Heroes, Hope, and The Dark Knight Rises

I had fully intended yesterday’s spoiler-free review of The Dark Knight Rises to be the final entry in my unofficial “Nolan Week,” but the recent events in Colorado – and the subsequent media coverage of the tragedy – have made it clear that the discussion of the film and its importance to American culture is far from over.

I am not writing a news piece; I was not there.  I am not writing a vitriolic condemnation; it is superfluous.  I am not purporting to know the truth; likely, sadly, it cannot be known.  But what is known is this:  without trivializing the events in Aurora, filmgoers were attacked by a man who represents everything that The Dark Knight Rises asks us to reject – tyranny, terrorism, and hopelessness.

I wish to be empirically clear.  I do not wish to claim that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a tool to combat such evil (I will not name him – his alleged alias, “The Joker,” tells us all we need to know about this madman).  Rather, these events illustrate in a very tangible and tragic way the precise “point” of the trilogy, which the media in its bloodlust has steadfastly refused to acknowledge.  Again, I do not wish to belittle by this comparison; rather, I want to explore the ways in which media coverage of the events in Aurora entirely overlook the reality of this devastating moment.

Frankly, the coverage of this sad day has been shameful.  I have strongly considered removing myself entirely from social media outlets like Facebook due to a barrage of messages and posts that declare impertinent and irrelevant things about the shooting; I had fully expected to defend only the film’s virtues as a work of art and was prepared to do so, not to defend it against those who see the events in Colorado as a Rorschach inkblot on which to project their political or aesthetic prejudices.  I have been forced to violate one of my most sacred personal beliefs – the belief that silence is sanction – because I cannot bear to engage with the issue on such a misguided level.  I am debating with myself whether I can continue to permit myself to “exist” in a digital forum which is comfortable with zero accountability beyond a few keystrokes and failed punchlines.

But on a less personal level, I find it difficult to learn about the tragedy from “mainstream” and “reputable” sources.  The details are heartwrenching, and the realization that the victims in Aurora had done the exact same thing I had – purchased a ticket to enjoy a film they’d been anticipating – has been difficult to comprehend.  But I cannot read or watch news reports on the heartbreaking occurrence because media coverage has reeked of a “blame the victim” mentality which cherry-picks at seventy-three years of Batman stories to find incidents that suggest why this incident victimized this particular fanbase at this particular time in history. 

The film’s Bane is a terrorist who assaults innocents at random in public places?  Illogically connected.  The recent videogame Arkham City takes place in the movie theater outside which Bruce Wayne’s parents were gunned down?  A broad mischaracterization of the game and the location’s importance.  Scenes in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns depict audiences in theaters being murdered by madmen?  A deplorable implication.  The New Yorker believes that the nature of the “midnight screening” is to blame and should therefore be banned?  An untenable non sequitur of the most immoral order.  A trailer for an upcoming film portrays gangsters shooting through a cinema screen?  A disgusting attempt to point a finger of blame at anyone other than the one man solely responsible for taking those lives.  Even the gunman’s invocation of The Joker is reported with the gleeful intonations of one purporting to recognize a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The message reported by the media is not that a sick individual committed an evil act.  The message seems to be, “You brought this on yourself.”

I have seen only one level-headed commentary on the issue, one which I believe points us in the right direction.  While many are blaming any number of political affiliations or issues or even the source material for this tragedy, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool reminds us that the case is a very simple one – an evil man committed an evil deed, and while we will mourn the loss he forced upon us we must not enshrine the killer as anything other than a madman, one of many this world has seen.  Mercifully, Mr. Johnston does so by invoking the core of the Batman character, which every major media outlet seems to have neglected in what can only be an act of willful omission.  Mr. Johnston’s coverage begins with a powerful image from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which finds Batman breaking a shotgun and rendering it powerless, declaring, “This is the weapon of the enemy.  We do not need it.  We will not use it.”

