is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush is not Batman, OK?
Hopefully you've heard about this already, and called or emailed George W. Bush (and all of your political representatives, just in case that ends up mattering), but in case you haven't, here it is. Bush is trying to take advantage of our current focus on things other than his famously bad judgment, like election politics, to redefine what abortion is and make that definition the one that has to be followed for any clinics getting federal funding. Basically, the new rule for Health and Human Services would make getting contraception difficult for low income women, and would broaden the definition of abortion to include (and I quote):
"any of the various procedures � including prescription, dispensing, and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action � that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation."
Many common and safe forms of contraception fall under that definition. If you agree with me that this is an alarming and dangerous development, I hope you'll let Bush know, and give money to a local or national organization working on fighting this new rule. Here's one easy way to let Bush know what you think. I gave some money to Planned Parenthood.
In other news, there's been a lot of gum-flapping about how the new Batman movie is a "love letter to Bush" or some such crap, since the movie shows Batman quoteunquote making tough choices and disobeying written law to bring justice. So, the dumbasses out there conclude, Batman must be like Bush, and so, perhaps, Bush is our hero!
Fuck that. Please hear me when I tell you that if Bush is any character in the latest Batman movie, he is the Joker. Like the Joker he thinks no law applies to him. He only obeys law when it happens to suit him to do so. And so he is lawless, an outlaw. Given what we know now about the lack of foresight about getting into the Iraq war, we might even say that, like the Joker, Bush doesn't really have an evil plan. He just likes to fuck shit up. But that's secondary and iffy. My main point is that he is lawless.
When a superhero Dark Knight is lawless, that's one thing. But when someone who is charged with safeguarding the law decides that law doesn't apply to him, well, that is quite another thing.
Batman may disobey law in the name of justice, but part of the main plot of the freaking movie is that Batman does what cops and elected officials cannot and should not do: break the law. Batman is very clear that that is a line that cannot be crossed--and that's why we are supposed to think it's wrong when Harvey Dent becomes bad two-faced Dent (man, what a terribly apparent metaphor). And the film even makes the point, fairly clearly, that Batman's acts may be called "good," they may not all be good, and they may not be all good. He has to accept being hated and hunted, rejected from respectable society. He is not allowed to be the president.
That said, though I thought the film had a few good moments, it wasn't all that good, overall. My favorite moment was the Joker's "chaos" hospital speech about whose deaths matter to people (a respectable old man, a child), and whose we choose to ignore or expect as ordinary or necessary (gang bangers, soldiers)... because they're part of how the system works, or what the system deems acceptable. A great speech made even better by the wig and nurse uniform, and Heath Ledger's crazed Chaplin-esque performance.
7:06 p.m. - July 27, 2008
Vladimir Estragon - 2008-07-28 03:23:36
The place where the comparison between Bush and either one of the characters fails lies in the movie's apparent allegation that lawlessness is a direct result of some sort of trauma. The Joker tells conflicting stories of his scarring, but Batman's origin is well-known, and Harvey Dent rejects the law a few days after suffering some unrealistic facial scarring. (How typical of Hollywood to assume that the loss of one's pretty face should be sufficient to turn a good man into a murderer overnight. How insulting to the many people who suffer daily with far worse disfigurations.) Mr. Bush, by all accounts, has had the easiest life a man could hope for, at least up until he became president. He seems never to have wanted for anything, never worked for anything, never suffered anything. His apparent lawlessness must therefore stem from some other cause, one that is far less pitiable than those of the movie characters.
-------------------------------
js - 2008-07-28 15:27:34
good point, nicely made. it reminds me of a further thing i liked about the movie, among the various things i didn't like. the joker keeps telling different origin stories of his disfiguration--he tells us it's because of his father, his wife, and so on. it messes with the idea that trauma is easy to locate, or that there is a simple/direct cause-and-effect relationship between it and later actions.
-------------------------------
js - 2008-07-28 15:31:11
actually, that point also makes me wish that the movie's makers had made some tough choices, editing-wise, so it could have told THAT story better, instead of a bunch of different stories in half-ass fashion. the film as it stands is like Dark Knight for ADHD. sometimes editing failures are ethical failures.
-------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
