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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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As I posted, above, Bucheon Bum, CNN reports that, in its first four weeks, the Dark Knight has earned "$441.5 million, behind only 'Titanic' ($600.8 million) and the original 'Star Wars' ($461 million)." Justin Hale stands nearly alone on this. And Nowhere Man is desperately grasping at straws to contradict, undermine, and discredit me. He apparently has nothing more to contribute to this message board than that.
I found an apparent attempt to obliquely justify the War on Terror in the film, I cited specifics here, I found a Wall Street Journal Op-ed which speculates along the same lines I do, and at least one other poster here agrees as well, at least partly. Who knows what this means? According to some cultural historians, films function as social barometers. I thought it might be interesting to mix my speculation and these theories on what this might mean in this case in a tailor-made "Current Events" thread to generate discussion on this great film (and I saw it twice as well).
Some have chosen to respond to this reflexively and rigidly. In Nowhere Man's case, he is just, per usual, responding reflexively and rigidly in whatever way necessary to contradict and attempt to undermine and discredit anything at all that I might post here.
Typical day on this forum. Go figure. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| 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? |
I don't know it, and I didn't say that I did. I said I think so, and I even said that I might be wrong. You quoted me saying that. Where do you get any grand pronouncements of truth from my direction about this?
There are a lot of factors at work that make a movie a summer blockbuster. As others have pointed out, ticket sales of a fantasy film do not indicate a widespread agreement with the policies of any particular govt - more likely it means you got a good story going on, or at the very least that there are not so many other good movies out there to choose from.
And I know it was a lot to ask you to read, but within the context of the film, Batman's torture of the The Joker is presented as a failure and a defeat at the hands of his adversary. If there's a "message" about the Global War on Terror, that's what
I think
the message might be.
To state it more clearly: when you do evil, even in the service of good, you become evil. And you lose. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:36 pm Post subject: |
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Bobster: do not be so eager to demonstrate your hastiness to pounce, and in self-righteous, unimaginative style. I did not mean to provoke defensiveness in you. "How did you arrive at that, perhaps tentative, conclusion on the audience and its perceptions?" That is another way of phrasing my question.
Also, I have made it clear, multiple times, on this thread, that I am speculating based on cultural theory and film. No more no less. I am not married to any interpretation. As I have also admitted, there is no evidence at all to reach conclusions on the audience. There is no final answer to such interpretative questions as those I ask and answer here, either. We are dealing, ultimately, with a work of art.
This inconclusiveness notwithstanding, I arrived at the speculative interpretation I advance here through the scholarly works of Richard Allen (who explores activist-spectator audiences and film), many others, including Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's postmodernist, theoretical discussion on politics and film, and from a vast array of cultural historians who have applied such theories in historical reconstructions. The latest I read, a couple of months ago, was a cultural history on weddings -- and it partly relied on film. I have also looked at coal mining, Marxism, and film. In any case, here is part of what Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck say on the matter, as it has to do with "lavish weddings," in their book, Cinderella Dreams...
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| Most important, films are social barometers of attitudes toward the lavish wedding. Hollywood films are more than merely a reflection of the personal views of the screenwriter or the director. Films are produced and become popular and successful because a major company believes there is an audience for the views the film expresses. Attitudes toward the grand wedding in films may be one step ahead of the culture at large (satirizing such views when they are in fact valued by the audience), but most reflect popular attitudes. In short, most screen movies are mass-marketed fantasy, borrowing from situations familiar to the public either through personal experience or aspiration... |
It is boring that you want to argue polemics and hastily dismiss the view I advance here as "simplistic," rather than merely exchange views on this when I have stated numerous times that I am speculating for the purposes of starting a discussion. If you would add to this, I would welcome it, and would exchange with you. Are you interested in that? Or are you going to join the other one in bitterly stringing together things I have said indefinitely on this message board?
