Speaker 1: Alson Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about stuff
Speaker 2: falling apart and how it can maybe come back together.
Speaker 2: I'm Garrison Davis. Joining me today is Mia Wong. Hello. Hello.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what this episode is about. I
Speaker 1: have been told the words David Graeber, and that's that's
Speaker 1: that's all I know.
Speaker 2: Gra Graber will will come up. So we've we've been
Speaker 2: We've had a lot of you know, upsetting stuff that
Speaker 2: that's been covered on the pod recently. It's it's it's
Speaker 2: not a it's not it's not a great time in
Speaker 2: the world. It's a lot of upsetting things happening. But
Speaker 2: I thought we we might get a small reprieve from
Speaker 2: all of the all of the uh real real world
Speaker 2: chaos and mayhem to talk about some fake world chaos
Speaker 2: and mayhem. And it's also the it's also you know,
Speaker 2: it's we are we are vastly approaching the holiday season,
Speaker 2: which means that I I think next week am doing
Speaker 2: my yearly Batman Returns watch party, which I am extremely
Speaker 2: excited about. Is it's gonna it's gonna be a fun time, uh,
Speaker 2: which is it's probably it's probably the best Batman movie.
Speaker 2: Oh No, it's just about the aesthetics. The aesthetics are unparalleled.
Speaker 2: But I'm discovering what this episode is about. But there
Speaker 2: is another Batman movie that's also set during winter time,
Speaker 2: which is also also very political, because Batman Returns is
Speaker 2: weirdly political. We have the Penguin running for mayor. It
Speaker 2: exposes the the corrupt core of our political system. And
Speaker 2: there is another Batman movie, also set during winter that
Speaker 2: tries to expose the corrupt core of the political system,
Speaker 2: which is Christopher Nolans twenty twelve. The Dark Knight Rises,
Speaker 2: a not very good movie which which I think we
Speaker 2: have We have referenced before because there's this one essay
Speaker 2: by one David Graber which really gets into the film
Speaker 2: which we're gonna which we're gonna get to. But the
Speaker 2: reason why I actually put together this episode, or I
Speaker 2: wanted to do this, is because when I was at
Speaker 2: the Ghost conference earlier this year in Seaside, Oregon, as
Speaker 2: you can listen to that two parter which came out
Speaker 2: last Halloween, I got a whole bunch of old magazines
Speaker 2: from this conspiracy talk radio host. Now I love collecting
Speaker 2: old magazines. I find them endlessly fascinating. We have this
Speaker 2: one from two thousand and three called MK Zine. Uh
Speaker 2: oh no. On the cover, we have a mind control,
Speaker 2: ritual abuse and political implications, the cult of national insecurity.
Speaker 2: I've not I've not flipped through this one super in
Speaker 2: depth before because I'm more taken aback by the other
Speaker 2: magazine I got from twenty twelve called Paranoia the Conspiracy Reader.
Speaker 2: On this cover, we have beyond MK Ultra Satellite Terrorism
Speaker 2: in America, science fiction or space faction. Oh no, and
Speaker 2: Dark Knight kill programming, which is obviously the one we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about here today. No is this
Speaker 2: the Sandy thing? No? No, this is this is this
Speaker 2: will briefly get into the Aurora mass shooting because this
Speaker 2: comes up in this in this article. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to get too into that's actually not the focus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm realizing, I'm confusing, my you're confusing.
Speaker 1: Your's actually no twelve mass shootings. No, there's that because
Speaker 1: there is actually a Alex Jones conspiracy that there was
Speaker 1: predictive programming in the Dark Knight returns or the Dark
Speaker 1: Knight rises.
Speaker 2: That's what this is going to be about. Oh okay, Okay, okay, yes,
Speaker 2: this is by discount Alex Jones, Clyde Lewis, who lives
Speaker 2: in power. Goddamn it. There's there's some pretty fun stuff
Speaker 2: in this issue, which we might get to later at
Speaker 2: the end to kind of close out all of our
Speaker 2: political mamba jomba that that we will actually get into
Speaker 2: as well. But I want to first look at how
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists read this movie and how they read the
Speaker 2: political aspects of this movie, because this movie is obviously
Speaker 2: very political if you've seen it, we will we will
Speaker 2: get into some of some of the stuff, but I
Speaker 2: want to I want to talk about how these conspiracy
Speaker 2: theorists saw this movie because the way that they do
Speaker 2: political analysis of media is very different from the way
Speaker 2: actual academics and people who take this stuff seriously do
Speaker 2: political analysis of media. And I think there's an interesting
Speaker 2: juxtaposition there. So this is this is the cover page
Speaker 2: for this story. The Storm is coming.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, saves one already off for bands start, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: all right, So I will read a little bit from
Speaker 3: this magazine and then we can kind of talk about
Speaker 3: it and then compare to uh to our our colleague
Speaker 3: David Graeber, as I was watching Christopher Nolans The Dark
Speaker 3: Knight Rises, I didn't know the political substance right away,
Speaker 3: which is a great way to start.
Speaker 4: This because the film is so obviously political. This this movie,
Speaker 4: like the Reeple whoever like this movie like starts with
Speaker 4: Bain literally saying he's going to occupy Wall Street and
Speaker 4: like seizing beflow.
Speaker 2: See this is Wall Street, this, this is this is
Speaker 2: what we will soon be debated. But anyway, I only
Speaker 2: saw it as a bit of predictive programming and a
Speaker 2: believable scenario as to how it might all begin. In
Speaker 2: The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman as Selena Kyle and Batman
Speaker 2: as Bruce Wayne are dancing at a socialight gathering when
Speaker 2: Selena purs in his ear. There's a storm coming, mister Wayne.
Speaker 2: As it turns out, The Dark Knight Rises is a
Speaker 2: damning indictment of the anti corporate movement and the threat
Speaker 2: of social chaos it poses. Despite rallying people around their
Speaker 2: deceased hero Harvey Dent, the rich are losing their grip
Speaker 2: on Gotham City. Antagonist Bain played by Tom Hardy, and
Speaker 2: his League of Shadows rise up against the bankers and
Speaker 2: the elite billionaires like Bruce Wayne and attack Wall Street,
Speaker 2: savagely beating the rich while promising the good people of
Speaker 2: Gotham that tomorrow you claim what is right for yours.
Speaker 2: Bain's organized violence against the wealthy evokes the reality of
Speaker 2: Occupy Wall Street, but Bain is no Robin Hood. He
Speaker 2: is plotting a massive transfer of wealth through stock exchange
Speaker 2: after inciting civil unrest and taking control of cutting age
Speaker 2: weapons technologies whose algorithm can be directly traced to Bruce Wayne,
Speaker 2: software which will avail them from the fortunes of the rich.
Speaker 2: As the war between the people and the police in
Speaker 2: the Dark Knight Rises indicates, the predictive programming of statistical
Speaker 2: data could very well undermine the one percent and send
Speaker 2: them into the streets where the disgruntled will eat them.
Speaker 2: Fraudulent practices will be exposed, identity theft, credit card fraud,
Speaker 2: securities fraud, and a number of other practices that the
Speaker 2: elite do in order to bilk the poor out of
Speaker 2: their money. This is one interesting thing about these sorts
Speaker 2: of kind of conspiracy radio guys, how they're both against
Speaker 2: the elite but also fundamentally also for the elite. Like
Speaker 2: this film is celebrated as being you know, like it's
Speaker 2: deriding the anti corporate occupy movement, which they hate because
Speaker 2: they hate they would dislike, you know, a left wing
Speaker 2: popular uprising. But in the end they actually prefer this
Speaker 2: corporate like illuminati to the actual alternative.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's it's interesting too, Like the ways that
Speaker 1: they think that, like rich people exploit people is through.
