On with the diatribe.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW***

We are Gordon/Dent/Dawes

I propose we are Gordon, Dent, or Dawes.  These three are the only people besides Fox and Alfred that Batman can trust.  As we mentioned before Batman would ideally like to hand the city over to them.  These three are agents of good who all have framed their ideas of justice and have presented them to the world.  they have been attacked because of their ideas (literally).  Most of us have ideas about what Justice is and even more have strong opinions about what it is not.  Just because these three are attacked for their beliefs does not mean that they have the right idea.  For the most part they all believe that the law is justice.  But Joker tears this belief apart by using his own capture as a vehicle for chaos.  Joker uses the system that is supposed to work to show the Batman that they dot hold the answer.  and as a final blow he takes out the heads of these systems.  Even more drastically he “kills”  all three of these icons of what Batman believes in.  in the end all we have left is Gordon who was never part of the system in its current form.  At the end of the film Gordon actually has the harder job of reconstructing Gotham and “capturing” Batman.

I think this is a big cue to the audience that we have to look at ourselves as these three as well.  We need to be the greatest believers in Justice, whatever it may be, and we need to stand as a beacon to those who do not know what it is, who are trapped in a battle, or who are blind to it.  There have to be people willing to sacrifice themselves for Justice so that it will survive.  Some of us need to be the support to those who are lost (Dawes), some need to be the executor of the Justice and its hands (Gordon), and some need to be the beacon of hope and an ideal to look to.  I don’t think we get to choose which one we are.

We are Gotham

We are The City of Gotham.  Pathetic, helpless, dirty, cruel, antagonistic, easily manipulated, and represented only by the weakest and strongest among us.  We need help we are creatures that can be threatened by those in charge, good or bad, and we are mechanical predictable in our reactions.  Gotham is not innocent but regardless it needs to be protected because they are beautiful and good because they are people.  This is epically important.  because they are fellow humans they deserve respect and protection and gentle care.  and at all costs to be taken care of.  because they have only seen hate, malice, and manipulation they cannot understand the efforts of good men and women who sacrifice themselves for the city.  Just as the city does, we need to recognize grace given to us and seek out those who love us and want to protect our innocence and soul.  It is no surprise that children are ones who constantly see the good in Batman and desire to be like him in Gotham.

As a memer of the city we cant try to emulate those who are fighting the good fight.  without proper education, dicipline, and understanding we will get hurt and will be used against those who are prepared to be our knights.  There are obvious ||s that can be drawn from this in every arena.  Christians, Muslim, envrionmentalists, liberal, conservatives, etc. are cursed by their “gotham” population desperately trying to be Batmans, Gordons, Dawes, Dents, or worse Foxes and Alfreds.

We are NOT Fox/Alfred

We are not Fox or Alfred.  They have no flaws.  They are our compass and light.  They guide us at our darkest times.  We feel that we have to hide our inadequacies from them and we hide the moments that we step over our boundaries. we hide our sins until we are forced to reveal to them exactly how bad we really are.  and Their reaction is always precisely and perfectly appropriate.  These men our the saints we meet once or twice in our lives.  Chances are if you are reading this you are not this person, I am quite sure I am not.  These are the men we should look to be like but we cannot make the mistake and think we are like them.

What can we learn?

I’ll leave this for you to explore on your own.  There is much more than I have discussed here but please post any thoughts in the comments.

The Dark Knight is a profound film in that it attempts to tackle 2 icons of American pop culture in one film.  because of this I am willing to give Nolan the lenience that he deserves, although he out performed my personal expectations.  DK is a complex film that asks much of the viewer, and I appreciate the challenge because this says to me that Nolan is not making the mistake of creating an “American Blockbuster,” rather he is attempting to make a great film.  I believe that Nolan has raised the bar in comic films although he did not do anything especially spectacular as far as standard filmmaking.  His film is excellent yet I could only say that it is an excellent American film.  I believe that it may raise audience standards and many American filmmakers standards I have to say that this film is not the messiah of American film people are making it out to be.

