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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Excellent analysis Steve, especially the historical
example of U.S. ruling class propoganda themes and techniques via the old
cartoon.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>This is the very same theme used in the film " THE
DARK KNIGHT " and is also observed by the film reviewer below.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3><STRONG> " John talks about the film's
depiction of any opposition to capitalism as emanating from a mob and leading
inexorably to mob rule. I think there is something more historically entrenched
in American culture which is at work then just crude capitalist propaganda,
however. If comrades have the time, watch this American propaganda short from
1948.<BR><BR></STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh75ylAUXY"><FONT
size=3><STRONG>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh75ylAUXY</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT
size=3><STRONG> <BR><BR> The exact same theme is present: the system
isn't perfect, but any attempt to organize collectively will lead you to be
duped by tricksters and demagogues - in the case of the cartoon it is a
snake-oil salesmen selling communism in a bottle. Notice also that the contract
the trickster in the cartoon holds says "ism" on it, underlining what John said
about a hostility toward ideas in American culture.<BR><BR>The demagogue with an
alterior motive playing upon popular anger or dissatisfaction, only to be shown
as a fraud, is a theme very common in American books, television, and film. This
also plays out in political discourse, where the unions are seen as "another
interest group" equal (and just as outside of "the common man") as multinational
corporations."<BR></STRONG></FONT><BR> <EM>By</EM> <EM><A
href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/mark-fisher">Mark Fisher</A></EM>
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<DIV class=story_comments>'The Dark Knight Rises' Asks Us to Believe the Rich
Can Save Us</DIV>
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<DIV class="field-item even">The new Batman film isn't the simple conservative
parable rightwingers would like, but it is a reactionary
vision.</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV class=story-date><EM><SPAN
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content="2012-07-22T23:00:01-04:00">July 22,
2012</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></EM> | </DIV>
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<DIV class=heading>'How long do you think all this can last?" Selina Kyle (Anne
Hathaway) asks Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne amid the opulence of a high-society
charity ball in <A title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/19/the-dark-knight-rises-review">The
Dark Knight Returns</A>. "There's a storm coming." A storm of a rather
unexpected kind gathered over the film on Friday, with <A title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/20/colorado-theater-shooting-dark-knight?newsfeed=true">the
appalling massacre in Denver</A>. But the film was already enmeshed in political
controversy in the US, when conservative US radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed the
name of Batman's adversary in the film, Bane, was a reference to presidential
candidate Mitt Romney and his former company, Bain
Capital.</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<P>Yet as Limbaugh also noted, it is not Bane but billionaire Bruce Wayne who
most resembles Romney, while Bane's rhetoric seems like a nod to the Occupy
movement. Rightwing commentator <A title=""
href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/19/Occupy-Damage-control-dark-kinght">John
Nolte argues that</A> the film has forced Occupy Wall Street into "damage
control" and praises the director, Christopher Nolan, for "using the kind of
conservative themes that most of artistically bankrupt Hollywood refuses to go
near any more". Fellow rightwinger <A title=""
href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/18/dark-knight-rises-review-batman-bain-ows">Christian
Toto argues</A> that it is impossible to read the film except as an anti-Occupy
Wall Street treatise. "Bane's henchmen literally attack Wall Street, savagely
beat the rich and promise the good people of Gotham that 'tomorrow, you claim
what is rightfully yours'."</P>
<P>Such readings spuriously conflate Occupy Wall Street's anti-capitalism with
the indiscriminate violence used by Bane and his followers.</P>
<P>When Nolan revived the Batman franchise in 2005, the setting – Gotham in the
midst of an economic depression – seemed like an anachronistic reference to the
superhero's origins in the 1930s; 2008's The Dark Knight was too early to
register the impact of the financial crisis. But The Dark Knight Rises clearly
attempts to respond to the post-2008 situation. The film isn't the simple
conservative parable that rightwingers would like, but it is in the end a
reactionary vision.</P>
<P>The storm Hathaway's character prophesies is a time of reckoning for the
wealthy, and what stops the film being a straightforward celebration of
conservative values in the way Nolte and Toto want is the relish it takes in
attacking the rich. "You and your friends better batten down the hatches," Kyle
continues, "'cause when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought
you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us." An early scene
features the stock exchange, where we have the pleasure of seeing Bane manhandle
some predatory traders. Later, when Wayne tells Kyle that although he is
supposedly bankrupt, he has kept his house, Kyle acidly observes that "the rich
don't even go broke like the rest of us".</P>
<P>Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From <A title=""
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/125194/wall-e">Wall-E</A> to <A
title="" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/131170/avatar">Avatar</A>,
corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of
corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot
just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this anti-capitalism is only allowed within
limits. The Dark Knight Rises draws clear lines: anti-capitalist comment (of the
kind that Kyle makes) is fine, but any direct action against the rich, or
revolutionary moves towards the redistribution of property, will lead to
dystopian nightmare.</P>
<P>Bane talks about returning Gotham to "the people", and liberating the city
from its "oppressors". But the people have no agency in the film. Despite
Gotham's endemic poverty and homelessness, there is no organised action against
capital until Bane arrives.</P>
<P>At the end of The Dark Knight, Batman had sacrificed his reputation to save
the city, and it's tempting to read The Dark Knight Rises as an allegory for the
attempts by the elite to rebuild their standing after the financial crisis – or
at least to preserve the idea that there are good rich who, if suitably humbled,
can save capitalism from its worst excesses.</P>
<P>The sustaining fantasy of Nolan's Batman films – which does chime
uncomfortably with Romney – is that the excesses of finance capital can be
curbed by a combination of philanthropy, off-the-books violence and symbolism.
The Dark Knight at least exposed the duplicity and violence necessary to
preserve the fictions in which conservatives want us to believe. But the new
film demonises collective action against capital while asking us to put our hope
and faith in a chastened rich.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV class="field-item even">Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism: Is
There No Alternative? (Zero Books). He blogs at k-punk.abstractdynamics.org
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