English+12+Honors

=English 12 Honors =

The Dark Knight (2008)
In one of my favorite scenes from the film—spoken inside the interrogation room just before Batman is forced to play one of The Joker’s many games and choose between saving Rachel or Harvey—writer director Christopher Nolan offers up a psychopathic [1]  villain proclaiming that “They’re only as good as the world allows them to be.” Eleven words that highlight a primary conflict in the two-hour feature film. Here’s why….

If we really are “only as good as the //world allows//,” we have a problem. We are not in control of our own destinies. We have no free will. We possess no independent “self.” The world //allows//, or permits, us to become our individual selves.

So who or what is really in control? Not us. Not me. Not you. Something outside, something foreign, is //allowing// us to live our lives. We live not for ourselves but in the service of this external thing. (In the film it’s The Joker who represents that chaotic, unpredictable thing outside of ourselves—that dictates and directs, limiting, crippling and stealing our ability to become what it is we want to become….)

What are the consequences of this on our spirit, soul or conscience? Do we even have a soul if we can only accomplish that which the world allows? Are we anything more than slaves or puppets? Can we even define //ourselves// when we are defined by everything around us as The Joker suggests? If it’s true that all of our actions and thoughts are circumscribed—not truly and freely our own but limited to what the world allows—then we have been robbed of our very humanity because we can never transcend, never rise above our least common denominator, our most base desire and animalistic urge (//Heart of Darkness//, anyone? Anyone?). What’s even worse is The Joker’s inference that we shouldn’t even try.

But we do try. Not only do we try, we succeed. Or else we wouldn’t have movies like the //The Dark Knight//. We wouldn’t have movies at all. Or books, songs, poems, paintings, dances…. Art in all its forms (take that shizznat, //Grendel//!).

Why?

According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, we constantly seek to distinguish or differentiate ourselves as individuals, struggle to free ourselves from the group—he calls this individuation. Individuation describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinguished from other things. We seek the Self—as Jung termed it—through individuation. If someone asks, “who are you?”, it’s //your// answer to that question that matters, not anybody else’s.

You’ve already gotten a dose of this from me this year but you didn’t know it: “how do you know a cat is a cat…?” I’ve pretty much coerced, intimidated and bullied you into believing that we know it’s a cat because it’s not a dog, a car, an airplane, love, purple, etc…. it’s a cat because it’s different from everything else in the universe. It’s unique. And because it’s unique we have given it a unique name: “cat.” And speakers of Spanish call it “//gato//.” French, “//chat//.”

But that’s what a cat is according to us “non-cat” outsiders. In this case, we humans are the outside force, the foreign masters allowing a cat to be //this// rather than //that//. In this sense we circumscribe the cat’s possibilities. A cat can only be a cat. It cannot be anything else. But I wonder how a cat would feel about this set up. If he could. But can’t. A cat doesn’t sit at a computer pondering the universe. He doesn’t ask, “Why am I here?” He’s a cat!

I am not a cat…a dog…a cup of coffee…a savior...hydrogen…the cruddy funk around the top of the toothpaste tube my kids never seem to clean off…. I’m a human being. As such, I am the one who names, the one who creates, the one who dreams, reasons, improves…destroys. So, the Joker is wrong. I am as good as I want to be, **//not//** as good as the world allows me to be.

Which brings me to the first quote on the assignment linked below: “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” Batman is a fictional character, a fictional Self who dares to make the difficult choices (in the movie we are told they are choice that only he can make) in opposition to the evil chaos of The Joker, while //Batman// is Christopher Nolan shaking us out of our soporific trance to see the possibility of art.

Whether it’s Gawain or Beowulf or Batman, our heroes dare to do one thing: smash the limits of what the world allows. Heroes show us how to do this. Through fiction. Fiction helps us find ourselves.

I am the Batman. //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…goo goo goo joob! // <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">[2]

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[1] A [|personality disorder] that has been variously characterized by shallow [|emotions] (including reduced [|fear], a [|lack of empathy], and [|stress] tolerance), [|cold-heartedness], [|egocentricity], [|superficial charm], [|manipulativeness], [|irresponsibility], [|impulsivity], [|criminality], [|antisocial behavior], a [|lack of remorse], and a parasitic lifestyle.

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">[2] Lennon/McCartney: “I am the Walrus”



<span style="color: #09b511; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Sir Gawain and The Greene Knight
A very helpful look at where the story takes place and the route that our hero takes to meet the Green Knight in his Green Chapel can be found at Travels with Sir Gawain.

Another helpful resource is the BBC documentary with Simon Armitage, the translator of the version we read in class, as host.

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