Dark Knight as Neoconservative Narrative?
I have only three words to say about The Dark Knight, which I saw twice: SEE IT NOW!
Other than that, I’ve been harboring deep suspicions, especially after the second viewing, that TDK qualifies as a neoconservative film. This is, of course, in no part a reflection of the creators or writers. Neoconservative films, like Charlie Wilson’s War and Gone Baby Gone come into being usually out of mere coincidence.
Before I go on, let’s establish what brand of neoconservatism I’m talking about, and specifically what themes from the neoconservative school I’m trying to emphasize. The focus here is on second generation neoconservatives (Robert Kagan, Boot, Bill Kristol, Lake, Podhorretz) primarily concerned with a post-Cold War, Bin Laden-emergent world. This is in opposition to the more variegated first generation neocons like Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick, who possessed large differences on a variety of domestic and foreign issues, but shared a common philosophy that liberalism’s social welfare state aspirations, ahistoric progressivism, and accomodations towards Communism were no longer tolerable. Recognition that international law is weak, violation of norms for the purpose of desired ends, and a weariness of compromising fundamental principles for calculations of utility are key.
Batman the Vigilante:
One of the main accusations hurled at the neocon vision of American power is that it is unrestrained and unruly. America under Bush has been characterized as a lone gunman, a cowboy outlaw taking arrogantly taking matters into its own hands. Certainly this has been the supposed case with the war in Iraq, which did not attain UN Security Council clearance and was in violation fo resolution 1444. For neocons, this was necessary, even if unfortunate. Neocons do not privilege international law (as dictated by UN governance bodies) over the assumed universally natural rights of all human beings. While they prefer to work multilaterally, they do not assume UN legal processes are sacred rites that legitimize any act. Moreover, in a world that is absent a “leviathan”, a world where the UN is unable and often unwilling to enforce its dictates due to politicization, the need for a lone, principled cowboy becomes evident. This is a dangerous proposition to make, and it comes with the caveat that the cowboy himself must not betray his own principles. But unfortunately, this is the world we live in, and any desire to achieve a better, more principled world requires that we break agreed-upon norms sometimes.
Batman is first and foremost a vigilante, which is by definition an outlaw. He exists and acts forever in violation of the agreed upon rules of society. But he realizes that innocent human lives must not submit to technicalities and bureaucratic processes that let criminals walk. Such a reality is unjust, even if it is indeed legal. In Batman’s world, the body that is supposed govern over all others is inept and corrupt. Its own police force is laden with spies from the underworld. Large enterprises are either owned by crime families or are complicit in their perpetuity. Gotham’s political leaders and law enforcers, like the UN, are either unable or unwilling to act in the name of justice. Batman, like the lone American cowboy, may be illegal, but his existence is derivative of a society that is so weak and degenerate it needs a vigilante save to it.
Neocons would argue that in a world where everyone is willing to act in accordance to liberal values - where governments do not commit genocide on their own people or murder dissidents en masse - international legality, even if it is imperfect, can exist and govern over us all. Liberal democracies can submit to international rulings out of cooperation and acknowledged mutual interest in perpetuating a rules-based society for the goods of peace, prosperity, and harmony it brings. Batman would argue that in a Gotham where the police can be trusted and the politicians possess courage, he can willingly submit to the rule of law. But neither neocons nor Batman live in the fantasies they wish were reality.
Principles vs. Norms:
One of the 2nd generation neocons’ main principles is democracy promotion. Charles Krauthammer has framed neoconservatism as in fact a type of democratic realism. For all the violations of international laws and norms, neocons do not take principles lightly (or at least, they shouldn’t). They certainly do not advocate for the lone American cowboy to disregard human rights, democratic dissidents, and political freedoms, whether at home or abroad, when it is actively trying to shape a better world. For Batman, this means keeping in tact his strongest conviction: that he will not kill. In their respective worlds, both neocons and Batman must endure tests to such principles.
Principles Are Tested:
One reviewer has made this statement:
In short, if the Joker’s goal is to create a dilemma where the most attractive option is to “do evil that good may result,” several characters reject the appeal of self-interest and choose good even if evil may result.
For Batman, this means not killing the Joker even if it implies more deaths in the future. It means not killing the crime lords even if the result is that they will be allowed to walk.
