So, this weekend, as part of my birthday package, my wife took me to see the Dark Knight. A series of events (most of them not unfortunate) have conspired to keep us away from the film but today we decided to take the plunge. I was interested to see the film because a few Christians (and film critics) I've read have expressed their misgivings about the film and I wanted to see for myself.
Now, before I go any further with this blog, I want to warn anyone who hasn't seen the movie that I'l be discussing some of the specifics of the plot. If you don't want to know about those things you can think to yourself, "Well, at least he didn't write about that boring cycling stuff again..." and click off to some other, more entertaining and enlightening place and come back in a few days when this blog has been bumped down by something else I've written that is probably a lot more cycling related and a lot less interesting.
So, OK, back to the Dark Knight. Some of the critiques I've read (not just Christian by the way) have been troubled by the moral ambiguity of the film. To be honest, I'm a bit stunned by this. Come on, this is Batman. Batman has been from the beginning, in part, a study in the ambiguity of vigilanteism. If you don't think we as a society aren't just a bit uneasy about people taking the law into their own hands you need only look at the case of Bernie Goetz, called by some, "The Subway Vigilante". For those too young to remember Mr. Geotz, he was a middle aged man riding the subway during a more crime filled time in New York City's history (under the leadership of Mayor David Dinkins if I remember correctly). Mr. Goetz was surrounded by four young men on the subway and told to produce $5. He responded by shooting all for of the young men with an illegal handgun he had purchased after being mugged three years prior to the incident. At first, Goetz was acquitted by a grand jury as acting in self-defense during a time when the crime rate was over 70% higher than the national average and many New Yorkers felt like the city was out of control. A short while later, when new witnesses came forward about the events in the subway car, a second grand jury, indicted Mr. Goetz on charges of attempted murder and assault. The charges were then dropped due to subsequent criminal activity by two of the young men when threatened Mr. Goetz. The charges were reinstated by the New York Court of Appeals. The criminal trial only convicted Goetz in illegal handgun possession. However, in a civil suit, argued in a time when crimes rates in New York were dropping due to the newly instituted "broken window theory" measures (under the leadership of Rudy Guillini and his police chief), a jury found that Goetz had acted recklessly and dangerously and held him liable for damages in the sum of $43 million. The short of all of this is to point out that the movie is about a vigilante and his actions and what those actions mean to a group of people who feel as if they have little or no hope. As such, for the story to be told faithfully, there's got to be more than a little moral ambiguity and we, as an audience, as to leave the film with significant unease.
In addition, this narrative isn't going to have a nice, neat, tidy, happy ending. Batman is a postmodern fable. He's not Superman which is exactly what Bob Kane wanted when he dreamt up Bruce Wayne as a tortured soul who hunted other human beings to bring them to his form of justice. It's not going to be "Truth, Justice and the American Way". Batman is Kane's Noir Superman. While he has his principles (or maybe just one principle) he's also human and flawed and twisted by what he is and what he becomes. He's a fallen hero in a fallen city just like all those in Gotham City who want to stop crime but he desperately, and I emphasize desperately, has hope in something better.
So this brings us to this movie and to it's end (and if you're still reading and haven't seen the movie this is your last chance to not have it spoiled. After this, I take no responsibility for ruining anything for you). Bruce Wayne wants to be a normal guy. He wants to stop being the one who lives behind the mask so Gotham can have hope and courage. In the movie, he sees the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, as the one guy who can offer that hope out in the open. But when Dent is scarred and split and becomes Two-Face, Batman realizes that Harvey can no longer be that for the people of Gotham. Not if they know what Dent has done and what Dent has become and what corruption still infests the Gotham City police department. So he tells the new Police Commissioner to tell the people a lie. His justification is something along the lines of "Sometimes the truth isn't enough. Sometimes people need more than the truth." This sentiment has gotten some people up in arms, which I can understand. Especially if you're a Christian fully schooled in hyper-rationalistic ways of thinking.
You see, in that way of thinking, there is only One Truth. And that's correct in a sense. The problem is that we can never approach that Truth so a lot of us invent our own version of it. We invent versions of it where it votes for our political candidates and espouses our causes and, most often of all, hates the same people we hate. But the Truth isn't that. And the truth is that we do need more than the truth, our version of the truth, sometimes. Let me give you an example that is germane here.
Let's take justice. Human justice is about right and wrong, guilty or innocent, determining who is good and who is bad. Our justice is about assigning blame and guilt and determining punishment. Sometimes, when we rise above our baser natures, we accept blame and guilt and not only accept punishment but seek reconciliation. But Truth's idea of justice is very different than that I think. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing all creation back to it in love. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing and giving hope to the afflicted and fallen and broken of this world. Truth's idea of justice is redeeming all of the two-faced hypocrites out there by bringing them to Him. Even if it means having to die to conquer death. even if it means being branded a criminal and an outcast so that all those who wander and are lost find Him. Too often I hear good intentioned but poorly informed people talk about a justice of truth that is really just a more powerful version of our human kind of justice; a justice of truth that punishes more perfectly, that assignes blame more accurately and that knows true goodness from sincere self-interest when evaluating motive. When I hear that presented as truth, I think that "truth isn't enough, I need more than truth." The truth is that I'm fallen and guilty and broken. The truth is that I'm every bit as fallen as Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin and so many others. The truth is that like Paul, I am "first among sinners." And if I look at justice from the eyes of men, I have no hope. In the movie, Batman tells Gordon to lie so that the people of Gotham can have hope that it is possible for a person to rise above the chaos and crime without having to resort to vigilanteism. His example for this hope is in the fact that people on two ferries don't blow each other up but choose to accept that they might die over killing a group of unknown others. It is similar with us. To have hope we must look beyond what we see everyday and beyond what our own minds can conceive. In truth, I have no hope. But in Truth, who seeks me and all those like me above all things, I have hope. And while the postmodern fable of Batman breaks down here in hiding the Truth in lies, it reveals that the Truth might lie beyond what we can "know" or "rationalize".
Grace and Peace.
