Service interuption…

Just to note. I don’t think you’ll be seeing much from us until at least the week after New Years.

Now that I’ve posted this, I’m sure a ton of content will be forcoming.

Hope you all kick off 2009 in style.

In case you missed it… (Dark Knight Seminar)

I would mark our first attempt at a “Discussion Seminar” a – qualified – success. The main snag is how long it should be. Next time we do one of these (next month?) we’ll make it longer than just a week.

Here the posts involved in our discussion of “The Dark Knight”:

Starting Post

• The joke is on me, I think… (Smith Michaels)
• Bat-Mania! (Tito)
• “Wanna Know How I Got These Scars?” (Tito)
• Thesis and Antithesis… Synthesis… (Dr. Brown)
• One more thing – Dark Knight/Killing Joke (Psycholarry)

We still haven’t figured out what we should do for our next seminar. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Bond, James Bond – You Only Live to be Racist Twice

You Only Live Twice!

Year: 1967

Bond Actor: Sean Connery (Age:37)

Women Slept With: 3

Villain’s Evil Scheme: To steal Soviet and American spaceships with their own spaceship that eats spaceships to incite nuclear war between the two super powers.

What’s next, blurred-blogoverse?

I know we are just wrapping up our seminar, which I actually found to be a stimulating intellectual exercise, but I can’t help but wondering what should be next. I am personally following a few pop culture things with interest right now: the (in my opinion) surprisingly good Clone Wars cartoon, Batman comics, and Morison’s run Doom Patrol. I think that I might be interested in doing some kind of a comprehensive essay on depictions of the Joker, maybe breaking it down by decade. Just some thoughts.

Mike Huckabee is full of shit…

Submitted without comment. Continued from here.

One more thing – Dark Knight/Killing Joke

I’m going to do my best here to not rehash things that have already been said here.  I can pretty much guarantee that I will fail.

Talking about either story really comes down to discussing the four major characters of the story: Batman, the Joker, Two-Face/Dent, and Detective/Commisioner Gordon.  Certainly there are other ancillary characters that play important roles, but most of what they do serves largely to drive these characters.  We’ll start with the Killing Joke because I don’t have to discuss Harvey Dent at all.

I think in the end the Killing Joke deals with the struggle of archetypes.    As Batman tells the faux-joker at the beginning, the struggle that they are locked into is a cycle that can only be broken with the death of one of its participants.  The Joker cannot stop being the Anarchist/Murderer/Joker and Batman cannot stop being Vigilante/Crime-Fighter/Batman.  In the same way Commisioner will never be anything but a balancing force/good cop, no matter how hard he is pushed by either side.  This is probably what makes the ending so irritating to me, a moment of levity shared between two mortal foes (as far as mortality goes in comics anyway) after a long look at how it’s impossible for them to be anything but enemies.

Of course there’s also the potential backstory for the Joker, Batman’s own sympathetic origins, and the conventional law and order morality behind Jim Gordon’s world view.  These characters weren’t always the monolithic archetypes they have become.  At some point each of them went through or goes through a massive traumatic event.  I think Moore’s hypothesis is that everyone goes through some moment of great stress that defines who they are and strips away everything else, further stressful events only reinforce this character.  The Joker was a normal nice person pushed as far as anyone could be and he came out of it the Joker and it’s clear that nothing will ever make him go back to being normal.  Bruce Wayne had his world come crashing down and he was refined into the Batman and no matter how he tries or who he hurts the Joker cannot make Batman become Bruce Wayne again.  Commisioner Gordon became a cop long ago, and even when he literally has his life stripped from him, he’s still going to remain that cop.

The Dark Knight deals with those archetypes, but looks more at when they fail.  The four main players all have their own very strong ideas about how the world works or should work and they all try to impose that worldview on Gotham.  The Joker believes that the only rational way to live is with no rules or structure, that chaos is the only reasonable way to exist.  Batman has his own problems with societies rules, but only when they stop working or when they stand in the way of JUSTICE.  Gordon may be willing to bend rules like most police forces do, but he will hunt down anyone that breaks them, even someone who just saved his family.  Harvey Dent sees duality in everything:  you either die a hero or live till you become a villain (and presumably vice versa).  Eventually this turns into a full fledged belief that Random Chance rules over every aspect of life.

Gotham is the crucible where these guys test and push their philosphies on each other and the populace.  Batman test’s Gordon’s belief in the system.  Gordon calls out Batman on the consequences of his tactics and existance.  Two Face makes them both wonder if they can trust in the system at all.  They in turn try to make Harvey see that his random approach to existance only makes things worse for everyone.  And the Joker sits back and tests everyone’s ideas of how the world works, and is in turn proved wrong about how people will act given the chance to break the rules.  Everyone of the characters makes mistakes again and again, and everyone is proved wrong.  Certainly some of them have more valid and workable beliefs, but no one is perfect or infallible.