Now. I have explained where I am coming from. Where are you coming from, Bobster? Other than how you feel about it, I mean. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| As stward pointed out, The Joker always planned to divulge the information Batman wanted to have... |
Making my text yellow just in case some poor sap that hasn't seen the movie stumbles upon this thread (page 4 already but you never know)
That's a pretty detailed look at the picture. Yes, the movie is often about avoiding the abuse of power even when nobody's there to stop you, and not making the choice to do evil when all external factors say it would be the most logical choice.
I think the end part did make sense though because realizing that he was actually two-face would be pretty traumatic for the city right then, and Batman as a shadowy figure can easily take on the responsibility. Maybe a decade or two later after the city is able to clean up somebody will find out but then it won't be that shocking; they'll be like remember that guy that we thought was our white knight? He became a criminal too. Really? Yeah, our city was pretty f*ked up then. Totally. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Bobster: do not be so eager to demonstrate your hastiness to pounce, and in self-righteous, unimaginative style. I did not mean to provoke defensiveness in you. |
Thank you very much for the courtesy and respect you've shown me just now. I'm a little confused that you think I was defensive, however - the truth is, that you simply said something that was wrong. I still don't know how you arrived at the conclusion you drew, but I don't suppose you are interested in explaining your errors. By the way, that's a lovely color shirt you're wearing today. Can I get you another cup of coffee?
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| "How did you arrive at that, perhaps tentative, conclusion on the audience and its perceptions?" That is another way of phrasing my question. |
Hm. I thought I was clear - and twice, but I guess I'll have to try a third time.
1. As others have said, the popularity of a movie does not reflect the popularity of ideas it contains. There are a great many factors, and a great many unknowns at work.
2. The lack of protest over ideas contained in a fantasy film does not indicate any large amount of agreement about ideas contained in the film, either. There are a number of reasons for this, but among them are that there are a great many real and true things in the real world that are more worthy of our time.
3. Finally, I am not the first to point out that (following mith's lead, I'll use yellow here) what "torture" there is in the film is not at all on the level of what we have observed in our daily headlines - most importantly (and I think it's the 3rd time I'm saying it) Batman was maneuvered into the position of perform the act, and succumbing to it is not presented to the viewer as proud and admirable moment, but rather as a moment of failure and even defeat.
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| It is boring that you want to argue polemics and hastily dismiss the view I advance here as "simplistic," rather than merely exchange views on this when I have stated numerous times that I am speculating for the purposes of starting a discussion. |
Sorry that the word "simplistic" hurts your feelings - frankly, it's amazing how much else of what I said you had to skim over to find one word to feel bad about. If you'd like an apology to soothe you, I'll offer it gladly, but I went to quite some trouble to offer my own interpretation of the film with what I though was sufficient discussion about reasons for how I came to the conclusions I did. If you really want to discuss it instead of fend off perceived attacks on your person, I think I did put enough out there for us to talk about.
My overall thesis, though was that the moral framework of the film was rather more complex than the average good/evil melodrama, despite the fact that story takes this form. To me, that complexity is why it is good art. I'm not going to go tell you that it's been so financially successful because the art is good - as I said, there are many reasons for a movie to make money - but doesn't hurt at all.
Batman, for many people, is probably the most interesting superhero character, and for reasons I alluded to earlier: no super powers. And that means that, because he is as human as the rest of us, the choices he makes are as likely to be flawed, and his motivations more difficult to pin down as any other human being.
He is a Knight, sure, but his heart is clouded with the Darkness of pain from his past, and by the possibility that even he might not fully know the reasons for what he does. And, as with most interesting and complex characters, even when he is compelled by the best motives, he will unintentionally cause pain to those around him - and that's got to suck, you know?
Having said that, I'm willing to bet that if I took a poll of people's opinions leaving the thater and asked who was more interesting as a character, The Joker would win out for much that same reasons that a lot of us found Lucifer to be the most interesting character in Paradise Lost ... shall I go out on a limb and suggest that Milton did not intend that we approve of him? Shall I also suggest that finding Satan to be a more complex character than Adam does not mean that world approves of forming an army to dethrone god from heaven?
