Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Wow, a non-X-Files post?

I walked out of the new Batman movie with a furrowed brow. The movie was a great roller-coaster ride. It had spectacular shots and lots of amazing action. I also really enjoyed seeing Chicago barely changed for the movie.

But the last voiceover. It disturbed me.

The plot is pretty complicated for a summer blockbuster so I hope my shorthand is going to make sense. There are two targeted villains in the movie: the mob and the Joker. Through a long-term sting operation, the forces of law are about to bring down the mobsters by taking away their money.

So if the mobsters are villains who still operate by a code and within certain rules, they are the state actors (North Korea, Iran, etc.). By denying them their money (economic sanctions), the good guys (U.S. and its allies) are able to curtail their behaviors. Despots can be dealt with because they have one main directive—to stay in power.

The Joker doesn’t care about money. He doesn’t have a code or behave according to a set of rules. There’s nothing that anyone can do to him through the proper channels to dissuade him from pursuing his primary objective—to destroy the order and stability of his targeted society. As Scully said in the first X-Files movie (I can’t just quit cold turkey can I?), “The rational object of terrorism is to promote terror.” So the Joker is the non-state actor (Al-Qaeda) that just wants to watch the world burn.

Harvey Dent, the best of us all, the one who wields the weapons of light and right, stood up courageously to the mobsters and was about to win. But he was destroyed, twisted, by the Joker.

Without the white knight, the voiceover said, we need the dark one. Oh, we’ll disavow the vigilante. We’ll hunt him. We’ll curse his disregard of civil rights, but this jurisdiction-less hero who operates in secrecy and beyond the law, he is just what we need.

Batman sacrifices his reputation and becomes the outcast. He’s willing to take the slings and arrows if it means that society can still go forward with faith and hope. For Batman, his great hope is that one day, the world won’t need him anymore.

I’m thinking that if there hasn’t been one yet, a White House screening is going to go over big.

Tags: Governance, Movies //