Speaker 2: Like credit card fraud is like that, that's how you
Speaker 2: think rich people get rich, Like really, like all right,
Speaker 2: we are almost at the end here. Christopher Nolan's epic
Speaker 2: sounds the alarm of the advent of an organized puppet
Speaker 2: master anarchy that plans to topple the government by exposing
Speaker 2: and gutting the fortunes of the elite. In real life,
Speaker 2: it might look like an occupy. In this reads sands
Speaker 2: and evil drums soundtrack pounding out the perennial battle between
Speaker 2: the haves and the have nots, while the dark Knight
Speaker 2: rises acknowledges the systemic inequality and injustice. It is not
Speaker 2: the rich, but anarchy that is the bane of Gotham's existence.
Speaker 2: Get It, Get it on. Nolan portrays the occupy anti
Speaker 2: hero bane as a demagogue, ultimately seeking to speculate on
Speaker 2: legitimate grievances and when Baine or hands the reigns of
Speaker 2: power over to the people, they really won't know what
Speaker 2: to do with it, which is something that never happens
Speaker 2: in the movie. By the way. Oh now this is
Speaker 2: at this point Clyde Lewis stops talking to the movie
Speaker 2: and instead it talks about this bit of predictive programming
Speaker 2: in the movie, which has which has a few kind
Speaker 2: of aspects. Then there is the intriguing subplot that seemingly
Speaker 2: seeped into reality on the eve of The Dark Knight
Speaker 2: Rise's release, that a software company takes its findings to
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court and exposes so called political heroes which
Speaker 2: would lead to riots and marauding shooters creating mass casualties.
Speaker 2: Imagine that intelligence is aware of the threat and issues
Speaker 2: a declassified memo from the Department of Homeland Security warning
Speaker 2: law enforcement that terrorists could be killing people in movie theaters.
Speaker 2: All that is needed is the catalyzing event, and immediately
Speaker 2: the police estate is activated. Flash riots take place in cities,
Speaker 2: civil unrest bruise under the radar. Truth becomes stranger than
Speaker 2: fiction as we examine the media stories surrounding the main
Speaker 2: story of the so called brainwashed low nut James Holmes
Speaker 2: opening fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, on
Speaker 2: July twenty, twenty twelve, and allegedly killing twelve and injuring
Speaker 2: fifty nine others. Interesting use of the word allegedly there
Speaker 2: in regarding regarding the people that were killed. Oh boy.
Speaker 2: And then the next sentence is really where things pick up.
Speaker 2: Not only is James Holmes connected to the neuroscience super
Speaker 2: Soldier Peak Soldier performance experiments, but his fa there works
Speaker 2: for a software company that analyzes fraud. So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to actually read the next bit because it is
Speaker 2: just the ramblings of conspiracy brained lunatic who thinks that
Speaker 2: because the shooter's dad was a neuroscientist, that therefore his
Speaker 2: son must have been this victim of a super soldier
Speaker 2: program to brainwash you to activate the police state once
Speaker 2: you receive a bit of predictive programming, and the other
Speaker 2: will I will get to one other paragraph and then
Speaker 2: will be done with this article, because there's really not
Speaker 2: much more substance quote. The chilling predictive programming looming behind
Speaker 2: the dark Knight Rises does not escape at least the
Speaker 2: unconscious of those watching. Bain, the leader of the fictional
Speaker 2: anarchist mob, decides to plant bombs in the Gotham underground,
Speaker 2: the final target being a stadium where the Mayor of
Speaker 2: Gotham attends a sports event. A young boy sings the
Speaker 2: national anthem with a British act scent. Bain pauses to
Speaker 2: listen to the distinct voice, then says Nott the gerberge brigand,
Speaker 2: after which the stadium is bombed and the mayor is
Speaker 2: killed in his reserved viewing box. Now, Clyde Lewis believes
Speaker 2: that this was a bit of predictive programming in order
Speaker 2: to prepare people for a mash casualty event at the
Speaker 2: London twenty twelve Olympics, which you might you might know
Speaker 2: did not happen. Was not yea was not a thing.
Speaker 2: But he is convinced that this is part of some
Speaker 2: predictive programming to either trigger this event, or cover up
Speaker 2: this event, or allude to this event again an event
Speaker 2: that did not happen. So that's you know, as as
Speaker 2: as we're going to be talking about, you know, how
Speaker 2: people view mass uprising and political movements in media. For
Speaker 2: the for the rest of this episode. This is how
Speaker 2: a certain sect of conservative does their own media analysis,
Speaker 2: which I think is a really is a really fun,
Speaker 2: really fun look into how their brains operate sorting a
Speaker 2: very political film into these into these predictive programming boxes.
Speaker 2: But we will we will return to talk about the
Speaker 2: Virgin David Graeber and the Chad Mark Fisher. After this
Speaker 2: ad break, we are back. I am. I am waiting
Speaker 2: watching for the rich to be thrown from their balconies
Speaker 2: as wealth as redistributed and a man in a very
Speaker 2: fancy coat takes over a sporting event. So I read
Speaker 2: almost every like serious political analysis of the doctment rices
Speaker 2: that I could find from fascists, from conservatives, from liberals,
Speaker 2: and from leftists and anarchists. Everyone agrees that this film
Speaker 2: has some very very obvious occupy parallels. We're going to
Speaker 2: get into how much of those are actually kind of
Speaker 2: built into the film's production versus how much of those
Speaker 2: are more or less coincidental. Now unfortunately for me, not
Speaker 2: actually unfortunately, because I actually do like Graber a lot,
Speaker 2: but his analysis was by far the best out of
Speaker 2: anybody else's in regards to this film. Unfortunately, the UH
Speaker 2: the schizoid, acid fueled chaos magic of Mark Fisher kind
Speaker 2: of paled in comparison to the precision of the anthropologist
Speaker 2: David Graeber in terms of their analysis of this film,
Speaker 2: but both of them had roughly the same opinion. Graber
Speaker 2: has just went into a lot more depth about how
Speaker 2: kind of this film actually politically operates. So I'll be
Speaker 2: mostly talking about in quoting from Graber, with a few
Speaker 2: things from Fisher kind of mixed in, and then we'll
Speaker 2: compare it to some stuff in Breitbart and The Daily
Speaker 2: Caller and a few other reactions from liberals who enjoyed
Speaker 2: the film too much and are are are unwilling to
Speaker 2: kind of seed this conservative ground to Nolan's twenty twelve film.
Speaker 2: And I think this is actually really interesting to talk
Speaker 2: about this film this year after the release of Oppenheimer,
Speaker 2: which I think is Nolan's probably most politically mature work.
Speaker 2: And he has definitely grown a lot in the past
Speaker 2: ten years as a filmmaker, at least in terms of
Speaker 2: his ability to get into politics in a way that
Speaker 2: is not just purely reactionary, where I think a lot
Speaker 2: of his early films are kind of absorbed by this reactionariness,
Speaker 2: and I think I think he has matured a decent bit,
Speaker 2: at least as as a political filmmaker. So we will
Speaker 2: start with a paragraph from Graber quote Christopher Nolan's Batman.
Speaker 2: The Dark Knight Rises, not the title of the film
Speaker 2: is really a piece of anti occupy propaganda. Christopher Nolan,
Speaker 2: the director, claims that the script is written before the
Speaker 2: movement even started, and that the famous scenes of the
Speaker 2: occupation of New York Gotham City were really inspired by
Speaker 2: Dickens's account of the French Revolution. This is probably true,
Speaker 2: but it's disingenuous. Everyone knows Hollywood scripts are continually rewritten
Speaker 2: while movies are in production, and when it comes to messaging,
Speaker 2: even details like precise wording or where a scene a
Speaker 2: shot can make all the difference. Then there's the fact
Speaker 2: that the villains actually do attack the stock Exchange. Still,
Speaker 2: it's precisely this ambition, the filmmaker's willingness to take on
Speaker 2: the great issues of the day that ruins the movie.
