The Politics of The Dark Knight

Much has been said about the political undertones both in The Dark Knight and in The Dark Knight Rises. Some on the Right have decried the movies for portraying conservative views toward crime and torture as being overly brutal, self-serving, and ultimately ineffective while a few on the Left have called the movies pro-fascist and have criticized their glorification of violent response to crime while creating a paranoid dream of what the Occupy movement could become. Even Rush Limbaugh has waded in with the rather ridiculous opinion that the character of Bane is a liberal conspiracy aimed at vilifying Mitt Romney due to the name being a homonym with Bain (as in the investment firm at the center of a small controversy right now).

So what is it? Is Christopher Nolan’s Gotham a violent, objectivist, conservative wasteland only Ayn Rand could love, or is Batman a secret liberal because he refuses to kill criminals and condemns those who would? Or are we missing the point trying to pin partisan values on a figure either side of the political aisle would be hesitant to embrace were he real?

The character of Batman has always been a delicate one when the topic of politics gets inserted into the world of comics. On the one hand, he is the epitome of the successful capitalist, but how he uses his wealth (outside his wonderful toys) is up for debate. Also, Batman is capable of brutalizing his victims as capably as any professional torturer, but he will not kill – nor does he believe any individual has the right to proclaim themselves judge, jury, and executioner.

The simple fact is, though, that comic book characters are more a commentary on the time period in which they are residing than they are consistently partisan. Pick out a period in which Batman or any other hero is portrayed, and you’ll find the popular values of the day reflected. Take the Cold War undertones in the later Christopher Reeves Superman movies for example. Is Superman political? He is (or was) for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but he also strives for world peace with the single-mindedness of an activist. Those movies of the eighties portrayed both the heady optimism of Reagan conservatism alongside the fears that we were putting too much faith in militarization. More recently, what do we make of Green Lantern’s coming out of the closet? Is it a sign that DC has picked sides in the culture wars, or is it just a reflection of our times?

Yes, comic books and their varied media adaptations sometimes do promote certain societal and political values, but those same characters may be on the opposite side of those same issues a decade later. If we can then strip our political preconceptions from Nolan’s Gotham (especially in light of his statements that he had no intention of promoting political values), then perhaps we can see a more valuable lesson in the Dark Knight trilogy, one of the dangers of extremism and escalation.

Oh, and I guess I should point out that minor spoilers are contained beyond this point.

• In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne turns to a group of extremists, the League of Shadows, to help him fight the rising crime in Gotham City. Their solution is one of destruction, which Wayne rejects. His solution is instead to escalate the war on crime in a way the police cannot. He hopes to inspire hope, which he does, but he also inspires the criminal element to escalate in kind, as Jim Gordon points out in the conclusion of the film.
• The Dark Knight displays the result of the arms race between criminals and Batman, and the result is a completely unhinged psychopath named Joker. Joker becomes to the underworld what Batman is to the law. He is the one willing to go beyond normal means to stop a threat, and the battle between the two reaches a fevered climax that ultimately destroys Batman’s reputation and nearly plunges Gotham into irreparable despair.
• The Dark Knight Rises brings escalation to a new level with the Dent Act, a law that gives the district attorney’s office and the police force unprecedented power and authority, a law that is creating an air of civil unrest in Gotham, and a law that is predicated on everyone believing a lie. Bane offers an extreme solution to the authoritarian state Gotham has found itself in. No longer is the war between vigilante and psychopath; it has grown to the point of tearing Gotham apart.

Yes, shadows of the Occupy Movement exist in Bane’s revolutionary movement. Yes, there are shadows of the Patriot Act in Batman’s surveillance system in The Dark Knight and in the Dent Act of the sequel. None of this is the point, though. They are merely reflections of the time in which these movies were made, and those reflections will lose their power with time. How many people still understand the fear of nuclear war during the 80s that underscores the plot of  Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? No, the bigger message is not one of partisan values. It’s not about vilifying or glorifying one set of political ideals over another. If there are any political messages in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, it’s this: extremism begets extremism, and we should always be wary of using escalation as a means to an end.

George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

 

Winning Without Losing

“We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that’s great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault.”

- Steve Jobs 1997

I rediscovered this quote a couple of days ago while looking through some YouTube videos of old Apple keynotes and conferences. The context of the quote was a difficult situation for the returning former-CEO. He had to convince a crowd of the Apple faithful — those who had waged war against the giant Wintel juggernaut for years now — that it was okay for Apple to make some concessions to Microsoft in return for a $150 million dollar investment from their Redmond competitor in a move that basically amounted to a corporate bailout. It was a tough pill for that audience to swallow, and it’s a lesson others in our culture could stand to learn.

From the modern tech industry — the one that posits that only one successful mobile OS can thrive, only one ebook vendor can flourish — to the book industry to education to foreign policy to energy companies to the auto industry, we have this notion that for one company or concept to win, all others must lose. GM must dominate Ford and the others. Oil can never be replaced or enhanced by other means. It’s winner-take-all. Any and all compromise or concession is a sign of weakness and eminent defeat. It is, however, an unsustainable model, but it is the model in which our partisan-divided government has become entrenched.

