Klavan''s Bachelor in B.S. (Batman Science)

Upon my first review of Andrew Klavan’s viewpoint of “The Dark Knight” I… fell out of my chair laughing. The bat symbol as a discreet symbol for everyone’s favorite former President? You have got to be kidding me.

Andrew Klavan’s viewpoint is a broad, and stretched interpretation of “The Dark Knight.” In fact, any most every movie ever made, in most every genre, but especially in action and drama, contains the basic principle good vs. evil. According to Klavan’s viewpoint, most movies have war on terror undertones, including movies that existed before the war on terror.

Now I have to admit that I don’t often watch movies looking for a deeper political message, but I can usually at least perceive, even if I don’t agree, with a person’s alleged interpretation. But I refuse to accept that my favorite movie of 2008 is, as Andrew Klavan says, “a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown” by the President I most despise “in this time of terror and war.” For example, Klavan states that Batman, like former President Bush, “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. “ Bush not only pushed those boundaries of our enemies but also extended those boundaries to the point of vengeance, and disgraced our countries reputation. Batman doesn’t believe in vengeance and punishment. Batman believes in justice and change for the better, like is passion for trying to improve Gotham City. Even further, Bush didn’t re-establish those boundaries he pushed; he left his mess for the next administration to clean up. In fact, the next administration did more for those “pushed” boundaries in days than Bush every attempted to do.

Another statement that I found particularly unnerving is his statement that “doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous,” implying that this principle regards to both Batman and President Bush. Well, I am not going to deny that there is a possibility that there are some things that the former President did do right and with good intentions. But telling the truth, I have my doubts. In fact, with the onset of the war, the American people were told to live our lives as normal and to continue spending money, as if to not cause any panic or concern over the said war. The truth is that if the Bush administration had been honest about the terrible happenings in the Middle East, that they would have been able to rally more support for their cause, instead of Bush’s administration having to “slink in the shadows” because we’ve turned Bush into the bad guy. He asked for it by treating to American people with kid gloves, and allowing the media to skew the view on the war on terror.

Andrew Klavan should keep to writing his books and movies, and quit trying to interpret other works of entertainment. It’s possible, and likely, that Batman is just Batman.

Beth Goin

A Flawed Fictional Comparison?

In the Wall Street Journal piece comparing Batman to Bush I can see where the author might conceptualize the two being connected and showing how wonderful the movie did in the theaters with what he saw as “right wing” values compared with the movies he sees as “left wing” but when looking closer at such a comparison many flaws become apparent. The need to compare a comic book character with a real life person can be troublesome, Batman invented in the 1930’s and his continuum ever since show a man fighting crime in a mask to protect his loved ones but also the system was too corrupt from the inside so he had to step out and do things his way. Bush is the system he is the president all authority begins and ends with him, for the most part. I fail to see the comparison looking at the two men from that perspective, if we widen it though to say the United Nations the world agreed with the invasion in Afghanistan many nations pledged troops and supplies. When it comes to Iraq, those comparisons do arrive for the most part because France was a major player in saying No to the invasion. The proof was given later that France and Iraq had strong diplomatic ties as well as economic with almost everything in Saddam’s palace originating from France. This is the only connection I can make for the call to step out of the system. The call to step out of the system can easily grow to a problem because there is nothing to keep you in check, because power corrupts. With Batman his super-power is control, he has one absolute rule and Joker did not fail to see it or call it in question, Batman lives his life by rules so he does not become corrupted by his other persona. We see today that many liberties were trampled on during the Bush years and that power might have tainted some of his administration. Batman and Bush while fighting for what they believe have had both highs and lows shown in the movie, popularity is fickle and the John Q public will question things the longer they go on. While it is important to finish what you start conversely Batman is not up for re-election this is his career, Bush can only be in office for eight years. While I do agree with Mr. Klavan’s opinion with what he calls “left-wing” movies looking at the list they were all wildly unpopular to the public none of them scoring a lot of money, it illustrates a disconnect. Batman in my opinion is not a right-wing movie; the director said in an interview it was not political. Comic books do allow writers to tell a story I agree but few writers take such an abrupt political tone. Making tough choices is not a labor simply shared with the right it is a labor both parties deal with. I agree also that freedom is not free and defending those rights takes sacrifice Batman showed it and Bush did as well from time to time. The trapping that people can fall into when discussing comic book characters and real life people is that they live in different worlds, the real world is more complex yes but the values are still shared between them. I can see where he Mr. Klavan can draw similarities but for the most part his piece stretches a lot of reality.

Robert Foster

If Bush Would Have Worn Spandex The World Would Be a Safer Place

Upon reading Andrew Klavan’s “What Bush and Batman Have in Common” (WSJ 7/25/08), the reader may question whether the writer is being serious or not. My initial impression of the article was of astonishing wonder. I figured that this article was bitterly cynical yet was offering a humorous commentary of our nation’s collective exhaustion of President Bush’s ethos. George Bush as Batman; hey that’s kinda funny. But boy was I wrong! Granted, by the end of my initial reading, I did think, “Maybe this guy is laying it on pretty thick, but then again I don’t write for the Wall Street Journal, so who am I to question his stylistic choices?” But sadly, Mr. Klavan is not trying to be cute, something I learned after a quick Google where I discovered that Mr. Klavan is in fact, “for real”.

