented, but you get the point.)

Then that's really down to tastes when you're complaining about Bane's voice for one. I thought he was creepy as shit. That mechanical, jovial voice with his ill intent... that moment when he laid his hand on that guy in an almost intimate way while he questions the man's authority over him. Shit made my skin crawl.

Then there's the plot. I'm trying to see these plot holes people keep talking about and I'm just not seeing them. I thought the movie was brilliant. I too didn't exactly agree with the political undertones. But damn. I can't help but think this was one of the best stories I've seen in a long time. People keep bringing up the cops being immaculate when exiting the sewers. They were getting supplies you know. Plus, if you find that problematic, I actually find the very huge lack of blood and damage in the second movie to be more problematic. That scene in the bank heist with the Joker when he shot that guy in the knees... Where the HELL was the blood? Where was the wounds?

[Despanan]

Okay, WOW, whole shit ton of posts to respond to and I really don't have the time at the moment. I'll try to respond to Cock and Saya and Sol as soon as possible. For now I'm going to respond to Versus and then get back to work.

Originally Posted by Versus

1) I don't need you to /splain the secret knowledge of an argument or a debate to me and you're not imparting some kind of epiphany that I had the misfortune of being ignorant of. I'm old enough and intelligent enough to know how contextual language can shape a person's perception of something's meaning, and you fucking know this.

Then you know why I would want to make sure that we're on the same page. This isn't about belittling you this is about making sure that I haven't made a mistake.

I know that I'm not the brightest crayon in the box, but because of my experience with white privilege, when you do that it's like you're belittling me by stooping down to my level to make me understand like I'm a fucking child. The only thing that I get from you doing that is a sense that you're trying to reinforce yourself from how fucked up it is when you completely dismiss and ignore something that would bother me. It's a bag of tricks that I am painfully aware of, so please cut the bullshit and talk to me like we're equals before you say anything else to me.

I'm sorry, I assumed I was talking to you like we were equals. That's why I approached our discussion formally. Versus, If I thought I was debating with someone who wasn't my equal in that arena I would've made fun of you.

I asked you to define Privilege it was just as much for my edification as yours, probably more as you've been aware of privileged longer than I have and I thought it was possible I was missing something.

2) My frustration is human and there's nothing wrong with it.

Nor have I said that there is.

It's great that you can push whatever the hell a "Despanan" is aside and try talk to me logically. Well, I can't. I'm not you, and it pisses me the hell off when people tell me how to deal with what I perceive as oppression.

Then you should sympathize, as telling Kontan and I how to deal with oppression is exactly what Saya did in that thread.

Everybody does it at work where getting upset isn't worth anything, so I'm sure as shit not going to when I only have an ally to gain. I'm not throwing a fucking temper tantrum when explaining privilege over and over and over again annoys me to the point where I throw my hands into the air, just start to just say "Fuck it!" and count some people as "lost" to me. Explaining what I now recognize as privilege is something I've tried to do throughout my life, albeit in a progressively more constructed way, so you'll have to forgive me when a couple instances of somebody who I expect to fucking understand throws me through a loop. I've been an ass hat around here for long enough for me to feel like everybody here, and you especially, should know what I mean when I say "privilege." Anger is how I cope with shit like this in life and I think it's fair to say that everybody on this forum knows that, so I don't know why you expect anything different from me when you do the same shit that makes me want to pull my hair out as the random dumb fucks who I legitimately get angry at.

Okay, I sympathize with your frustration here. I think I see why we're butting heads of late: One of the ways I deal with frustration and conflict is by turning off my emotions completely and focusing on pure logic. Going "Vulcan" if you will. I try to understand the object of my frustration academically, I try to dissect it, I try to understand it.

It's really no wonder that we're clashing, our coping mechanisms are incompatible.

My bad. I'll let you do your thing.

Really, I'm not even angry. I posted a passive aggressive gif and haven't said a fucking thing to you. I knew that Saya would cover anything I had to say about the new batman and more, if you didn't know. I think I've done that like, twice now? I remember Sternn did the same thing as you, once. I even made a whole separate thread and everything. Somebody who I can't fucking stand or respect told me how to deal with shit and I got another boner for MissCheyenne. But hey, I might start whining any moment by going all caps lock and bolding or italicizing really big size seven words like I do when people say shit worthy of a little Versus injected obnoxious. Call out this fucking time bomb before it blows up in your face.