I am now embarrassed that I was trained as a journalist, because the behavior exhibited by those in the media repulses me on a very basic level.  One of the main reasons I took up writing – journalism specifically, but every connected word of prose I have composed, even this very post you’re reading today – was because one of my great childhood heroes was a writer.  While my parents were undoubtedly first influences in my life and always encouraged me no matter what, I had a personal hero who used his writing to make the world a better place.  He is, by all accounts, a gifted journalist and a brave man who seeks to change the world from behind a typewriter.  The goals of his life align with the goals of his writing – to prove to the world that there is a better ideal to be attained, to help those who cannot help themselves, to reveal the truth and offer a hand to those who do not believe that such an embrace of compassion exists.

His name is Clark Kent, and he was my first hero.

Comic book writer Grant Morrison, who’s currently concluding his long-running Batman storyline with the serial publication of Batman, Incorporated, has advanced the notion that superheroes function as idealized versions of ourselves – in essence, the “best versions” of humanity, with Superman as the Ideal of that ideal.  It’s an interpretation that I resisted initially – it’s all just fun and games, right?  Comic books don’t mean anything other than basic good-vs-evil stuff, right?  Then I began to realize how much of my life had been, directly or otherwise, influenced by the comic books I had read. 

Superman was a journalist; so was I.  Batman had rejected drugs; so had I.  Spider-Man turned the other cheek when he was bullied in school; so did I.  The Fantastic Four wanted to solve their own problems while saving the world in the process; I have never counted as a true friend anyone who would not, if necessary, don the blue spandex and the mission statement of Stan Lee’s first super-team.  Even indirectly, I realized how much Morrison’s idea rang true in my experience; it’s long been a cliché that comic book fandom is incompatible with a successful romantic relationship, but when I became interested in girls and began asking them out, I realize now that I have always been attracted to the “Lois Lane” type.  (Had Batman ever had a “love of his life,” I suspect my girlfriends would have looked a great deal like her.)

The superhero exists as an avatar of optimism, an icon of hope.  When I have been asked why I read comic books, I have often struggled to articulate an answer to that question.  Now, with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, I can point to a concrete and substantive example.  I read comic books because I believe in the message that Christopher Nolan wants us to learn – there is always hope.  That’s what is meant when his characters say “I believe in Harvey Dent.”  As the website friendsofharveydent.org writes, “Harvey reminded us that WE are the answer. Gotham is what we make it. And we refuse to let it be defined by darkness, ugliness or despair. Gotham is a city of Hope and of Heroes, and we owe it to him to keep it that way.”  While we are not in as dire a situation as the citizens of Gotham, we can learn much from their position.  No matter how dark the night, a dawn is coming; we must continue to hope for it and to work toward it until that ideal of humankind is achieved.  Such will be our reward – the fulfillment of our goals and the salvation of a better world.

I cried at the end of The Dark Knight Rises because this statement needed to be made, and I was gratified to see it made in such an effective and affecting way.  And not only was this statement finally made in a world which seems to blame ourselves for the evils which plague us, but it was made in a coherent film which effectively utilized one of the strongest metaphors currently in existence – the superhero – to communicate the most important message of all, the one thing left in Pandora’s Box – hope.

Despite the despicable innuendoes of the mainstream media, the tragedy in Colorado is not one for which any creator or Batfan is responsible.  One man alone bears full culpability for this deplorable act.  But while the mainstream media is attempting to blame the filmmakers for any number of things – demonizing Mitt Romney, vilifying the OWS movement, or (the most egregious misstatement) even encouraging this violence – what is being lost is the message of The Dark Knight Rises itself.  We fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.  We forget our enemies and reject those who would do us wrong; it is not by accident that the characters in the film never mention The Joker or his reign of terror, because the city has healed and moved past him.  We need to continue to hope, and if we need a symbol behind which to rally, we can find no better hero than Batman, the Optimum Man, who repeatedly rejects the creed of the Colorado gunman by declaring to his allies in The Dark Knight Rises, “No guns.”

I will leave you not with the gunman, who is thankfully in police custody; the real-world superheroes have him now.  I want to end as Christopher Nolan did, with a reminder of the value of hope.  In the book Supergods:  What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human, Grant Morrison writes the following about the power of the superhero:

“We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.”