Exploration of the Batman universe...another chapter in the Under-World.
Quote :
The Joker: Oh, you. You just couldn't let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren't you? You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever. Batman: You'll be in a padded cell forever. The Joker: Maybe we can share one. You know, they'll be doubling up, the rate this city's inhabitants are losing their minds. Batman: This city just showed you that it's full of people ready to believe in good. The Joker: Until their spirit breaks completely. Until they get a good look at the real Harvey Dent, and all the heroic things he's done. You didn't think I'd risk losing the battle for Gotham's soul in a fistfight with you? No. You need an ace in the hole. Mine's Harvey. Batman: What did you do? The Joker: I took Gotham's white knight and I brought him down to our level. It wasn't hard. You see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push! [The Joker laughs hysterically as Batman races off and the cops come to take the Joker into custody]
Gotham’s Nihilism is expressed as its corruption – a city built on lies, where different characters can dress up as supernatural creatures and call themselves by any name. Batman’s represents positive/masculine Nihilism with its childlike hope, founded on no more than a naïve, superficial, intention to do, and be, good. Joker is its opposite, in the Nihilistic binary paradigm, untainted, or honest, true negativity, pure Nihilism, exposing the lie for what it is. Both are part of the same nihilistic paradigm, like 1/0. Batman comes out at night when dreams awaken – Joker follows as the nightmare that breaks all experiential rules of nature; he’s the dreamer whose dream follows no order ever perceived. One needs the other and this is why they never kill each other, despite numerous opportunities. Without the self-deceiving, naïve dreamer, Joker has no reason to exist. He constantly evades death because he is part of the same nihilistic order – all would be unbalanced without his presence. Batman’s’ duplicity, his mask, and those he protects, despite themselves (weakness sheltered form itself) would be exposed without the presence of the Joker, who acts as a cleansing force, keeping the lie convincing, and the liars good actors. Joker is dead without Batman. He is not really the same character, but different manifestations of the same insanity – those who having discovered the duplicity go mad. It’s not that the Joker thwarts his numerous suicidal tendencies, but even when he dies, from his own hand, another takes his place. The story of his existence changes every time a new individual wears the same painted-on smile – an exaggerated happiness reflecting Gotham’s corruption, its duplicity. Joker can never die because it is Gotham that constructs him continuously. The Joker needs Batman just as much as Batman needs him.
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Last edited by Satyr on Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:17 pm; edited 1 time in total
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Batman: Then why do you want to kill me? The Joker: [giggling] I don't, I don't want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You... you... complete me. Batman: You're garbage who kills for money. The Joker: Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.
Batman is like Joker in that he stands above the common man’s understanding of what is going on. He is Apollonian, knowing full well that those he protects from chance, from the cruelty of chaos, are part of the problem. They follow blindly and, like Joker says, would turn on him if the “chips are down.” Who lays down his chips but a gambler; a believer in chance, a blind fatalist?
The "freaks"...multiple manifestations of nihilism when there is no natural corrective process, or it is excluded from the city's domain. Gotham's protection is what breeds this multiplicity. Outside of it it would be weeded down to those who could see, and adjust to the world as it is. Nihilism multifariousness, allowing different mutations, unfit genes, to identify with human constructs of their own choice - identity crisis of Modernity.
From the corruption, of lies, to those whose identity confronts these lies, and becomes a danger to the system that permits them to rise up, and to exist. Each new "villain" and "vigilante" another mutant who would not be born, nor survive long, outside the city's domain. Within Gotham these unfit mutants indulge in political, spiritual, moral warfare - memetic battle; not wanting to destroy Gotham, the protective domain, but to control it, spread within it, master it.
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Every character/caricature in the Gotham universe, represents another genetic mutation, fit only for urban living, adorning itself with the masks, fashion, make-up, cosmetic surgery, he considers representative of what he is: freaks of modern settings, most demented, others confused seeking their place in a world disconnected from past. The mundane rabble are those "innocent" and, often, corrupt citizens with no sense of self – a uniformity of non-distinctness, used as pawns in the battles between these others, these mutant, self-identifying, super-humans, because human, as a designation, no longer has meaning here… all is noetic.