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. The combination of the ridiculous clichés, “[H]ounded to the gates of Hell”, the old-hat complaints of limp-wristed Hollywood Liberals, and the downright silly comparison of President Bush’s plight to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, may lead one to think that this article is not from The Wall Street Journal, but rather, some stoner’s comment in a discussion forum on Politico. When does Godwin’s Law kick in to effect? If the article ran longer, I would expect a comparison of ________ (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, etc, etc, etc…) to Adolf Hitler. I guess Klavan makes up for it by successfully using the phrase “Islamo-fascism”.

It is Klavan’s tone that makes it impossible to take the article seriously…he sounds like my grandfather when he complains about, “how those fucking liberals are destroying America!” But somebody must be taking him seriously, just as I’m sure that my grandfather’s bridge club takes him seriously. Personally, I was ready to take Klavan seriously, I was ready to see the connection that he was trying to make, but all I got out of it is: Batman does tough guy things, and so does W, America doesn’t like tough guys because hand-wringing liberals control the media, and as a result those damn liberals have made America hate George Bush.

George Bush made tough decisions because he had the foresight to understand that he was doing the right thing; after all, God told him what to do, and you wouldn’t question God’s will, would you? But maybe it wasn’t God that talked to Bush; perhaps He was really only W’s sidekick Cheney? But who was the Dark Knight’s sidekick, I didn’t see Robin anywhere (Too gay?), I guess it was Morgan Freeman, I mean he did help Batman spy on the whole city. So if Batman is W, Morgan Freeman is Cheney, the Joker is Osama bin Laden, Harvey Dent is Donald Rumsfield (hmm, not quite right, maybe Andy Carr?), then who are the wimpy liberals? Maybe they’re the Joker’s army of the mentally challenged? It’s only appropriate because liberals are the only ones who care about them anyways, but it doesn’t quite add up because Batman doesn’t execute them.

Klavan’s not-so-subtle comparison of the Joker to Osama bin Laden is not quite accurate either. In the film, the Joker promotes anarchy as a way to show that mankind is inherently selfish; the Joker signifies a lack of morality, rather than a particular type of morality that lies in contrast to Batman’s. But, to be a namby-pamby relativist, Osama bin Laden does not seem to be that simple. Yes, he has stated that his goal is the destruction of “Western ideals”, but his morals lie with Islamic extremism, not anarchy. Bin Laden has morals, even though they are wrong ones. George Bush has morals that are largely right, yet they were wrongly executed. Klavan only sees things in black and white; you are either right or wrong -- Klavan would never admit that bin Laden had any sort of motivation. His terribly misguided beliefs are best exposed in his passage where he says:

“Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don’t always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.” (Klavan 2)

This is a hopelessly naïve view. If you asked any man or woman on the street what they thought about the above sentence, they would most likely admit that they prefer freedom, love, kindness, and tolerance over the opposites, yet our history as Americans, as well as our history as humans, says the opposite. We as humans have a history of doing wrong things with the belief that we are doing the right thing. Perhaps I am a hopeless cynic and I harp on our past mistakes, but I cannot believe that we “mysteriously” believe these things. We as a people largely believe things that we are told to believe, and we have a history of excommunicating, executing, or imprisoning those who believe differently. Klavan’s article seems to promote this osterization of “the others”.

What does Klavan’s perfect world look like? In his world, people are free, people are loving, people are kind, and I guess people are tolerant. But I can help but think that tolerance would be a lost trait, as there would be no opposing views to tolerate. His world sounds eerily similar to a hippie love-fest where everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, but I get the feeling that he wouldn’t see it that way. In his world, Batman is Christ-like, in that he had to sacrifice himself so that we could reach a better place. But I can’t buy into W. as Batman if that means that the invasion of Iraq, the implementation of the Patriot act, the bumbled response to victims of Hurricane Katrina, the attempt to make global warming a non-issue, and the rabble-rousing of politicizing gun ownership, abortion, and rights for homosexuals is a way for us to reach the promised land.

I do not see President Bush as a bad guy, nor as the idiot man-child that Oliver Stone portrays him as. I see him as a human being, as someone who is inherently good, as I believe that individuals on their own are “good.” But Bush was someone whose attempt at making the world a better place failed. President Bush failed as a leader because he inspired hatred, intolerance, fear, and mistrust in people. I will insist that this was unintentional, I am not a person who thinks that the Republican Party is out to destroy America (nor do I think that they are a destroyed party, but that is for another time), but I believe that it is the twisting of history’s motives that can destroy any sort of collective good that was produced. Because of this, I can only see Klavan’s article as the sort of fantastical storytelling that comes with say, a superhero movie.

Jack Gustafson