Just for the record (since you have shared what pisses you off): It's massively disrespectful and annoying to me when you pull that shit. If you're going to call me out for something, call me out and we'll have an argument. maybe I'll be right and maybe I'll be wrong, but at least something gets accomplished there.

Posting passive-aggressive gifs about my opinions when you haven't even seen the movie is just douchy man.

Posting passive-aggressive gifs

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by CuckooTuli

You’re right, it’s immeasurably stupid to analyse the ideology of texts beyond their surface meanings. Please, O Wise One, forgive me my folly.

Only when you do it poorly, and OH MAN did you do it poorly.

My criticisms weren’t about the fact that the goodie was good and the baddie bad, so that’s moot. You might have noticed that the main element I accused of fascist apologism was the representation of The Police and The People as allegorical representations of good and evil (and they really did – c.f. the fallen police officers as the two groups rushed each other, the police apparently not shooting back. You’re seriously telling me I shouldn’t be interested in that in an ideological sense? And you’re a writer? Huh). What bothered me was the depiction of the people of Gotham as a whole.

You saw this as a good vs. evil allegory because you didn't pay attention. Bane's troops weren't "the people of Gotham" (at least not entirely), they were:

1) League of Shadows mooks that Bane imported

2) Former Mobsters released from Blackgate

3) The poorest more disenfranchised citizens who turned to bane because their was "work in the sewers".

None of these groups can be considered a stand-in for "The people" because we SAW other examples of "The People" (The orphanage folks running a shelter for instance) Granted, not as many as I would've liked, but hey - the movie was already nearly 3 hours and once again, that shit doesn't serve the story so much as clarifies the politics.

The police were facing off against the Army Bane used to implement a Stalinist Coup, not regular citizens of Gotham.

Also: The cops were firing. Those who had guns anyway.

Nolan did throw in a couple of brief lines about how the privileged were about to get theirs when the “storm came”, but the exploitative behaviour of the few wasn’t really gone into in any depth that made the chaos Gotham falls into understandable. The excesses of the 1% were much more muted and understated than the contrastingly-sensationalised excesses of the mobs (and, as Solumina mentioned, first voiced by Catwoman, who was an antagonist, morally suspect at that point, and ill-placed to speak for the poor). It was straight up condemnation, with no exploration of poverty and inequality to give us empathy with the anarchistic urge, even before anarchy tears the city down.

Again, anarchy didn't tear the city down, Bane's army did. Yeah they talked about anarchy, but you never saw anyone ruling themselves. The closest was the French Revolution style court, and that was set-up by the prisoners, not the people.

Actually I’d say that the movie paid lip-service to this element, before jumping into: “… and the moral is, most humans are barbarians who need the police force to stop them from smashing up everything with indiscriminate animalism. And good citizens are not only in the minority, but are mostly cowards who just hide indoors. Face it, you would crash and burn without the establishment to keep you safe from yourselves. Isn’t it great living in a civilized country?”

This is obviously not the point of the movie. You yourself admitted that it made no sense in the context of the Trilogy, and the citizens behavior on the boats in the Dark Knight disproves this theory.

Once again, if the upperclass had not been corrupt at the beginning of the film, if the stability they enjoyed had not been based upon a lie used to excuse oppression, you might have a point here. But they were and it was, so you don't.

To repeat, that’s all fine, but did the citizenry have to be so dupable and/or bestial? Couldn’t we have seen just a few revolutionaries who were regular humans trying to make things better, rather than roving gangs of animals? There were no sympathetic revolutionaries among the ones seen in action. It wouldn’t have taken that much time; a few seconds here and there amidst all the mob and riot scenes.

You did, the orphanage and the shelter they ran later. Granted I would've preferred to have seen more of it, but once again this was not the central story, and the movie was already nearly 3 hours.

There were no real revolutionaries because it was never a real revolution. The whole revolution was manufactured by Bane specifically to torture the people of Gotham.