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| Now. I have explained where I am coming from. Where are you coming from, Bobster? Other than how you feel about it, I mean. |
I can't think of anything more to add about this movie aside from what I've said, and I've said a lot.
I will take a moment and disagree with your quote, however.
Hollywood films are more than merely a reflection of the personal views of the screenwriter or the director. Films are produced and become popular and successful because a major company believes there is an audience for the views the film expresses.
This is a good description of why some films get made and others do not, but it does not explain why some of those that get made become popular and successful - the people quoted here are academics, though, and if they knew so much about what makes movies successful, one wonders why they are not heads of production companies and filthy rich from the spoils of their wisdom.
Personally, I'm gonna go with William Goldman, who had a pretty long and successful career on the frontlines of the box office wars.
| Quote: |
| "Nobody knows anything." |
Before a movie is released, nobody can guess how well it will do, and after it has become successful, anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's about the reasons why it did so. And making sweeping generalizations about the mood of society based on messages contained in its art is a cute little game that intellectuals play between themselves, but it's the farthest thing from science and in the end it's just another set of opinions, interesting to toss about, but ultimately no better or worse than anyone's.
Last edited by The Bobster on Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| I'm a little confused that you think I was defensive, however - the truth is, that you simply said something that was wrong. I still don't know how you arrived at the conclusion you drew, but I don't suppose you are interested in explaining your errors. |
Here we go again.
When someone prefaces a statement with "I think..." this almost always indicates a conclusion. It means that you have thought about something, reached some kind of conclusion on it, and now you are going to tell us "what you think." Presumably, Bobster, some kind of thought process or processes went through your mind before you said "I think..." I do not care about people's usual disclaimers here: IMHO, FWIW, or your double-talk "I might be wrong, but..." You introduced a claim. I asked you to explain how you reached it, what process or processes you went through. There is nothing more to it than that -- except, of course, your very nitpicky defensiveness, centered, as it is, entirely on the disclaimer at the expense of the central clause you articulated.
This is boring. And it looks like you are more or less spontaneously inventing an interpretation based on how you feel and based on little more than a negative reaction to the speculative position I developed here. I am done with exchanging with you (again). Always takes about two posts, Bobster.
Last edited by Gopher on Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:35 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| The Bobster wrote: |
| You introduced a claim. I asked you to explain how you reached it. |
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I explained it when I first made it the "claim." I explained it again later, with 3-point bullets, and a reference to a very successful Hollywood professional. If it's still unclear, you will need to explain what there is about it that you do not understand.
I'm sure I am not alone in feeling regret over whatever it is that people here have said and done to make you feel that people are all out to get you. You want to discuss a movie, why not discuss a movie instead of all the angst you display because not everyone agrees with you all the time?
Here's a review from The Huffington Post that misses the mark just about as thoroughly as that guy in the Wall Street Journal did ...
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| The thought of Vice President Dick Cheney in a form-fitting bat costume might be too much for most people to bear. But the concepts of security and danger presented in Christopher Nolan's new Batman epic, "The Dark Knight," align so perfectly with those of the Office of the Vice President that David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff and former legal counsel, might be an uncredited script doctor. |
Click through to read the whole thing.
Last edited by The Bobster on Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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Not "people," Bobster. Again, you mischaracterize. But you two have a special thing for me, no doubt about it. And it exceeds "pathetic." More than you two disagree with at least some of the views I express here. But only you two have that special thing going on.
This notwithstanding, thank you for the link. I wonder, from another point of view, whether W. Bush, Cheney, and their administration might not take comfort from this film's angle -- assuming they even saw it or read such editorials; and I think they probably did. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Not "people," Bobster. Again, you mischaracterize. But you two have a special thing for me, no doubt about it. |
Honestly, dude, I had forgotten you were the OP by the time I got around to using the word "simplistic." My original post was in response to someone else entirely. It was just one word out of a thousand or so. And that's all you want to talk about.
Why not talk about the movie?
Here's a review I DO mostly agree with, though ...