Speaker 2: So the script was written well before Occupy started. Shooting
Speaker 2: for Dark Knight Rises ended two months after the start
Speaker 2: of Occupy. Most of the shooting for the film took
Speaker 2: place before Occupy even happened, and now in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: it was widely misreported that the movie was going to
Speaker 2: be filming at Occupy itself, which started from like I
Speaker 2: think something in the La Times, which just got blown out,
Speaker 2: blown out of proportion. Was not true. They did shoot
Speaker 2: in New York, but they did not shoot at Occupy
Speaker 2: yeampubliccause you would have got run out probably Now, leading
Speaker 2: up to twenty eleven, both Nolan and what became Occupy
Speaker 2: were on very similar conceptual roads. They were just leading
Speaker 2: to two very different places. The Dark Knight released in
Speaker 2: the middle of the two thousand and eight financial crisis,
Speaker 2: right after the two thousand and eight writers strike ended,
Speaker 2: so there were a lot of class issues circling around
Speaker 2: in Nolan's bubble. So it made sense that Nolan's next
Speaker 2: Batman flick would tackle these things that rose to cultural
Speaker 2: prominence by the time he finished The more Patriot Act
Speaker 2: inspired at The Dark Knight. Now, Nolan and other writers
Speaker 2: obviously saw economic inequality and corruption seating people's anger and
Speaker 2: the rising possibility of civil unrest, and that was put
Speaker 2: into the script and then it just happened two months
Speaker 2: before they finished shooting. Now Nolan also took a lot
Speaker 2: from the Tale of Two Cities. This probably more than
Speaker 2: anything else. The Dark Knight rices is actually based on
Speaker 2: the Tale of Two Cities, a passage of which is
Speaker 2: read at the end of the film, And there's plenty
Speaker 2: of parallels to the Front Revolution, including the storming of Bestile.
Speaker 2: Actually two prison breaks inside the Dark Knight rises. There
Speaker 2: is the release of Black Eight, and then there's of
Speaker 2: course when Bruce Wayne escapes the giant hole in the
Speaker 2: ground and frees the other prisoners as well. So still,
Speaker 2: throughout all of these kind of class issues that Nolan
Speaker 2: is talking about in this film, he still shows a
Speaker 2: deep distrust of populism, or at the very least feared
Speaker 2: how easily it could be subverted in a charged financial climate.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read one quote from Fisher here. Quote.
Speaker 2: When Nolan revived the Batman franchise in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: the setting Gotham in the midst of an economic depression
Speaker 2: seemed like an achronistic reference to the superhero's origins in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties. Two thousand and eight, the Dark Knight
Speaker 2: was too early to register the impact of the financial crisis,
Speaker 2: but the Dark Knight Rises clearly attempts to respond to
Speaker 2: the two thousand and eight situation. The film isn't this
Speaker 2: simple conservative parable that the right wingers would like, But
Speaker 2: in the end it is a reactionary vision, which I
Speaker 2: think is the fairest way to look at this film.
Speaker 2: But now we're going to go deep into into Graber's analysis,
Speaker 2: which is by far, probably one of the best write
Speaker 2: ups on twentieth century superheroes and their role in American culture.
Speaker 1: It's my it's my favorite by far. This is the
Speaker 1: one that I always like push on people when people
Speaker 1: talk about Marvel.
Speaker 2: Because yes, no, absolutely, I mean this is this is
Speaker 2: an essay that you've referenced a lot on this show.
Speaker 2: I've been I've been going into a bit of a
Speaker 2: graver resurgence lately. I deeply enjoyed his essay on Puppets,
Speaker 2: which I'm going to respond to by writing an essay
Speaker 2: on why nihilists hate puppets and except the U and
Speaker 2: accept the adversarial framing of the police. But that is
Speaker 2: a digression. Now we will we will get back to
Speaker 2: Graber's essay in the New Inquiry titled Superposition.
Speaker 1: Oh the thing, the thing I want to mention here
Speaker 1: about this essays he wanted to oh god, what was that?
Speaker 1: He wanted to call it on Batman and the problem
Speaker 1: of constituent power, but they wouldn't let him do it.
Speaker 2: So it's well super position instead. This is that is
Speaker 2: certainly what it's actually about, constituent power. We will get
Speaker 2: to that very shortly. So quote. Superheroes are a product
Speaker 2: of their historical origins. Superman is a Depression era displaced
Speaker 2: to Iowa farmboy. Peter Parker, a product of the sixties,
Speaker 2: is a smartass, working class kid from Queens. Batman, the
Speaker 2: billionaire playboy, is the scion of the military industrial complex
Speaker 2: that was created just as he was at the beginning
Speaker 2: of World War Two. I will say the early origins
Speaker 2: of Batman are far divorced from that, but that is
Speaker 2: certainly what Batman has evolved into. Quote. These heroes are
Speaker 2: purely reactionary in a literal sense. They have no projects
Speaker 2: of their own, at least not in their roles as heroes.
Speaker 2: Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains,
Speaker 2: in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans
Speaker 2: and projects and ideas. Clearly we are supposed to at first,
Speaker 2: without constently realizing it, identify with the villains. After all,
Speaker 2: they're the ones having all the fun. Then, of course
Speaker 2: we feel guilty about it, reidentify with the hero and
Speaker 2: have even more fun watching the super ego clubbing the
Speaker 2: the Errant. It back into submission. This essay that Grab
Speaker 2: wrote is very Freudian. Craper makes a lot of freud
Speaker 2: references in this. I'm not gonna be getting into that
Speaker 2: as much, but superheroes are also very very Freudian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to I want to say one thing
Speaker 1: about this specific passage or specifically the the the way
Speaker 1: that you're encouraged identify with the hero and then like
Speaker 1: that gets like that gets subverted. You're supposed to come
Speaker 1: back to the hero.
Speaker 2: So this used to be a kind of so to
Speaker 2: identify with the villain and then yeah, and then come
Speaker 2: back back to the era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so and this is part this works as like
Speaker 1: a conserv ave project of conservative ideology, and this used
Speaker 1: to be like an implicit thing in these movies. And
Speaker 1: then you get to Black Panther, which is literally well
Speaker 1: literally they just like that. That is just the me,
Speaker 1: like like they they stopped being subtle and we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a guy who's an anti imperial list and then
Speaker 1: the ending reveal is, oh my god, he's actually evil.
Speaker 2: In terms of Marvel, I would say, yes, I think
Speaker 2: my two favorite superhero movies, which would be Tim Burton's
Speaker 2: Batman and Batman Returns, do the reverse of this where
Speaker 2: very obviously the villain is the main characters of both
Speaker 2: of those and Batman is really just a side character.
Speaker 2: And I think that was actually work better for this
Speaker 2: medium so much more. Oh yeah, but when it comes
Speaker 2: to Marvel, absolutely, yeah, yeah, they're just like openly doing this. Now.
Speaker 2: It's really sort of like, yeah, it was what the
Speaker 2: second one's about? Two? Yes, yes now. Grayber then talks
Speaker 2: about kind of what the project of these comic books
Speaker 2: were originally supposed to be and how that kind of
Speaker 2: continues on today into pop culture. Quote. Politically speaking, superhero
Speaker 2: comic books can seem pretty innocuous. If all a comic
Speaker 2: is trying to do is tell a bunch of adolescent
Speaker 2: boys that everyone has a certain desire for chaos and mayhem,
Speaker 2: but ultimately such desires need to be controlled, the implications
Speaker 2: would not seem especially dire, especially because the message still
Speaker 2: does carry a healthy dose of ambivalence. After all, the
Speaker 2: heroes of even the most rightly ining action movies seem
Speaker 2: to spend much of their time mashing up suburban shopping malls,
Speaker 2: something that many of us would like to do at
Speaker 2: some point in our lives. In the case of most
Speaker 2: comic book superheroes, however, the mayhem has an extremely conservative
Speaker 2: political implication. This is where we can start getting into
Speaker 2: God versus the people and using both of these things
Speaker 2: as constructs. Right, neither of these things really fully exist
Speaker 2: in a super material way. Both of these things are
Speaker 2: constructs quote unquote God, quote unquote the people. They both
Speaker 2: occupy a very similar ontological role, and this is something
Speaker 2: that Graper gets into quote any power capable of creating
Speaker 2: a system of law cannot itself be bound by them.