He remained, as at the end of TDK, a symbol. In this movie as in the last, it’s heavily implied that people need symbols. And this comes attached to the idea that people need to be lied to for their own good - Gordon tells Blake that the people shouldn’t know the Batman’s true identity, just as Wayne told Gordon that the people wouldn’t be able to deal with the truth about Harvey Dent at the end of TDK. Batman’s “sacrifice”/abdication doesn’t free the people from paternalistic rule, it just transfers the power back the to establishment of Gotham, in a way that involves covering up the truth about shit that affects everyone.

Except Blake said that if he did it, he wouldn't wear a mask. I do agree that the idea of people needing symbols is problematic, because of unfortunate implications, but once again that doesn't make the movie bad, it just means that it may be advancing a theme we disagree with.

Did Nolan MEAN it that way? Maybe not. Does that mean it’s dumb to notice it? Fuck, no. Jesus rollerblading Christ, enjoy it despite its problems if you want, but don’t tell me they’re immaterial and not worth pointing out just because you liked the movie.

Once again, please stop with the Ad-Hominem arguments. I'd be saying the same thing even if I didn't like the movie. It's dumb to mention it because the movie is not fascist apologism, there are too many themes and plot points that clash with that idea and if you'd paid a little more attention you might have noticed this.

I’m not expecting him to be a revolutionary. I’m pointing out the problems with his blanket depiction of revolutionary movements as destructive forces, by showing them purely as the stooge of supervillains who just want to see some shit burn down.

Those are problems. In the end the movie is anti-revolutionary and I expected it to be so, but once again, it's a superhero movie, created by a member of the 1%, specifically to enrich the 1%. Honestly I had expected much worse from Nolan and was pleasantly surprised by how hard he was trying to see things from the point of view of revolutionaries.

He put some serious effort into Bane, to the point where I was ready to applaud that giant Luchador. This is a movie which challenges my outlook, and I appreciate it for that.

So you DO agree that there are troubling elements of the film’s ideology. In that case, the only point we’re differing on is that I thought it sucked, was poorly written, and not as clever as it thought is was being, while you thought otherwise.

You actually haven't talked much about poor writing, aside from that one exchange in your blog and pointing out a few nit-picky "plotholes". (Seriously dude, Blake psychologically profiled Bruce Wayne to figure out he was Batman. Orphan senses nothing, that's precisely how Hugo Strange figured it out in the comics.)

Blake was an amalgamation of all three previous Robins. One of the previous Robins (I forget which one...maybe Jason Todd) figured out his identity the exact same way. That's a send-up to the comics. Proving yet again that way more thought and nuance went into this movie than you gave it credit for.

Most of your purported refutations of my reading of the movie are actually you going, “Yeah, BUT”, then telling me why you think the thing I’ve just criticized is justifiable (Nolan is rich and privileged but he did his best; Nolan is old and therefore thinks all revolutionaries are Stalinists/terrorists; Nolan is a genius). In which case, it would seem that the only real difference between us is that you enjoyed the movie despite the things you disagreed with in it and I thought it was a turkey.

Look, you made a claim about the movie, I pointed out evidence which either disproved your claim, or expressed why I was miffed that you'd expected anything different. That's how discussion works.

The only real motivation you seem to have here is the belief that I’m overanalyzing and over-politicising something that wasn’t meant to be that political in the first place.

Actually, I think you're under-analyzing and this is leading you to draw the wrong political themes from the movie. The movie was meant to be political, but politics are secondary. You can't judge the films politics based up themes that are endemic to the Superhero genre.

[Con't]

[Despanan]

I on the other hand think that if we analysed everything around us more, instead of patronising the creators of things we like by making exceptions for them, we’d be better at distinguishing the way things are, instead of just accepting it because it’s invisible to us. That’s one of the major aims of literary criticism, especially the political side, and it's one that I whole-heartedly agree with as an artistic AND cultural necessity.

Good, now stop being so fucking lazy and simple about it. If you want to criticize literature you need to pay more attention and you need to not go for the easy answers in a film as dense as the Dark Knight rises.

Oh shit, you’re a writer? Boy do I feel foolish. There I was thinking you had to account for your opinions in debate like everyone else, when I should have been dropping to my knees and licking your writer-balls.

Do what you want. I'm just pointing out that you're assuming alot of stupid shit here.

Newflash: the fact that I’m a writer too (published via various forums, been paid for my work and had my plays performed by regional theatre companies) is really less relevant here than the fact that being a writer doesn’t make your opinion untouchable.

