Some Kind of Mazzaro World

(contains spoilers)

Somewhere around the midpoint of the newly-released second installment in Director Christopher Nolan’s brilliant reimaging of the Batman film series, Gotham City DA Harvey Dent urges Gotham citizens to look at the chaos and despair around them with the mindset that it’s darkest before dawn. If this is true, even as dark as this film is, there’s probably more darkness in store for the caped crusader in chapters to come.

The film, punnishly entitled “The Dark Knight”, is dark and morose in a way befitting its title. Batman, the character, has mostly been dark and morose–his response to the depravity in the world around him is to go to his dark place and deal with it, usually with violence. Or maybe it’s his happy place, like a bat, he’s obviously most comfortable in deep, dark, quiet places.

But Batman, the movies, have always toed that line between darkness and light, they have always stayed in the mouth of the cave and never truly gone in deep without a light.

Until now.

Batman films in the pre-Nolan days were cartoonish, their characters archtypes displaying the stark difference between black and white rather than the similarities in shades of grey. Nolan eats his lunch on the greyscale. He plies his trade in a world where the moral centers are as shifty as a politician.  In his non-Batman films (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige), Nolan has made a living playing with the characters’ (and the audience’s) sense of reality. In his Batman films, especially this one, reality plays with the characters’ senses.

And so it should come as little surprise that he and his brother, who co-wrote the script, found such a worthy canvas as The Joker (and an equally worthy actor in Heath Ledger) upon which to paint their bleak and twisted tale.  Ours is not to reason why The Joker menaces as he does throughout the film. The point is that he does. It doesn’t really matter how he gained his scarred visage, it only matters that he did. He’s willing to do pretty much anything to pursue his sense of what he wants out of the world. If that means vamping around in a fright wig and a nurse’s outfit so he can destroy an empty hospital, so be it. If it means lying down with the dogs in order to gain a dual sense of equality and superiority, so be it.

What’s so brilliant about this film is the greys, because the preceding can also be said (with one line uncrossed until the finale) about Nolan’s Batman. Batman and The Joker aren’t different sides of different coins, they are different sides of the same coin. But maybe sometimes they are the same side. And maybe sometimes they are different sides, with chance being the only thing that differentiates one from the other.  And the same can not only be said for Batman and pious District Attorney Harvey Dent, but also for Dent and (Commissioner) James Gordon, whose own willingness (aka weakness) to look past the moral weaknesses of others leads to so much havoc in the film. Put simply, no one is ever just heads and no one is ever just tails. Everyone spends a little time face down.

But this isn’t just normal character arc stuggle here. This is the stuff of the Ancient Greeks. This is tragey writ beautifully and large with explosions to rival any in film history.  It’s greek theater without the comedy masks, except for the grotesque physical one The Joker sports to mask some sort of inner pain (or does he wear it to prevent any real happiness from emerging?)  What’s bold and refreshing about the choices Nolan and his actors make is exactly what makes the film unsettling. There is no happy ending, just as there’s no happy beginning, and no happy middle. In a film that begins with a bank robbery and ends with what amounts to the public crucifixion of the title character, there aren’t too many bright spots along the way. There are few daytime exteriors (a funeral parade notable among them), and even fewer moments of a sense of clam or contentedness. The whole film, and all of Gotham, is dread and foreboding.

This, of course, has to frustrate Batman. In Batman Begins, he essentially saved Gotham from complete and total annihilation.  Unfortunately doing so has its consequences–saving Gotham from instant death subjects it to death of the slow and painful variety.  It’s clear from the jump that saving Gotham had absolutely zero impact on curing it.  What has happened instead is actually a turn for the worse. One time top-billing worthy baddie The Scarecrow is reduced to the role of glorified drug dealer, and dispatched in an ignominious way not 25 minutes into the film, never to be heard from again. That’s not to say fighting crime is easier for Batman. His old suit will no longer suffice. His old standby the Batmobile is reduced to a catastrophic mess, which he discards in a crumpled heap on a nameless city street. He needs newer gadgets to keep up with the Jokers of the world.

