The Darkest Knight Before the Dawn

With all the Hype Hubbub and $450 million in worldwide sales, I can't help but wonder; is Osama Bin Laden allowed to see movies? My gut instinct says he can't, especially not the cinematic triumphs of the "Great Satan". But more to the point, I wonder if he is aware of the shifts that are taking place in American culture and the messages it is sending. Certainly George Bush must have taken a few hours out of his busy agenda to grab some popcorn and check out Gotham's Caped Crusader. How could he not with every reviewer linking the Bush administration to the Batman?

The question might then be, does he get it. Does George Bush feel the turning tides of the superhero genre, which emerged out of the American public clamoring for a world delineated into right and wrong, transforming into a complicated global awareness of cause and effect, sovereignty, pride, and hubris? Or does he simply salivate over the idea of complete SONAR surveillance of every citizen and the idea of an in flight pickup out of the top story of a Hong Kong Skyscraper.

Chances are everyone's favorite cowboy is more into gadgets and grenades than geo-political philosophy, but it seems that Hollywood is beginning to love both. There is no doubt that the media landscape has changed with the minds of Americans over the last 7 years.

As two wars rage on in the Middle East, people are starting to realize that American heroism (also known as colonialism) may be creating the very monsters that it is trying to fight. No doubt Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is analogous to the situation we face with the Bush administration and its crusading in a nebulous War on Terror, but to call George Bush Batman is desperately short sided. If the emergence of Bruce Wayne's vigilantly alter ego is to be accredited to the emergence of the fanatical terrorist The Joker, we have to point out that Osama Bin Laden was bombing America long before George Bush was elected president in November 2000. We were bombing Saddam Hussain while Bush’s dad was in office, and funneling guns into Iraq to take down the Islamic Republic in the Iran-Iraq war under Regan.

In Christopher Nolan's first film in the series, Batman is told that the only way he can take on the corruption he sees, is to become more than a man. Henri Ducard tells him "If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely… A legend". Batman is Neo-Liberalism driving its jet-black super-tank through the side of your building. In the first movie, multi-billionaire hero Bruce Wayne takes the law into his own hands after seeing the murder of his father, a man who worked to save Gotham on the back of the shiny silver commercialism of Wayne enterprises.

By the second movie we learn that the lawless fight for truth and justice in the name of citizens trying to make a good honest buck, has manifested into a criminal world of ever increasing violence. The mob ruthlessly defends its sovereignty from the crusades of an idealist who speaks of freedom while defending a still equally corrupt system.

Terrorism is bread when force rather than law is brought down upon the lawless, and in the end of the movie the fight for justice fails because the men of the law are still unwilling to purge them selves of the corruption in their own ranks. George Bush is only one more masked incarnation of the Neo-Liberal fanaticism, which feeds the madness of The Joker. The relatively sane corruption of the mob turns toward lunacy when confronted with the armored Batman. For us the legend which drives our enemies to extremes is an idea of a "The West" as the opposition, willing to root out both corruption and sovereignty with tanks. Where colonial Neo-Liberal policies have imposed them selves upon the Middle-East states, we have seen those people turn to fanaticism with increased vigilance.

Watching George Bush pack his suitcases at the end of this year will not be the same as watching Batman depart from Gotham. It is the idea of the masked avenger, which must take to the night, leaving us to respect the law even towards those we may disagree with.

Hanging upside down out of a building the joker tells us, "You just couldn't let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object…I think you and I are destined to do this forever."

What is left to be seen is whether the release of the dark night is really a change in direction. Are people really looking to loose the Neo-Liberal ideals which have created Batman and the Joker? Or is Hollywood just responding to people looking out at a war they do not want and the heroic rhetoric of a commander and chief with an approval rating of 28%. Is public consciousness truly ready to turn towards the source of the issue?

I can only hope that viewers of The Dark Knight are perceiving an allegory a little more sophisticated than Bush Vs. Terror. Still with $450 million dollars and counting, the sequel seems to be an unstoppable force as well. I guess we will have to check back in with our favorite Dark Knight to see how we are doing in a couple of year.