Month: July 2012

Guns & Football

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Below the jump, some thoughts on topical issues relating to two things Americans are way, way too obsessed with. Contains politics, so don’t read it if you don’t wanna:


Regarding The Aurora Massacre:
Absolutely tragic, no other way to say it. That having been said, this whole thing where we’re not supposed to say James Holmes’ (the shooter’s) name or discuss certain “bigger” aspects of this story so that he won’t “win?” Look, I understand the feeling behind that… but he already “won” to the degree that he pulled off his crime. I understand the symbolism behind “denying him the fame he so craves;” but come on, that’s largely impossible whether you participate or not. It’s too late to deny this bastard “victory” (since he clearly doesn’t care about being caught); so the only tangible “win” the rest of us can get out of this is to learn from it and prevent it from happening again…

…Which brings me to guns.

I think people have the right to own guns, because guns are tools and tools are only as good or bad the person using them. However, I also recognize the reality that it’s incredibly stupid for anyone to be able to own any gun. I drive a car, for example, and to get the right to drive that car I have to prove that I know how to drive it, register it with a government agency on a yearly basis, get it inspected on a yearly basis and have a public record of what I do with it – because cars, while useful, are also dangerous. And if I prove that I’m incapable of using a car properly, my privilige to drive can be restricted and even revoked. To me, that guns should be at least as well-regulated as cars is pretty logical.

But it’s not really about logic – it’s about cultural mythology. It’s about symbolism. Americans LOVE The Gun as symbol. It reminds us of ourselves as we like to see ourselves. Guns are symbolic of our revolution against an oppressive colonial government, our “conquest” of the western wilderness and the “spirit” of how both were accomplished – i.e. not through strategy or fighting-techniques informed by high-born martial legacy, but through a tool that any man of any background can pick up and become a warrior with. “God didn’t make all men equal,” goes an old saying that might as well be our secondary national motto, “Samuel Colt did.” Guns and their attendant mythos are sacred to the American Psyche, so you’re never going to get us to “quit” them.

But is it really too much to ask that there be common-sense restrictions on their use? Is it really “radical” to suggest that a Second Ammendment written in an era when foriegn-invasion by armed ground-troops was a very real threat and the “fastest” gun was a single-shot pistol may not be entirely applicablr in an era where foreign-invasion by armed ground-troops is a logistical impossibility and automatic weaponry is commonplace? A common gun-rights retort is that, “yes, people DO need to have assault rifles in case the enemy becomes our own government!;” in which case it seems to me that the Second Ammendment is even more obsolete: Sorry, Mr. Gribble, but The Government has nukes, radar-guided missiles and predator drones – if the Eeeeeeevil Kenyan-Born Secret-Muslim Communist President wants your ass dead, it won’t matter how many AKs you’ve got stacked up in your post-Rapture Panic-Room.

Just saying.

Regarding Penn State.
So Penn State’s football program doesn’t get the “death penalty” for covering up decades of child-rape in order to protect the “honor” of a fucking athletics program. Instead they just lose a shitload of money, the Holy Program gets kneecapped for a few years and bunch of utterly-meaningless statistics and records get either wiped-out or asterix’d from the books. And yet some people think this is “too far.” Me? I don’t think it goes nearly far enough.

Granted, nothing can “undo” the crimes or the cover-up; but the sickness that allowed both things to happen – that allowed a monster to go about raping children while others covered it up goes higher than Joe Paterno and bigger than Penn State. The cover-up was possible because Football Programs wield far, FAR too much power in the American college system. Programs wield that power because it’s often the college’s main source of income – effectively supporting the rest of the institution. And they are the main source of income because alumni donors, and Americans in genral, care way, way too much about Football.

That we are willing, as a culture, to pump infinitely more money into bloated, greedy NCAA programs in order to maintain a talent farm for the bloated, greedy NFL is obscene enough, but predictable – you can’t expect America to start caring as much about collegiate science, art and humanities programs that might yield cancer cures, energy-sources on the next transcendant works of art as we do about whether or not some guy can kick a ball between two poles… I mean, have you met us? Most of the time, these warped priorities manifest themselves in ways that are only superficially irritating; like raising men whose sole contribution to the world is throwing a ball pretty-good to the status of living gods. But the Sandusky Scandal represents the logical-extreme of this obsession: The willingness to excuse/ignore horrible crimes in order to protect The Game itself.