I think in the end what the difference in films comes down to is change (you can believe in!).  Killing Joke ends with the same panel it began with, and a sense that nothing has changed.  The story will repeat itself again and again until someone dies.  The Dark Knight on the other hand leaves all the characters changed.  Two Face is dead; Batman has had to take measures far more drastic and deadly than he ever intended; The Joker’s belief that he could break anyone proved completely wrong; and Gordon has had to lie to protect a murderer and attack a friend.  Some bent, some broke but no one came out unchaged by the events in the Dark Knight like they did in the Killing Joke.

Tense…

We’ve been talking about some serious shit over the last few days, so I thought I’d provide some levity:

Ok. Back to discussing the Dark Knight and free speech.

Case in point…

Following up on themes discussed here, Valerie D’Orazio talks very honestly and bracingly about her experiences with pornography, sexual violence, and child porn. As strong an argument against those sort of things as you can find.

From Thesis and Antithesis … Synthesis?

Okay, so I was never very good at turning in assignments on time, or even following the directions I was given. Like the proverbial “dog chasing cars,” I simply did what I wanted to do, and let my own barely understood nature dictate my actions.

That said, I have enough self-awareness to know that I cannot analyze “The Dark Night” or “The Killing Joke” with the alacrity that has been already displayed – I would rather examine something I have noticed about how the characterization of the Joker in both works has been played on and fed by in the works of my favorite comics writer, Grant “Godlike Genius” Morrison.

However, I will stop along the way to my point to talk a teensy bit about Batman, who has not gotten enough attention, in my own humble opinion, in these postings.

I think of the major similarities between “Knight” and “Joke” is the character of Batman, who I think is treated with a fairly similar characterization in both works. In “Joke,” the people Batman is closest to are threatened by a homicidal, grinning maniac who is trying to make a point – all that stands between sanity and insanity is one bad day. In “Knight,” not only Batman’s city is threatened, but the people Batman is closest to are threatened by a homicidal, grinning maniac who is trying to make a point – all that stands between anarchy and order is a series of very bad days. The main difference in the conflict is the size of the brush the Joker is using to paint his own twisted picture of the world. Batman’s reactions fit the threat: in “Joke,” the threat is more personal, Joker maims Barbara Gordon and kidnaps Commissioner Gordon – Batman’s response is similarly personal; in “Knight,” Batman reacts a bit more like a post-911 government facing a terrorist cell, because Joker is essentially trying to take down the status quo of one of the largest, most powerful cities in the DCU.
In both stories, Batman learns that he can not cross the line between hero and villain by murdering the Joker in cold blood, even though it would remove the threat. In both works, this line becomes blurry: in “Joke,” Batman acknowledges that his vendetta with the Joker is a death struggle, but agrees ultimately to follow the path of law and order after the victimized Gordon pleads with him to “do it by the book” and “show him our way works,” creepy shared laugh aside. This scene is revisited in one of the last good moments in “Hush,” in which the Batman seriously considers beating the Joker to death, only to be stopped by Gordon, who has suffered more than anyone at the homicidal clown’s hand.

In “Knight,” Batman similarly comes to terms with his desire to kill Joker, acknowledging that it is something he can never allow himself to do, even though he must also take the fall for Harvey Dent and become a de facto villain in the eyes of Gotham City – and I like Gordon’s speech, hammy as it may be.

But the major, completely ignored comic-to-film relationship this seminar overlooks is the relationship from “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth” to “The Dark Knight” back to “Batman R.I.P.” – in this case referring to Morrison’s entire run on Batman thus far.

Christopher Nolan has acknowledged that “Arkham …” played a role in his characterization of the Joker, I would argue to a much greater degree than Moore’s take. In this book, we are first introduced to the idea of Joker as a kind “glam-punk” rock icon, an evil(er?) David Bowie whose murders and crimes change as a means of “reinventing himself.”

Indeed, Heath Ledger, who can not be praised enough for his truly chilling performance, said Nolan gave him “Arkham…” to read, and that he could not finish the book. However, some of that characterization made it into the story: Nolan’s Joker is much more a Morrison villain than a Moore Villain. His speech is witty and clipped, always alluding to philosophy and sociology without directly quoting anybody. He looks much more like Sid Vicious in clown makeup than a Brian Bolan scribbled Cesar Romero meshed with Tim Burton. And his plans work out like clockwork, again the hallmark of Morrison’s emphasis on cool plot points over plausibility.

