The Philosophy of Batman: Part 2

When we left off last time, Batman had just managed to vanquish Ra’s Al Gul and his ignorant Utilitarian morality without breaking any of his Kantian-style moral imperatives…

Unfortunately, just as it appears that Batman finally has a solid, workable moral system to work with, along comes this clown:

The Joker, after emerging from the canal of chemical-waste from Batman: The Killing Joke. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Joker is undeniably a much cooler, wicked, and more fascinating villain than Ra’s, and one of the coolest villains in the entire pantheon of superhero adversaries.  Our fascination with the Joker stems from the fact that he’s not, as he points out, all that different from Batman.  To most of the outside world, like Bruce’s ever-loyal butler Alfred, the Joker is just a maniac who “wants to watch the world burn,” but he actually has an extraordinarily well defined purpose and method behind the madness.  He says to Batman:

To them, you’re just a freak, like me. They need you right now. But when they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper. See, their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you, when the chips are down, these… these civilized people? They’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.

Photo by Hans Olde from the photographic series, The Ill Nietzsche, summer 1899 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s alluded to that Nolan’s Joker, much like Bruce, caught some tough breaks early on in life (although he never nails down a consistent story).  Whatever happened, it’s not implausible to think that he had to face up to the same sort of fear of death and meaninglessness that young Bruce faced.  Nietzsche called the apparent meaningless of our short existence in the face of death the “nihilistic void.”  He claimed that with the “death of God” (that is to say, the elimination of the need for God and divine commandments to explain the world and human behavior), there could no longer be any coherent, rational foundation for a universal morality.  In response to the fact of our existence in the face of this apparent “void,” he believed that we must actively carve out our own meaning and purpose, irrespective of societal or cultural rules or “obligations” that restrict the expansive force of life and human “will to power.”

What the Joker tries to argue to Batman is that they both represent responses to the this problem of existence, and that his (the Joker’s) is just as sensible as Batman’s.  Whereas Batman  re-creates himself as a moral guardian aligned to infallible moral rules, the Joker concludes that the entire notion of a rational morality is incoherent and re-creates himself as a destructive and irrational force of chaos dedicated to demonstrating the irrationality of any sort of morality.  What’s more, he does it because it’s fun; he finds  a delicious enjoyment in murder, explosions, and….”gasoline”!  What’s alarming is that his response to the world seems just as rational as Batman’s.  Actually, according to Nietzsche, it seems more rational; while Batman is a slave to the moral imperatives that he lives by and is therefore limited, bound, and miserable much of the time, the Joker is liberated by his disregard for any moral standards outside of his own (he’s clearly having much more fun than Batman).  All of his scheming and toying with the people of Gotham and Batman is aimed at making them realize the irrationality of their moral beliefs.  While he might not be able to make Batman kill anyone directly, he succeeds in making Batman choose between the lives of two people, in effect forcing him to let one of them die.  In this case, there seems to be no right answer.  Even when Batman makes the choice that is “best for Gotham” and lets Rachel die, it seems (to me at least) cold and morally unsatisfying.  Joker plays the same game with the people of Gotham in the boat situation.  His greatest triumph over the course of the film is converting Harvey Dent to his side, formerly a staunch moral idealist and absolutist who was unwilling to tolerate any compromise or dirty means in the fight against crime.  “The only sensible way to live is without rules,” he tells Batman, and all of the rules that Batman and Gotham abide by are a hilarious joke to him.

Ultimately, good triumphs and the people of Gotham show the Joker that they are “willing to believe in good,” and Commissioner Gordon gets to make a cool speech about Batman that I always forget the words to.  Batman stops the Joker, but not without a price.  At the beginning of the final movie, he’s somewhat of a broken bat.  In order to stop the Joker, he not only had to allow his one closest friend to die, but also had to bend some of his other moral beliefs to their outer limits.  Recall when he drops Sal Moroni off a roof and says he’s “counting on it” not to kill him?  Or how about how he enacts his own miniature Patriot act and puts aside the privacy of Gotham’s citizens in order to find the Joker?  Batman’s absolute, incorruptible commitment to moral standards (in contrast to a villain who is willing to use any necessary means to accomplish his ends) is what originally led us to consider him a hero, but in the second movie he seems more blurry around the edges.  Yet, we still think he’s the good guy.  It would be hard, for example to get too upset at his trivial invasion of the people of Gotham’s privacy, since without doing this he would have allowed the Joker to blow up a boatload of people (two, actually).

