Alright, god dammit; I get the rare chance to post something as dumb, juvenile and geeky as the inside of my head tends to be, and then I go and have another serious thought.
So here goes.
Batman movies might just be construed as fascist propoganda.
Stick with me here.
It's already been pointed out that Christopher Nolan's last Bat movie, "The Dark Knight", was an extended allegory for the Bush administration's war on terror.
In the early scenes, Batman kidnaps a mafia banker from a foreign country, illegally, so that he can be interrogated. It's a veiled comment on the process of rendition.
Soon after, The Joker appears. A demented anarchist who will never answer to reason, he is memorably described by Michael Caine as a man who "just want[s] to watch the world burn."
Faced with an implacable, unrelenting and impossible-to-reason-with enemy, Batman and his allies are forced to resort to extreme measures; in the final reel, Batman hacks into the phones of every person in Gotham city and uses them as a vast information pool to locate his quarry.
Lucius Fox, Batman's secret tech designer, is aghast. "This is wrong, Mr. Wayne," he insists.
Having finally captured the Joker, Batman gives Fox the key to the entire hacking operation, allowing him to destroy it permanently.
So, to recap, we have rendition, a dangerous and unpredictable terrorist foe, and draconian measures that invade the civil liberty of the masses in the name of catching the bad guy(s).
Pretty clear cut, when you think about it.
And so to the new movie.
Paid by a corporate fat-cat, the terrifying mercenary Bane is hired to ruin the now-reclusive Bruce Wayne's business empire.
Playing a long-con, Bane is, in fact, a twisted revolutionary who, through massive plot spoilers, manages to isolate Gotham both politically and physically, and wipe out the police force.
The populace of his newly-formed city state are now deemed "free," in Bane's eyes, and there promptly follow various show-trials and executions of the city's wealthy elite by an un-governed and angry populace.
One member of said populace is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman, a Robin Hood master thief who is only robbing from the rich to, as she sees it, redress the balance of wealth and get ahead the only way she can.
Whilst "The Dark Knight" may not have been overt in its war on terror motif, "The Dark Knight Rises" is pretty clear in its themes; they're topical and very obviously aimed at the Occupy movement.
They're also scarily reminiscent of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies.
Several times in the movie, a now-retired and reclusive Bruce Wayne is reminded that he should be doing good through philanthropy rather than roundhouse kicks.
So, the people who should save us are the wealthy industrialists? Society should be succoured by them? The billionaire elite should be looked to for salvation, because they are our superiors?
Apparently so, because the implication seems to be that Bane, a hulking, freakish mass murderer, is the logical conclusion of the desires of the 99%.
I find it really, really disturbing that the person who is calling - however crazily - for a reckoning between the downtrodden poor and the wealthy elite is depicted as a monster and a thug. He could quite literally be the poster boy for what the one percent fear about the occupy generation.
As discussed, there are equally unpleasant ideologies at work in the previous movie.
Whilst it could be argued that the overall message of "The Dark Knight" was that police-state tactics are never acceptable, actions speak louder than words. Batman and co., for all their chin-stroking, do end up using the morally questionable means in "The Dark Knight."
Perhaps, then, the message is that potentially dangerous tools should only be entrusted to upstanding, morally good and rational men like Lucius Fox.
Doesn't matter. Because again, the message that comes across is "draconian methods are okay to use if the threat is really really bad. They're okay to use just this once."
That's an obviously slippery slope, and the film is making apologies for it.
"The Dark Knight Rises," meanwhile, seems to be telling us that the poor are inherently violent, and deserve their place in the world because if they weren't held down, they would riot and kill everyone. While Catwoman/Selina Kyle is poor and good hearted, she is still a thief, and the only other people we see doing good during the occupation of Gotham are Lucius Fox (y'know; head of tech for a mega-conglomerate Lucius Fox) and Miranda Tate, who is herself a rich businesswoman.
The police are also portrayed well, but that just means that the only people who are good in society are the rulers, and the people they arm and pay to keep the peace.
I'm not sure that's ever been true.
To recap, again: "The Dark Knight" shows us that it's okay to use over-the-top methods just this once, when threatened, and "The Dark Knight Rises" thinks that the proletariat are a violent menace who shouldn't be trying to tamper with the balance of financial power, because it will only lead to carnage.
Metaphor is a subtle art, but in the subtext of the last two Bat-movies, the subtext feels broadly right wing. There is dissent from the fascist notions, but it's a minority view that ultimately goes ignored.
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into films about a man dressed as a rodent in a cape.
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