Jag hånar dig med mina apbyxor.
Proof Neo- Conse rvati ves Live in a Fantasy World.
What Bush and Batman Have in Common by Andrew Klavan (The Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2008)
Could it be any easier than an essay comparing a U.S. President's actions to those of a fictional vigilante, and praising the likeness?
It seems to me that what is fundamentally at issue here is the neocon grasp of reality. For Andrew Klavan, I'm going to make a short list of things that aren't real:
- Batman
- Narnia
- The Spartan warriors of 300
- Hobbits, Gandalf, elves, and Middle Earth
Now I'm going to make a short list of things that are real:
- George W. Bush
- Civil rights and liberties
- Vigilantism
- The rule of law
Now the basis that Andrew Klavan's essay rests on, its fundamental assumption, is that Batman is a hero.
This is not the case.
Batman is an antihero. He is not noble and he doesn't have lofty goals or principles. He's obsessed with revenge and he is subject to clouded judgement and an all too human willingness to sacrifice ideals to achieving it. Batman is the Caped Crusader, on a vigilante mission. He is the Dark Knight. His goals are not lofty or noble, though his aim may be good--as he sees it.
And that's part of the problem when we try to distill reality into fantasy, as Andrew Klavan does.
In a fantasy story we have the hero and the villain, the protagonist and the antagonist, and characters are either with you or against you. They help or they hinder. There is no acknowledgement of the possibility that another view, another goal, another ideal could also be right. There is no understanding that it's possible that two sides, two ideas, two dogmas can both be wrong. In the words of my sainted mother, "two wrongs don't make a right."
In a fantasy story, the heroic epic, we get the world crystallized into two opposing views, one is right and light and good, the other is dark and wrong and evil. It works in a fantasy story. Not so much in reality, because the reality is that the whole world is not a supporting cast for GW Bush vs. The Islamo-Fascists. It's not a fucking comic book.
So now to answer Andrew Klavan's questions:
Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?
Yeah, you can read that again. I'll wait until you finish laughing.
But Andrew Klavan is serious. So I'll give it a serious answer.
The "left-wing" movies that are direct and realistic are direct and realistic because they explore the idea, albeit in a shallow Hollywood way, that there may be more variations than just Good and Evil, that people and situations have more depth than just Noble or Monstrous. The reason that the neocon interpretation of those values appear only in make-believe fantasy films is that they are a make-believe fantasy construct. They hinge entirely on the idea that there can be no middle ground, ever, and that everyone, everything, must fit neatly into two categories.
Which may work fine for Batman, but it's not realistic .
(Thanks for the article link, shentzu.)
Comments are open. Have at.
Tagged: Neocon Nutjobs, Politainment, Surreality, U.S.
Skrivet av alphanum3r1c, 2008-07-29 12:09
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