Speaker 2: In the Middle Ages, the solution was simple. The legal
Speaker 2: order was created either directly or indirectly by God. The English,
Speaker 2: American and French revolutions changed all that when they created
Speaker 2: the notion of popular sovereignty, declaring that the power once
Speaker 2: held by kings and by extension, God, is now held
Speaker 2: by an entity called the people. The people, however, are
Speaker 2: bound by the laws. They are able to create the
Speaker 2: laws through those revolutions themselves. But of course revolutions are
Speaker 2: acts of law breaking, so laws emerge from illegal activity.
Speaker 2: This creates a fundamental incoherence and the very idea of
Speaker 2: modern government, which assumes that the state has a monopoly
Speaker 2: on the legitimate use of violence. It's okay for police
Speaker 2: to use violence because they are enforcing the law. The
Speaker 2: law is legitimate because it's rooted in the constitution. The
Speaker 2: constitution is legitimate because it comes from the people. That
Speaker 2: people create the constitution by acts of illegal violence. It
Speaker 2: all circles back on itself. Quote. The obvious question then,
Speaker 2: is how does one tell the difference between the people
Speaker 2: and a mere rampaging mob, Which is a question that
Speaker 2: comes up all the time across the political spectrum, from
Speaker 2: anarchists to fascists to liberals. This is a debate that
Speaker 2: still goes on. Is without the law, what is the
Speaker 2: difference between the people and just a lynch mob. Now
Speaker 2: Graber doesn't really give an answer to this, because this
Speaker 2: doesn't really have an answer. This is a very vague question,
Speaker 2: and kind of, as Graver points out, it's vague by design. Quote.
Speaker 2: The response by mainstream, respectable opinion is to push this
Speaker 2: problem as far away as possible. The usual line is
Speaker 2: that the age of revolutions is over. Now we can
Speaker 2: change the constitution or legal standards by legal means. This
Speaker 2: of course means that the basic structures will never change, unquote.
Speaker 2: And this is where kind of Graver talks about how
Speaker 2: the role of tradition has totally taken over the legal
Speaker 2: implications of our system. Here, how the US, which was
Speaker 2: you know, at once progressive in its like in its
Speaker 2: electoral college and two party system, is now quite old
Speaker 2: fashioned compared to a lot of other you know, popular
Speaker 2: democratic countries. There's a good line quote we base the
Speaker 2: legitimacy of the whole system on the consent of the people,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that the only people who were ever
Speaker 2: really consulted on the matter lived over two hundred years
Speaker 2: ago in America at least, quote unquote, the people are
Speaker 2: long since dead. So now we have this situation that
Speaker 2: we have this idea of the legal order which comes
Speaker 2: from God, which then came from armed revolution, and now
Speaker 2: it just comes from this idea of sheer tradition. Now
Speaker 2: there's obviously a lot of American politicians who would want
Speaker 2: to give this power back to God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even then I was like, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to actually do that. Like, even governments that are very
Speaker 1: explicitly theocratic, like for example, like Oron, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: they still have elections and they still have this like
Speaker 1: the notion of popular sovereignty belonging to the people is
Speaker 1: very hard to dislodge unless you're going to straight up
Speaker 1: impose a monarchy. And even a lot of the monarchies
Speaker 1: now are like, you know, they follow the European thing
Speaker 1: of like claiming to like derive the authority from the
Speaker 1: people or something.
Speaker 2: Sure, but we also we also have people like like
Speaker 2: a Wall Michael Knowles, who are very openly like Castlic monarchists,
Speaker 2: who yeh, you're getting a lot of prominence in American culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's a like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: wish them bad luck.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is a that is a more moderate thing
Speaker 2: I wish upon them. So back to Graber, quote, for
Speaker 2: the radical left and the authoritarian right, the problem of
Speaker 2: constituent power is very much alive, but each takes dimetrically
Speaker 2: opposite approaches to the fundamental question of violence. Unquote. Now,
Speaker 2: I think this is something that has I'd be interested
Speaker 2: to see Graber revisit this idea now. Unfortunately that cannot
Speaker 2: be the case, because this question of violence has certainly
Speaker 2: evolved a lot in the ten years in which he
Speaker 2: wrote this, both in terms of how the alt right operates,
Speaker 2: but also also in terms of how the quote unquote
Speaker 2: left views violence as a necessary political tool. But getting
Speaker 2: into his analysis of the twentieth century, I think it
Speaker 2: is still fairly accurate quote. The left, chastised by the
Speaker 2: disasters of the twentieth century, has largely moved away from
Speaker 2: its older celebration of revolutionary violence, preferring nonviolent forms of resistance.
Speaker 2: Those who act in the name of something higher than
Speaker 2: the law can do so precisely because they don't act
Speaker 2: like a rampaging mob. For the right, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: and this has been true since the rise of fascism
Speaker 2: in the twenties, the very idea that there is something
Speaker 2: special about revolutionary violence, anything that makes it different from
Speaker 2: mere criminal violence, is so much self righteous twaddle. Violence
Speaker 2: is violence, but that doesn't mean a rampaging mob can't
Speaker 2: be the people, because violence is the real source of
Speaker 2: law and political order. This is why, as Walter Benjamin noted,
Speaker 2: we cannot help but admire the great criminal, because, as
Speaker 2: so many movie posters have put it, he makes his
Speaker 2: own law. After all, any criminal organization does inevitably begin
Speaker 2: developing its own, often quite elaborate set of internal laws.
Speaker 2: They have to as a way of controlling what would
Speaker 2: otherwise be completely random violence. From the right wing perspective,
Speaker 2: that's all law, ever, is. It is a means of
Speaker 2: controlling the very violence that it brings into being and
Speaker 2: through which it is ultimately enforced. Now, I think this
Speaker 2: is also true of even certain aspects of the left,
Speaker 2: where we have we don't call them laws, we might
Speaker 2: call them like community guidelines or something, but we often
Speaker 2: actually do this same process, especially in the anarchist kind
Speaker 2: of formations that try to replicate gang formations, like purposefully
Speaker 2: we get this this same essence that is developed in
Speaker 2: order to people might you know, reject these to the
Speaker 2: word police, but at least, you know, make some kind
Speaker 2: of structure that deems which violence is acceptable and which
Speaker 2: violence isn't. But back to Graber quote, this makes it
Speaker 2: easier to understand the often surprising affinity between criminals, criminal gangs,
Speaker 2: right wing political movements, and the armed representatives of the state. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: they speak the same language, they create their own rules
Speaker 2: on the basis of force. As a results, they typically
Speaker 2: share the same broad political sensibilities. In Athens nowadays, there's
Speaker 2: active collaboration between the crime bosses in poor immigrant neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: fascist gangs, and the police. In fact, in this case,
Speaker 2: it was clearly a political strategy. Faced with the prospect
Speaker 2: of popular uprisings against a right wing government, the police
Speaker 2: first withdrew protection from neighborhoods near the immigrant gangs, then
Speaker 2: started giving tacit support to the fascists for the far right.
Speaker 2: Then it is in that space where different violent forces
Speaker 2: operating outside of the legal order interact that new forms
Speaker 2: of power and hence of order can emerge. What does
Speaker 2: this have to do with costume superheroes. Well everything, because
Speaker 2: this is exactly the space that superheroes and supervillains also inhabit.
Speaker 2: An inherently fascist space inhabited only by gangsters would be dictators,
Speaker 2: police and thugs with endlessly blurring lines between them. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the cops are legalistics, sometimes they're corrupt. Sometimes the police
Speaker 2: themselves slip into vigilanteism. Sometimes they pursue the superhero, sometimes
Speaker 2: they look the other way. Sometimes they help villains and
Speaker 2: heroes a case a team up. The lines of force
Speaker 2: are always shifting. If anything new where to emerge, it
Speaker 2: could only be through such shifting forces. There's nothing else
Speaker 2: since in the DC and Marvel universes, neither God nor
Speaker 2: the people really exist. Now this is I think this
Speaker 2: is great hitting on something that really actually does hit
Speaker 2: at the core of this whole genre is that this
Speaker 2: is the genre which is really only inhabited by the
Speaker 2: uber mench as this like governing body. Right, there's there
Speaker 2: really isn't the God in any kind of meaningful way.