For neocons, one of the greatest challenges to their democracy promotion, especially when it comes to the middle east, is the charge that it will merely bring terrorists into power. While neocons will certainly reject this on substantive grounds, they are also willing to endure the heat even if it does indeed lead to some thorns in the side in the short term. And of-course, on substantive grounds, neocons will point to the dangers of selling out one’s liberal principles. One of the problems, as they asserted when it came to coddling middle eastern dictators during the cold war in the name of stability, is that making deals with the devil will only lead to more problems down the road. The despots and autocrats the U.S. worked with during the cold war marginalized and alienated their own people to the point where they were more capable of empowering a Hezbollah or Al-Qaeda within their own populations. In TDK, this was exemplified in inspector Gordon’s willingness to compromise integrity and trust for the “pragmatic” employment of able-bodied men and women, even if they had criminal records of their own. In one dispute between Gordon and Dent, the former retorts to the latter’s charges of turning a blind eye to corruption by saying that he could not afford to act with the kind of ideals his counterpart possessed. The end result, as we witness, is the MCU (Major Crimes Unit) betrayal of Gordon. Both Dent and Dawes are sent to their deaths by MCU cops, one of whom was Gordon’s right hand woman. Just as Gordon learned his lesson tragically late, the U.S. has had to witness the calamtiy of 9/11 before it could realize that the devil could not be trusted.
Domestic vs International
Some may be skeptical of my comparisons between essentially domestic and international problems. But if we accept that neoconservatism is essentially a “mutated” version of liberal internationalism, then we should look to the latter’s roots. In this we find that the liberal school of IR theory has its fathers in Smith, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. These men, for the most part, concerned themselves with the problem of creating a just, well-governed domestic society (though Kant envisioned a perpetual peace and Rousseau wanted a “league of democracies”). And yet, they were so successful in informing one of the most influential schools of IR thought. And with good reason. It is Hobbe’s state of anarchy that informs the realist-liberal debate on international governance. And yet, when Batman’s Gotham because a lawless, unruly hell-hole, it breaks down into a state of anarchy found in the international arena.
Testing.
**** SPOILERS ****
One central fact undermines Josh’s reading of TDK as a neocon narrative, the point being that the mantel of Batman can only be filled by Bruce Wayne.
At the most basic level, Batman can only work as fantasy. The perfect combination of luck, brilliance, physical mastery, and wealth of resources functioning as a cohesive whole only exists as a dream. The movie even subtly attests to this, as soon as the average man attempts to be Batman, he fails. Similarly, it can be argued that the right mix of these qualities is impossible to find in a government, especially given the very diversity of views and interests of institutions and even individuals in the government. One batman is rare enough, so how likely are we to have a government filled with Batmen
The movie even goes as far as to directly repudiate governmental involvement. When Batman co-operates with the government, they fail. In fact, when Harvey Dent, symbolically used as governmental order, attempts to function outside the law he is stopped by Batman. The officers who are left to deal with the Joker make a fatal mistake of losing their cool, thereby leading to the detonations that kill Dawes.
One last ideological issue is that the principle Batman espouses is drastically different from the one espoused by Neoconservatives. Though he allows death through inaction, ie not killing the Joker, he refuses to actively hurt the innocent, willing to sacrifice himself instead. The government simply does not have this drive (nor should it, arguably). Neocons (however reluctantly) are ok with innocent casualties. Even more importantly, whereas Batman’s dilemma is deontologicaly decided, the government acts in the opposite manner. Neoconservatives may agree that terrorism and hatred will increase, but that ultimately it will do more good for the world to actively intervene. This is ideologically opposed to Batman, who is unwilling to compromise regardless of the dangers or benefits, whereas Neocons refuse to do so because there action is ultimately the lesser of two evils. It might be worth noting that the Joker also believes that society is utilitarian (the boat scene).
If Batman is to be understood as paralleling neoconservatives, then we must add at the end (and so criticizing the ideology of the neoconservatives) that it’s just a movie.
I don’t think Josh is suggesting that Batman is an orthodox neoconservative. Just that its premise speaks to the core principles of neoconservatism in a very allegorical way.
“If Batman is to be understood as paralleling neoconservatives, then we must add at the end (and so criticizing the ideology of the neoconservatives) that it’s just a movie.”
Just a movie? Obama would say:
The matrix…… just a movie
The God father.. .just a movie
(notoriously) Birth of nation…. just a Movie
The whole fucking thing is an allegory for the neo-conservative world outlook.
The Joker is ‘terrorism’ (they call him a terrorist in the flick). He has no previous history, he has no motivation other than being pure evil and absolutely chaotic. He is just plain bad. Like the neo-conservative conception of a terrorist, there is no root cause or underlying issue which pushes him to acts of violence… his evil exists in a vacuum.
Further highlighting the fact taht his violence is an aberration, completely unrelated to outside causes, consider that even when the Americans in the ship are presented with a situation in which their lives are on the line, they refuse to engage in an evil act. In other words, no amount of suffering could ever change a normal, or even a criminal, American into a ‘terrorist’ : terrorism remains is domain of the completely insane.