But that’s not all he needs. In order to keep up with The Joker, he has to dance to the circus music playing in The Joker’s mind. In Tim Burton’s world, the Joker tosses a line “Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?” and you sense his evil. But when Batman tosses it back to him later, it’s to appear macho and ironic. In Christopher Nolan’s world, there is little room for irony because there is little understanding of what has happened and even less expectation of what was supposed to happen.  It isn’t until far too late that Jim Gordon realizes that The Joker was 15 moves ahead of him, and that what appeared to be good policework was all part of a grand scheme. Reality bites, or in this case creepily shifts its tongue across its teeth. And, though it’s not revealed, you have to suspect The Joker wired the detonators on the cruise ships so that a choice to destroy the other ship actually would result in destroying your own. He played a similar morality shell game with Dawes and Dent. It isn’t about there being a right choice, it’s about not making the wrong one.

It is in this world without obvious irony that The Joker crafts his masterpiece of mayhem.  And so instead of it being ironic that those who attempt to do good end up causing harm, it ends up sour serendipity, as though the outcome is both unintended and exactly what we and the characters should’ve expected to happen. Alfred, the butler, observes this to Bruce Wayne after the death of Rachel Dawes, essentially saying if you play with fire, you get burned. And, as is often observed in the film, you make your own luck. The problem is, not all luck is good. Put another way, chance favors the prepared mind, but if the mind is warped, it’s not necessarily a good chance. One can’t help but see undertones of the current political climate, especially in Iraq, in this observation. Good intentions don’t always equate to good results.

What Nolan does with our “hero” Batman, and the city the Wayne Family has championed for decades, is show how difficult it is at certain times and in certain places, even with good intentions, to do more good than harm. Batman is being impersonated by other vigilanties, lacking both his physical acumen and mental harshness.  Many to most of these Batmen end up arrested or in one case murdered simply to be used in effigy. It’s as if the film is saying that once you stray from the truly straight and narrow path, you’re but one step away from the truly dark part of the forest.

This is true not only for Batman, but also for Harvey Dent, stopped from a brutal torture session he’s administering by none other than a knowing Batman. Batman’s message to Dent displays a knowledge of self and knowledge of weakness. Dent has to be the White Knight for Gotham, because Batman never will be. And without even that hint of light, there is no hope for ending the dark night and retiring The Dark Knight.

Dent, that hint of light, is snuffed out, first with fire to the face, then with a mind fuck on par with any Cold War era “reprogramming”, ultimately ending with his death. And when Dent dies a villain’s death, the only scintilla of hope remaining in Gotham lies in making Batman Public Enemy Number One. When your best hope dies and your best chance after that is casting aspersions on your other best hope, well, that’s when you know your dark night is not yet just before dawn.

And so the Dark Knight, and the dark night, live on. The question posed by Rachel Dawes in the film, one that could forever remain open ended, is whether there will ever be a point without Batman, either because the world, or Batman himself, is no longer in need. Nolan creates a world so bleak, in which good actions snowball so quickly into awful results, that it’s tough to say whether there will always be Batman because there is evil, or whether the evil will always be more desparate and depraved because there is Batman. There may be a sraight answer in Nolan’s disjointed world. But it won’t come any time soon. And while that’s bad news for Batman, that’s great news for viewers. One man’s pain is another’s pleasure. The coin has two sides.

I first remember politics with my parents. Children of the 40’s and activists of the 60’s, the 80’s for them were like a menagerie of shattered dreams. The messages of unity, change, volunteerism, and true inspiration from the 60’s had given way to the lies and cynicism of the 70’s and the new Conservative frontier of the 80’s.

