Batman is a fascist. [View All]

[nashville_brook]

In the hype to the release of the new Batman movie, we've been having this discussion about HEROES and wondering if this version of the movie would say anything new and relevant about *who our heroes are* in this moment in history. After seeing it, I'm thinking that the hero, sadly, is Heath Ledger's Joker.

We saw the movie last night at 11 and sat in the last two seats available in the front row, as seeing Batman on opening night is somewhat of a pop culture must-do. At the Winter Park movie palace were surrounded by cautiously enthusiastic Full Sail students (kids studying to be game developers, graphics engineers and film makers). Unlike the opening night for Batman 2 in Elizabethton, Tennessee, there was no applause at the opening logo. Maybe people were exhausted from the hour's worth of television commercials and that horrid cable tv promo you always see now as opposed to a decade ago with the hillbillies.

Or maybe we've just had enough of the ultra-rich imposing their idea of justice on us.

Batman's superpower is his trust fund and his narcissism which he uses to "protect the people of Gotham" from a consortium of racially stereotypicial crime bosses. You've got scary black gangsters and hispanic crews with fighting dogs and the smart asians with their accountants and satellite phones. Oh, and one slick Italian with greasy hair.

Batman is a strutting and preening authoritarian, who secretly conspires with Gotham's muckety-mucks to wiretap the city in order to stop those dark-skinned criminals. The Joker interjects himself as an agent of chaos who is neither on the side of the criminals nor, of course, the side of "good." As a matter of fact, The Joker is much more effective in putting the kibosh on the crime gangs than any of our supposed heroes.


The People of Gotham are conspired against and kept from the truth out of fear that they will upset the ineffectual status-quo of Batman, Dent and Gordon. They are not to know the truth that Harvey Dent is really Two Face. That the police and political leaders are being held hostage (I'm not making this up) thru HEALTHCARE EXTORTION, as the people who were bribed were bribed via their sick relatives needing hospital care. The People of Gotham are repeatedly used as pawns by good guys and bad guys alike, at one point they are even used as disguised targets -- human sheilds -- against a military insurrection by 'the forces of good/order.'

I think this movie is so anti-heroic that it might even be a cultural marker for a new era of Post-Heroism.

Or maybe that's just what the muckety-mucks want us to think.

You can go back to sleep now.