This is, incidentally, why while I feel bad for the players, potential players and other program staff whose careers have been impacted by this; I don’t see that as a reason not to have done it – innocent of the cover-up they may be, it’s all part of an institution that has frankly been crying out to be knocked-open, re-examined and probably dismantled to a large degree for a long, LONG time now. Yes, Penn State should be made to honor the commitments they made to scholarship athletes who may no longer be playing, up to an including financially-assisting them in finding placement at other schools’ programs. Yes, either the NCAA, Penn alumni or their trustees should take the good-faith step of helping potential scholarship prospects already “in the works” get to the school (if they still want to) even if there’s no real program waiting for them. But beyond that? Knock “The Program” over, find the rotten parts, reassemble if possible and above all else put the fear into every other Program that they’re godhood – and their free ride – is over.

Now, obviously, you can’t stop people from caring too much about NCAA football; but if colleges were better funded in other areas to begin with football programs wouldn’t be quite so all-powerful, which is the only way you’re going to stop the next Penn State from letting the next Joe Paterno cover-up for the next Sandusky. I’ll probably be branded some kind of “socialist” for saying this, but y’know what’d be a good start? More federal funding for the non-athletic departments of American colleges. Start with the science and technology departments, since after all those have a tangible economic/security benefit to the nation as a whole so as to warrant such investment.

Just saying.

DreamWorks Animation Just Bought Like 30% Of Your Childhood – And Your Parents’ And Grandparents’ Childhoods, Too

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As licensed-properties have taken over Hollywood, consolidating big collections of said properties (the better to avail yourself as partner to production companies) under one umbrella has become a canny investment for companies that once upon a time might’ve only ever existed to license nostalgiac DVD sets.

For one such umbrella, “Classic Media,” the ship has come in: DreamWorks Animation SKG just paid $155 Million for the company (which will now be called “DreamWorks Classics”) – or, rather, for the impressive roster of characters, series, franchises and other intellectual-properties that DWA will now be able to leverage into movies, TV shows, video-games, etc.

So, what did they buy? Well, about 450 properties – not necessarily the gargantuan thousands-strong collection of individual characters Disney got when they aquired Marvel, but probably a more diverse and (in some cases) eyebrow-raising set all the same…


Most of the “bigger” stuff Classic Media owned tended toward really oldschool (Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, Lassie) or near-immortal kiddie fare (Casper, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Felix the Cat, Gumby); but they’d also more-recently gotten into the business of Gen-X nostalgia marketing – most notably, they own Filmmation’s entire library (though only partial rights to certain productions that had been based on licensed properties) and World Events Productions, which means that DreamWorks now has some kind of claim on “Masters of The Universe” and total rights to “Voltron;” both of which have been eyed for big-screen revival.

This also gives DreamWorks Animation control of Noddy (ask somebody from the UK), the U.S. distribution rights to certain “Godzilla” movies, the VeggieTales franchise and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Oh, and if your looking for a reason for your inner-child to cringe; this also nets them the “Little Golden Books” library – so, yes, “The Poky Little Puppy” is now in the hands of the studio behind “Shrek.”

Sonic Boom

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I like the “Man of Steel” teaser (now online for real) a little better now than I did when it was letting me down in the theater by being a little too tease-ish. The atmosphere is killer and unexpected, and feels “mythic” once you realize what it is. I still feel like I’d be really nervous about it if I didn’t already know that the broader film looks a lot more DC Universe and a lot less “Jeans Commercial.”

If nothing else, it certainly puts to lie the idea that Snyder can’t “do” a more restrained/naturalistic aesthetic… which I predict he will recieve precisely zero credit for, as the folks who’d previously been shitting on him as director will simply attribute it’s quality to Holy Touch of Saint Nolan…

Minor editing thing, though: I think it would actually work better as a “reveal” if the title-card for the shield swapped places with the title-card for the title; I feel like kid-posing/logo/reveal/title would elicit a bigger “oh, shit!” from audiences than kid-posing/title/reveal/shield gets here – more of “gradual rise in iconography” flow.