Because there is not much I can write about the film as a standard review that hasn’t been said in the last few weeks I would like to propose a few ideas to you and share some thought on the characters, comparisons with past versions of these American Icons and some possibly unconventional thoughts on the film and structure as a whole.  before I do let me fully disclose my admiration for the film and my and absolute fanboy addiction to Batman.  I tend to border on the over analytical as I have given lectures on Batman before and really find that there is some great power to his story.

There are fundamentally different ways to view this film and my biggest problem watching this film is that it didn’t seem to me that Batman was absolutely the main character.  In this film we don’t see the film through any ones specific viewpoint so it is a true 3rd person film but we are not 3rd person omniscient as we can tell through specific elements being hidden from us on purpose.  And interestingly we are kept in the dark about things the primary characters are going to do so we are not let in on anything until we are in the midst of the event itself.  So here are some ideas on viewing the film through a specific characters perspective.  I am not supposing that these characters are the eyes we see through but these are the characters we are meant to attach to and will empathize with at different times.  So do not take these as literal but next time you watch the film try and see it from a different perspective.  After all you never know what the person next to you may relate to in the film and this exercise can help foster some great discussion here and other places.

We are The Batman/Bruce Wayne

I propose that we are Batman.  Batman and Joker are not diametrically opposed as one may think.  They both are rule breakers, are not willing to confront their problems using society’s conventions, have complete freedom within their fantasy they have created, and only have one thing to loose, and are willing to die for their beliefs.

Batman desires Justice with a big “J” yet he is never sure what that truly is although he is presented with multiple answers and usually chooses one that fits the particular story he is in or situation he is in.  As we walk through these stories particularly DK we have to continually ask ourselves ‘What is Justice?’ That has to be our driving force.  In DK we actually see a rare thing for Batman and for ourselves.  Complete submission.  Bruce is willing to completely submit himself to the greater good so that the community can be whole again and safe.  When can we say that we ourselves have ever submitted so wholly to someone’s idea of Justice or any other virtue.  Through Batman’s example Nolan has taken an opportunity to show us something unexpected from a “hero,” humility.

We should remember that Batman is a free man.  He has more money than he can fathom and he uses it to maintain his freedom not only to be The Batman, but to manipulate his closest relationships.  We see this in small ways in his interactions with Dent and Dawes but it is brought to fruition in his relationship with Fox as he uses money to push that friendship to its breaking point and then to pull Fox back to him.  There are obvious things we should be making ||’s to so I wont go further into this.

Lastly we desire Justice in the world and believe that the world is not “fair,” and we  want to resolve our problems as well as others.  This is where Batman has become a servant of others as well as himself.  Batman has chosen himself and placed himself into this position of the defender of Justice.  As he is still unsure of what true Justice is he delegates that duty to the only people he can trust, those he relies on completely.  Batman lives by a strict set of rules and uses those rules to dictate every action he performs.  Batman does what he does only so that eventually someone better than him can implement true Justice in his place.  Sadly his own actions will always keep this from ever happening.

We are The Joker

I propose we are the Joker.  Joker is an agent of chaos, rules do not apply to him and he seeks to destroy all rules. There is something more important in his character that should be examined first.

Who is the Joker?  In the comics and other interpretations of the character there is usually an abnormal almost unjustified amount of time spent on how the Joker became who he is.  This seems necessary for American audiences because it is comfortable and we can think about half baked Freudian explanations for a disturbed individual.  What are the implications of a person who comes from nowhere?  A man with no history can be the most dangerous man in the room.  Think about it, when we meet people we like to know who they are but really we want to know what makes them who they are now.  To trust someone we like to be confident in who they were and if that corresponds to the person we see.  Also on the more manipulative side if we can know someones past we can manipulate them or we can predict their future actions.

Something that scares us about Joker is that he comes from nowhere.  Joker realizes this about himself and uses it to his advantage.  He terrifies us with his constructed pasts that he creates for his own purposes and as the audience we may relate to this because so many of us have tried to re-construct our own pasts.  We do not want to be constrained even by reality or society’s perceptions.  making these ||’s should start to scare you a little.