Weirdos, degenerates, and desperate souls trying to stop the madness, all coexist within Gotham’s artificial realities; dark, and decaying, reflecting dreamlands of modern Dystopia, nightmares harassing the inner child. With no correction for nature, these urban dwellers can take infinite forms, because the only restriction is noetic, the human imagination, inspired by genetics that have been left rampant. Gotham is nature's correction.
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Impulso Oscuro
Gender : Posts : 796 Join date : 2013-12-10 Age : 33 Location : Praxis
I didn't really intend to go into the numerous characters, the superhuman ones, in detail. There are so many. Like I said, each superhero, villain or "hero" (in relation to Gotham as a sheltered decaying urban setting - Modernity) represents a different genetic mutation, allowed to replicate and accumulate mutations (one mutation adding to the previous one) until you have these monsters, these humans that could not have existed outside Gotham. You can study each character/caricature, keeping in mind my take on character, as the public face, social face (personality adapting, adjusting, to environment, in this case a human, artificially constructed and maintained one, producing types not to be found in nature - ergo the "super" in superhuman - not necessarily a flattering label - memetic), and personae as the private (organ interactive hierarchy producing a personality: genetic).
Don't know enough of each character in the Batman universe... so I went here for a brief overview of Ra's al Ghul. He appears to be a Islamic traditionalist character. Very topical...a terrorist confronting Batman's Western culture of no culture. He would be the classic nemesis of a Batman who is a Nihilist hero, trying to preserve modernity, and protect the "people" from themselves, with the aid of The Joker, ironically. The Joker reminds the people of what they've done, making Batman necessary. Ra's al Ghul would be a more threatening, to Gotham, character. You can add more.
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Without wanting to get too far into the Gotham Dystopic world of artificial (Modern) urban, sheltering environments, we can find parallels, though not as dramatic and impressive, between Gotham "freaks" and the Modern psychologies accessible to all of us who live large cities, in nations using Nihilism as a form of mind-control, a political tool to placate, redirect libidinal energies, create self-induced placidity (self-medication) and harmless cynicism. Characters (exoteric - public/memetic face) burying personalities (esoteric - private/genetic disposition), building their social character upon the unifying, uniforming, ideologies of Nihilism. It is here, where appearances are indeed social constructs, superficial displays meant to impress or to display, passing no a desirable message to the observer, where the popular delusion that appearances are all superficial and mean nothing, no more than an expression of personal taste/choice, finds its place.
Sampling a few of the most popular mutations we can recongize individuals in our own urban expriences:
Riddler:
We've all experiences this type as the one who uses words to confuse, create an impression, cause a stir. He is not interested in the world, suing words to connect to reality, but is directed, by an internal psychosis, to linguistically express his cynicism, confusing all who come under his explosive spell. Words are a game, for him. A game exploiting the common man's ignorance about what words are, and how the majority use them literally. Illiteracy in literality confusing noumenon with phenomena – the people can read and write but all they can do with this technique is serve, becoming mere extensions of it: recite, repeat, and seek an escape in the symbols. You are what you say you are; you are what clothes, work, service you provide, what words/symbols you build your public self with. Magritte’s surreal no-man, with a linguistic fetish, and a propensity to shock and awe. His power resides in the Modern mind’s weakness with language.
Penguin:
A more classic Modern, western figure, he has become a popular character antagonizing Batman's idealism. He is Judeo-Christian/Islamic Nihilism made secular - God of fame and fortune. A miser, hoarding, collecting, living in the underbelly of the city where he gathers his minions into a criminal (unsanctioned, secretive) organization (clan), feeding on the city's refuse. He sells what he does not, having acquired a different appetite, a unique taste, and consumes what he does not sell. The people's shit are his bread and butter; their garbage are his wealth – it all has value. In the catacombs, of the sewers, he hides and collects. Having discovered that money cannot buy you respect, let alone love, the miser settles for respect based on fear. Penguin’s exploitation of Modern materialistic greed, seeking salvation in symbolic god, the token of appreciation, is his power.