Escape to the Movies: "The Dark Knight Rises" (Updated)

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Re-posting for regular Friday schedule and “Intermission.”

THE MOVIE: Good, not great. Review probably would’ve been slightly more negative if I’d seen it more than just once beforehand.

“INTERMISSION”: Warners is already talking reboot. Because that’s where we live now.

A SECOND ARTICLE: Because why not?

Before anyone asks, yes, I’ve been watching the same “Colorado Batman Massacre” story unfold as everyone else. Horrifying, unbelievable, tragic stuff; but thus far that it happened in concurrance with this particular movie appears to be wholly incidental and I’d appreciate it if people didn’t try to pull it into the conversation here at this time beyond this obligatory acknowledgement – both out of respect to the victims and consideration for viewers/visitors who may have ties to that community.

Bat & Switch

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Went to see “Rises” again at midnight. Liked it a little less the second time – more and more “wait a second…” annoyances – but still not “bad” by any stretch of the imagination.

My real reason for heading out was, of course, because I wanted to finally see the “Man of Steel” trailer in a form other than grainy Comic-Con snippets or shot-by-shot descriptions; only to discover too late that what SDCC saw isn’t the same teaser that’s been attached to “Rises.” Phooey.

I’ll say this: If I DIDN’T have the sliver of context for how much “cooler” the footage you lucky SDCC attendees out there saw was; this teaser would’ve left with me a serious sinking feeling…

It’s not a BAD teaser, certainly – the “when did Zack Snyder become Terrence Mallick?” feel that people at SDCC were describing is absolutely there; and it’s intended effect on an unsuspecting audience (“what the heck is th… HOLY SHIT! SUPERMAN!?”) went over big with everyone else at my screening. It’ll have people talking, definitely.

But without the big, epic “you will believe a man can KICK ASS!” stuff I know was on the Comic-Con reel; what’s presented makes it look VERY much like a “Nolanized” Superman… and that’s the last thing the property needs. If anything, seeing TDKR a second time through left me more convinced than ever that, while “his” Batman has yielded an interesting trilogy with two excellent entries and one “okay” one, it’s in everyone’s best interest that Christopher Nolan be kept as far away from comic-book movies as possible for the forseeable future. He’s had his fun with this little “deconstruction” project, now let’s be done with all that limitation and timidity… there are universes to be explored.

I don’t wanna undersell it – it’s a good clip, and it’ll probably get mainstream audiences psyched about at least the “prospect” of Superman again, so that’s all well and good. But speaking for myself, if I didn’t know that there’s bigger, braver, more authentically-Superman “stuff” being held back this would’ve left me pretty deflated about a project I’m still holding out a great deal of hope for.

Bat-Mitt vs. The Obamavengers

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NOTE I: I was going to wait until after Midnight to put this up, but it looks like everyone and their grandmother is already running their “TDKR in bigger culture” pieces so I might as well drop it now.

NOTE II: This is NOT a review of “The Dark Knight Rises.” My review of the film will run, as scheduled, on tomorrow’s episode of “Escape to The Movies.” This piece is not directly affiliated with any other MovieBob projects appearing elsewhere on the web and should not be taken as such.

I’ll admit, straightaway, to the unavoidable fact that the title and premise of this piece carries with it an air of exploitation, if not outright “hackery.” You would be correct in suggesting that I turned this particular vague idea into a 3,000+ word piece and titled it thusly for “attention” – I plead guilty of being a writer who wishes to be read. I can only offer that I wouldn’t be bothering to actually analyze and write-about whether or not 2012’s dueling superhero movies in some way mirror 2012’s dueling presidential candidates if I didn’t think the observations therein might’ve turned out somehow noteworthy or worth sharing… although, of course, that’s a matter of opinion.

Incidentally, yes, there are SPOILERS for “Dark Knight Rises” after this point. Not major spoilers, mind you, but descriptions of themes, story-points, dialogue, etc. You have been warned. 