Nor did I assert that it did. I merely cited my experience to explain why I would already know the very basic bits of literary criticism you were talking about.

But you're also a playwright? Awesome. Where have you been produced? I'm always down with connecting with other people in the industry.

[Despanan]

I should say BTW, as for the Cops vs. Bane's Army:

This was actually really cathartic for me. I've been on the other side of that kind of showdown, and it was really REALLY interesting to see the cops in a position that protestors here in NYC often find ourselves in.

While casting the police as the heroes is problematic for me, it makes sense in the context of the Batman universe, and you need to look closer and look at that and the political context of the times in which this movie was made to see there's alot more to this scene than a simple championing of the police. It's a rather brilliant role-reversal.

This would have been even better if the bit where they had Gotham PD facing down a bunch of Occupy-styled protestors at the beginning of the film hadn't been cut in the interest of taste.

Bane literally turned Gotham on it's head. The criminals in the sewers came to the top. The cops went to the sewers. The criminals were set free and given power and privilege, the cops were imprisoned. The oppressors became the oppressed and the oppressed became the oppressors

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Alan

I almost liked the movie. Almost. But I couldn't enjoy it because it didn't go far enough. There were too many things missing that could have been easily fixed, and that makes for a less enjoyable movie than a mediocre one that has no gaps.

I'm not talking about plot holes; I'm talking about the motif.

First of all, isn't Bane supposed to be super smart? I don't feel the movie did enough to show that; Bane stopped giving a shit too soon. Hell, the thing I hate the most about the movie is that they didn't explain why Bane's followers were so loyal to him and how they have no problem dying. That right there would have been the single best thing to characterize Bane and they completely skipped it.
Second, the idea that Gotham could have become that clean in eight years is either absurd or lackluster. They needed to show that is has become a police state, which they only alluded two meager times that most people didn't even pay attention to.
Third, Bane's rhetoric when he takes Gotham falls on deaf ears. He is clearly a Stalinist, or better yet a Maoist, but the rest of the movie doesn't fit it. Again, it was only shoehorned that most of the prisoners were just petty criminals and Gordon-Levitt (the perfect cop who also coached an orphan basketball team on his spare time) reprimands commissioner Gordon exactly three seconds before forgetting all about it and making these petty criminals as violent and angry as Arkham criminals.
Bane was talking about how the worst hell is when one believes one has hope until the last minute. This means the Gotham lowerclasses (who SHOULD have been more evident instead of having just a reference about the lack of work) SHOULD have tried building a makeshift failed utopia, and you know what would have been perfect for that? If they had rounded up the Arkham criminals and also sentenced them to death at the sham trials.
I liked those sham trials, but because of what they could have done with them. Imagine how awesome it would have been if they had sentenced to death all the violent Arkham inmates. Then it wouldn't just look like bloodthirsty people killing off any form of authority but rather a very violent attempt at a new order and that people are still too angry and fired up that they will completely pass judgment without remorse, but not only to old cops, but to people who they believe are genuinely evil. It would mark a difference between Arkham inmates and Blackgate inmates and would show that the people are at least trying to make up a sensible but brutal form of justice, which would also parallel with both the police's sense of justice and Batman's.

Also it's bullshit that Batman got better from a fucking broken spine. I don't know how the climax should have happened, but the ending should have had Wayne in a wheelchair being the new Alfred to Gordon-Lewitt. He should have never recovered from a confrontation with Bane and he should have stayed in Gotham and still with an eye of fighting crime while at the same time being forced to move on.


The three things I did like about the movie:
1) I like how for a Batman movie it wasn't really centered too much on Batman himself.
2) I like how there was technically no Catwoman here. There was just a very agile cat burglar called Selina Kyle whose suit kinda makes it look like she has cat ears sometimes.
3) I like how Nolan, for all his faults in his political ideology, still reflects the political discourse of the times even if it's according to his values. Think about it.
Batman Begins, released in 2005. The film is all about decadence and how people are bad and corrupt. The villains are well-intentioned extremists who want to end this decadence while Batman fights to maintain the status quo and faith in it.
The Dark Knight, released in 2008. Now it's the system that is bad and corrupt, and people are just either sheep or part of the corruption. The villain is a chaotic extremist who wants to destroy these structures just because he wants to take them to their logical end. Batman fights to maintain the status quo and maintain his faith in it.
The Dark Knight Rises, released in 2012. Now the system works but by being less forgiving than before. The bad guys talk about oppression and that the people should rise against it for their own rights, even if the leaders don't actually believe in what they're saying. Batman fights to bring back the status quo and the faith of people in it.