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
The tragedy of The Joker, contradicting his appearance, creating a disharmony, deformity, that hits us like a slap, is that he fears others laughing at him rather than with him, and so he makes sure his jokes are cutting and, unlike comedy, they hurts more than just feelings, and are more than metaphorical in their impact. With comedy the disparity between what is said and how it is delivered, and the impact of the surprise, is released with hyperventilating spasms we call laughter. The audience is relieved the tragedy described does not affect them, at least not directly and not immediately – the distance of space/time the sheltering buffer they are more than happy about – ecstatic, actually. But the Joker does not allow the audience such common comforts. He follows the "joke", shallow and lame as it may be, with an immediate, and direct taste of the tragic, evaded in performance comedy. He is Gotham's wake-up call, and along with Batman fights to heal, to awaken Gotham from its lethargy, numbness, naiveté, allowing corruption to be its inevitable Dystopic outcome. If not heal, then, and this is where he antagonized Batman, take advantage of it.
He needs Gotham, and he knows it. An ready audience waiting to be shocked with a punch-line that actually shatters their jaws and darkens their eyes; forced to endure his childlike, cynical, wit. Without it he would be just another failed genetic mutation.
Joker feels his similarity to Batman (they are both freaks - mutations awakening to their condition), and he also feels their superiority over the citizens of Gotham, who are beneath them both, because they take themselves, and their city, seriously, unlike the cynicism required to cope with what man has wrought, and now cannot live without.
Joker wants to break Batman out of his seriousness, so they can both, along with all other mutants, laugh together at those who are sheltered but fail to take advantage of this nurtured inter-subjectivity, and construct a superb, fantastic, unique, caricature to identify themselves with - let the imagination go wild, and create a character to hide within. Gotham's lack of creativity irks Joker. Nihilism lost on them... or they lost within Nihilistic Modernity: Metropolis of Gotham. Despite being protected from the world, they remain as they were, as if nature/past still mattered, not having grasped the liberating opportunity of the circumstances.
Joker knows he is a monster, though he is clueless as to how he was born and why he was permitted to live (the story changes from event to event, or with his every reincarnation, beneath the mask – Is it always the same man, or the same insanity taking over different men?). monster defined as unfit genetic mutations, compounding from generation to generation, until the original product of natural selection is buried in time/space - there's no going back, to trail to follow back to a lost inheritance. The citizens of Gotham, he despises, live in ignorance, actually proud of themselves – and that’s where the laughter begins, ending with a cry, or a scream.
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Batman is more than a story about a vigilante, fighting against evil, on the side of good. It is a tale of a city, standing in for all urban environments, and consequently, representing Modernity and its fabricated worlds – its nihilistic sub-cultures, driving away culture and past/nature; covering it up with asphalt realities, and electric sunrises casting a pale hue in the gloom; artificial light, imitating the sun, en-lightening a darkening esoteric world of subjective surrealism. It's a tale about sheltering and mutations, unchecked naturally, forcing some to cull using their own whims - idea(l)s, motives.
A tale about human intervention and the pollution it produces, not only material and genetic, but of the spirit - corruption.
Nature keeps man humble and honest, or he dies. Past reminds him of this. Without these controlling factors man becomes a lunatic, a schizophrenic, wearing gaudy outfits, pretending he is god - what would control such genetic/memetic dis-ease but an equal and opposite force, a toxic pharmakon.
Gotham is a tale of the west in the fevered throws of the Judeo-Christian virus, slowly declining towards death.
What hero will save it? What mortal man can save it?
