Warner Brothers Pictures The Dark Knight

Batman and the War On Terror

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

The one story, “The Sum of all Fears,” written by Tom Clancy before 9/11, was a worthy subject for film. In the novel, an Islamic terror group, a former East German nuclear scientist and an angry Native American commit an act of nuclear terror on American soil. However, when Hollywood got its hands on the story, the evil alliance was changed to be between a Russian military clique and a European neo-Nazis group. Given a choice between addressing the real enemy or a fictitious one, Hollywood chose the latter.

In the seven years since radical Islam murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on a clear September morning, Hollywood has failed to come to grips with an enemy totalitarian ideology in as compelling a manner it once did when faced with Hitler’s evil.

Enter the latest in a series of sagas chronicling the exploits of the Batman as told in the recently released DVD “The Dark Knight” by Warner Brothers Pictures (2008) and staring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freemaon and directed by Christian Nolan.

The characters in the Batman film franchise are usually portrayed in a fun and campy way. This latest interpretation is rendered in a darker and more chilling manner. The Joker, brilliantly portrayed by the late Heath Ledger, is a twisted agent of chaos, committing acts of mindless terror.

The opening scene shows men in clown masks robbing a bank. It’s not just any bank, however. It happens to be owned by Gotham City’s organized crime gangs. As the Joker loads the last of the duffle bags filled with cash into his getaway vehicle, the bank’s manager observes, “Criminals in this town used to believe in things – honor, respect. Look at you! What do you believe in, huh? What do you believe in?”

“I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you stranger,” says the Joker.

Eventually, the Joker frightens Gotham’s gangsters into hiring him to rid the city of its Caped Crusader. In the process, Joker also begins a campaign of fear and terror by killing a judge and the city’s police commissioner.

“They’ve crossed the line,” Wayne tells his trusted butler regarding Gotham’s mob hiring of the Joker.

“You crossed the line first, sir,” says Alfred, “You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation; and in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.”

“Criminals aren’t complicated,” Wayne assures Alfred. “We just need to figure out what he’s after.”

Alfred introduces Bruce Wayne to a darker evil than he’s ever encountered. “With respect, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don’t fully understand, either.”

“A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anyone who traded with him.”

“One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.”

 “So, why steal them?” asks Wayne incredulously.

 “Because he thought it was good sport,” explains Alfred. “Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical…like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

In this simple scene, Batman, crime fighter extraordinaire, faces an enemy that refuses to fit the mold of the typical materialistic bandit; Batman slowly realizes that battling this strange new foe requires tactics that go beyond reading a criminal his Miranda Rights or throwing him in jail.

When the Joker is eventually apprehended, the police interrogate him– to no avail. The police give Batman a try.

 “Why did you want to kill me?” Batman asks.

“I don’t want to kill you!” assures Joker, “What would I do without you, go back to ripping-off mob dealers? No, no, no, you…you complete me.”

 “You’re garbage,” Batman says through clenched teeth, “you kill for money.”

This really angers the Joker, “Don’t talk like one of them,” he says pointing to the police, “you’re not; even if you’d like to be. To them you’re just a freak, like me. They need you right now. When they don’t, they’ll cast you out like a leper. You see, their morals, their code; it’s a bad joke – dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. They’ll show you; when the chips are down, these civilized people – they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.”

After a vicious battering at the hands of the Caped Crusader, Joker says, “You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with; nothing to do with all your strength.”

After the Joker affects his escape from the police, he meets with one of Gotham’s gangster bosses. Standing near a pile of money stacked into a pyramid mimicking the reverse side of our national seal, he dowses it with gasoline and sets it on fire to the horror and shock of the mobster standing nearby.

“This town deserves a better class of criminal,” says the Joker. “This is my city. It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message; everything burns.”

In another scene, the joker further fleshes-out his twisted, Godless nihilistic worldview: “I’m a dog chasing cars; I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.”
“Introduce a little anarchy; upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos; it’s bare.”

It’s a shame that the best film dealing with the ugly reality of Islamic terror’s dark heart is seen in a film based on a 1930s cartoon hero. That the subject of nihilism taken to its logical conclusion must be addressed obliquely through hyper-stylized film fiction is one of the real tragedies of our time. 

In today’s world, conventional wisdom holds that once we figure out what Islamists want, we can reach some materialistic accommodation (buy them off) so they will leave us alone. The U.S. and Israeli governments thought that giving “Land for Peace,” which created the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority, would usher in Middle East tranquility Instead, the Palestinian Authority, run by the Fatah and Hamas terror gangs, is no more than a staging area for insane suicide bombers and a platform for launching missiles into Israel. The Israeli military is currently battling these forces before a morally bankrupt world can come to terror’s rescue. What Israel is learning the hard way, is that Islamic terrorists can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. These insanely evil men, it turns out, just want to watch the world burn.

--Mr. Curmudgeon