Speaker 2: There isn't the people in any kind of meaningful way.
Speaker 2: There is just the super individual, the uber minch himself
Speaker 2: is what inspired Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel to create Superman.
Speaker 2: Like that, this is this is the origin of this
Speaker 2: entire genre.
Speaker 1: By the way I want to I want to mention
Speaker 1: some some comic book nerds are gonna get very angry
Speaker 1: here and be.
Speaker 2: Like, Wow, there's some one above all.
Speaker 1: It's like okay, like God, like there are there is
Speaker 1: technically God in this right, but like God is the
Speaker 1: thing that you can beat the crap out of. Like
Speaker 1: it's not God in the sense of like God or
Speaker 1: dame authority is bla bla bla blahah, Like no, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing this is. That's not what
Speaker 1: we were talking about. Leave don't be pedanic in the comics,
Speaker 1: and I'm.
Speaker 2: Talking like as like a literary tradition. God does not
Speaker 2: operate as a significant role in these pieces of art
Speaker 2: like that that like that, like if you're gonna be
Speaker 2: looking at this genre as art for twelve year old boys,
Speaker 2: God does not operate in a specific crucial role in
Speaker 2: in this world's ontology.
Speaker 1: And it's funny too because one of the things that
Speaker 1: happens after this is there's there's a thing called there's
Speaker 1: a thing called Occupy Avengers, and they make this attempt
Speaker 1: to bring the people.
Speaker 2: It's it's a shit show. It is awful.
Speaker 1: It's so bad, like it's well, and it's interesting to
Speaker 1: you because like anytime they try to so that, that
Speaker 1: was an attempt to bring in like sort of the
Speaker 1: people as like a left wing constitutive body, and that
Speaker 1: was a disaster. They tried to do it, like they've
Speaker 1: tried to do it again, but the people exist as this.
Speaker 2: Sort of like very right wing like.
Speaker 1: Forced that is like as like this Bob that's constantly
Speaker 1: on the edge of sort of like destroying society whatever,
Speaker 1: and that's been like the most yeah, attempts to do it.
Speaker 2: Now, there are certainly attempts to bring in, like the
Speaker 2: American political system into various aspects of comics, whether that's
Speaker 2: like Lex Luthor being president, whether it's stuff like in
Speaker 2: the I know this stuff and I think it's called
Speaker 2: the Immortal Hulk has has has a lot of politics.
Speaker 2: But I do think Raper's kind of point here is
Speaker 2: still still still accurate and rings true. I have one
Speaker 2: other paragraph from Graper then we'll kind of get into
Speaker 2: a little bit more more discussion. Quote. Insofar as there
Speaker 2: is a potential for constituent power, then it can only
Speaker 2: come from purveyors of violence. The super villains and evil masterminds,
Speaker 2: when they are not merely indulging in random acts of terror,
Speaker 2: are always scheming of imposing a new world order of
Speaker 2: some kind or another. Surely, if Red Skull King the
Speaker 2: Conqueror or Doctor Doom did ever succeed in taking over
Speaker 2: the planet, there'd be lots of new laws created very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there was actually after he wrote this, there
Speaker 1: was an arc where doctor dun successfully conquered the entire universe,
Speaker 1: and he did, in fact do exactly that, which also
Speaker 1: one another w for common David Graeber w.
Speaker 2: Which also does not last very long because if if
Speaker 2: that happened for a while, it would make the story incredibly boring. Yeah,
Speaker 2: things doing things will always return to the status quo,
Speaker 2: which is also another crucial aspect of this genre. That
Speaker 2: things have to return to the status quo, which is
Speaker 2: something I will get to very shortly. Back to Greber quote,
Speaker 2: although their creator would doubtless not himself feel bounded by them,
Speaker 2: superheroes resist this logic. They do not wish to conquer
Speaker 2: the world. Now, this is where I'm gonna actually disagree
Speaker 2: slightly with Graber. He writes that superheroes quote remain parasitical
Speaker 2: off the villains, in the same way that police remain
Speaker 2: parasitical off criminals. Without them, they'd have no reason to exist. Now,
Speaker 2: I'd argue that the police actually create the spectral ca
Speaker 2: category of criminals to justify their own existence. Yeah, criminals
Speaker 2: didn't create the police. It's the other way around, right.
Speaker 2: You can look at you can look at like the
Speaker 2: way even the past few years, police have been lying
Speaker 2: about inflated crime rates to justify their own increased funding.
Speaker 2: And now, obviously people always broke social norms, but if
Speaker 2: you're looking at the actual, like the actual like political
Speaker 2: class of criminal and the political class of police, this
Speaker 2: is like it's like everyone has done a crime, right,
Speaker 2: Like police commit more crimes than the average person, but
Speaker 2: they do not often get called a criminal. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about like a very political class that we call criminal,
Speaker 2: and this is something that the police create. And curiously,
Speaker 2: in the same way, most superheroes also predate their respective supervillains,
Speaker 2: as it is the presence of the superhero that often
Speaker 2: births the adversarial supervillain. We see this across tons of
Speaker 2: superhero medias where they use the example of how the
Speaker 2: superhero predated the of these theatrical villains, and this is
Speaker 2: actually the superhero's fault, right, this is this, This happens in Batman,
Speaker 2: this happens in Spider Man. This is this is very
Speaker 2: very common. We even see this in something like The
Speaker 2: Boys or The Watchmen, both of which targets superheroes as
Speaker 2: a reactionary right wing tendency, which are our line of
Speaker 2: the police and military. We we literally have Homelander creating
Speaker 2: supervillains to justify his own existence, or super terrorists in
Speaker 2: the Watchman, the actual team predates the arrival of many
Speaker 2: super villains. So this, this is this is one one
Speaker 2: small nitpick I might I might say with this article,
Speaker 2: at least in terms of the like the the causality
Speaker 2: loop between superheroes and villains and criminals and police. Do
Speaker 2: you know what also pre dates all all of us,
Speaker 2: every every single person listening. We're gonna have like someone
Speaker 2: who's one hundred and the advertising industrial complex predates every
Speaker 2: single one of you fuckers. The surrealists burst this hell
Speaker 2: hole of h of advertising which tricks your mind via
Speaker 2: predictive programming, the ditch to buy this fucking food box. Okay,
Speaker 2: we are we are back. We have returned to the
Speaker 2: status quo of our podcast. Speaking, speaking of which we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about returning to the status quo. So
Speaker 2: what what superheroes and the police, which are very ontologically
Speaker 2: similar roles in a lot of cases, what their end
Speaker 2: project is is that they seek to maintain what is
Speaker 2: and then seek out and destroy anything that threatens to
Speaker 2: alter our civilizational fabric. They fundamentally are defenders of the
Speaker 2: status quo. That is, that is the that is the
Speaker 2: role of the superhero across almost all media. This is why,
Speaker 2: if you had the powers of Superman, why are you
Speaker 2: just saving cats from trees and instead not fundamentally reshaping
Speaker 2: the world in something that is better. Now, this is
Speaker 2: a question that gets tackled by people like Grant Morrison
Speaker 2: and Alan Moore. Is to they often give reasons for
Speaker 2: why someone shouldn't do that, but still, this is a
Speaker 2: fundamental aspect of this genre is that these guys never
Speaker 2: really have any generative political project. They are purely reactionary,
Speaker 2: and they purely are made to hold up the status
Speaker 2: quo and always return to this single point from which
Speaker 2: they emerged. Back to grayber quote, they remain defenders of
Speaker 2: a legal and political system which itself seems to have
Speaker 2: come out of nowhere, and which, however faulty or degraded,
Speaker 2: must be defended because the only alternative is so much worse.
