"do you think those film-makers are fools?" he told a largely indifferent class.
his theory was that mainstream-blockbuster films are loaded with archetypes that signal the times. hence, "with great power comes great responsibility" is actually an analogy of america's position in the world. the only superpower, it was its responsibility to take care of the world, so when it works beyond UN law, it is, like spiderman, doing so for the good of the world.
now it may seem farfetched, in fact it may BE farfetched, but it was bloody interesting.
i recently watched the dark knight a second time, mostly cos its obvious that heath ledger will win that oscar posthumously, and i revised my original opinion on it. it's a damn good film.
any film that makes the public take seriously a man dressed as a joker, or for that matter, a man dressed as a bat, has done really well in my opinion.
but then, i thought i would apply britto's theory on the film, and came up with some interesting stuff.
first of all, the film is about terrorism. that much is obvious - the central theme is, should batman and the good people of gotham give in to a terrorist's demands? or as the isrealis say, can there be "no negotiation with terrorists"?
i think its a fair question in these troubled times, but dig a little deeper, and there's something more disturbing there. first of all, the terrorist is portrayed as just a lover of chaos, killing randomly for the pure joy of revelling in evil. terrorists in the arab world do have an agenda, they are fighting for something, and we go back to the age old maxim "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".
BUT that sounds as though i'm on the side of terrorists - which i most certainly am not. these people are vicious, power hungry, and certainly not the ones strapping bombs across their chests. instead they are very adept at manipulating the despair of poverty stricken areas - isn't that where jehadis come from? - through religion or whatever. and they use these poor people to achieve their own ends - power maybe? or money? who knows. (plus there's a distinction between Hamas, who i think have a legitimate cause, and al-Qaida, who don't.)
but their existence is made possible by a global economy which allows for one group of people to be squeezed dry to feed the insatiable needs of another group.
and batman, who is hated by everyone once the joker gets going - is that george bush i wonder? is the film saying - it's the US's duty to do the difficult thing, the unpopular thing?
"these people will use you, and then when they no longer need you, they'll turn against you" the joker tells batman. now this DEFINITELY sounds like george bush to me. he was voted in a second time wasn't he? and then booed out of office at the end of that term. i'm certainly not a fan of bush, but at some point people have to take responsibility, stand in front of a mirror and boo away, as it were, instead of blaming bush alone for eight years of misrule.
anyway, the good thing is batman does not succumb to it, he refuses to 'make the right decision' (i.e. allow the joker to continue to kill people so as to not give into his insane demands). i really hope this is an allegory of the times. if the biggest countries in the world - india included - refuse to descend to the level of the terrorists, that would be wonderful. why? because you could, like harvey dent, turn into a monster yourself - which many people would argue, myself included, is exactly what has happened to the US in the last eight years.
see how neatly it all ties up?
anyway, this is all purely academic, i may be reading way too much into everything, so sincere apologies to anyone who is offended by all this!
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my video for the week is... the incomparable Captain! vote for, vote for.... CAPtain! CAPtain!
11 comments:
thought provoking.
appa
Lol...Dude. Interesting but I have to disagree with you.
For me Batman, Spiderman or for that matter Shaktiman are just stupid Superheroes underpants over their trousers. Meant to entertain...though this Batman was extremely impressive.
Somehow..all these Superhero movies make these larger than life ambiguous statements which can be applied to any political situation...suddenly it begins to work in its favour. Remember Anna Malai...Rajni Kanth. The Co-incidental Dialogue.
I hate to break it to you, but this idea's been written about and dissected quite often since TDK's release, along with a million other theories (which, of course, only reinforces the power of a good archetype -- it can inhabit all manner of interpretation with equal ease.)