So what to make of this?  The answer (sort of) next time when I’ll talk Bane, and why he wears the mask…

Related articles

• Philosophy of Batman: Part 1 (nerdosophy.wordpress.com)
• The Social Philosophy of The Dark Knight Trilogy (johnweirick.com)
• Batman… Ends? [contains spoilers] (slayermusings.wordpress.com)
• Off My Mind: Why Batman Needs Joker (comicvine.com)

Wreck it Ralph Review

If you’re turned off by the fact that the first post on this blog is about an Disney animated movie, you should probably go find another blog to read immediately.  Animated movies kick ass, especially ones by Disney, and if you think you’re better than them you’re likely a serious n00b.

I’ll be honest: I was more excited for Ralph than any other of this year’s big screen offerings.  Sure, I was excited for Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises just like every other red-blooded American, and Avengers was a blast and a half, but seeing Zangief, Bowser, Eggman, Kano, and Clyde (the little orange ghost you’ve eaten countless times in Pacman) all sharing the screen in the Wreck it Ralph trailer ignited all my nerd receptors instantaneously.  The fact that Disney was handling this retro-mashup was just as exciting; regardless of whatever negative feelings you might have towards the massive and oftentimes rapacious Disney Company, there’s no denying that they have produced not only some of the best animated films since the advent of the medium, but some of the best films period.  Don’t believe me?  Go watch Lion King again.

Actually, the possibility of a Disney directed game adaptation is something I’ve been thinking about for some time.  Anyone who’s ever sat through some of the abysmal live-action adaptations of video game properties (the 1993 Super Mario Bros. dumpster fire is the obvious culprit, although this fan-film adaptation of Mega-Man looks about as corny) probably can’t help but question the sanity of trying to translate these characters and the worlds they inhabit into live-action experiences.  While some franchises, such as Resident Evil and Tomb Raider, are easy enough to translate into living flesh, the same can’t be said more whimsical titles in which fat Italian plumbers eat magical mushrooms and stomp on evil turtles.  One might think that animation might be a more logical medium for adapting these sorts of titles, but the animated attempts haven’t proved extremely satisfying either (with the exception of Sonic’s stellar Saturday morning cartoon gig back in the day).

Imagine, though, that these adaptations were handed over to the care of folks who really know how to nail a good animated film.  A film complete with fully fleshed out characters and a simple but elegant storyline that expands the characters beyond what we’ve seen in their games and manages to accomplish the wonderful ruse of tricking us into believing in the humanity of the characters.  Everyone seems wants to a Legend of Zelda flick directed by Michael Bay or Peter Jackson, but personally, I’d rather see one directed by Disney.  Save the gritty realism approach for when they decide to adapt Metroid and instead give me an animated Disney Zelda complete with musical numbers by Alan Menken  a wise-cracking Navi voiced by Sarah Silverman (I’ll get back to her later).

Although Wreck it Ralph is not a direct adaptation of any existing video-game property, it is, as the folks at IGN agree, the best gaming movie yet.  The references and shout-outs to classic games and characters abound, and the animators manage to capture the mannerisms, sounds, and jerky 8-bit movements of these characters perfectly, but the plot itself centers around characters that were more or less invented for the film (though Ralph and the game in which he stars is a not-so subtle tribute to Donkey Kong, the arcade classic that put Nintendo on the map).  This is all just as well; it allows the film to dip into the DNA of all sorts of different games and gaming tropes while following a plot-line that is completely original and unconstrained.  The result is a nostalgic and colorful tribute to gaming (and the classic games that helped shape the past-time into what it is today) centered around a simple and heartwarming story.

I won’t get into plot details in this review; it’s always been my opinion that film reviews should tell me why I should see the movie and not what happens in the movie.  I’m also not going to get into a philosophical over-analysis of Wreck it Ralph (like I’ll be doing in a lot of other posts), because for me the movie’s charm didn’t have anything to do with the way it dealt with any philosophical issues.  I read a few other reviews, including one that tried to argue the whole film was a commentary on class conflict and the failure of socialism, and it seemed to me that this totally guy, in the process of trying not to let the movie’s “philosophical underpinnings” fly over his head, let the entire experience fly over his head.    Suffice it to say that the plot is equal parts Toy Story and The Incredibles, and the major conflict is the struggle to define yourself against expectations that are pre-defined by the society to which you belong.  And also, Sarah Silverman nails it.  I’m usually not a fan of hers, but there’s no denying that she nailed this particular gig.  What I want to talk about is why Wreck it Ralph succeeds, or more specifically, why it succeeded in grabbing my nerdish imagination.