Doesn't that approximate countercultural politics really well? Before the crisis, in the Bush era and with the antiwar movement, the cry was a cry that the United States was decadent. The problem wasn't really seen in regards to exploitation or even oppression, it was just seen as that the government was overstepping their boundaries and that wasn't 'proper'. Left and right didn't make demands to justice so much as cries of moral indignation.

Post financial crisis we get bullshit like a rise in popularity of libertarians, anarchists, ultranationalists, even stalinists. Basically people just wanted to take an extreme and had a reactive hatred to the system. They wanted to pretend 'if I claim the ideological polar opposite to the evils I believe caused this problem then I can pretend it was everyone's fault but my own'. You get people being very mysantrhopic, filled with hatred, and not a care in the world about what to do if they were to actually destroy the 'world order' and so on. Hell, this was the period where I called myself an anarchist as well.
Today, 2012, you get the legacy of movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street is part of American culture for better or worse, and most 'alternative' people in regards to politics now tend to qualify their stances, which shows a shift from reactive populism to more specific and splintered utopian hypotheses, again, for better or worse.

TL;DR the Joker is passé four years later, and Raz Al Guhl sounded more like an 80s revolutionary than one of today. Today a villain of the status quo would be a neo-Maoist one or a neo-Fascist one, and had Nolan put more effort into the political undertones he would have come up with the perfect villain, even much more sympathetic than the Joker, but he missed by just the exact amount that Bane still falls on second place.

I agree with all of this, except this stuff didn't ruin the movie for me, just annoyed me and gave me ideas for themes to work with in my own plays.

Also: as per the back-breaking/prison stuff. I don't know if you caught that Alan, but the Prison was a Lazarus pit.

Batman is broken. He's thrown in a pit. What happens? He is rejuvenated both physically and spiritually and he comes out stronger than before (and probably a little crazy from the experience)

Another really awesome, really subtle nod to the comics.

[Versus]

Despanan, I'll get back to you when I get home to my computer. I'm going to make a new thread in general so check for it when you get a chance.

[Alan]

No dude, don't discuss Batman on General or you'll spoil it to others.

[Versus]

I feel like you're making a joke, but I'm not sure.

[Alan]

I'm not.black text

[Versus]

Oh. Well, it's not about Batman.

[AshleyO]

Man I fucking love this movie. Shit.

[CuckooTuli]

Warning: LONG-ASS pile of theory wankery coming up.

Originally Posted by AshleyO

Then that's really down to tastes when you're complaining about Bane's voice for one.

Absolutely, the vast majority of what I don’t like about it is a matter of taste.

Again – and to Despanan too – I am not claiming the movie is nothing but fascist apologism; obviously it isn’t, and the reason I didn’t bother pointing out its We Are The 99% overtones is because they were obvious enough to make this redundant. I’m feeling the need to acknowledge this cause rereading the thread, I suppose I didn’t make this clear enough, and just took it as read that you’d know where I was coming from. The intention was to emphasise the elements that I thought contradicted this general ethos rather than claim that Nolan is exclusively totalitarian in his vision, which I have sounded like I’m arguing at points (so I guess I should take back the “depiction of the poor is straight up condemnation” comment as inaccurate. I’d argue that it does bestialize them at points, but it’s not “straight up condemnation” – I just retreated too far into my corner on that point).

But it wasn’t, as you guys seem to keep thinking no matter how many times I say it, just because of the politics that I thought it sucked. There are films I love whose political theses I find just as dubious as this one. I liked Iron Man, because shit blew up merrily and some of the dialogue made me laugh, and that film took on faith that the best way to combat destructive technology is not by not making it in the first place, but with MORE destructive technology (suit race!!) Hell, I hated some of The Dark Knight’s politics (already mentioned the “unnecessary cover-ups FTW!” ending), but I still thought it was a great movie. TDKR had more social justice-oriented moments than any of these, so by that logic I should have liked it more; I just found them sparse, poorly executed, and unconvincing, and more important to my enjoyment I didn’t really like much of anything else about it.