Speaker 2: They aren't fascists. They're just ordinary, decent, super powerful people
Speaker 2: who inhabit a world in which fascism is the only
Speaker 2: political possibility. Why might we ask what a form of
Speaker 2: entertainment premised on such a peculiar notion of politics emerge
Speaker 2: in the early to mid twentieth century America at just
Speaker 2: around the time that actual fact was on the rise
Speaker 2: in Europe. Was it some kind of fantasy American equivalent?
Speaker 2: Not exactly. It's more that both fascism and superheroes were
Speaker 2: products of a similar historical predicament. What is the foundation
Speaker 2: of social order when one has exercised the very idea
Speaker 2: of revolution, and above all, what happens to the political imagination?
Speaker 2: So at this point Graver starts talking about how basically
Speaker 2: all power goes to the individual, but the individual who
Speaker 2: is embedded within a system. He discusses how the core
Speaker 2: audience for superhero comics are adolescent or pre adolescent, to
Speaker 2: white boys. At least that was in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: or thirties and forties, and roughly is still the case.
Speaker 2: It's that these comic books and now Marvel films, although
Speaker 2: unfortunately Marvel films have a much broader audience, but they
Speaker 2: are targeted to people who are at a point in
Speaker 2: their lives where they're like where they're likely to be
Speaker 2: both like the most imaginative and a little bit rebellious. Right,
Speaker 2: this is the twelve year old white Boy is the
Speaker 2: is the thing that that this is targeting. So they're
Speaker 2: both very imaginative, they're a little bit rebellious, but they're
Speaker 2: also being groomed to take on positions of power and
Speaker 2: authority in the world. Right, They're about to transition to
Speaker 2: being fathers, share of small business owners, middle management. Right.
Speaker 2: So this is what this genre is targeted towards. So
Speaker 2: what are they supposed to learn from these kind of
Speaker 2: endlessly repeating stories that are all very much the same story.
Speaker 2: One aspect is that imagination and rebellion will inevitably just
Speaker 2: lead to violence, right, And then second is like imagination
Speaker 2: and rebellion violence can actually be a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: but ultimately violence must be directed back against any overflow
Speaker 2: of imagination and rebellion or else everything will kind of
Speaker 2: go into chaos. These things have to be contained. So
Speaker 2: this is why superheroes are only allowed I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: gonna quote from Graper again quote their imagination can only
Speaker 2: be extended to the design of their clothes, their cars,
Speaker 2: maybe their home, and their various successories unquote. Basically, all
Speaker 2: of their imagination for the superhero is limited to commodities. Right.
Speaker 2: This is this is the fundamental aspect where that's the
Speaker 2: only acceptable outlet for your imagination. It's it's it's just
Speaker 2: with these, it's just with commodity fetishism like that. That's that,
Speaker 2: that's the only possible way. Back to grayber quote, it's
Speaker 2: in this sense that the logic of the superhero plot
Speaker 2: is profoundly, deeply conservative. Ultimately, the division between left and
Speaker 2: right sensibilities turns on one's attitude towards the imagination. For
Speaker 2: the left, imagination creativity and by extension, production, the power
Speaker 2: to bring new things and new social arrangements into being
Speaker 2: is always celebrated. It's the source of all real value
Speaker 2: in the world. For the right, it's dangerous and ultimately evil.
Speaker 2: The urge to create is also a destructive urge. But
Speaker 2: this is also what separates conservatives from fascists. Both agree
Speaker 2: that the imagination unleashed can only lead to violence and destruction.
Speaker 2: Conservatives wish to defend us against this possibility. Fascists wish
Speaker 2: to unleash it anyway. They aspired to be, as Hitler
Speaker 2: imagined himself, great artists painting with the minds, bloods, and
Speaker 2: sinews of humanity. I think this is a really good
Speaker 2: distinction between conservatives and fascists in terms of how they
Speaker 2: view creative violence. And to get back to superheroes, I
Speaker 2: think this medium, as Grab points out, has this kind
Speaker 2: of built in essence of a guilty pleasure. It revels
Speaker 2: in the absurdity of both the costumed heroes and villains,
Speaker 2: all while still targeting in imagination which is too expansive
Speaker 2: to outside the norm as being the ultimate crime. This
Speaker 2: guilty pleasure aspect even applies to the great superhero satires
Speaker 2: like The Watchmen and The Boys, which we applaud for
Speaker 2: poking and prodding at the conservative superhero all while still
Speaker 2: reveling and watching the outlandish antics on screen or on
Speaker 2: the page. Now. Graver even applies this guilty pleasure aspect
Speaker 2: into explaining the kind of the conservative backlash to superheroes
Speaker 2: in the forties and fifties, particularly with the book Seduction
Speaker 2: of the Innocent, which kind of viewed superheroes as this
Speaker 2: weirdly fetishistic kind of naughty impulse, which resulted in superheroes
Speaker 2: getting very sanitized and much more much more silly, much
Speaker 2: more campy, which all which resulted in the fantastic nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six Batman show. But but but still it kind
Speaker 2: of it kind of points at this this this guilty
Speaker 2: pleasure aspect. There's there's something inherently kind of naughty about
Speaker 2: about viewing this material. All right, we are we are
Speaker 2: nearing the end of Graber's analysis here. Quote. If the
Speaker 2: message was that rebellious imagination was okay as long as
Speaker 2: it was kept out of politics and simply confined to
Speaker 2: consumer choices like clothes, cars, and accessories, this had become
Speaker 2: the message that even executive Hollywood producers could easily get behind,
Speaker 2: which results in stuff like the nineteen sixty six Batman
Speaker 2: show and now leading us back into Christopher Nolan, Uh,
Speaker 2: we get we get this. This really good, really good
Speaker 2: paragraph from Graber. Quote. If the classic comic book is
Speaker 2: extensively political about mad Been trying to take over the world,
Speaker 2: but really psychological and personal, about overcoming the dangers of
Speaker 2: rebellious adolescents, but then ultimately political after all, then the
Speaker 2: new superhero movies are precisely the reverse. They are sensibly
Speaker 2: psychological and personal, but really political, but ultimately they go
Speaker 2: back to being psychological and personal. So this is me
Speaker 2: just ripping. Now let's take Batman begins, right, we have
Speaker 2: Racial Ghul, who operates in this psychological role of a
Speaker 2: second father for Bruce right after Bruce's training initiation to
Speaker 2: the League of Shadows. Only then does Race reveal his
Speaker 2: political goals to destroy Gotham and rid the world of corruption.
Speaker 2: So this is like the psychological is the first bit,
Speaker 2: then it's actually political, and then by the end it
Speaker 2: actually it goes all the way back into being truly psychological.
Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna I'm gonna read one paragraph from Graver,
Speaker 2: which is only because it has a very funny oh
Speaker 2: two word combination. In the ritual comics, we learned that
Speaker 2: racial Ghoul, a character introduced telling Lee in A nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, is in fact a zerzen Esque primitivist and
Speaker 2: no terrorist, determined to restore the balance of nature by
Speaker 2: reducing the Earth's human population by roughly ninety nine percent.
Speaker 2: None of the villains in any of the three movies
Speaker 2: want to rule the world. They don't wish to have
Speaker 2: power over others or to create new rules of any
Speaker 2: sort unquote. And I just really like the term Desi
Speaker 2: Esque primitives to describe the seventies racial Ghoul, which is
Speaker 2: a deeply a deeply brain poisoned way to describe a
Speaker 2: comic book likelier. John Zergeon is an eco anarchist writer
Speaker 2: who certain sects of kind of social anarchist theorists liked
Speaker 2: to make fun of.
Speaker 1: I think Great Graver's most devastating thing about the premi
Speaker 1: of this was calling them all Marxists, because they're the
Speaker 1: only people on earth who say it's a program, not
Speaker 1: a critique.
Speaker 2: He's very funny.