Joker is as free as Batman.  The Joker only has one thing that he is fearful of and that is Arkham, but that is only in the comics.  In DK The Joker has no fear he is free of everything all rules and constraints.  Particularly money, and that sets him apart from Batman in an interesting way.  The Joker is an explorer of ethical boundaries without restraint.  In the film Joker actually acts out multiple textbook Ethics problems.  In an of it self exploring the ethical dilemmas of the world is not evil, actually enacting them is.

We are The Joker in that we are also creations of the media and creators of the media.  The Joker has a theme of manipulating the media and being affected by the media.  His desire to be a part of the news, and using the news to his advantage shows him to be actually controlled in a simple way.  The Joker may not fear anything in this interpretation but he has a weakness.

Just as Batman desires to seek justice the Joker desires to be a victim.  Joker actually seeks out opportunities to be throttled by Batman and he manipulates Batman into those situations by using Justice.  He thrives on fear and uses fear to drive society and to drive himself.  At his most threatening moments he is nearly trembling in a fear euphoria.  The joker uses others rules against themselves our their inhibitions.  This is why he thrives on Batman capturing him, because he knows he will take Batman to the brink of his sanity and that gives him immense pleasure but because he does not fear death from Batman (because he can’t dish that out) he allows himself to be placed simultaneously in his worst fear and that is capture (because he can’t create chaos in captivity he hasn’t constructed)

Please feel free to discuss in the comments, I cant wait to hear from you!

Continued next time:

We are Gordon/Two face/Dawes

We are Gotham

What is There to Learn

I am Nate Marshall.  I was raised all over the country and have settled for the time being in the Bay Area.  I have found that one thing that has always impressed me since my childhood was the incredible power of the visual medium.  From design in toys to films to typography and what the words actual say, I have been fascinated by it all.  Visuals drive me to think harder and to act every day of my life.  This isn’t to say that I am a slave to media but you could safely say that I am often consuming media to learn more about this strange diverse beautiful and horrible world that we all live in and share.

I am a Teacher by profession currently though I will always be a student, I believe, in some fashion.  I trained to be a film producer in college @ Biola University.  My passion was to create films.  I particularly wanted to create animated films because of the freedoms involved and the relatively low cost.  The other reason I liked animation was that the smaller teams of creative individuals allows for a community to be developed and I always dreamed of living a life as an “Imagineer.”

I teach now though, and it is a perfect job in so many ways.  I teach many different classes at the private school that allows me such creative and personal freedom to teach great classes.  I offer a Intro to Video Class (how to hold a camera and point it at something interesting), Art of Filmmaking (creating the interesting image and learning from the masters how to say something Good, True and Beautiful), Applied Filmmaking (creating and distributing high quality content), Screenwriting I teach this with my wife Lindsay (How to tell a story and not look like an amateur so you can eventually put your script in the hands of people who matter).  We also have two other classes that I co-teach with other excellent facilitators and educators, Acting for Film is taught by our Theatre Department head and we offer a daily live news broadcast to the entire school.  I  co-teach this class with our Radio Dept. head.  we offer this news class so that we can live webcast school events and sports as well as provide the daily news to the student body.

My future is teaching for the foreseeable future as well as screenwriting with my wife.  We have been writing together for 5 years and have a great time doing it!  It is something that we love to do together and it keeps our marriage strong because we work together as a family and we work together creatively and academically.  That kind of bond is more valuable than anything I have ever experienced.

So this blog will be about the media, but really mostly about cinema.  I want to begin a tradition of reviewing movies in a new context.  I want to explore movies in the context of their value and their contribution of an age-old conversation on art, communication and other topic raised in the specific films.  because of this you wont expect to see many reviews of films here on the lower brow film of the week.  and you will have to be sure to expand your repertoire of films.

I want to encourage you as well to get involved reading and commenting on these films.  There is no real reason to talk to the air when we write and the only way that we can truly appreciate the films that are created is to discuss and try to better understand them.  So I call on you to challenge me and others in the goal of making us all better film viewers but essentially better people in the process.  People who understand just a small bit better the world that we live in and the world that we all share together.

Our future is together and our future is bright.  Let’s gather and speak of things that have value and create a new comunity of souls that understand the value of the visual word