Getting closer to the text on its own terms often involves separating ideology, and issues like gender politics with ones that short-change female characters, from the ‘personality’ of the text. This is about going, “okay, so you think the politics/gender politics/whatever are dodgy as fuck, BUT: is it well-written, do you enjoy watching it, does it have a good ‘feel’ to you, are you drawn into its world” etc.

Although these things can be rationalized to an extent, they are often primarily emotional responses that come down to personal taste. But they are completely separate from the politics, which you seem to think I’m incapable of comprehending. Just because we’ve gotten into a mostly political argument here, doesn’t mean I see nothing but a mess of politics to jigsaw into submission when I look at a piece of art. It’s just the topic you happened to initiate a discussion on, and are now accusing me of hating on the movie SOLELY on the back of when it’s just one element.

Originally Posted by Despanan

“Bane's troops weren't "the people of Gotham" (at least not entirely), they were:

1) League of Shadows mooks that Bane imported

2) Former Mobsters released from Blackgate

3) The poorest more disenfranchised citizens who turned to bane because their was "work in the sewers".

The first two groups would logically have been smaller than the third by the time the pseudo-revolution really hit its stride – the whole city fell into chaos, which suggests that that third group were considerable in number and that a good portion of the citizenry was with them. So yeah, they would count as a representative sample of “the people of Gotham”. If there were enough of them that it’s totally understandable that the ‘good citizens’ holed up from the shitstorm outside their door, then they are not the tiny marginal group you’re suggesting.

Shit, if they really are a small minority, then that’s even more offensive to the good citizens: if they weren’t even outnumbered, they could have taken a shot at some form of autonomous resistance, or maybe starting plotting a shot at the weaponry bring used to keep them down. Instead the ‘good’ citizenry remain completely passive while their city burn at the hands of a small minority that they vastly outman, without any active attempt to resist. They need the establishment and Wayne to come and bail them out. Again, re: politics/enjoyment, this didn’t ruin the movie for me, but it did stick out.

I get that Nolan had a limited time-frame to tell what’s already a big story. But the way that any writer chooses to tell their story reveals structures to their mind that aren’t always conscious on their part: the things they cut, the things they keep in, the elements of the story that they get out of the way quickly and the ones they stay with for a more sustained depiction. So this is imbalance is still relevant in my view – it doesn’t necessarily make the film a bad piece of art, but it does betray Nolan’s (probably not ideologically motivated, but unconsciously there) inclination to represent the people of Gotham with whom the movie’s thesis purports to sympathise as either savage, or helpless and ineffectual.

I agree that that’s not enough to make it a bad movie (the reasons I count it as a bad movie as opposed to one whose ideology I find inconsistent are, to repeat, mostly about the writing etc), but the fact that one side get way more story than the other does reveal some unconscious biases in the narrative IMO. It’s not necessarily completely noxious; I don’t think Nolan thinks all proles are animals waiting to turn into mobs. But I do think that elements of fascist apologism betrayed themselves against the general dystopian Occupy Wall Street vibe it started with, which probably says more about wider cultural influences and contributing dialogues, than about Nolan wanting to bring back capital punishment for petty thieves.

Originally Posted by Despanan

Also: The cops were firing. Those who had guns anyway.

I don’t seem to remember seeing any fire from them, but okay, maybe I blinked. I do remember beyond all doubt that only cops fell as the groups charged one another though. Are we supposed to believe they’re all just crappy shots, or is the text betraying its (possibly unconscious) desire for us to sympathise with one group over another?

I mean, since the mob is made mostly of those ultra-disadvantaged folk you mentioned, I’d think the whole bloodshed when they clash would be depicted as a giant fucking tragedy for everyone concerned; the movie is generally about the monsters society creates for itself via inequality, rather than pure evil that emerges from nowhere, after all. But instead of keeping their human element even when they behave in terrifying manners, the citizenry who appeared in the mob were represented as barely-human, gurning, bestial savages as the two groups faced off while the police stood firm and chiseled of jaw; romantic; morally unimpeachable in those clean & freshly-pressed uniforms.