And how do you fight terrorism? Surveillance (the cell phone sonars) and overwhelming state power (Batman is strong).
Finally, and most troubling in my opinion, is the agreement between BAtman and commissioner Gordon to cover up the fact that Dent became evil… ‘the people deserve BETTER THAN THE TRUTH’. So when the state (Dent) does fuck up, it’s acceptable (noble, even) to mislead the people and cover up the state’s mistake. This is a huge fucking change in the mores espoused by hollywood and it scares the fuck out of me- when is the last time that the lying state has been the fucking HERO of a movie?!
Seriously, this is a bad thing.
yeah.
Captain:
I think you confuse neoconservatism with the civil rights crackdown of the Bush era. I don’t think there’s been a consensus on the legality and morality of surveillance, especially when you start counting liberal hawks and ex-Trotskyites as neocon sympathizers. Moreover, neocons DO believe that terrorism has a root cause: societal dysfunction married with a politicized Islam in a heavily authoritarian middle east. This is why most neocons advocate democracy in the long run - to fix these societies so that they will produce less noxious by-products. And while the Joker may be a terrorist, Batman’s neoconservative allegory really applies to his unlawful confrontation with the city’s more ordinary criminals. In this case, the allegory is more applicable to a guy like Saddam Hussein, who was the head of a rogue state (the very definition of a criminal leader).
These Batman movies show the inherent *weakness* of democratic governments, and their natural tendency towards corruption. In order to maintain an ideal democratic government, the intervention, benevolence, and omniscience of a all-powerful outsider is necessary. Batman is a man who understands the dark side of humanity - a dark side which democratic societies deny as within the natural inclinations of man - and feels it stirring within him, yet stands with both physiological and technological strength against those dark, evil inclinations of man. Ergo, the arrival and rise of a pure *incarnation* of all the repressed instincts, the Joker.
Batman is a God, a pagan god, a god born out of all the strengths and weaknesses of the American value system. A Batman is the only man who can save us now (Batman mythology continues to posit the necessity of our redemption from ourselves - soft, weak, easily bought and sold) - a man who, while possessing in him all the instincts which democratic societies strive to repress and demonize, sublimates these instincts in order to protect these societies.
Democratic societies, in order to survive their own inherent weakness and tendency to corruption, need exactly what they themselves have deemed incongruous with their ideal.
“In this case, the allegory is more applicable to a guy like Saddam Hussein, who was the head of a rogue state (the very definition of a criminal leader).”
Does this make the Joker Osama Bin Laden? No, the Joker is a God, and as this god’s ever-faithful drinking companion, how could I fail to recognize his maniacal, chaos-drunk laugh? My dear friends, the Joker is none other than Dionysus!
The White Knight, the glittering crusader of public justice, Harvey Dent? Our dear blonde Apollo, ray of hope, beacon of order and cleanliness. As long as Batman serves as an agent of Apollo, then that Dionysian urge to destructive delight and revelry, which Batman lives to suppress, will only grow more terrible and grotesque in each subsequent manifestation.
And so we have the birth of a new god, a pagan god, a Batman, who strives to protect a fundamentally Christian (Apollonian) nation by taking from the devil’s (Dionysus’s) playbook.
Captain:
Josh said:
“I think you confuse neoconservatism with the civil rights crackdown of the Bush era….neocons DO believe that terrorism has a root cause: societal dysfunction married with a politicized Islam in a heavily authoritarian middle east. This is why most neocons advocate democracy in the long run ”
Hmm. I think your ‘root cause’ and my ‘vacuum’ are actually one and the same. When I say that neo-cons think terrorism occurs in a vacuum I’m referring exactly to your ’causes’ which are ‘just there’- these societies are just taken as dysfunctional as a starting point, and the ‘root causes’ of these socio-political ills are in fact products of the societies themselves. The fact that the US is a target of the terrorists is rarely linked back to US foreign policy in the region by neo-conservatives, the emergence of radical islam is rarely linked back to the US support of morally bankrupt states.
(no this is not a complete account but you have to factor in the US and neo-cons never do)
Now, an appropriate metaphor in Batman would be if, for example, it was discovered that Batman killed the joker’s parents and then put him in the care of an abusive foster home.
I think much of your analysis is right. The Dark Knight was rife with similiarities to current events. The wannabe Batmans that were murdered by the Joker as propoganda were striking parallels to the allies of the United States that backed out of support in the War on Terror when their citizens were murdered on camera. Like with Bush’s war on terror, as the going got tougher and the villains got rougher, the public lashed out at Batman instead of the villains.