The best line, of many, sums up the movie, “sublimely” indeed. Joker to Batman, who’s incapable of murder: “this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object” (I quote from memory).

The strength of Ledger’s Joker is that he’s “no, … not crazy,” (or did he say “mad”?) as he insists in one of his few insistent moments. He just recognizes that good and evil are two side (two faces??) of human devise, not unlike the binaries that bind Batman/Bruce. And how fun it is to play with such fictions – how eerie too, as his convincing, yet contradictory, scar explanations evince. The card up the Joker’s sleeve is a universe that’s indifferent to morality and other forms of imposed order. He is “evil” because he interprets meaninglessness of the term absolutely; he is immovable to human solidarity, not to mention his own meta-madness.

The strength of Batman’s character is that has the same postmodern recognition as the Joker, yet for the “good” of Gotham, and yes the world, he relies on a very Platonist position: lie. Nietzsche said we have art because the truth is unbearable. The human mind needs fictions, imposed order, to orient itself in a disorienting, chaotic universe. Batman is good because he affirms humanity in the face of its meaninglessness. Like Candid, he’s drive for life is unstoppable.

This aesthetic perspective, to which I subscribe, nevertheless supports a dubious form of politics. Aesthetically sound – and some quirks aside, like that dumb Kumbaya scene on the boats – the film is essentially a validation of the Bush years and a blatant endorsement for the McCain campaign. How does Batman track the Joker’s movements? He has an ethically-torn Freeman tap into cellphone conversations. Ring a bell? Though the Bush administration would have loved a White Knight for their war in Iraq, the idea of lying to the public for their own good is very Republican.

Thus, the “good” Batman is perhaps “evil” beyond his fictional context. He constant surveillance actually calls humanity into doubt, the assumption being we’d all become like Joker if only we really knew the truth.

Or do we, like the pathetic citizens of Gotham, (real)ly need him?

On Lameazoid (hosted on WordPress.com), the Categories box has been named “A” got a while. I tried correcting it but it didn’t take.

I’m playing it right now, as a matter of fact. I’m on my New Game+, near the end of the game and leveling/farming for epics.