Atrios just linked to a take on the politics of Dark Knight in the WSJ. This is pretty funny:
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"?
I'll dispose of the strawman by pointing out that morality, failth, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right are all enshrined in Al Gore's movie about those hard choices we need to make as a society. Moving beyond that...
Could it be that, in the real world, the swarming hoard of The Enemy are real people who have families, emotions, and feel pain. When the horrors and indignity of "whatever it takes" are inflicted on the real world counterparts of Tolkien's orcs, the moral outrage of right wing ideology becomes fully apparent?
But all of that is, I'm sure, readily apparent.
The WSJ piece is a meditation on politics in cinema, which is something I spend a lot of time on myself, but at its base it comes down to the core parallel between Batman and Dear Leader:
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.
I found this to be a somewhat strained vision of what happened in the movie, effortlessly dismissing a lot of negative attention to Batman's own methods and behavior. His fellow good guys are critical of him in a number of places, and the way things end up in the end create some question of who the winner in all of this really is. There is even a parallel made between Batman's efforts and colonialism, which has defied my ability to fully make sense of the implications, but it seemed significant.
I admit, I heard the same things loud and clear when I was watching it, with a different interpretation, enough that I made the following Twitter post:
Bush destroys our freedoms to protect us, and we appreciate it, but we should still hunt him down like a pig.
I think that Dark Knight split the ideological difference, creating a movie that deals with the good and the bad of Batman's vigilantism (something Frank Miller has spent a lot of time on, too), and layering the politics in a way that won't offend anyone. The movie allows you to form your own judgments. It doesn't contain its own ideological thesis, which may not be such a bad thing for summer blockbuster, as much as I do find that ambiguity to be completely chicken shit.
This follows, somewhat, with the earlier film, Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne's parents are killed, in this movie, during a massive depression in Gotham City, where economic desperation drives his parents' murderer to kill. Mass transit is also portrayed as a public good. However, just in case anyone in the audience was at risk for leaving the theater slightly more socialist, what really saved us all from the depression was the shock of the Waynes' murder which prompted the city's wealthiest citizens to get more involved in charity. Oh, and the depression itself? The badguys started that in an effort to purge Gotham of its corruption and disease.
I am reminded of one of the greatest cinema betrayals of all time. In the Alien series, the monster is essentially a force of nature--something horrible that we need to fight for our survival, but not malicious. The villain of these movies inevitably comes back to the force that puts the characters in harm's way with the Alien.
In the first film, Alien (1979), the ship is sent to the planet by "Mother", their computer, which is receiving messages from "The Company," through "Network." The entire thing is completely faceless, orders coming from a detached hierarchy to a crew who doesn't understand why, is afraid to ask questions, and turns out to be completely expendable. The entire thing is an excercise in Marx's alienation of humanity. (I can't imagine this is a coincidence in the naming of the movie.)
In the 1986 sequel, our heroes are once again lured into a similarly hopeless situation... this time, though, it isn't a sprawling and faceless corporate hierarchy that does it. It is Paul Reiser.
We go from a Marxist critique of corporatism to one bad apple, who just happens to be Jewish. And the audience can leave the theater feeling however the want about it, but certainly with none of their preconceptions challenged.