Speaker 1: I think like one of the things that's kind of
Speaker 1: going on here is like everyone who's writing about superhero
Speaker 1: movies is also trying to settle their own grudges a
Speaker 1: little bit, and oh absolutely grudges in this is like
Speaker 1: one of Graber's grudges that he was like like he
Speaker 1: was tear gased, like very very close to a lot
Speaker 1: of where these things were shot, like a month before.
Speaker 1: And his second grudge is that he had to spend
Speaker 1: the whole fucking nineties arguing with a bunch of primitivests.
Speaker 2: He's very annoying in it because two thousands. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that those those are his grudges going into And I
Speaker 2: do believe his his kind of framing of the Nolan
Speaker 2: supervillains of not really having any desire to like rule
Speaker 2: the world as ringing true. They they really only want
Speaker 2: to like wape the slate clean. I think a. Graber
Speaker 2: correctly identifies Nolan's supervillains as being primarily some form of anarchist,
Speaker 2: just a very peculiar type that really only exists in
Speaker 2: Nolan's imagination. Graber describes them as quote, they are the
Speaker 2: anarchists who believe that human nature is fundamentally evil and
Speaker 2: corrupt unquote. I think this has taken to its most
Speaker 2: obvious extent in the Dark Knight, with the Joker, who
Speaker 2: openly claims affiliation with anarchy and fetishizes destruction. His sick
Speaker 2: and twisted imagination is the real villain, even with the
Speaker 2: backdrop of the film's kind of deceptive war on terror framing. Now,
Speaker 2: between the production of The Dark Knight and The Dark
Speaker 2: Knight Rices, the funniest thing happened. The economy completely collapsed
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, and it wasn't due to
Speaker 2: an eco terrorist cult or a clown set on a
Speaker 2: total negation. Instead, it was bankers and finance managers and
Speaker 2: Wallstree bros. Who became the obvious villains in their quest
Speaker 2: to maintain the lie of endless growth. Millions of people
Speaker 2: lost their homes and source of income. So in response,
Speaker 2: there was a whole bunch of popular uprisings that took
Speaker 2: place all around the world. Graber lists regimes being toppled
Speaker 2: in the Middle East and people occupying squares everywhere from
Speaker 2: Cleveland to Karachi trying to create new forms of democracy.
Speaker 2: So there's this resurgence of constituent power, right, and this
Speaker 2: imagination driven kind of radical and largely non violent form
Speaker 2: of resistance at least hearing the States. And this is
Speaker 2: the sort of political situation which superhero universes can never
Speaker 2: really fully tackle because it can't exist within their own
Speaker 2: weird ontology. To quote Graver or quote in Nolan's world,
Speaker 2: something like occupy could only have been the product of
Speaker 2: some tiny group of ingenious manipulators who are really pursuing
Speaker 2: some secret agenda. Why does Bain wish to lead the
Speaker 2: people in a social revolution if he's just going to
Speaker 2: nuke them all in a few weeks anyway, it's anyone's guess.
Speaker 2: He claims that before you destroy someone first, he must
Speaker 2: give them hope. So is the message that utopian dreams
Speaker 2: can only lead to nihilistic violence presumably it's something like that,
Speaker 2: but it's singularly unconvincing, since the plan to kill everyone
Speaker 2: came first and the revolution was a decorative afterthought. In fact,
Speaker 2: what happens to the city can only possibly make sense
Speaker 2: as a material echo of what's been most important, what's
Speaker 2: happening in Bruce Wayne's tortured brain. Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 2: a good line, which, yes, yeah, because in the end,
Speaker 2: Batman and the police rise from the abyss. Literally in
Speaker 2: both cases, both of them are trapped underground. They both
Speaker 2: rise from underground join forces to battle the people occupying
Speaker 2: outside of the Gotham City Stock Exchange. Batman fixed his
Speaker 2: own death by disposing of this nuclear bomb, and Bruce
Speaker 2: Wayne gets to live happily in Florence with the criminal
Speaker 2: Selena Kyle. And then a new new phony martyr legend
Speaker 2: is born in the role of Batman, and people of
Speaker 2: Gotham are returned once again to the status quo. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read kind of Graver's final final kind of overview
Speaker 2: of the entirety of this message, right, like, of what
Speaker 2: this thing is really trying to convey, right quote, if
Speaker 2: they're supposed to be a take message from all of this,
Speaker 2: it must run something like, yes, the system is corrupt,
Speaker 2: but it's all we have anyway. Figures of authority can
Speaker 2: be trusted if they've first been chastised and endued terrible suffering.
Speaker 2: Normal police might let children die on the bridges, but
Speaker 2: the police who've been buried alive for weeks can employ violence. Legitimately,
Speaker 2: charity is much better than addressing structural problems. Any attempts
Speaker 2: to address to such structural problems, even through nonviolent civil disobedience,
Speaker 2: really is a form of violence, because that's all it
Speaker 2: could possibly be. Imaginative politics are inherently violent, and therefore
Speaker 2: there's nothing inappropriate If police respond by smashing protesters' heads
Speaker 2: repeatedly against the concrete as a response to occupy, this
Speaker 2: is nothing short of pathetic. When The Dark Knight came
Speaker 2: out to this in eight, there was much discussion over
Speaker 2: whether the whole thing was really just a vast metaphor
Speaker 2: for the War on Terror. How far is it okay
Speaker 2: for the good guys America obviously to adapt the bad
Speaker 2: Guy's methods. The filmmakers managed to respond to these issues
Speaker 2: and still produce a good movie. This is because the
Speaker 2: War on Terror actually was a battle of secret networks
Speaker 2: and manipulative spectacles. It began with a bomb and ended
Speaker 2: with an assassination. One can almost think of it as
Speaker 2: an attempt on both sides to actually enact a comic
Speaker 2: book version of the universe. Once real constituent power appeared
Speaker 2: on the scene, the universe shriveled into incoherence. Revolutions were
Speaker 2: sweeping the Middle East, and the US was still spending
Speaker 2: hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a ragtag bunch of
Speaker 2: seminary students in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for Nolan, for all of
Speaker 2: his manipulative powers, the same thing happened to his world
Speaker 2: when even the hint of real popular power arrived in
Speaker 2: New York. So that is kind of the essence of
Speaker 2: Graber's view of this movie. I think it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: This is a This is a pretty a pretty solid
Speaker 2: take on this. Now, there's obviously people who have opinions
Speaker 2: that are less good than this. I'm gonna read I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read this. This right up from from these two guys,
Speaker 2: Jeff Sprousse and Zach Buchemp, who argue that Batman represents
Speaker 2: this symbolic defense of liberal democracy, which I think is true,
Speaker 2: but the way that they go about their analysis I
Speaker 2: think is heavily flawed, because yes, I do think he
Speaker 2: represents a defensive liberal democracy. I just don't think that's
Speaker 2: necessarily a good thing. Yeah. So they talk about how
Speaker 2: fear is the kind of the core emotion across all
Speaker 2: of Nolan's Batman films. Right, we have in Batman begins
Speaker 2: fear and takes the form of Scarecrow, as you know,
Speaker 2: one of the main villains. But we also have this
Speaker 2: terror of there being a powerful criminal underworld which overwhelms
Speaker 2: the power of political and social intitutions that are meant
Speaker 2: to address such criminal underworlds. We have Batman, in his
Speaker 2: role is to fight injustice by turning quote fear against
Speaker 2: those who pray on the fearful right Batman is this
Speaker 2: terrifying symbol meant to restore the balance of fear between
Speaker 2: the anarchic private underworld and the gutless public spear to
Speaker 2: quote jeffin zax rite up quote. In The Dark Knight,
Speaker 2: Nolan continues his examination of the terror of anarchy, as
Speaker 2: well as the potential for the state and allied institutions
Speaker 2: to abuse their enormous power. Bain and each of Nolan's
Speaker 2: other villains attempt to exploit fear for ideological projects, revenge
Speaker 2: or simple fun. Batman aims to channel it to make
Speaker 2: his opponent's legitimate grievances subject for debate in an orderly system,
Speaker 2: rather than through violent resolution, which is not what Batman does.