But what is more interesting – and appropriately metatextual given the source – is that Morrison’s own characterization, both physical and mental, of the Joker in Batman R.I.P. seems to explain that the Joker from the film could still be the Joker in the DCU. “R.I.P.” is – as we now know – most probably the result of a virtual reality torture being conducted on Batman, but as with any Morrison work, it serves as a means to examine why we love comics books and the over-the-top characters within them. The Joker’s reinvention of himself as the “Thin White Duke of Evil” – with a Bowie-esque hairstyle, a somewhat androgynous frock and a Chelsea Smile reminiscent of Ledger’s Joker – is deliberately referred to as a manifestation of the original personality. Joker’s first appearance in 1940 was decidedly more violent, frightening and psychotic than the “harmless” clown seen in most of his incarnations from the early ‘40s through the early ‘80s. Batman seems to think that this was because he was so brilliantly insane that he “reinvented himself” to fit each challenge that the forces of order threw at him, but the Joker himself gives a different analysis as his threatens the Black Glove: he has gone completely insane by trying to get the Batman to laugh.

However, as “Knight” shows, the Joker is a compulsive liar who has reinvented his own origin story so many times that this could be a fabrication or a convenience of the moment, but as “Joke” shows, getting the permanent frown off Batman’s face may be the only source of pleasure and accomplishment in the Clown Prince of Crime’s life.

Sorry for the rambling, off-topic response, but as I said, I was never very good at following directions.

“Wanna Know How I Got These Scars?”

Part two of my contribution to our The Dark Knight/The Killing Joke seminar.

I think the most important difference between the two depictions of the character of Joker comes down to a question of origin. Moore demonstrates, as Joker wishes to prove, that a normal man can be driven to insanity by “one bad day.” Nolan gives no origin, but a few possibilities that are most likely lies. Moore’s Joker is a broken man. Nolan’s Joker is a force of nature. It’s an major distinction, but both are perfectly in harmony with the character. Both interpretations illustrate the Joker as the perfect complement to Batman. Either way, both characters are conflicting responses to a cruel and chaotic world.

In my last post, I talked about the scene at the end of the Killing Joke, where our hero and villain share a laugh. It’s a rare flash of the Joker’s humanity. He might be a monster now, but he at least was once a completely human being. It’s an appropriate ending for Moore because you have an origin story, because you’ve seen what’s created the Joker. Can you imagine how horrifically out-of-place this would have been in Nolan’s film? What if the last scene with the Joker has ended this way, with Bruce chuckling along with the defeated Joker, suspended over the edge of a building? Critics and audiences would’ve torn the film apart.

So what’s different in Nolan’s depiction?

I’ve heard more than a few people complain about the unbelievable good timing of most of the Joker’s plans in The Dark Knight. It’s easy to see where they’re coming from. The Joker happens to escape the bank robbery just in time join a line of school buses. He happens to hide bombs in a hospital, on a ferry, and in two warehouses without ever drawing attention. He happens to sew a bomb into one of his goons just in case he needs to escape the police station, and then, when the bomb goes off, happens to stand in just the right place to avoid getting hurt. True, these might be plot conveniences. But it’s more than that. It’s demonstrative of the nature of the character and the nature of the attacks. Nolan’s Joker is never truly human. He’s a force of nature. He’s terror personified. He destroys simply to destroy. All he wants to do is show the rest of the world how pointless everything they struggle for is.

One of the best scenes in the movie, I think, is also one of the most misunderstood. When Joker visits the scarred Harvey Dent in the hospital, he gives the final push needed to send Dent into insanity. I think many viewers just naturally assume this is just part of Joker’s plans, but it’s worth listening carefully to what he has to say. I really believe this is the Joker at his most honest. He calls himself a “dog chasing cars,” and it’s true. He targets people like Dent and like Batman because that’s his nature. He wants to be the eternal antagonist, but if there’s no law and order left to destroy, what would he do? He’d have no sense of purpose. Joker’s aims are deliberately anarchic, but there is no over-arching plan beyond anarchy for anarchy’s sake.

At the end of the scene, Joker arms Dent and sets him free. Dent decides Joker’s fate — life or death — with a coin toss. In that moment, it doesn’t matter to the Joker whether he lives or dies, because either way, he’s won. He’s forever corrupted the white knight. It’s the same decision he continuously gives Batman, but Batman will never bend. Two opposing forces of nature that cannot act against who they are. Though occasionally, as in Moore’s depiction, a glimpse of humanity might shine through.