In any case, while I agree with many others that the knee-jerk temptation to place Summer 2012’s far and away biggest movie/box-office stories – “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises” – in competition with one-another is very much an unfair apples to oranges scenario in that, despite both being adaptations of long-running comic-book superheroes, they’re entirely different animals in the cinematic sense… I wholly understand why the comparison leaps so readily to mind: Different to the point of non-relation as they may be in whole, in the details they begin to resemble “opposing forces” on an almost cosmic scale.

There’s the professional rivalry, of course: The Dark Knight (“Batman” to his friends) hails from DC Comics, while The Avengers come from Marvel – two publishers who’ve been at “war” for the loyalties of readers for over a half a century. This being the age of consolidation, this friendly-competition between publishers of four-color funnybooks is also a proxy-skirmish between globe-spanning corporate titans; DC being part of the unfathomably massive Time/Warner empire, while Marvel recently became a member-state of The Magic Kingdom. It’s not simply Batman and Captain America staring one-another down across the field of the battle; it’s the assembled armies of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse – with the ghosts of Jack Warner and Walt Disney looming above like rival gods.
Even the radically-divergent approach to the source-material that separates the two films also binds them in opposition – two absolute-extremes of the two prevailing methods of superhero-adaptation. Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy is a tear-down/rebuild of not only Batman but of the genre, consciously and deliberately draining the very concept of the costumed-crimefighter of as much color, humor, archness and otherworldliness as can be drained without jettisoning the core entirely; with a goal of finding something “more” in what remains. Joss Whedon’s “Avengers,” on the other hand, is a sort-of climax to a multi-film experiment whose goal has been to translate the entire “Universe” of Marvel Comics to live-action film as unmolested as possible. “Dark Knight” sees superheroes as a subject in need of “elevation” (and an extreme-makeover) to earn a place among a serious-cinema; while “Avengers” feels made by people who looked at superhero movies and said “You’re not as a good the comics are – let’s fix that.” Nolan appears to approach the source material with something akin to the “White Man’s Burden” – the noble Colonialist bringing civilization to the savage land of the superhero; while Whedon has the zealotry of a prophet: he’s Moses down from Sinai, carrying Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Holy Writ, and fie unto thee who would alter a word of The Holy Text.
The final and yet most surprising place they differ is in their approach to the “real world” that they, fantasies both, aim to mirror. Specifically, in their approach the ultimate verboten subject of crowd-pleasing blockbuster entertainments: POLITICS. “Knight” is portentous and self-consciously weighty – it’s characters frown and sigh as they dutifully cross every “t” and dot every “i” on Very! Meaningful! Matters! like terrorism, classism and government overreach; while “The Avengers” occasionally look even more excited to be smacking an army of Space Monsters around Manhattan than their audience, and aren’t selling much in the way of explicit messages beyond “it’s good to make new friends” and “teamwork is important.” To be fair, neither one is exactly C-SPAN; that “Rises” has a philosophical/political through-line could easily be the unintended byproduct of putting topical-sounding statements into characters mouths so that we’ll know that it’s a Very Serious Enterprise.
And yet… one is the story of a single high-born aristocrat deigning to restore order to a city after the disastrous results of a (partially) poverty-instigated citizen’s-uprising; while another is about a group effort where the world can only be saved if various characters set aside self-interest and work toward a common goal. The metaphor is pretty obvious, particularly this year. Can it really be expressed so simply – The Avengers as the “progressive” super-saga, Batman leading the reactionary-retort? Is it possible that our culture is now so politically-stratified that even a pair of “rival” blockbusters could perceived/received as “The Obama Blockbuster” and “The Romney Blockbuster?”
“The Dark Knight,” immediate predecessor of “Rises,” was an explicitly (though not particularly deeply) political film; taking it’s dramatically-overhauled incarnations of Batman and The Joker out of the broader “order versus chaos” dynamic that tends to define their relationship and into an explicit allegory for the War on Terror – Joker as an extreme caricature of American culture’s post-9/11 vision of The Terrorist as the incomprehensible madman, the force-of-nature whom it would be a waste of time and resources to even consider might have some point or reason (which is not to say “excuse”) behind his actions. “Some men just want to watch the world burn,” intones Alfred; a poetic but ultimately empty turn of phrase that serves the same function as real-life’s equally-dismissive “they hate our freedom” as an entreaty against introspection: Don’t waste time overthinking it, Gotham City/American Public; they’re just pure-straight crazy. Now shut up and let us do What Must Be Done to protect you.”