Look no further than the current deficit reduction and debt ceiling talks. An issue that could disrupt the lives of millions who rely on our social security, veterans affairs, and Medicare services to function as smoothly as they can, an issue that could create an economic roller coaster, an issue that could put thousands of hard-working people in government service out of work, an issue that could further cripple the running of our public schools — this has become a stage for political theater where catering to extreme partisan ideals has become more important than just doing the job.

There is more than enough blame to go around, but the House Republicans have been the most egregious in their insistence that they have to win this debate at any cost. Former presidential speech writer and conservative blogger David Frum observes:

They raised the menace of deliberate default in a way it has not been raised before.

Then having issued the threat, they discovered that their own core supporters would not allow the gun to be holstered again.

They issued demands they knew could not be met, for budget cuts much bigger than Republicans ever enacted when they had the power to enact them. They cocked the weapon. And now here we are: the demands are unmet and Republicans find themselves facing a horrible choice between yielding on their exorbitant demands or pushing the United States into financial upheaval.

(emphasis mine)

Party politics in the United States has escalated to a winner-take-all battle in which people gleefully embrace extreme ideals on one side or another and disregard the destructive nature of such extremism. We can lay the blame at the feet of extreme rhetoric in our politicians — whether from Grayson and Kucinich on the left or Bachmann, Palin, Pawlenty, Boehner, and Perry on the right. We can lay the blame at the political indignation broadcast by cable news and talk radio commentators — whether Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, and Ed Schultz on the left or Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Greta Van Susteren, and Michelle Malkin on the right. We can even lay blame on anyone who listens to highly partisan sources and never thinks to hear another perspective or check facts. There is blame to go around.

With or without blame, though, it’s time to stop. And it starts with you and me. We have to stop buying into the notion that for us to win, one party or the other has to lose. They are not on your side or mine. They are on their own team, and they temporarily recruit us every few years to bolster their support against the opposition. It’s time for us to stop thinking in terms of parties and sides, and, if we can do that, then maybe some real progress can be made if the politicians figure out we no longer want to play their game.

As it stands, as long as they keep fighting, and as long as we keep enabling the fight, we all lose.

Herman Cain: Templar

I’m sure by now you’ve heard that Republican presidential contender Herman Cain released a gospel album. It was actually cut long before his presidential aspirations, and the surprising bit is that it’s pretty good if you’re into gospel music.

My favorite part has become the album art on the ReverbNation page, though:

Except for the nearly-illegible text toward the middle, it’s pretty good, but I instantly thought something looked familiar about it. It took my wife to make the connection. (Have I ever mentioned how amazing she is?) She thought the artwork looked a lot like the box art for a certain action-rpg we’ve been enjoying:

I might be wrong, but I don’t think Mr. Cain would much like our support of the mages. Something tells me he would be more of a Knight-Commander Meredith kind of guy.

The Perceived War On Women

Despite claims to the contrary, there are strong opinions that the conservative movement in the United States is waging a war on women. If asked straight on, every one of my conservative friends will say that such an idea is ridiculous, that said war is as made up of a bogeyman as Glenn Beck’s liberal conspiracy theories. Numerous women on the political right will defend their ideology, saying their positions are very positive for women.

Here is freshmen Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) on the issue:

The Republican agenda is indeed pro-woman. It is pro-woman because it is pro-small business, pro-entrepreneur, pro-family and pro-economic growth.

Others will cite the growing number of powerful women in the conservative movement – Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. You can even go back a few years and point to Elizabeth Dole, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and Peggy Noonan to add more weight to the argument. Many of these would say there is no war against women; but it is the war on abortion that the progressive community frames in an incendiary way to win female votes.

It may be that abortion is the true target of conservative warfare, but women are getting caught in the crossfire, and the conservative movement seems to have no problem with them being collateral damage in a battle they see as the greater cause.

Defunding Planned Parenthood

Republicans are attacking federal funding for Planned Parenthood because of their providing abortions, but what of the other services (PDF link) Planned Parenthood provides? 35% of their services do involve birth control – preventative birth control for poor and disenfranchised women. 34% of their services include STD testing and treatment, again for those who might not be able to afford treatment at a completely privatized facility. Prenatal and infertility care make up around 11% of their services, and cancer screenings make up 17% of their operations. In fact, Planned Parenthood annually conducts roughly one million screenings for cervical cancer and about 830,000 screening for breast cancer. In all of this, abortions constitute three percent of their services.