Originally Posted by Despanan

Yeah they talked about anarchy, but you never saw anyone ruling themselves. The closest was the French Revolution style court, and that was set-up by the prisoners, not the people.

Exactly!! There was no sense of agency or responsibility to be found among the ‘good’ people of Gotham - they all fled to hide in their homes the second conventional authority broke down. The only representation of people ruling themselves were the prisoners being sadistic a-holes. It's not that this is illogical storytelling, it's that its logic is the logic of authoritarianism because it implies that people are helpeless without the establishment to protect them.

Anarchic rule is presented in a single way, and that way is barbaric - the implication is that people themselves are not strong enough, either morally or in terms of manpower, to resist its dark side. They can only wait helplessly for the establishment and Wayne to come and save them from the monsters of anarchy, represented as Darwinistic brutality.

The fact that it’s the prisoners who carry this out doesn’t un-complicate this; in fact it suggests that without a conventional system of authority, the ‘good’ people would be oppressed by the (heavily sensationalized, compared to how the wrongs of the establishment and the 1% are represented) ‘bad’ people. Again, this doesn’t have to ruin the movie, but it’s still noticably there.

Originally Posted by Despanan

Once again, if the upperclass had not been corrupt at the beginning of the film, if the stability they enjoyed had not been based upon a lie used to excuse oppression, you might have a point here. But they were and it was, so you don't.

Moot. Already discussed: you say they showed upper-class decadence, I say briefly to the point of lip-service, you say but they showed upper class decadence, I say here lie only circles. So we disagree – you thought they were paid sufficient attention to be ideologically coherent, I didn’t.

[CuckooTuli]

CONT'D

Originally Posted by Despanan

You did, the orphanage and the shelter they ran later.

As above. I’m not arguing that these representations aren’t there, I’m arguing that plenty of them are sparse to the point of lip-service.

Originally Posted by Despanan

There were no real revolutionaries because it was never a real revolution. The whole revolution was manufactured by Bane specifically to torture the people of Gotham.

You’re arguing that Bane didn’t tap into a real and culturally present impulse towards social change, to mobilize the most disenfranchised of the people (those in the mobs, at least) into assisting with his destructive plan? Wow. You actually just made the movie a little LESS interesting for me.

Originally Posted by Despanan

(Seriously dude, Blake psychologically profiled Bruce Wayne to figure out he was Batman. Orphan senses nothing, that's precisely how Hugo Strange figured it out in the comics.)

He psychologically profiled him to confirm what he’d already come to suspect via orphan-radar. Nod to the comics or not, that’s weak storytelling since it doesn’t hold up as a convincing plot point on its own terms.

Originally Posted by Despanan

Proving yet again that way more thought and nuance went into this movie than you gave it credit for.

Errr, my entire argument here has been pushing contradictions and general nuances that complexify its overall leftist slant. Like I said, I kind of thought the ‘prioritise social justice’ elements were dominant enough to not need pointing out; it was the method of their delivery that sometimes betrayed conflicting ideology. This isn’t ‘bad’ to my mind, even if I happen to think the movie is. It’s interesting, because there’s no piece of art created by humankind that doesn’t carry cultural imprints: the fear of social upheaval that accompanies the recognition of the need for change in TDKR seems perfectly human to me (even if it falls back on authoritarianism in resolving the anxieties it communicates), and maybe even tell us something about the patterns people are engaging with in popular films right now.

I still thought it was a shitty film, but not because of its politics. If dodgy ideology ruined art entirely for me I’d never get to enjoy anything FFS.

Originally Posted by Despanan

But you're also a playwright? Awesome. Where have you been produced? I'm always down with connecting with other people in the industry.

I’m not sure how “in the industry” an active NY-based playwright would consider me really. I’ve had shows on in two venues in South East England – both by small independent theatre companies on modest budgets, but still, it was awesome seeing them up there and the turn-out was decent (though obviously All Our Friends came too ). I’m not sure I’m motivated enough or good enough to do more than dabble locally (I’m also trying to finish a novel and have article-writing and work and life and stuff to keep me busy), but I’d like to think I’ll always have time for a play on the go on an as & when basis. (Congratulations on NY Fringe, by the way - that’s really cool. For real.)