In “Dark Knight,” What Must Be Done turned out to mean Batman giving The Joker an “enhanced interrogation” and later illegally wiretapping the entire city in order to “sonar map” The Clown Prince of Crime’s location. The Bat’s confidant, Lucius Fox, raises the obvious “invasion of privacy” question… but in the end his fears turn out to be unfounded: Batman is The Good Guy, he really does have our best interests at heart, and he really will only use this incredibly-unethical-yet-incredibly-effective extraordinary measure just this once – and we can trust him on that. Even Fox can only smile and shake his head at how pure the motives of The Administration – excuse me, The Batman – turned out to be. The obvious parallel to The Patriot Act and other Bush/Cheney anti-terror efforts (“warrantless wiretaps” being a hot-button topic at the time) in a massively-popular film raised antenna on both sides of U.S. political spectrum; earning high praise from The Right, objection from The Left and panicked denials that the film was about anything other than a costumed vigilante fighting a clown from a controversy-wary studio and an introspection-resistant fan-culture.
Speaking only for myself, I don’t necessarily see “The Dark Knight” as a high-five from British director Christopher Nolan to the then-outgoing U.S. presidential administration; but it’s hard for me not to concede that the film tips ideologically to the “right;” whether incidentally or by design. Even ignoring the topical business about wiretaps and mad-terrorists, there’s an unmissable element of the Privatization Ideal underpinning the whole franchise: The police are ineffective and corruptible, well-meaning White Knight beaurocrats like Harvey Dent can’t really fix a problem like The Joker. No, fixing that takes a Man of Business – not some measly rule-bound government cog but a two-fisted child of privilege with the money and the means to save us all – if only we’d just get out of the way and let him, damn it!
The seeds of this are planted in the less overtly-politicized “Batman Begins,” which adds a key dash of Nolan’s literalism to Bruce Wayne’s backstory …and Batman’s nickname. It posits the Wayne Family as having a tradition of shepherding Gotham City through tough times via charitable capitalism, a noble-burden Bruce effectively inherits along with his title, mansion and bottomless fortune. The Dark KNIGHT, indeed. Nolan’s Gotham is a medieval Castle Town, with Bruce Wayne as it’s Feudal Lord. Or, if you prefer, welcome to Trickle-Down Superheroism – if only we would just stop over-regulating Bruce Wayne’s self-punishment/symbolic-retribution, the rest of us will eventually reap the benefits of a lower crime-rate.
So when it becomes clear that in “Rises” the symbolic issue of the moment has gone from Terrorism to so-called “Class Warfare,” it’s hard not to see similarities between the chaos unleashed by the film’s antagonists and the paranoid demonization of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement from the likes of Talk Radio and Fox News – though, admittedly, it doesn’t help that the filmmakers at one point planned to incorporate real footage of the initial Occupy protest as background for the actors.
In the story, the supervillain Bane aims to bring Gotham City and Bruce Wayne to their respective knees by breaking the city off from the mainland and setting himself up as dictator of the (localized) post-apocalypse. A key part of his plan is whipping Gotham’s impoverished underclass into a frenzy against authority in general and The Wealthy in particular: In the intervening eight years between films, Gotham’s police have used the fabricated accounts of Harvey Dent’s death as pretext for heavy-handed anti-crime techniques that have “secured” the streets at the cost of bloated prisons and simmering unrest (at least in theory – like too much in the film we’re only told, not shown, much of Gotham’s citizenry until Bane’s Occupy Gotham horde starts dragging rich folks from their homes in Act III); and Bane’s faux-revolutionary rhetoric inflames both into a violent fervor that intentionally recalls The French Revolution (as imagined by “A Tale of Two Cities,” at least.)
It’s the classic reactionary alarmism of the “Socialist Boogeyman” blown-up to blockbuster proportions: Encouraging The Peasantry to question the rightness of class-stratification can only lead to societal collapse, and the guy speaking-out/organizing against it is actually a monster who knows this and actively seeks it for his own sinister agenda (Bane helpfully informs Batman/the audience of his “use-class-warfare-to-mask-mass-destruction” plans before he starts preaching, so we won’t be confused). And since said Peasantry is too dumb/short-sighted to suss that out for itself, they require the protection (from themselves, naturally) of their wealthy betters because only they’ve got the tools (“Job Creation” in real-life, vaguely bat-shaped fighter-jets here) to save us – after all, you silly poors… That’s why they’re on top in the first place!