Simply put, the reason Wreck it Ralph succeeds is that it draws on the imagination itself.  Like its spiritual predecessor Toy Story, Wreck it Ralph’s departure point is the human imagination’s tendency to, well, humanize things.  When presented with a lifeless cowboy doll, kids will endow it with human qualities and imagine that it owns a personality in the same way that they do.  In the same way, with the classic video-games that Wreck it Ralph pays homage to, we often fill in the gaps and imagine a back story and life for these 8-bit collections of pixels.  As a kid, I can remember repeatedly pushing quarters into a Pacman machine.  I was a child of the N64 era, not the NES, and by this time there were plenty of other, flashier arcade offerings, but what kept my pumping quarters into that machine was the back story that I had invented for Pac-man.  If I could just manage to evade those a**hole ghosts for one more level, I would finally get to rescue Ms. Pac-man and we’d venture off together to a maze full of fruits and big dots.  I’m pretty sure that there was nothing on the arcade console or in the Pac-man lore to give me this idea, but this was precisely what allowed me to imagine it.  Sure, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game had way better graphics and let me control characters I watched every Saturday morning, but since the details were already so familiar and fleshed out, it left me no reason to invent my own compelling reason to keep playing

A quick aside: I think that the reason why many people who grew up with games like Pac-man are so nostalgic about this bygone era in gaming is highly related to this phenomenon.  In gaming’s early days, developers weren’t able to create the highly realistic and detailed environments and characters that they are today.  It’s an often expressed opinion that these constraints actually forced early game developers to be more creative; instead of having Theseus running through a maze and avoiding the Minotaur, you were forced to have the simple Pac-man running from brightly colored ghosts.  This idea, the notion that restraint can be a powerful catalyst for creativity, has gained recent popular expression in the musical arena from Jack White and his protégés.

While this seems to make perfect sense, a quick visit to pacman.com will reveal this quote from Pacman’s creator:

“Back then, the popular games in the Japanese arcade game centers were mainly alien shooting games. The arcades were filled with male players. I wanted to brighten up the atmosphere by drawing in women and couples. For that to happen, there needed to be a game for that audience. When it came to women’s interests, I thought of concepts based on fashion and love stories but ultimately ended up with the idea of “eating”. While brainstorming on the idea of “eating”, I picked up a slice of pizza and saw the shape of what was to become PAC-MAN. The idea flourished into the chomping motion, enemy ghosts, and into a maze game.”

So, actually, the games that dominated the gaming world back then were the same ones that dominate today: alien shooting games.  And the idea for Pac-man come not from Greek mythology, but from pizza.  The difference between the games of yesterday and the games of today, I think, is not in the minds of the creators but rather the eyes of the players.  When games were limited to 8 bit collections of pixels, people were forced to “fill in the gaps” and imagine things that weren’t really shown on the screen.  When I played Space Invaders over and over on my Dad’s friend’s Atari, I imagined that the ever-encroaching invaders were something like dancing space alien faces instead of bug like aliens, and to me, it was much more interesting that way.  Gears of War and Halo are good fun, but somehow the space invaders in these modern, fully fleshed digital epics will never be as captivating, otherworldly, or terrifying as those floating pixellated space faces.

What Wreck it Ralph does so expertly is engage in this sort of imaginative extrapolation.  We are invited into an imagining that includes not just one game, but a whole arcade full of them.  We get to see what lies just outside the edge of the player’s view of the screen in Ralph and Felix’s game, get to romp around outside the racetrack in the candy themed Mario-Kart clone “Sugar Rush,” and get a peek into what the after-hours lives of the characters that inhabit these worlds might look like.  Most importantly, it imagines them in a way that is at once both fantastical and extraordinarily human.  While preserving of the beloved whimsical charm, quirk, and utter oddity that characterizes these timeless classics, Wreck it Ralph makes them relatable by successfully tying them together in a story that’s filled with characters that are more believable than the great majority of those that are played by “real live” people.