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loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
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 Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject: |
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According to Gopher's logic, a lot of people think 9-11 was an inside job. Check out these numbers.
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| An August 2006 Vanity Fair article suggested that Loose Change "just might be the first Internet blockbuster" as it became the most watched video on Google Video in May 2006, being viewed at least 40 million times on that site, and with the official Loose Change website receiving over 100,000 hits a day. Millions more have viewed the film via unaffiliated websites. More than one million copies of the DVD have been sold, and many more have been given away. |
Care to comment on this Gopher?
Can I now assume that 40 million plus people believe 9-11 was an inside job?
Of course not. That would just be silly.
OP is pointless. Not surprising though. |
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BreakfastInBed
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Location: Gyeonggi do
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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Great topic. I just saw the movie last night and it was obvious and deliberate in evoking the War on Terror and its surrounding moral and political issues.
I'll tell you why I am less offended by Batman's beating of the Joker than by things like water-boarding in the real world. His pummelling of the Joker was done in anger and with fists in the rather quaint, traditional way we are all accustomed to from 70 odd years of interrogation room scenes, and as it has already been mentioned, we know the guy on the receiving end of the abuse is guilty. The scene is hot, passionate, and quick, with none of the cold, naked cruelty I associate with 'real' torture. Certainly any form of the latter would destroy whatever sympathy or identification we have with the Batman character, as it does with its practitioners in the real world. This difference is highlighted by the Joker's admonishment that 'you never start with the head' because that will lessen the suffering of future trauma to other parts of the body. This is torturers' thinking, something foreign to Batman.
It is interesting, the movie never condemns Batman's actions, even when invading the privacy of the whole city (though it pays lip service to its dubious ethicality), and doesn't seem to want us to either. I can't tell how cynical the film is being in its suggestion that there are things people shouldn't know, that the lily-white image of Harvey Dent shouldn't be tarnished by truth. That the populace needs to be protected from the truth for its own well being is an interesting argument for a mainstream blockbuster to appear to make sincerely, and it is suprising that more people don't seem troubled by the implications.
Probably it does come down to most people thinking, and believing, that it's just a movie. It can't possibly have anything to do with the real world or the way people think.
Last edited by BreakfastInBed on Sat Aug 09, 2008 6:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| BreakfastInBed wrote: |
| Probably it does come down to most people thinking, and believing, that it's just a movie. It can't possibly have anything to do with the real world or the way people think. |
And because the comparison of Batman to any administration is only on a single level, that of counter-terrorism. Batman would probably be a much less sympathetic character if there were scenes of him always running Wayne Enterprises into the red (budget deficit), not attending to a rescue effort for a few days because he was busy with whatever closer to home (hurricane Katrina), firing anyone in the company that didn't seem loyal to the idea of Batman (justice department firings), that sort of thing. Then I suspect people would have a lot less sympathy for his character (and the movie would then suck).
On an unrelated note to the op, this Batman would be even worse:
http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/24038627564.241.GIF |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 3:57 am Post subject: ... |
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| His pummelling of the Joker was done in anger and with fists in the rather quaint, traditional way we are all accustomed to from 70 odd years of interrogation room scenes, |
True. Maybe 3 punches and a wall slam is now brutal torture?
Compare this to The Falcon and the Snowman(also based on a true story). Sean Penn gets worked over with a telephone book among other things. But, hey, gotta go low sometimes for the greater good. He is a Soviet spy, after all.
Same for Missing. Pinochet's government has to eliminate the foreign potential rabble rouser.
What's more is you have all these conversations that go like this:
A: Bush should be tried for war crimes
B: Nope. No war crimes. No evidence.
Bush: The United States does not torture.
Now, Batman time: Batman brutally tortures the Joker. Clearly audiences approve of the Bush administration's tactics.
Hmm. Interesting. |
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heyrube
Joined: 30 May 2008
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| Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:56 am Post subject: |
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| how about we just talk about how awesome this movie is? |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:42 am Post subject: ... |
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Well, we coulda done that before Mr. Right decided that the movie supports torture which he doesn't support but he does and a war that he doesn't support but he does.
Cuz he's in the middle and not biased, just troubled by all of the other people who are.
Don't ask me about illegal wiretaps. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for your thoughts, Breakfast in Bed.
Ha. Reminds me of the different costumes Zorro wore in Zorro, the Gay Blade. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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Dark Knight continues to do well at the box office...
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"The Dark Knight" took in $26 million to finish as the No. 1 movie for the fourth straight weekend, beating the stoner comedy "Pineapple Express," which opened in second place with $22.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The weekend haul lifted the Warner Bros. Batman sequel to No. 3 on the all-time domestic box-office charts with $441.5 million, behind only "Titanic" ($600.8 million) and the original "Star Wars" ($461 million).
The last movie to remain No. 1 for four consecutive weekends was "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" in late 2003 and 2004, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers. That movie did it during a much slower time of year, with nowhere near the competition "The Dark Knight" has faced during Hollywood's busy summer season.