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
The villains, despite their pure negation of world, are, at least, more authentic with their desires, whereas the heroes are struggling with their own integrity, their conscience. This is what Joker wants to snap Batman out of – this lie he has convinced himself of. See, Joker knows there is no rehabilitation – he has himself as evidence. There is too much damage to repair, too many mutations to compensate for, too much has already been lost, too much past to be un-covered from its burial depths, by those who would go criminally insane by the prospect, just as The Joker did. The only solution, for him, is extermination – an Orthodox Jewish solution {one of the three types of Zionism: spiritual, political/social, and cultural}, now transformed into Christian and Islamic sects, political movements, secularism – Modern Triad. If we analyze deeper we may even manage to divide each character by evaluating to what degree each Zionist type participates in his psyche, in the character type’s super-powers: powers to exceed past/nature, using words. All this is about word-wars. Teenager stuff.
Back to the narrative… Batman, and the "good guys", are more romantic, more idealistic. Still clinging on to hope, they dream of an electrically manufactured sunrise, a Utopia, where all will be made “right", and the artificial surreal will finally completely replace the real, and the natural will become a uniform supernatural.
Rehabilitate back to what? When past/nature is annulled what is left are variations of human artificiality. Rehabilitation in Gotham means returning the villains back to functionality, back to an acceptable pretense, and what self-respecting narcissistic egomaniac would settle for such a dull act? Past/Nature being denied their power of limiting options, leaves Gotham open for business – a vast expanse of manmade possibilities – which is another way of describing chaos. Gotham's order is founded on untruth, and Joker knows it, as do all the villains who have become too cynical to pretend that things are otherwise. But, Batman also knows that without these pretenses, there is no more Gotham. The shared space/time of surreality is only possible if all play their part, within law and order boundaries – natural law replaced by human law, and the past, replaced by the future. The struggle is over this positive and negative Nihilism – a potential honest, and total destruction of past/nature, or its happy replacement with alternatives – winner gets to decide Gotham’s artificiality.
Who is more mad?
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Ra's al Ghul:An amalgamation of Egyptian cult of death, and Zoroastrianism’s reduction of life/death into good/evil dichotomies, representing the historical plight and rebirths of spiritual Zionism. Exodus from Babylon births Israel – Linguistic play with the concept Gothic, where past and present converge (space/time implosion). Egyptian death cult, the “chosen” liberate themselves from, then lost in spiritual limbo (desert) for a period of time, then rejected and cast out from Babylon, Zoroastrianism and its binary spirituality – later to evolve into Islam via the chosen one’s linguistic inversions - cross contamination. The chosen projects their God, over Mazda, as God of gods – the nameless one – refusing salvation to all other tribes – Gotham is the place of no salvation, the desert of the real, the surreal to annul the real (hell on earth).
Wikipedia wrote:
Zoroastrianism has no major theological divisions, though it is not uniform; modern-era influences having a significant impact on individual and local beliefs, practices, values and vocabulary, sometimes merging with tradition and in other cases displacing it. Liberality is emphasized in the scripture, and—like the Roman religion—the religion was generally inclusive, with Cyrus the Great annexing Babylonia in the name of its God Marduk. In Zoroastrianism, the purpose in life is to ‘be among those who renew the world...to make the world progress towards perfection’. Its basic maxims include: Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta, which mean: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. There is only one path and that is the path of Truth. Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and then all beneficial rewards will come to you also.