Before I was even old enough to know what I wanted out of my politicians and for my country, I knew disappointment. My parents‘ frustration was mine—as an eight year old, a nine year old, a ten year old. Oh they did their best to hide it, but I remember them yelling at the nearly-animatronic President Reagan on television. I remember being in DC with my father on a family vacation during the presidency of Bush the Elder and watching him seethe at (and boo) an awful Congressman spewing hate toward Ted Kennedy in a speech on Capitol Hill. My father was not the sports fan I am, this was as passionate as I’d ever seen him about anything.

It was with pride I volunteered with them for Bill Clinton in 1992, and cast my first-ever vote for him in 1996. But I remember my parents wanting more. I didn’t get it at the time, but while Bill Clinton offered the charisma of some of the dynamic leaders of the 60’s, he didn’t offer the leadership of those people. He was never able to win a simple majority of voters in either of his campaigns. He was not able to build a coalition—to get America past the things that divide us and bring us together to face our greatest issues.

Because of this failure to unite, he failed the American people on many levels. He failed to take even small steps toward universal health care. He tapped out to conservatives and signed the Defense of Marriage Act; he signed NAFTA into law without Human Rights or worker protection provisions, and allowed sweeping welfare reform to pass that left millions without emergency safety nets at the state and local levels. While he was in many ways a good president and to be admired, he did not build the bridge to the 21st century he’d hoped to, because he was unable to rally the support to do so. He played the game with the same pieces, and gained many wins, but ultimately he was playing the SAME game.

Throughout the incredibly divisive presidency of Bush the Younger, we’ve suffered further as a country. We’ve become more polarized, more likely to look upon each other with scorn and disdain. More likely to look at things we can’t do, instead of focusing on the things we can. What was a conflict of color—white and black—became a conflict of Red and Blue in the first decade of a supposedly marvelous 21st century. We went to war on the strength, or rather because of the weaknesses, of those conflicts. We’ve been so busy pointing fingers at each other that we haven’t taken the time to point them at our leaders and hold them accountable.

And then….along comes Barack.

Like just about everyone else, before the 2004 Democratic National Convention I had not even a scintilla of an idea who Barack Obama was. But on that night he delivered the Keynote address, he became something special to me. Growing up in a “Red” state with decent people who happened to think like me on many issues and differently on a maybe a scant but important few, it had become very hard to just consistently revile Republicans and blame them of all of life’s problems. As a person who one day hopes to affect change in my home state, it became abundantly clear to me that the only way I’d ever be able to do that is to find common ground with people and work from that to create change.

Barack’s rhetoric that night—there is not a Black America, a White America, a Latino American, an Asian America…there is the United States of America—hit me like an 18-wheeler. Not only did it touch on what I was feeling about my future and the future of my state and Country, but for the first time as an adult—in the face of both Democratic and Republican leaders who continuously demonized each other to the long-term benefit of no one but themselves—I felt hope.

Hope for the future of the nation, and of the world. Hope for the future of my family and friends, and hope that there was something more to politics than just the opportunity to help people on a grand scale. I finally had hope that my dreams were more than just dreams. His words, if anything, gave wings to my dreams. Those wings stabilized what had been my up and down gliding, and allowed me to soar to new heights.

When he won nearly 80 percent of the vote in the 2004 Illinois Senate race in a year that saw Democrats take it on the chin pretty hard across the country, he got more attention. The country was not ready to unseat Bush in 2004, but the people who heard Barack’s message believed in and were ready for something different. He has not stopped convincing people since then.

In so many campaigns on which I’d worked in the past, the Democratic candidate placed all their hope on getting people to vote who had not previously shown a commitment to voting, or who had never voted in a campaign before. It was from the ashes of the disenfranchised that many a campaign had hoped to rise. None had, including the Kerry campaign in 2004 even with the hundreds of thousands of new voters registered.

