Last month, Andrew Klavan argued that The Dark Knight is a simple
“paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war (and) …a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,”* “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
On National Review’s Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson attempted to Klavan to task for this, put found himself unequal to Klavan’s rejoinder that “‘Aw, come on’ is not an argument.” As I wrote recently, Klavan makes a foolish
one-to-one equation of Batman and his tactics, to President Bush and his efforts to fight terrorism domestically.
President Bush is an elected public official responsible for ensuring the safety of his constituents and the protection of their rights. Now, does that make him more like the Gotham’s A) millionaire playboy turned chiropterian-themed vigilante, or B) its district attorney?
And what did the movie have to say when Harvey Dent adopted Batman’s modes of crime-fighting? It condemned them and not only because Dent/Two Face went too far: but because it acknowledged that some things that are appropriate for vigilante Batman are not appropriate for DA Harvey Dent.
One other thing of note is that Batman “push[es] the boundaries of civil rights” under much more limited circumstances than President Bush does. When Batman tortures the Joker, he’s doing it in response to a literal ticking time bomb; when uses his sonar-thingy to tap into all of Gotham’s cell phones, he gives control of it to a man who he knows will destroy the device as soon as the crisis is passed. The Bush administration has seen little need for this kind of sunsetting, and when it does provide provisions to allow new government powers to lapse, it insinuates that anyone who would allow such a thing to happen is a squishy-dove liberal.
Geoffrey sometimes speaks of some conservatives’ masturbatory fantasies of a real show down with Islam; this Batman-equals-Bush thing is its kissin’ cousin.
Posted by Tom in Conservatism, Film Rants