Ian On The Red Dot

Nocturne has written another post which I really like and part of it speaks to why I love Batman. The recent movie “The Dark Knight” also talks about this point, a point made very well in some of the story arcs for the Justice League where Batman has to put up with all the have-your-cake-eat-your-cake Boy Scouts like Superman.

Say a cashier undercharges me, I get away with $10 that is wrongfully mine. I bring it home happily as if I’d found it on the street. That makes me the kind of person that would, given the chance, steal. The only reason I don’t, say, redistribute 200 million dollars from my company by forging invoices to gullible foreign banks is because the penalty is harsher. It is fear, not morality, which decides my actions.

Someone has to draw the line.

Lines never satisfy everyone.

But someone has to make the Choice.

In an Esmeralda Weatherwax story, Esme, a witch, was called in by a midwife for a case the latter could not handle. It had come to this, Esme said, save the child or save the wife. The midwife said, “I’ll go find the father.”

Esme caught hold of the midwife’s arm. Esme’s grip, as her eyes, like steel.

And Esme said, “What has he ever done to me, that I should force him to make that choice?”

There is great difficulty, at least on my part, in being consistent. There is always the tension between the man you want to be and the man you must be.

In the end, we loathe the person we become.

Sidenote: Recent serious posts by Nocturne has just meant less boobs. We need a balance.

Watched “The Dark Knight” with the gf last night. It is the best superhero movie from the two mainstream comic houses DC and Marvel.

I have long learned to disregard anything the Straits Times movie reviewer Ong Sor Fern says about movies. In fact, I have a theory. Whenever she says a movie is ok or so-so and then continues to say it could have been better if the director, actor, or writer had explored and expounded on story themes, character study and whatever nonsense only a literature student will love, and then gives the movie 3.5 stars because it does not live up to her idea that every movie has to be like a prize winning novel studied by literature students, I know the movie has to be good if not great.

And no, the movie wasn’t too long. What needed to be said was said with good pacing.

Anyway, the movie is the best because this was probably the first movie adaptation of a comic book superhero that my gf got and liked and also one that me a comic book lover loved. You can’t argue with a movie that stays true to the best of it comic inspiration as well as be accessible to mainstream audiences like my gf.

I like this movie because it really covered a lot of the themes found in the best writing done for Batman.

In the recent major story arcs for the DC universe, two questions were basically asked:

1. Why don’t the superheroes just kill off all the villains who can’t be reasoned with or reformed?

One time, do it once, do it good and no more worries. Strangely, I find parallels with the above question and that which I always asked my cell group leader - why doesn’t God just right everything now instead of promising a better afterlife.

2. Are superheroes actually a good thing? Are they consequence of evil or the bringer of greater evil?

No easy answers to those questions. Just like there isn’t an easy answer to why the people like the Joker exist in the multiverse or for that matter, ours.

Humans like to see things as cause and effect. We enjoy simple explanations too much. It is just too comforting.

Ok. Anyway, I like how the movie captured the dynamics of the relationship between Batman and the Joker. In a story arc where Joker had cosmic power, he still couldn’t kill Batman because their identities are so intricately linked.

I also loved how the movie ended. It captures what sets Batman apart from a lot of the pantheon of popular superheroes - he walks alone.

He chose to walk alone.

Update: I thought it might be worth noting that the Joker isn’t just some archenemy. The Joker is a clown and a fool which are useful literary devices.

The Fool plays an integral role in the manipulation of the audience’s evolution of feeling. Lear walks through a world of deceit; the Fool walks with him like a halo of truth.

Clowns spread in cultures of any time and place, because they meet some deeply rooted needs in humanity: violation of taboos, the mockery of sacred and profane authorities and symbols, reversal of language and action, and a ubiquitous obscenity.

The performance is symbolic of liminality - being outside the rules of regular society the clown is able to subvert the normal order, and this basic premise is contemporarily used by many activists to point out social absurdity.

New York Times article on Heath Ledger’s death.  It’s going to be weird seeing him in the Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight‘ where he plays the joker.  New York Magazine were pretty much ready to declare him “the greatest-ever Batman movie villain“.  Another New York Times article on his death with this quote about having a child:

 “You’re forced into, kind of, respecting yourself more,” he said. “You learn more about yourself through your child, I guess. I think you also look at death differently. It’s like a Catch-22: I feel good about dying now because I feel like I’m alive in her, you know, but at the same hand, you don’t want to die because you want to be around for the rest of her life.”