The Dark Knight Rises and the wealth debate

More than once, I've engaged it what appears to be a fruitless debate about how the rich/poor divide, how the wealthy can, in its frustration, choose to hold onto its money out of principle while holding itself up as a class of people who earned what they have and believe in a certain code of behavior (moral behavior, consumer behavior, etc) that, if only the poor can reach it, will be rewarded, too.

And I've written in response that, yes, while this is accurate, the true final card in this escalating game - and it's the poor's to flip over - is simply that of, well, brute force. Violence. Terrorism. And though I don't advocate this, not in the least, it's a result of where our escalating actions eventually lead us: Two jackals in the street. When you don't share enough, and devise some complicated system of values and rules that seem unnavigable for many and that "many" just gets fed up, you move toward this ignoble end.

The Dark Knight Rises explores this debate on a 3-hour, $300 million scale. The movie will make a billion dollars worldwide. Everyone you know will see it. It could trigger some interesting conversations. It's just a movie, of course. But, as art, it mirrors the conversation at hand. And it will worm its way into real-world conversation. (which is why this is here and not on page whatever of the movie thread.)

 

If The Dark Knight openly invited interpretation as the War on Terror Batman, then The Dark Knight Rises, whose creators obviously scented the class discontent in the air, is the Occupy Wall Street installment. As in The Dark Knight's conflict between Wayne and the Joker, Order versus Anarchy, the face-off between Wayne and Bane is a dialectical battle between personified concepts. Wayne is Gotham City's philanthropic chaperone; his company develops technologies with great potential for help and harm, which Wayne then keeps away from a polis that he protects without trusting. Bane is, in posture at least, a radical revolutionist, setting himself up as the champion of the disenfranchised, though it is difficult to imagine who would be seduced by his tactics or his plan "to return control of the city to the people," followed by the neutralization of law and order and the foundation of a Gotham Commune. For the Nolans, it is characters who voice seemingly utopian goals such as "restoring balance to the world" of whom the most is to be feared...
http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-07-18/film/why-so-serious/

 

All $300 million will be donated, I assume.

 

From the next American revolution comes fascism. Gandhi ain't coming to America.

 

One thing to note about the movie without giving away any spoilers - the police in DKR stand against the mobs and the cops are shown as the good guys.

When's the last time you saw a movie that had cops in riot gear and it was the cops who were the heroes.

 

I have not seen even one of the Batman movies.

 

A hungry man, is an angry man.