Don’t worry, Batfans, this isn’t another post picking on The Best Movie Ever – we’ve got that covered elsewhere. No, this is a post picking on dipshits who view anything that goes thermonuclear in the pop culture as validation of their political leanings. You’ve probably seen them by now – the “Batman is Bush” editorials, the most notable (and laughable) of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week under the byline of right-wing thriller author Andrew Klaven.
“There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war,” Klaven gasses. “Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.”
Klaven has plenty of evidence to support this seemingly dubious proposition. For instance, if you squint a little, the bat-signal looks a bit like a “W.” And…well, that’s about it, but then we have Andrew Bolt in the Australian Herald Sun, claiming that Christopher Nolan made a film proving Bush right, though he had to “disguise it a little, so journalists wouldn't freak and the film's more fashionable stars wouldn't walk.” Boy, I betcha Christian Bale feels silly now! Bolt has also noticed the bat-signal’s similarity to a W, and goes on to equate Batman beating the crap out of the Joker with waterboarding, claiming “Batman has resorted to the last hope to make this terrorist squeal, because only the Joker has the information the police need to save two goodies who have just minutes left to live.” This sort of ignores the fact that the Joker intended to reveal this information all along and that the police didn’t save those two “goodies” at all, but let’s bear with him. Bolt goes on to cite Batman’s surveillance of Gotham City’s cell phones as another telling similarity to Bush. Except, well, nobody ever elected Batman to any office, nor did he ever swear to defend the Constitution or uphold civil liberties. That’s sort of what makes him a vigilante, no? The movie knows what he’s doing is wrong because Morgan Freeman says so, and everybody knows Morgan Freeman is the voice of God (or the Magical Negro, if you must go there).
These theories really fall apart when the editorial writers equate the Joker to Osama bin Laden. Think about it – if The Dark Knight was really an allegory for the Bush administration, Batman would half-heartedly pursue the Joker for the first few minutes of the movie and then let him escape and spend the rest of his time dicking around in Metropolis looking for Mr. Mxyzptlk and his weapons of mass destruction. Yet I do think these numbnuts are onto something with the Batman/Bush parallel – just not in the way they think. See, Batman doesn’t particularly remind me of George W. Bush, but Bruce Wayne sure does. That is, the public Bruce Wayne – the drunk party boy, the son of privilege, the out-to-lunch executive falling asleep during important meetings. (And this is not even the first time Bale has reminded me of Bush – his accent in I’m Not There sounded like Dubya’s worst Dylan impression.) You could conceivably make the case that the movie is actually a mockery of ol’ 43…or you could just accept that all the “war on terror” overtones are intended to lend the movie some contemporary resonance – to make it a Batman for the 21st century – and not much more than that.
Related:
Top Ten Reasons The Dark Knight Isn't as Good as You Think It Is
Screengrab Review: "The Dark Knight"