Take out whatever ‘comic-booky’ elements left that Nolan and company weren’t able to strip-out already, and what your left with looks and sounds more than a little like the thesis of the Romney/Republican presidential campaign: “That charismatic talker agitating against unrestrained-capitalism is leading us toward class-warfare, socialism and Soviet-style collapse; and only The Heroic Executive can pull us back from the brink!”
In the film, the audience-POV for this lesson is cat-burglar Selina Kyle (better known as “Catwoman” in versions of the story not petrified of “silly” nicknames), who breathily coos activist rhetoric to justify her criminality early on but wises-up and pledges Team Batman after witnessing her friends go from zero-to-Che during Bane-instigated manor-looting – “This was someone’s home…” mourns Not-Catwoman. “Now it’s everyone’s home!” cackles her newly-villainous gal-pal. Remember, kids: Recognition of income-inequality will lead to INSTANT STALINISM!!!
It would be, again, a mistake to try and specifically ascribe a so-called “Right-Wing Agenda” to Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking vis-a-vi Batman. After all, the fact that the bad tidings in Gotham are brought on in part by Batman’s (and then Commissioner Gordon’s) anti-crime overreach is a significant shade of gray in the setup’s moral-spectrum; and to be perfectly frank the political business in “Rises” comes off pretty superficial compared to its predecessor despite how much more of the plot and dialogue it takes up – as though the topical references to social-unrest, Stock Market shenanigans and Occupy are there as attempts to infuse specific meaning into a film that, despite its thunderous self-insistence doesn’t really have that much to say about the issues it raises.
It’s been suggested many times that superheroes – particularly the crime-fighting as opposed to world-saving kind – are inherently reactionary, and that Batman’s “stock persona” tips inherently rightward in as much as he’s a “maintain law and order” hero rather than “justice” hero (see also: Dick Tracy.) Better minds than mine* have suggested that the seismic shift wherein Batman began to supplant Superman as “The” Superhero coincided with the principal fear of American children changing from “death” to “loss of personal-security and/or stuff-I-own” during America’s post-WWII boom; which was also when the animating values of the emergent Middle Class changed from community and equal-justice to “Keeping Up With The Joneses;” which is part of the same calculation.
On the opposite end, we have “The Avengers” …or do we?
The two films are diametric opposites in all other respects, certainly, but opposition can have more than one form. With its broader tone and a story where the “real world” is only ONE of many relevant worlds – and currently under-siege by interdimensional aliens commanded by the Viking God of Mischief – it would be easy to argue that “The Avengers” differs from “Dark Knight Rises” ‘conservative’ political-streak not by being the “progressive” superhero movie… but by having no political-streak at all.** There’s some truth to that – Bane’s (disingenuous) rabble-rousing is grounded in something like authentic political philosophy, while the closest to something like that “Avengers” get is when Loki waxes the poetic about benevolent fascism and earns  a stern talking-to from onetime professional Nazi-puncher Captain America. Not precisely the same degree of relevance or nuance, that.
But, on the other hand, while “The Avengers” plays things broad and simple on the surface (the plot: “The Bad Guy stole the Magic Cube, call all the Good Guys so they can get the Magic Cube back!”) it’s far from a stupid or shallow film. Instead of labyrinthine plot-machinations, it’s complexity is found in the way it’s disparate characters relate to one other; and the themes, lessons and moral-grounding of these interactions invariably espouses collective-effort, self-sacrifice, teamwork, being true to one’s self, skepticism of military/industrial authority and other reflexively progressive (or, if you prefer, “liberal”) philosophical points.
Tony “Iron Man” Stark, for example, is a Businessman Hero not unlike Bruce Wayne in his own series (he brags that he “privatized world peace” in “Iron Man 2”); but his character-arc amid joining The Avengers is all about putting his individual ego in-check to contribute to a group effort. In fact, that’s practically the arc of the whole film. (He’s also gotten into the Clean Energy business, but so has Batman and that’s a story for another time.)