"It's almost unheard of. Summer doesn't usually afford films that much of a wide-open playing field," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers.
"The Dark Knight" should surpass "Star Wars" to become No. 2 on the revenue chart by this coming weekend... |
CNN Reports |
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stvwrd
Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 1:00 am Post subject: |
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I didn't think Dark Knight came down in support of torture AT ALL.
SPOILERS
After all, his torture didn't really work and the whole point was that he was falling right into the Joker's plan by beating him up, leading to Joker's line stating something to the effect of, "There's nothing you can take from me." Then a little later, "Don't worry I'm going to tell you anyway" after taunting him, showing him that all the brute force in the world is nothing to him, which is why the joker was such an awesome character.
As far as the surveillance goes, he almost lost one of his closest allies/best friends over it and in the end destroyed the whole thing. I'm still not sure what to make of the surveillance thing overall though. I think he was really just proving that yes, he is a good guy underneath because he blew up the system in the end. But we can take this all a step further and point out that there's little to stop him from building it again in the future. At most we can say that Batman acknowledges the tricky grey areas of these issues. Far from a ringing endorsement of any particular political ideology. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 5:42 am Post subject: |
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| Dark Knight continues to do well at the box office |
No it doesn't.  |
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Justin Hale
Joined: 24 Nov 2007
Location: the Straight Talk Express
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:00 am Post subject: |
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| heyrube wrote: |
| how about we just talk about how awesome this movie is? |
I absolutely hated it from start to finish. A feeble and, worse, utterly pompous beat-'em-up for middle-aged men with little willies. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:31 am Post subject: ... |
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| A feeble and, worse, utterly pompous beat-'em-up for middle-aged men with little willies. |
  
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| Apparently this film resonates with many. |
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Dark Knight continues to do well at the box office...
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Justin Hale wrote: |
| heyrube wrote: |
| how about we just talk about how awesome this movie is? |
A feeble and, worse, utterly pompous beat-'em-up for middle-aged men with little willies. |
Completely wrong. Of course.
I think ya-ta is probably right that Mr Ledger's death has a little to do with the box office numbers, but I don't think that's enough to make it top out at the number one all-time levels that we're seeing. The main reason is that it's just a very well-made film with enough action that thinking hard about it isn't very necessary while it's going on but with enough complexity and moral ambiguity to give us plenty to think about later, and also plenty to talk about with friends over coffee or beer later on.
The "problem" of torture is actually the smallent chunk of the big pile of ambiguousness I'm talking about. As others have pointed out already, it happens too quickly to touch us much on any kind of emotional level - most importantly, though, the real message being conveyed is quite the opposite of condoning or apologizing or justifying for "extraordinary interrogation techniques" (as the Bush administration calls it).
I saw the movie Sunday afternoon, so therefore this SPOILER WARNING!
As stward pointed out, The Joker always planned to divulge the information Batman wanted to have - so why did the perp participate in the charade? We learn pretty quickly after that scene that he had allowed himself to be captured by the police for other reasons, anyway. The answer is that The Joker wanted Batman to torture him, not because he enjoys pain (though there are hints that this might be true) but because he wants to send a message and prove a thesis: good people are not really so good as all that, and in fact only the slightest nudge is required to make the best among us commit the very worst attrocities.
By manuevering The Dark Knight into a position where his anger and desperation over the fate of his main squeeze cause him to step into the worst part of lawlessness, he is asserting moral equivalence the Caped Crusader. ("I don't want to kill you," he tells him. "You ... complete me.")
In fact, just about all of his crimes are avant garde street theater intended to make this very point, but the events of the story tend toward proving him wrong, that good people will in fact behave in good ways when given the alternative. A hospital is threatened with destruction along with all the people in it, and the price of preventing it is the death of a single innocent man - who is not really innocent, of course, because he had already attempted to extort Bruce Wayne out of several million dollars, but that's not as important as the fact that by succumbing to terrorists' demands we are participating in the act of terror ourselves - and even though at least two attempts were made to kill the whistleblower these were prevented because other people working with the system of established legality did the right thing and prevented the murder from happening.
Shortly thereafter, the passengers of two boats are given a chance to save their own lives by sacrificing their lives of the people on the other boat. Interestingly, we discover here that democracy does not lead to enlightened morality, because a vote taken reveals that by a 3-to-1 margin people would find it a fine thing to cause the death of others to save their own skin - and yet, but, still ... it doesn't happen. Push comes to shove, exactly one person is all that is required to actually close the connection on the detonator. And that person cannot be found on either boat, not even with the clock ticking away.
The Joker calls himself an "agent of chaos," which by some definitions means that he is an artist whose role is to show people aspects of their own identity that they might not prefer to look at. But, within the moral frame of the story, he is shown to be wrong, and that average people will choose good over not-so-good if they are able to do so ... and if they are given an example to follow.
