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| The M0vie Blog |
I see no point in reproducing perfection so read Darren at his blog www.them0vieblog.com
There are some things I wish to say about his review.
Darren's awareness of the poignant absence of The Joker. Not even a throw away reference to him as Darren wishes.
I agree with Nolan. The absence of The Joker is a void that is "Less Than Nothing" to steal from Zizek's book on Hegel. Nolan has invited Death as a presence in The Dark Knight Rises. The absence of The Joker resonates with the death of Heath Ledger, his irreplaceability, his singularity. Could there be any more beautiful memorial to Ledger than this film that mourns his non-being, depriving it of the focus that was his alone.
Darren has merged Bane and Wayne into an indivisible whole. As Babette Babich reminds us, each opposition includes its opposite. No division. Baudrillard will write an entire book on The Intelligence of Evil, how absolutely necessary evil is, which disappears in Simulated Reality. Ayn Rand tells us what evil is in her fictionalized character of Ellsworth Toohey, the man who would elevate mediocrity until our ability to perceive excellence disappears.
Darren's recognition of masks, how they act as "floating signs" to affirm what they deny. How Wayne's mask and Bane's mask reflect each other in a mirror darkly.
Nolan is teaching us our new world of simulation. He is addressing what DeLillo addressed in Cosmopolis, but what Cronenberg was afraid to touch. See here.
As Darren asserts, this is the first film to acknowledge the importance of Occupy, which Cronenberg misreads, thinking "they just want a piece of the pie."
Nolan plays on inversion which Darren recognizes. The mirror.
One discovers the same speculation in Baudrillard's concluding meditation on Borges' story of the 'mirror people', which prompts his suggestion that behind every reflection or representation 'a defeated enemy lies concealed'; a defeated 'singularity', which 'will one day rebel'. (Baudrillard in his The Perfect Crime quoted in Performance Research 1.3 - Richard Gough p.7)
Here begins the great revenge of otherness, of all the forms which subtly or violently deprived of their singularity,; henceforth pose an insoluble problem for the social order, and also for the political and biological orders.
In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms, and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off....shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. (Borges -T he Book of Imaginary Beings p. 67-8)__________________________________________________________________________________
A postscript.
Darren emphasizes the fact that Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises has an ending, breaking the trope of comic hero stories. And ending signals DEATH and Death does not belong to this genre. Another tribute to Ledger or perhaps Ledger lodged it in Nolan's mind.