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One of the "biggest" ideas of the year, according to James Fallows writing in the Atlantic Magazine, is the End of 9/11 as a metanarrative for American politics. For a growing domestic and international constituency, it is no longer tolerable for the very invocation of those events to warrant overriding every principle of American democracy. That moment of thoughtless panic has passed, and appears now to have been a dream of madness. Casting aside principles in the name of the "war on terror" -- to "work ... the dark side, if you will", as Dick Cheney put it -- is now being recognized as the path to becoming the very evil we feared.
One of the most potent confirmations of this maturing zeitgeist is the overwhelmingly positive critical and public reception of Christopher Nolan's stunning new Batman film The Dark Knight , which, in its careful use of 9/11 visual tropes takes the viewer on a sometimes traumatic but ultimately redemptive and humanistic journey towards a truly post-9/11 ethic |
Near the end of this one, said better than I ...
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Gordon and all of Gotham -- and by extension, the audience -- are left to face a complex, dangerous and interconnected world as a community of individual moral agents, guided by Dent's principles of law, fairness and justice -- as well as their own reclaimed humanism. Even in the face of incomprehensible, implacable evil, The Dark Knight reminds us that these are our only anchors, for without them we betray both them and ourselves.
America may still have that chance. At the moment, however, its Constitution has been mauled, and politicians of both parties long ago surrendered their capacities to stop an illegal war and the looting of the nation's wealth. Now, however, The Dark Knight warns against both abandoning our principles out of fear, grief and hatred, as well as abdicating our moral agency to external authorities -- both of which comprised the hallmark moral syndrome of the years following 9/11.
That audiences and critics have embraced this film gives one hope that the days of uncritically turning to leaders promising to save us from our fears are at an end. As James Fallows says, the 9/11 era is over.
We are all Gothamites now. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Good, thoughtful review. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 1:32 am Post subject: ... |
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Just as a note of closure, let us take note that the great resonance Americans have displayed for torture and illegal wiretapping has fallen in favor of a new (but probably brief) resonance for making fun of retarded people.
Sadly, the torture/wiretrap plot fell short of the all-time box office haul, wherein the proletariat show themselves a class above the self-consumed bourgeoisie aboard a sinking ship (and trust me, it was this triumph of class warfare, not teeny-boppers going to see lovey-dovey Leonardo crap that blew the top off the cultural barometer).
The good news is that The Dark Knight did displace The Phantom Menace, the most imaginative tale of slavery since Roots.
And, as a final test of resonance, let's look back at Nolan's Memento.
No Oscar, but it got 42 wins:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/awards
Does TDK deserve that kind of recognition?
Absolutely not. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: Re: The Dark Knight and W. Bush's War on Terror... |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Dark Knight remains at the top of box-office sales at nearly $350 million in less than a month. Apparently this film resonates with many.
CNN Reports
The film features many moments worthy of analysis. For example, the Joker is called "a terrorist" throughought. In order to apprehend the Joker, Batman constructs an intelligence network that temporarily invades every single person's privacy. Batman argues that the ends justify the means when he constructs and runs it. Further, Batman harshly interrogates and in fact brutally tortures the Joker for information.
The gist of Batman's reason for being seems to be this: when terrorists such as the Joker arise, someone has to take the responsibility of breaking the law, indeed becoming vengeful, a hated figure, and an outcast, in order to serve the greater good. Things always get worse just before they get better, Harvey Dent, in fact says, while defending Batman at one point. The police commissioner, too, expressly supports Batman when he takes this path.
Interesting film and message, then. Seems to be especially appropriate today -- if not a subtle commentary in support of the present administration's tactics. And, again, it seems that quite a few have accepted this message without objecting.
I wonder whether it will remain number one next weekend... |
Yes, it's extraordinary how eager the entertainment industry is, not just with this movie but a lot of the time, to take up the government line and run with it.
I wouldn't be surprised to find there are people who think '24' is a realistic depiction of the 'War on Terror'. |
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