Iron Man, in turn, receives his primary dressing-down vis-a-vi selfishness from Captain America, which might seem discordant until you recall that Steve Rogers hails from the 1940s – his flag-waving (or flag-wearing, as it were) is that of World War II “we’re in this together” communal war-effort and FDR’s social-justice New Deal; not the fortress-mentality “patriotism” of The Cold War or Ronald Reagan’s regressive “Morning in America.” And Cap has a lesson to learn, too: There’s real drama in a moment where, after having lectured his teammates against questioning the military chain of command, he discovers they were very right to be suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D’s motives.*** And when The Avengers make the climactic decision to eschew S.H.I.E.L.D’s headquarters and do they’re fighting/people-protecting at the street-level (“community organizing,” one might say…) it’s Captain America who leads the charge and field-commands the mission.
And there’s The Incredible Hulk. Typically, this character’s “heroism” has been defined by his own self-denial: The Hulk is a force for destruction, and Bruce Banner is a hero for keeping him at bay unless absolutely necessary.  “The Avengers” has a different take, courtesy the influence of Tony Stark. Not only does Stark demonstrate further complexity of his own character in meeting the “weird kid” who everyone else is nervous around and immediately insisting on making friends. He also has an opinion on how Banner should handle his “condition” that’s a far cry from the suppressive self-denial: He thinks Banner needs to “come out” – embrace that part of his person and let his Hulk Flag fly. Guess who turns out to be right when “The Other Guy” becomes a tide-turner in the climactic battle?
So, yeah: Suppressing your true nature? Bad. Teamwork and group-effort? Good. Saving the world? “It Takes a Village.” If “The Dark Knight Rises” can be read as an entrepreneurial power-fantasy that could’ve sprung fully-formed from the top of Mitt Romney’s freshly Just-For-Men’d head; “Avengers” can easily be viewed as a big, bright barrel of “Hopey-Changey Stuff” and ray-gun decorated progressive optimism – “Yes We Can… close that space portal!”
These are, of course, subjective observations of mostly superficial details. Batman isn’t Mitt Romney, and The Avengers aren’t the DNC. And while neither film is without a point to hammer home, they aren’t anybody’s idea of campaign commercials; regardless of Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre (and, given the actual themes of the film, hilariously ironic) postulation that TDKR’s Bane has been so-named as a covert anti-Romney smear.**** These are pop-entertainments, after all – so expensive to produce and so desperately needed as profit-generators for their corporate masters that it’d be close to suicidal for them to take any kind of truly “divisive” stance.
And yet… there IS such a thing as zeitgeist in a culture. The movies have a way of reflecting and embodying moods among the masses, and so do political campaigns. Removed from the specifics of policy, Romney and Obama’s respective campaigns still differ starkly in THAT very realm: A campaign is a narrative – just a like a movie – with The Candidate as hero, and narratives (the ones that work, at least) have a tone, mood and thematic-arc all their own.
The Romney narrative – the Republican narrative – is dark and somber. It’s story is of an America on the brink of collapse, and it’s antagonist isn’t so much President Obama himself as it is the “naïve” left-wing idealism he was said to embody. The Romney “story” is as openly-dismissive of “liberal optimism” as Nolan’s Batman is of authentic comic-book superheroics. The world defaults to darkness and danger, it says, and those who foolishly think it can be otherwise have brought America low. Playing nice and thinking big can’t save us – only the cold-steel strength of The Businessman can do that. Hope? Change? Kiddie stuff, as childish and useless as Boy Sidekicks or flying pals from Krypton.
The Obama narrative, on the other hand? Relentless – almost to the point of parody, frankly – optimism. Colorful, diverse, energetic, youthful. The dream can work, and the dreamers can make it work. There are problems, sure, but they aren’t insurmountable and they won’t be solved by some stern, anachronistic Daddy Figure. It’s the story of a world that’s bending, however slow, toward a better tomorrow; and it’s a coalition of radically-different people working toward a common goal that will get us there. And while that may seem like stuff that only ever belonged in fairytales (or comic-books), that doesn’t make it impossible – or unworthy of trying.
So, then, is it fair to look at “The Dark Knight Rises” dark, grim story of a billionaire out to rescue the status-quo from anarchy and see it as Summer 2012’s “Romney Movie?” Yeah, I think so. And then, by the same token; do the brightly-hued, relentlessly-optimistic “up with group-effort!” “Avengers” likewise constitute “The Obama Movie?” In a manner of speaking, certainly.
Does that mean anything, for either the films or “their” candidates? Does the respective popularity of one or the other (“The Avengers,” as of this writing, is the biggest boxoffice-winner/pop-culture fixture of the year, while newcomer TDKR’s prowess remains to be seen) tell us something about the direction of the political winds? Probably not… but it’s a long year ahead yet – and I don’t expect that this is the last time me or anyone else will bring it up.