Planned Parenthood’s customers can afford these screenings and tests because of federal funding. Take this resource away, and that is one million more women a year who can’t afford cervical cancer screenings. That’s 830,000 more women a year who may not catch breast cancer early enough. That’s more teens and destitute women without access to contraceptive care or who won’t be able to afford prenatal care if they are trying to preserve the life of their unborn child – and remember: more women go to Planned Parenthood for prenatal care than for abortions. How many more stillbirths and miscarriages are acceptable in the face of stopping the abortions provided by this facility? Is it worth stopping one way a baby will die only to exacerbate others?

Many financially struggling women will find their health and the health of their children to be “collateral damage” in the war on abortion.

Redefining Rape

HR 358, also known as the Protect Life Act (and alternately skewered as the Let Women Die Act) set one frightening precedent by proposing to mandate that emergency rooms allow an expectant mother to die rather than performing life-saving treatment that would harm the unborn fetus – even if the fetus would die anyway. That, in and of itself, is enough to show how marginalized a woman’s life is in the face of the great war on abortion, but the bill went further, effectively redefining rape so that physical force must be involved, effectively excluding date rape, statutory rape, drug-induced rape, and the rape of mentally incompetent women from any longer being defined as the hideous acts they are. The bill took similar steps in cases of incest against minors.

Without intending to, Republicans put forth a bill that said some forms of rape are not as serious as others, that some forms of incest are more acceptable than others. In trying to narrow the circumstances under which a woman could receive a federally funded abortion, they made a bill that seemed to brush aside the growing problem of violence against women.

Criminal Miscarriages

In Georgia, State Representative Bobby Franklin (R) introduced legislation that would effectively treat every miscarriage as a potential murder. Imagine that for a moment. You or a loved one discover you have lost an unborn child. You are in the throes of grief, and the state is requiring an investigation into the events surrounding your child’s death – even if you’ve been conscientious parents-to-be, even if you have a clean record, even if you’ve been making all of your doctor’s appointments. Even, then, you are suspected of being a criminal. While it may not yet be a crime to intentionally terminate your pregnancy, watch out if it is an accident.

Indiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, among others, seem to be following suit in practice if not in writing. Again, the intentions may be pure, but the collateral damage is significant.

Cuts, Cuts, and More Cuts

Women and their children are also victims of austerity measures pushed by conservatives, measures that leave the very wealthy unaffected and, of course, make sure we are still spending more on weapons than much of the rest of the industrialized world combined.

• The GOP sought to cut 10% from WIC, which provides financial assistance to low-income pregnant and nursing women and their infant children.
• They cut funding to Title X, which helps low-income families with family planning.
• Medicare and Medicaid are in the cross-hairs right now, both programs that provice more services to women and children than to men.
• Republicans fought to exclude maternity care from the Affordable Care Act, again making it more difficult for low-income mothers to seek care and to get cancer screenings. These were also the same people who defended insurance companies that treated pregnancy as a preexisting condition and that would reject covering infants born with complications or medical conditions.

I’m not even going to go into how many times the Republican’s “pro-economic growth” policies have made sure women are paid less than men in the workplace. Even Sen. McCain stonewalled when a girl brought it up at one of his campaign rallies. Indirectly related, though Michele Bachmann has become famous for her multiple foster children, her political career will likely do damage to foster programs in the long run, as she has demonstrated that she is willing to fall in line with the GOP practice of expecting the most sacrifice from those in the most need.

An Attitude of Callousness

For all the moral grandstanding about protecting life, I can’t look at these actions and see anything other than callousness. They will do everything they can, up to and including endangering the health and safety of millions of women, to ensure a child is born, but they seem to stop caring as soon as the infant exits the birth canal. “We will demand your child be born,” they say, “but we don’t want to sacrifice a penny to help make your child has any quality of life.” No, there may not be an active war against women, but the amount of callousness and carelessness directed toward women by our modern conservative movement leads to the same results. There’s no war on women just like there is no war on Libya.

I think the pervasive atmosphere is summed up well by a recent op-ed by Dan Rottenberg in Philadelphia’s Broad Street Review regarding the sexual assault in Egypt of reporter Lara Logan:

I can’t help thinking that women also need to take sensible precautions before they’re victimized…Earth to liberated women: When you display legs, thighs or cleavage, some liberated men will see it as a sign that you feel good about yourself and your sexuality. But most men will see it as a sign that you want to get laid.

Yes, because gang rape is always something to treat flippantly. You look pretty, it’s perfectly okay for a group of men to force themselves on you. After all, they can’t possibly resist their programming.

Why does this fit? Look at the measures taken to prevent abortions. Time and again, legislation is introduced that serves to marginalize women or treat them as having fewer rights than their male counterparts. Mr. Rottenberg speaks from that same well of female depreciation, condescension, and condemnation. Because you are a woman, you should expect to be mistreated, and you are wrong when you complain about it or seek better rights.

Or, put even more succinctly than Mr. Rottenberg, Kansas state Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R) when asked if women should always be prepared to be sexually assaulted:

I have spare tire on my car.

If these are the people who claim to be pro-woman, who call themselves friends of the females in this country – then who needs a war on women? The friendly fire is doing damage enough.