What Bush and Batman Have in Common
By ANDREW KLAVAN
July 25, 2008; Page A15
A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .
Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.
Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?
The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?
The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of “The Dark Knight” itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.
Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They’re wrong, of course, even on their own terms.
Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don’t always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.
The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them — when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.
When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, “He has to run away — because we have to chase him.”
That’s real moral complexity. And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised — then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.
Perhaps that’s when Hollywood conservatives will be able to take off their masks and speak plainly in the light of day.
Mr. Klavan has won two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. His new novel, “Empire of Lies” (An Otto Penzler Book, Harcourt), is about an ordinary man confronting the war on terror.
This article still makes me laugh.
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This article still makes me laugh.
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This article still makes me laugh.
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Wow… Bush=Batman. I don’t even WANT to know what drugs this person was on when THAT idea hit! The Prez is gonna want his own signal and utility belt now! 😉 *chuckles* ~Shady
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Wow… Bush=Batman. I don’t even WANT to know what drugs this person was on when THAT idea hit! The Prez is gonna want his own signal and utility belt now! 😉 *chuckles* ~Shady
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Wow… Bush=Batman. I don’t even WANT to know what drugs this person was on when THAT idea hit! The Prez is gonna want his own signal and utility belt now! 😉 *chuckles* ~Shady
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Well. That was ridiculous. I doubt the writers really had politics in mind when they wrote Dark Knight. They just wanted to make a Batman movie. They wanted to explore moral complexity, ends justifying the means, and so on. It could probably be argued that the film condemns what many on the left feel is Bush’s contempt for the law.
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Well. That was ridiculous. I doubt the writers really had politics in mind when they wrote Dark Knight. They just wanted to make a Batman movie. They wanted to explore moral complexity, ends justifying the means, and so on. It could probably be argued that the film condemns what many on the left feel is Bush’s contempt for the law.
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Well. That was ridiculous. I doubt the writers really had politics in mind when they wrote Dark Knight. They just wanted to make a Batman movie. They wanted to explore moral complexity, ends justifying the means, and so on. It could probably be argued that the film condemns what many on the left feel is Bush’s contempt for the law.
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I do find it funny how the writer of this article basically says that every successful movie praises conservative values, or Bush. Lord of the Rings? Spider-Man 3?! Gimme a break. Trying to tie some of these movies into the modern political situation is just ridiculous.
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I do find it funny how the writer of this article basically says that every successful movie praises conservative values, or Bush. Lord of the Rings? Spider-Man 3?! Gimme a break. Trying to tie some of these movies into the modern political situation is just ridiculous.
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I do find it funny how the writer of this article basically says that every successful movie praises conservative values, or Bush. Lord of the Rings? Spider-Man 3?! Gimme a break. Trying to tie some of these movies into the modern political situation is just ridiculous.
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bush is neither super nor a hero.
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bush is neither super nor a hero.
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After hearing people try to pan Chronicles of Narnia because it has “overly Christian tones” Im not entirely shocked someone would reach this conclusion. I think it’s kinda nutty (its a COMICBOOK MOVIE) but it’s not entirely impossible someone would think of it. Makes me wonder what someone will say about the Dark Tower, actually.
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After hearing people try to pan Chronicles of Narnia because it has “overly Christian tones” Im not entirely shocked someone would reach this conclusion. I think it’s kinda nutty (its a COMICBOOK MOVIE) but it’s not entirely impossible someone would think of it. Makes me wonder what someone will say about the Dark Tower, actually.
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Erm, no.
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Erm, no.
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Erm, no.
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Well, that’s put me off going to watch the new Batman movie that absolutely everybody I know has been raving about. Thanks a bunch… Joke. Part of me has died because I’m pretty sure this guy is actually serious.
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Well, that’s put me off going to watch the new Batman movie that absolutely everybody I know has been raving about. Thanks a bunch… Joke. Part of me has died because I’m pretty sure this guy is actually serious.
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Well, that’s put me off going to watch the new Batman movie that absolutely everybody I know has been raving about. Thanks a bunch… Joke. Part of me has died because I’m pretty sure this guy is actually serious.
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>”Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.” *sigh* When did superhero movies become political? And I’m sorry, but I still don’t go to movies to learn a message, unless it’s clear from the trailer that “Hey, this movie has a message” (i.e., “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Supersize Me”, etc.) Regardless, I seriously doubt this is what Chris Nolan had in mind. ‘:P
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>”Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.” *sigh* When did superhero movies become political? And I’m sorry, but I still don’t go to movies to learn a message, unless it’s clear from the trailer that “Hey, this movie has a message” (i.e., “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Supersize Me”, etc.) Regardless, I seriously doubt this is what Chris Nolan had in mind. ‘:P
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>”Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.” *sigh* When did superhero movies become political? And I’m sorry, but I still don’t go to movies to learn a message, unless it’s clear from the trailer that “Hey, this movie has a message” (i.e., “An Inconvenient Truth”, “Supersize Me”, etc.) Regardless, I seriously doubt this is what Chris Nolan had in mind. ‘:P
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