* http://badassdigest.com/2011/12/21/film-crit-hulk-smash-what-the-f-is-it-about-batman/
** The same certainly can’t be said of their directors – while Christopher Nolan isn’t known for talking politics in public, Joss Whedon is: http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/joss-whedon-america-turning-tsarist-russia-47756
*** Interestingly, in “The Avengers” S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the same “hack every phone” tactic “The Dark Knight” did. It passes without verbal commentary, but the initial reveal of this briefly cuts to Captain America looking vaguely-shocked. Maybe it’s meant to reinforce his awe at modern technology, but Whedon is on-record as having cut scenes featuring Cap speaking disapprovingly about present-day American political matters from the final film for time; maybe this was one of them?
**** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exm3gApFgPY&feature=youtu.be

P.S. I reiterate that this article is strictly part of this blog and not intended to be affiliated with any other writing/video-making I do about these films elsewhere on the web.

P.P.S. Breitbart headline: “Nolan Nukes Occupy Wall Street.”

I Re-Review Batman Movies

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Slow news week, mostly because everything in entertainment is dutifully clearing the deck so that this week’s pre-ordained blockbuster can take it’s Bat-bows. Was really kinda hoping that the mass-piracy would goad Warner Bros. into dropping the “Man of Steel” trailer early, but no such luck.

So why not eat up some internet-time watching (or re-watching) me re-watch the original four “Batman” movies, now handily collected in this one post?

Batman
Batman Returns
Batman Forever
Batman & Robin

My review of the “The Dark Knight Rises” will be up tomorrow afternoon in the usual place (which I’ll probably be re-watching tonight for kicks but mostly to see the how Superman trailer plays to the most pumped audience possible); but there will also probably be a rather lengthy non-review piece (partially) about the film going up sometime after midnight later today on this blog, so stay tuned.

Limbaugh Versus Batman (UPDATED!)

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Below, audio of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, wherein he posits that the villain of “The Dark Knight Rises” being named BANE is a deliberate attempt to help the Obama campaign by smearing his Republican challenger Mitt Romney (re: former head of BAIN Capital.) No, really.

UPDATE: Amusingly, The Guardian’s Catherine Shoard, posits that the film is actually much more of an anti-“Occupy” capitalist power-fantasy that “Mitt Romney would be thrilled” with. I’m not reviewing or opining on the film at all until Friday’s “Escape to The Movies,” but I’ll say that I don’t disagree with this particular thematic assessment.

Not that I expect that ANY of what Devin Faraci has colorfully named “The Bat-Jihadists” (or “Mujhabatdeen”) might be READING THIS and spurred to, oh, visit the contact page for Rush’s radio show and have themselves a lil’ old party or anything…

Y’know, I’m probably not a favorite person among the Nolan/Batman fanboys – we’ve had our differences in the past, etc. But if they insist on unleashing full-tilt troll-storms on any media personality who doesn’t break out the 10/10 rubber-stamp for their prefered movies… I can’t help but think it’d be just swell if some of that venom and vitriol got sent “Rushbo’s” way. Hate-spewing reactionary vs. hate-spewing reactionaries, and all that.

I mean, not for nothing, but part of the attack-the-critics mentality is that bad reviews might hurt the film’s chances at setting/breaking some arbitrary boxoffice record, no? Well, unlike ANY film critic, Limbaugh actually does have the clout to turn his sizable following “against” a media property – I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but he is about that powerful.