Deontological morality: Goodness a value independent from (inter)actions (deeds). He confronts Batman’s social Zionism, his Modern Nihilism – his Christianization. Modern = positive, masculine Nihilism, relegating all under its spell into feminine followers: zombies, dull, consuming entities with no past/nature (brain dead): citizenry of Gotham
Wikipedia wrote:
Zoroastrians believe that there is one universal, transcendent, supreme god, Ahura Mazda, or the "Wise Lord". (Ahura means "Being" and Mazda means "Mind" in Avestan language). Zoroaster keeps the two attributes separate as two different concepts in most of the Gathas and also consciously uses a masculine word for one concept and a feminine for the other, as if to distract from an anthropomorphism of his divinity. Some Zoroastrians claim Ahura Mazda as the uncreated Creator to whom all worship is ultimately directed, thereby formulating a panentheistic faith with a transcendent divinity, widely believed to have influenced the theology of Isma'ilism. Zoroaster claimed that Ahura Mazda is almighty, though not omnipotent. Other scholars assert that since Zoroastrianism's divinity covers both being and mind as immanent entities, it is better described as a belief in an immanent self-creating universe with consciousness as its special attribute, thereby putting Zoroastranism in the pantheistic fold where it can be easily traced to its shared origin with Indian Brahmanism. In any case, Ahura Mazda's creation—evident is widely agreed as asha, truth and order—is the antithesis of chaos, which is evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict. In Zoroastrian tradition, the "chaotic" is represented by Angra Mainyu (also referred to as "Ahriman"), the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that transcendental Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made His ultimate triumph evident to Angra Mainyu. As expressions and aspects of Creation, Ahura Mazda emanated the Amesha Spentas ("Bounteous Immortals"), that are each the hypostasis and representative of one aspect of that Creation. These Amesha Spenta are in turn assisted by a league of lesser principles, the Yazatas, each "Worthy of Worship" and each again a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of creation. Zoroastrian theology includes a duty to protect nature. This has led some to proclaim it as the "world's first ecological religion." Scholars have argued that, since the protections are part of a ritual, they stem from theology rather than ecology. Others have responded that, since the scripture calls for the protection of water, earth, fire, air, as once of its strongest precepts, it is, in effect, an ecological religion: "It is not surprising that Mazdaism (another term for Zoroastrianism) is called the first ecological religion. The reverence for Yazatas (divine spirits) emphasizes the preservation of nature.
Ahriman = Ra's al Ghul, slightly modified. Preservation of nature = preservation of balance, pagan principle. Batman's manmade law & order is challenged by past/nature, continuously brought back to life - mummy rising from the grave refusing to be buried.[/b]
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Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37114 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask…" [Bane]
Quote :
"Then there’s the question of the voice. Is Bane an example of what Michel Chion calls the acousmêtre: someone who speaks, but who isn’t seen?
Chion derives the concept of the acousmêtre from Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of acousmatic sound—sound that is floating free from its source.
Acousmêtres seem to be omnipotent and omniscient, but, as we see with the most famous example of the acousmêtre, the Wizard of Oz, this aura is stripped away from them once the moment of “de-acousmatization” occurs, and the sound can be traced back to a particular body. Mladen Dolar adds a further complication. In A Voice and Nothing More, Dolar argues that de-acousmatization never really happens. Even in everyday cases, Dolar claims: “The source of the voice can never be seen, it stems from an undisclosed and structurally concealed interior, it cannot possibly match what we see … [T]here is always something totally incongruous in the relation between the appearance, the aspect, of a person and his or her voice, before we adapt to it. It is absurd, this voice cannot possibly stem from this body, it doesn’t sound like this person at all, or this person doesn’t look like his or her voice. Every emission of the voice is by its very essence ventriloquism” (MIT Press, 2006, 70).
If the facial prosthesis provides Bane with physical power, it also gives him a more metaphysical “acousmatic” power. This is reinforced by the fact that the electronic effects on his voice are reminiscent of the devices that we’ve previously seen used in films by telephone stalkers and kidnappers to disguise their voices and terrorize their victims. Is Bane like the Wizard of Oz, or does he more closely resemble another of Chion’s example, the HAL computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey? With HAL, there’s no proper moment of de-acousmatization, because HAL is intrinsically acousmatic: there’s no mouth, no biological aperture, that the voice can be traced back to. As a cyborg, Bane is between these two cases. Unlike the Wizard, he doesn’t hide behind a screen. The apparatus which prevents us seeing his mouth is also the means by which he speaks—and presumably breathes—at all. Equally, the electronic augmentation of Bane’s voice is not something which conceals a “real” voice. If, as seems to be the case, Bane would die if his prosthesis were removed, then the electronic voice is the only voice he has (left). The moment of “unmasking” would not be a deacousmatization because Bane’s voice doesn’t belong to his biological body alone, and the body that the voice is ostensibly being traced back to would be dead."
