Grim's Hall

President Batman?

As Grim likes to use movies to instruct and inform on morality, this item caught my eye.

Andrew Klavan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has a curious interpretation of the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight".

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

I have not seen the movie, so I can't really comment on Klavan's idea, but any who have, feel free to discuss.

One thing I do note about Batman, as opposed to the other superheroes movies are being made about recently--Superman, Spiderman, the Hulk, the X-men, even Hellboy--is that Batman is still, underneath the costume, just a guy. He has no actual super powers, just some neat toys that help him get things done. I wonder if that makes stories about him more accessible than the others on some level.