{"id":50,"date":"2008-07-22T10:30:30","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T10:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html"},"modified":"2008-07-22T10:30:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T10:30:30","slug":"the-soul-of-the-dark-knight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html","title":{"rendered":"The soul of “The Dark Knight”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Batman<\/span> It is a dark soul indeed, and that is what makes the movie–which I saw last (k)night–so powerful.
\nI can’t qualify as a comic-book or action-hero or sci-fi geek (though my geekiness is evident in other areas), and I am completely insensate as far as the whole LOTR phenomenon and its ilk go. (I love using “LOTR” as it took me so long to figure out what it meant.) But for whatever reason I do invest a great deal of anticipation into these summer comic blockbusters, if only the first Spider-Man movie really paid off for me. Perhaps it is the appeal of religious themes that are veiled enough to seem literary yet obvious enough so that I don’t have to try too hard to discern them, and thus can feel smart as I exit the theater parsing its various ideas and metaphors.
\nSeveral threads emerge brightly from The Dark Knight, not least of which is my own (surely it’s been noted elesewhere in all the blogosphere blather) clear sense of the wartime warnings of how easily we can be corrupted by fear, and thus enlisted in the project of evil. Besides DC Comics, a good companion reader to the film would be Jane Mayer’s disturbing new book, “The Dark Side,”<\/a> about the moral and legal corruption of the Bush White House and the “war on terror.”
\nIt is a corruption we all share, however, and which the movie suggests we can all choose to defeat, as well.
\nThe principal drama though, is about how that corruption tempts those most involved in the fight of good and evil, as we all should be, and the moral ambiguity is as dense as some of the action sequences. “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” as Alfred tells Bruce.
\nSpeaking of action, there are some of the usual missteps, for me, like video-game action sequences you can’t follow without a rewind button (granted, I’m middle-aged) and key bits of dialogue rendered inaudible by the heaving soundtrack. The sonar-cellphone technology was weird and way too confusing to watch; don’t know how Bruce Wayne figured out what was happening inside that fishbowl or a mask. And lots of terrible wounds that never hurt. But some funny moments and lines…Such as when The Joker tells Batman, “You complete me.” Take that, Katie Holmes, via Tom Cruise.
\n\"Heath<\/span>That mutual embrace of good and evil, however, is at the heart of the film, and what makes it so good–and so disturbing. A friend of mine, a pseudo-geek but by no means a prude, wondered if the movie should be rated R.
\nOver at the Dallas Morning News, the omnivorous Jeff Weiss has several posts which get at the dark heart of the matter, including a parsing of the classic “Trolley Question”<\/a> which provides the drama of the finale (and is the favored plot device for so many shows these days, like “24,” that some poor social scientist should be getting royalties.) But Jeff also gets at the darker side of merchandising<\/a> such violence to kids. Jeff writes:<\/p>\n

“Dark Knight” is a staggeringly violent and disturbing film. Thought-provoking for adults, but potentially terrifying for children. Yeah, yeah, marketers can say they’re just playing off the longstanding Batman “brand.” But these products will make kids beg to see the movie — and will dupe less-attentive parents into thinking it’s a safe “comic book” flick. The PG-13 rating should offer some warning, yes. But this film dances just south of an R in my book. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jeff also points to a very Christian take <\/a>on the film by a Halifax, Va., pastor, Mike Parnell, who writes at EthicsDaily.com, who calls it the best movie of 2008 so far, and notes its Clockwork Orange references. Over at First Things, Thomas Hibbs has a longer reflection (it is First Things, after all) on director Christopher Nolan’s “achievement,” <\/a>which is a comprehensive wrap.
\nOf course the presence Heath Ledger, who died from a drug overdose after the movie wrapped, and whose almost steals the show with his protryal of the Joker, makes all of this moralizing both more dangerous–it’s a movie, after all, and he was a real person who suffered a real tragedy. But Ledger’s real story also makes it more poignant, pointing toward the dark night that awaits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a dark soul indeed, and that is what makes the movie–which I saw last (k)night–so powerful. I can’t qualify as a comic-book or action-hero or sci-fi geek (though my geekiness is evident in other areas), and I am completely insensate as far as the whole LOTR phenomenon and its ilk go. (I love…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThe soul of "The Dark Knight" - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The soul of "The Dark Knight" - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is a dark soul indeed, and that is what makes the movie–which I saw last (k)night–so powerful. 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(I love…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2008-07-22T10:30:30+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Batman%20and%20Joker.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html","name":"The soul of \"The Dark Knight\" - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Batman%20and%20Joker.jpg","datePublished":"2008-07-22T10:30:30+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-22T10:30:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Batman%20and%20Joker.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Batman%20and%20Joker.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/the-soul-of-the-dark-knight.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The soul of “The Dark Knight”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}