Month August 2008

Dark Knight = Guilty (or Empty?) American Soul

misplacedwilder 5 Comments

James Howard Kunstler, who predicted the sub-prime housing meltdown well before it happened, not to mention the predominate voice warning of our failure to confront the peak oil crisis, is one of the first smart people I’ve found ANYWHERE that feels similarly about The Dark Knight! However, he misses some of the (perhaps) unintentional right-wing war-cheering (or at least forgiving) in it… He is also clearly of the mind that society’s state simply shapes the stories it tells — but I think it’s a two way street — the stories we tell also shape the society we create. ..So maybe I’ll still have to write my article…

This is his site: http://www.kunstler.com/index.html

This is the article: http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary24.html

This is a taste of it:

The most striking thing about the new Batman movie, now smashing the all-time box office records, is its emphasis on sado-masochism as the animating element in American culture these days. It must appeal to the many angry people in our land who want to hurt others, even while they themselves feel deserving of the grossest punishments. In other words, the picture reflects the extreme depravity of the current American sensibility. Seeing it all laid out there must be very validating to the emotionally confused audience, and hence pleasurable, in all its painfulness.

The rich symbolism in this spectacle represents the tenor of contemporary America as something a few notches worse than whatever the Nazis were heading toward around 1933. We like nothing better than to see people suffer and watch things get broken. The more slowly people are tortured (including the movie audience) the more exquisite the pleasure derived from the act. Civilization offers no consolation. In fact, its a mug’s game. Thus, civilization is composed only of torturers and their mug victims.