One of the major theories doing the rounds these days among critics -- a slight amendment to your own -- has to do with the increasing reversion in Hollywood over the last two or three years to epic fantasies, romances and comedies. There are more superhero and comic-adapted films being made now than ever before. Gritty directors like David Fincher and Danny Boyle are making romances like Benjamin Button and Slumdog Mill. Spielberg, the best indicator of big studio trends, has broken his convention of alternating between serious cinema and unapologetic entertainment, and is about to follow up an Indiana Jones film with a Tintin film. It's the mood of the moment. The dominant realism of the 90s seems to have seeped out, people are tired of seeing their own lives reflected on screen. They now want to just go into the movie hall and forget the tenseness of the outside world, all the politics and terror and economic misery, and inhabit the lives of titans and superhumans. And the funny thing about that is, even as everyone's cutting back on their spending, Hollywood now has to increase spending more and more to keep up with the common man's need for escapism.
Damn, though. That was an ultra long and utterly random comment.
Man, that VK video's frigging awesome.
Hello Abhinav,
Quite fluent and indeed cohesive. I would agree with you on the subject. I loved the film by the way and Heath Ledger WILL probably get the Oscar - probably he deserves it too.
As for Britto's classes, trust me, "refrigerated nostalgia" - to use a friend's expression - is starting to pour. Wonder why people were indifferent in his class: he had to use your own word an 'inimitable' way of conducting his sessions.
Of course, I remember the class he took for us on Archetypes as well. I frankly loved the way he taugh Literary Criticism!
Hi... thanks for coming by and leaving that comment. Yes, the level of politics here is pretty bleak, as are the kind of debates raised in public. Any nation that can obsess about a mythical temple of 500 or so years ago is certainly not on the right track.
Change? Well, I've stopped hoping for it, on a national-scale at least. Protest is more a means of self-expression, rather than the expectation of seeing things change. I don't think the political debates of 2015 will be any more meaningful than the ones now. (But having said that, who ever thought of an Obama in office when Bush was re-elected?)
thanks appa..
@sudhir, fair enough mate, but didn't i clearly say that i was doing this analysis for purely academic reasons? i may be reading way too much into it, as i admitted on the post. but hell, it's a lot of fun. and sometimes you do things for fun!
and btw, i'm very disappointed that YOU of all people didnt notice my video for the week!!!
@eyefry - maybe so, i certainly wasn't shooting for exclusivity, nor am i saying its some novel concept i came up with. in fact, i nicked the idea entirely off of my lit prof.
fair point about escapism tho, i hear slum dog's not done too well in india - because the main function of cinema in india is escapism - and i'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.
in fact, slum dog's success in the west is another form of escapism in my opinion - at least a few hours, people can forget about how uncomfortable their lives are, and marvel at the horror of life in a faraway third world country.
brilliant movie tho.
@srini - britto rocks.. the class is largely indifferent because most of them were not passionate about the subject. that also has to do with where they come from, figuratively speaking.. who am i to judge them tho? i grew up with the privilege of being able to attend a good english medium school, after all. plus all the "good" students are off training to be managers and bankers. tossers.
@dev - i know you're not a fan of manmohan, but i thought india had its own 'obama' moment when we voted BJP out of power, never mind the fact that Congress have been disappointing since. i NEVER thought that would happen. but we seem to have regressed a bit, unfortunately.
Abhinav,
Britto rocks inDEED! I loved the man's almost "meeting on the road" style but gosh, he was so organised though nonchalant in what he thought! I still remember him coming to class, taking the first seven to ten minutes to fill the board and then running through the session in just the order in which he spelt things out on the board - without ever once referring!
But the other part of Criticism sufferd severaly:P. And as a backbencher, I was at the receiving end of some amusing backlash too!
oops, typo! That was "taught" not "thought"!
I might've come on a bit strong earlier. Didn't mean to sound accusatory, sincere apologies if I did.
Loved Slumdog. Really dunno what the fuss is all about. Maybe it's some kind of embarrassment or disbelief at an outsider having understood and appropriated our own strange cinematic language and applied it to his own ends. It had to happen some time.
hi ur writing is gud one
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