The old Soviet propaganda newspaper Pravda once called Batman a capitalist murderer, a superhero ideologically in league with the FBI. This judgment was meant for the ’60s TV show, but we have no doubt that Pravda would say the same thing about Batman Begins. This movie is utterly and self-consciously ideological; it is some kind of weird symbolic allegory about terrorism, social justice, and the nation-state’s relationship to both. That might sound too far out, especially for a movie about a superhero in a bat costume. Nevertheless, the movie persists to ask the question “What is justice?” and then answer it by creating an opposition between Bruce Wayne and Ra’s Al Ghul (the villain).
All that matters comes early in the movie. We’re shown in the opening scenes that Bruce Wayne represents deep pockets, a family-run corporation looking to practice philanthropy in Gotham City. Wayne himself is an American son; his is a patriotic, aristocratic family. Wayne is compassionate, his family is compassionate, and to let us know how compassionate they are, Wayne’s great-grandfather helped slaves travel the Underground Railroad, hiding them in what in this movie becomes the Bat Cave. But Bruce is disillusioned by the murder of his parents, a crime committed by a peasant. Who’s to blame? The murderer or society? Bruce and Ra’s Al Ghul have their own answers, and they debate the nature of justice and crime when Bruce travels to a remote Himalayan training facility for advanced ninjas. The movie makes itself a philosophical allegory within the first five minutes. These early training scenes set up the motivations for the action that will follow, which is as dark and grim as any popular movie we’ve ever seen.
Actually Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul share the same beliefs, but because Batman has “compassion” and Ra’s Al Ghul does not, the two have different aims. We detected a strong “War on Terror” angle to Batman Begins, one from a Sean Hannity perspective. Consider the location of the training facility (remote mountains in Asia), the purpose of Ra’s Al Ghul’s ninja group (stealth missions), and the poppy flowers, which are a lot like Afghanistan’s major export, the poppy plants that can be turned into opium. Further, Ra’s Al Ghul is an Arabic name, but in the movie this character goes by another moniker, Henri Ducard, which is decidely French. Al Ghul is a fanatic who prides himself on cleansing crime-filled Gotham City by destroying it. Meanwhile, Batman wants to rid Gotham of crime by becoming a vigilante, an above-the-law terrorist of sorts. The only difference between the hero and the villain in this case is Batman’s status as a corporate capitalist do-gooder and an American patriot who has a cutesy girlfriend in the DA’s office. This is our judgment, not the movie’s. It firmly believes in Batman, but that means it also believes in vigilante justice and the stealth means of attaining it (e.g, wire-tapping, torture, concealing information), or, to put it another way, in subverting several of the Ten Commandments.
The worst aspect of this movie is that in its “meditation” on justice, (if we can call cliches meditations), it is deliberately secular. There’s scant discussion of what the standards of justice actually are and why they should be standards, except for the cliches of utilitarianism and various crusades for social justice (“the greatest good for the greatest number” and all that rot). Batman, as a pseudo-savior figure, makes up the rules as he goes. As he admonishes one criminal, who shouts “I swear to God” as he reveals a secret, “Swear to me [instead]!” Batman Begins advocates the worst of abstract theories of justice, and it shows in the relationships between characters, which are all cold and distant. Almost no one is a warm-hearted friend in this movie. They all relate to one another through their status in a bureaucracy, whether corporate or governmental. Even Bruce Wayne’s and Alfred’s master-servant relationship seems shallow, and Bruce and his girlfriend treat each other more like a crimefighter-prosecutor pair than as old childhood friends. The human beings in this movie are objects upon which Batman’s idea of justice is either being done or not. They are impersonal abstractions, like the anonymous boy Batman’s D.A. girlfriend saves and cuddles during Ra’s Al Ghul’s attack. This a mathematical and cold idea, represented by the movie’s dark tones and the black Batman costume. There’s little here that represents the characteristics and quality of relationships to family, neighbors, and church members contained in, say, the New Testament epistles (a form of writing that implies warm-hearted relationships). As a secular savior, Batman fails in every regard.
Entertainment: 4 (too dark for us, but very well constructed)
Intelligence: 7
Morality: 1 (also contains disturbing images inappropriate for most people)
The Moral Minefield of Movies
Posted by J on August 14, 2007
We attend the movie theater twice a year at most. This is for a number of reasons, chief among them is that a $10 ticket is a vote in favor of Hollywood fare that may turn out to be at best idiotic and at worst immoral. DVDs, cost effective as they are, have excellent tools for the purposes of censorship — namely the STOP and EJECT buttons. A case in point is our recent trip to Ratatouille. The projectionist put the wrong movie through the reels, and so we ended up seeing previews for R-rated movies, featuring the graphic liaisons of a male gigolo (Good Luck Chuck) and the umpteenth sequel to Halloween. From what we could see, our matinee audience consisted of grandparents and children, none of whom seemed to flinch at shot after shot of half-naked females and the glorification of a resurrected murderer. (To be fair, one parent got up and left with a young child, though we debated whether they complained or went to the restroom.) We had a word with the manager, but the movie theater treated us merely like upset customers returning a broken TV. When Good Luck Chuck and Halloween XII debut, the theater will likely feature them.
Far from being the funhouses they’re marketed as, movie theaters and video stores are moral minefields. An honest Christian could not operate a movie theater in good conscience these days. He might run, say, a drive-in theater for families, but that would limit showings to three a year during the summer season. Otherwise, he would be forced into peddling current releases, the majority of which celebrate violence and pornography. The same goes for video rental chains and retail stores that sell DVDs. Retailers who profess Christ ought to get out of the movie-selling business altogether, not because if they limited their selection they couldn’t make a profit, but because little they could sell would edify their fellow Christians.
We therefore advocate two things: step as cautiously as possible in movie-watching, and know the Bible as well as you can. God’s story shows you how to examine man-made stories, and it will not let you be indifferent to previews for R-rated fare. We advise this knowing that, unless you are Amish, you will probably watch at minimum several dozen movies in your lifetime. Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
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