The Dark Knight Will Rise Again

Dave Monroe against.the.dave at gmail.com
Tue Jul 31 14:09:31 CDT 2012


But the heart of the film is not money. It's people and what they
choose to make of the injustices of their lives. Catwoman is the
linchpin of that theme. She is the link between those like the heroic
capitalist Wayne, who allow hardship to temper their souls, and those
like Bane, who cling to their hurts and demand to be repaid in
societal destruction. Catwoman begins as a thief making revolutionary
proclamations: "There's a storm coming." She ends up confronting the
true nature of that storm and a choice between that and freedom's
better way.

Free markets lift us all. People's "revolutions" inevitably result in
tyranny. Forgiveness and self-betterment redeem society while
embittered extortions in the name of "social justice" poison it. None
of these simple truths is hidden in the film. That is why left-leaning
critics on both coasts have reacted to the movie with the same willful
blindness with which they view history.

They should instead take a tip from Batman's faithful butler Alfred:
"Maybe it's time we all stopped trying to outsmart the truth, and let
it have its day."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577551504216719494.html

The sustaining fantasy of Nolan's Batman films – which does chime
uncomfortably with Romney – is that the excesses of finance capital
can be curbed by a combination of philanthropy, off-the-books violence
and symbolism. The Dark Knight at least exposed the duplicity and
violence necessary to preserve the fictions in which conservatives
want us to believe. But the new film demonises collective action
against capital while asking us to put our hope and faith in a
chastened rich.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/22/batman-political-right-turn



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