Bruce Wayne had told his ladyfriend that he was looking forward to the day when he would no longer need to be Batman, when people would follow his example not by putting on a costume and going to battle under cover of darkness, but by doing the right thing when confronted with a choice of clear alternatives. He is willing to take on the role of brutal vigilante until that time comes, and he saw in Harvey Denton a possibility that a "White Knight" could stand up in the light of day and perform this function without the need to hide his face.
Why does the Bruce Wayne do what he does? He doesn't have super powers like The Man of Steel, and Uncle Ben's admonition to Peter Parker that "With great power comes great responsibility" carries no weight here - so why dress up like a bat and use funky gizmos to fight crime in stealth? Well, he does it for the most personal reasons, a sort of functional schozophrenia which many have poointed out is a just a form of revenge on the people who killed his parents in front of him when he was a boy. Fact is, a form of moral equivalence DOES exist between Batman and The Joker, because they've both been bent by events that made them what they are.
We get the feeling that Bruce Wayne's pose as a rich playboy Peter Pan bon vivant is the real disguise, and when Harvey dies and is reborn as Two-face he is going to have to continue wearing both counterfeit identities - and he and Commissioner Gordon conspire to create one more fraud: the people must never learn about Harvey Dent, that The White Knight in fact crossed over and became Two-Face. Why? Because - so the movie tells us - people need heroes to show them that it is possible to do good, even when surrounded by the bad and the very real chance that they have to make the world better.
But this is just where the moral framework shows its greatest weakness, because how can good behavior be predicated on a lie? If it is so founded, the structure built upon it will eventually fall, because there will always be the risk that it comes to be discovered - and when illusions are shown to be false, the result is dis-illusionment, then cynicism, and ultimately moral equivalence and finally the complete destruction of all concepts of good and evil.
And, in the real world, this is pretty much what does happen, and frequently. In Harvey, we see what the Pentagon tried to do with Pat Tilman - make him a hero and a martyr by falsifying for the public what was known to be true by those in authority.
But it's a comic-book view of reality, and we know it is not real - on some level, we know that it shows a deep cynicism while masking itself with idealism. Average people, it says, need to be fooled in order to believe in heroes, and once fooled, they can consider the possibility of behaving heroically themselves. In the real world, there are no heroes - so we must create them. And we will.
The most ironic thing of all? The Joker gave people a clear choice of behaviors and predicted they would choose wrongly - and was mistaken. Batman and Commissioner Gordon, however, will hide the true facts and perpetuate a dangerous myth because they actually have no faith that people will do good unless they have a nice, petty lie to shield themselves with.
Legalities prevent the Gotham Police from extradicting a man out of Hong Kong, so Bruce Wayne buys a plane secretly, abducts the man and commits rendition secretly. Batman commits torture, but gains nothing from it that he wouldn't have gotten anyway, since the Joker always wanted to tell his secret. Bruce Wayne has the means to invade the privacy of everyone in the city, so he does it, temporarily, because he's fighting the good fight against an implacable foe who is willing to kill without compunction. Finally, he creates a lie in a criminal conspiracy that hides the identity of a true murderer - but, again, the ends justify the means.
And if this movie is actually a paen of exultant approval for the Bush Administration, it is here: the ends justify the means because we know more than you do, so we have the power and responsibility to do the wrong thing because we have the best reasons for it.
Is it true that the world needs heroes? Only if your vision of humanity is that of weak, stupid and selfish creatures who will not do what is right and good unless they are deluded into doing so.
Who's the real hero, anyway? Looking at the big picture, hey ... maybe it's The Joker. Although he puts a lot of lives at risk for most of the movie, we only actually see him kill just two people, a criminal at the beginning who had just finished offing a comrade, and later, Rachel, who was actually sacrificed by Batman because The Dark Knight chose to save Harvey instead. (So, there is one more motivation for Batman to cover up the birth of Two-Face, of course: to hide his own complicity in Rachel's death.)
I liked the movie, because even though children might need heroes, adults just might look at the hypocrisy and paternalism - and wrongheadedness - of the whole notion that we need a protector or some image in our minds of someone larger than ourselves who will do the right thing because we are not able to. Only the most simplistic reading of the movie will allow it to condone or approve of doing bad in the service of good - I might be wrong, but I think the large numbers of people seeing the film are not doing so with that in mind. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| Only the most simplistic reading of the movie will allow it to condone or approve of doing bad in the service of good - I might be wrong, but I think the large numbers of people seeing the film are not doing so with that in mind [my emphasis]. |
How do you know this? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:59 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
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| A feeble and, worse, utterly pompous beat-'em-up for middle-aged men with little willies. |
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| Apparently this film resonates with many. |
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Dark Knight continues to do well at the box office...
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Seriously. Mr. Hale is the only person I know that hasn't liked the movie.
It is the first movie in years that I've seen twice in the theater. |
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