The Dark Knight · 3 August 08 by Heather Voss Barta
Yea! Batman!
Henry and I went to see it opening weekend. Great fun!
Yeah, yeah – everyone was good, everything was put together – great effects, great technology… Heath Ledger’s last role.
Of course, another superhero movie could lead to a conversation about supervillans, but I think that we’ve covered this territory (see Hancock review). Though we do have some stellar supervillans here!
A lot of the movie focused on leadership. You sometimes have to be the leader that is needed – not necessarily the leader that you would like to be. I found this to be an interesting premise and reflected about how it is working in my own life. The point was to not stop being who you are, but rather, you need to look at the situation and do some things that you’d rather not do. Batman covers for Two Face. Good decision? Maybe not – but probably. He allows for hope for humanity, even if it’s covering for some poor choices by one man. On the other hand, we have several examples of history where the picture was painted differently than reality. What does that do to our sense of history? Though, of course, we also have a long list of giving to leaders more credit than they necessarily deserve – or ignoring parts of their character because they have been able to show strong leadership in most areas (JFK, Clinton). But we’re all human, and will never be perfect – we shouldn’t expect that in ourselves or our leaders.
The question becomes – who gets to decide what “society needs” in order to shape oneself to respond? Do all leaders in some ways shape themselves to the situation – and do we just call that “rising to the situation”? Is that a bad thing?
commenting closed for this article