Even though my support for Barack’s message and ability to lead carried me through all of last year, it wasn’t until he won Iowa based primarily on supporters who had never caucused, who had never supported a campaign, that my hope began to become a reality. As any of you who have spent a long time trading in hope will know, when hopes actually come to being in reality, there really is nothing sweeter.

For the first time, we have a leader who promises change, and delivers. For the first time, we have a leader who promises unity, and delivers. For the first time we have a leader who looks at the Washington of BOTH parties and knows to truly get things done we have to change the way we operate. And on top of all this, he’s a Democrat! He opposed the war in Iraq from the start; he’s a strong advocate for women, and for the future of our nation. What he’s doing is bringing the middle of the political spectrum to the Progressive agenda instead of bringing the Progressive agenda to the middle.

Now I know there are those of you who have supported other candidates. Hillary has experience; there is no doubt about that. But her experience is the experience that brought us the same failed solutions that led to job loss with NAFTA, that led to the knowledge deficit in American Schools, and that lets the drug and oil companies write health care and energy policy. Her experience is experience in a system that is fundamentally broken for so many in our country. She has openly stated she thinks the lobbyists who work for corporations and special interests in Washington, the same lobbyists who often get in the way of anything substantive getting done, represent the views of real people. To me, that’s trickle down politics. You can either listen to the corporations and their surrogates tell you what is good for the people, or you can just listen to and represent THE people in general. One way directly helps, the other leaves far too much to chance. It’s trickle down government at its worst.

To those of you who support Senator Obama now, thank you; we have miles to go before we sleep. But there are many of you to whom I am sending this who I know do not, or have not, supported this campaign. Some of you support other Democrats, some support Republicans, some support no one.

To you all especially I say, now is the time.

Now is the time to make the calls, to hang the signs, to canvass the neighborhoods and to do as I do in sharing your support.

Now is the time to give your energy, your heart, your soul, and yes, a little of your money as an investment in our nation and planet’s future.

Now is the time to get past the concerns about this candidacy. Obama won 93 percent white Iowa and steamrolled through South Carolina with the support of black voters as well. He’s drawing winning support from all age groups, and has more votes, more delegates, and a broader coalition than any candidate. He’s winning Democrats, he’s winning Independents, and yes, check the exit polls, he’s winning Republicans. And he’s done it all without taking the corporate or special interest dollar, without lying or distorting the record of his opponents. He’s done it by bringing people together across all the lines other candidates and campaigns for the last few decades have used to divide us. He transcends those labels and those divisive lines, as should we.  And look at his Super Tuesday results! America supports him. America is ready.

I know some of you have concerns about his experience. But it is exactly his lack of too much of the taint of Washington that makes him such a transformational leader. He certainly has incredible support and surrogates, from many of the Clintons’ own White House advisors to Senate anchors like John Kerry and now Ted Kennedy. At some point, it has to stop being about specific experience and start being about THE RIGHT experience, and the right person to lead. Barack has the right experience, and Barack is the right person to lead.

My friends, now is the time. It starts tomorrow after Super Tuesday. It will not end until we have written a new chapter in American History. We can’t do it without you.

Barack and his amazing wife Michelle in many ways remind me of my own parents. My father, a social worker and educator who taught me from a young age to see the dignity in everyone and to celebrate our diversity in meaningful and powerful ways, not to let it create chasms between people. Even though he passed away before realizing the full extent of his dreams, the lessons I learned from him echo throughout the rhetoric and life of Barack Obama. My mother, an outspoken and passionate female attorney struggling even in the 80’s to fight for equality for everyone, especially women. One need only know my mother, who has persevered in the face of incredible obstacles and is my true hero, and hear and see Michelle Obama speak to understand why I find both so inspiring. Though Barack and Michelle share not an age, racial label, or even generation with my parents, their message finds fertile ground in the seeds planted over the years of my life by loving parents who always challenged their son, with care, to do better. I have no doubt Barack and Michelle will do the same for this nation.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and for considering supporting Senator Obama.