Speaker 2: Thatman punches people. They were we watching the same movies
Speaker 2: quote to entrust Gotham to heroes with a face, as
Speaker 2: he says in The Dark Knight, and to democratize Batman
Speaker 2: as a symbol that can be embodied by anyone. It's
Speaker 2: not that it's not that Christopher Nolan is taking a
Speaker 2: side in our political debates. He's simply defending a particular
Speaker 2: system through which we address them. Which is nonsense of
Speaker 2: a writer from Forbes that this analysis is quach a
Speaker 2: beautiful rebuttal to those critics who viewed the film as
Speaker 2: fascistic or as a critique of left wing populism. Batman
Speaker 2: as the defender of liberal democracy, not of conservatism or liberalism,
Speaker 2: but the system itself from the forces of fear and chaos.
Speaker 2: Gotham as an examination of the frailties and pressure points
Speaker 2: that make this system weak in the face of the
Speaker 2: unexpected and uncontrollable. While there is indeed both praise for
Speaker 2: the role of civil society in these films, there's also
Speaker 2: a portrait of economic inequality that provides the brittleness needed
Speaker 2: for men like Bay to truly succeed. This is not
Speaker 2: a critique of the government or private sector as so
Speaker 2: much as it is a critique of the frailty and
Speaker 2: fragility of our system and its institutions and the power
Speaker 2: of symbols to combat this fragility, which is a deeply
Speaker 2: liberal analysis.
Speaker 1: We're just not even good, like I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the thing. This is the thing that really pisses me
Speaker 1: off about. So the cadre of liberal intellectuals that we've
Speaker 1: gotten in the last like twenty years is like, look,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be like unable to form coherent
Speaker 1: and that like it is. It is not a precept
Speaker 1: of liberal of like of like liberal intellectualism that you
Speaker 1: are unable to form a coherent argument or do any
Speaker 1: piece of analizamble like they used to be able to
Speaker 1: do this, and then at some point, like after the
Speaker 1: War on Terror, they just stopped. Now all we have
Speaker 1: is like matt Iglesias, and it's like these.
Speaker 2: I think this is what a greater talks about when
Speaker 2: there's like a fundamental incoherence, And I think this is
Speaker 2: really exemplified by like the structure of The Dark Knight,
Speaker 2: Rice is. It's a very messy film. The pacing is bad,
Speaker 2: the plot is very convoluted. It's it's so it's so plotting,
Speaker 2: which is often Nolan's kind of biggest failure as a
Speaker 2: as a filmmaker. In my opinion, it's it's it's very
Speaker 2: structurally just confusing, whereas The Dark Knight is actually pretty clear.
Speaker 2: It still has a few of those weird plot like
Speaker 2: super plotty elements, but overall it's it's it's it's much clearer.
Speaker 2: But in the wake of the War on Terror and
Speaker 2: then financial crash, there's this fundamental incoherence that kind of
Speaker 2: seeps into everything. I have two final takes to read.
Speaker 2: I know we are getting along here, but I think
Speaker 2: it's important to look at what the conservatives and the
Speaker 2: fascist rite actually said about this movie, beyond just the
Speaker 2: conspiracy rattled ramblings that we started this episode with. This
Speaker 2: is from The Daily Caller twenty twelve. The film is
Speaker 2: sympathetic to the concerns of the poor and points out
Speaker 2: that some who achieve wealth don't earn it legitimately. But
Speaker 2: these themes disappear as soon as the hulking terrorist Baine
Speaker 2: takes over Gotham City. All that criminals are released, rich
Speaker 2: people are executed in sham trials headed up by Baines's
Speaker 2: lunatic friends, Government officials and police officers are killed or captured.
Speaker 2: Bain claims that he is solving inequality by leveling the
Speaker 2: playing field, but his true plan is to perpetuate massive
Speaker 2: murder by setting off a nuclear bomb. In this way,
Speaker 2: viewers see a familiar story unfold, and that's reminiscent of
Speaker 2: communist and fascist revolutions in Russia, Germany, Cambodia, and North Korea.
Speaker 2: No matter how legitimate criticisms of the economic, political, and
Speaker 2: social order may be, any revolution that shatters the rule
Speaker 2: of law or eliminates the market entirely well necessarily resulted
Speaker 2: in greater inequality, suffering, and death.
Speaker 1: It's so funny you can tell how on the defensive
Speaker 1: they are, like in the wake of occupied because you
Speaker 1: have these people going like, wait, social inequality is real,
Speaker 1: but if you try to do anything to it, it's
Speaker 1: also so funny, and this is this is the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about like I think I think the fundamentally incoherence
Speaker 1: of it politically is that they've tried to graft the
Speaker 1: French Revolution onto Occupied because like, yes, yes, the two
Speaker 1: things that Occupied resolutely refused to do was one have
Speaker 1: a leader and two like do any kind of mass violence,
Speaker 1: like well, arguably outside of Oakland, but that wasn't even
Speaker 1: like what that was like in Oakland.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they fought the.
Speaker 1: Cops, like in New York, like not the only bank
Speaker 1: window in New York that was broken the entire time
Speaker 1: was I think it was a Bank of America window
Speaker 1: that was broken with a hop smash of protests head
Speaker 1: through it, like.
Speaker 2: That's it's that's why, That's why I really don't think
Speaker 2: the Dornet Rices isn't about Occupy. It just like it
Speaker 2: just isn't It arose from similar conditions that Occupy a
Speaker 2: rose from, and then in its final tunes of filming
Speaker 2: they did some parallels to Occupy, But it is much
Speaker 2: more about the French Revolution, especially in like Bean is
Speaker 2: like a vanguard, like he is a leader of this
Speaker 2: there is there's no but there's no such rule. And
Speaker 2: Occupy now during during the editing and final production of
Speaker 2: the film, obviously they realize that there is some obvious
Speaker 2: parallels here, which they do they did indulge in. But
Speaker 2: I mean most of the writing and the filming of
Speaker 2: this took place before occupy. I think it just came
Speaker 2: from a very similar social place. Yeah. Also, though even
Speaker 2: as a French Revolution thing, it's incoherent.
Speaker 1: Because it's not like it's not like rose Fier got
Speaker 1: in there and was like this is all a secret
Speaker 1: plot executing beggars, like it doesn't make any sense. It's
Speaker 1: like that's why it has that fundamental incoherence, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one othergraph from the from the Daily Caller. Then
Speaker 1: we will read something from Breitbart, like the communist parties
Speaker 1: of real authoritarian states. Bain and his Cohurtz represent a
Speaker 1: new ruling class that pretends to care about equality and liberation,
Speaker 1: but in practice resorts to oppression and extreme violence. The
Speaker 1: film's good guys are Batman and the police officers of Gotham,
Speaker 1: who bravely go to war to prevent Baine's genocide.
Speaker 2: These guys have these guys.
Speaker 1: Have never had more than two thoughts like consecutively. It's
Speaker 1: surely impressive.
Speaker 2: If the political message of The Darkness Rises seems muddled,
Speaker 2: which it does, it's because real life problems can't be
Speaker 2: solved with Batman. There is no well funded superhero with
Speaker 2: a glut of fancy gadgets and moral incruptibility. No, a
Speaker 2: core Parties films is that Batman is morally corrupt. This
Speaker 2: is sorry. Nor are there villains in America as damning
Speaker 2: and transparently evil is Baine. The film doesn't offer much
Speaker 2: right there. The film doesn't offer much of a practical
Speaker 2: answer for what The film doesn't offer much of a
Speaker 2: practical answer for what to do about inequality, social unrest
Speaker 2: or terrorism. Great great work, daily collar God. Now where
Speaker 2: do they find these guys?
Speaker 1: I guess they find these guys from failed actors. So
Speaker 1: makes sense.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned Bush as being an obvious villain. Well,
Speaker 2: Breve Part disagrees. Obviously, Bright Part disagrees. Here is Here's
Speaker 2: here's our final take on on The Dark Knight Rises.
Speaker 2: Quote Bain, a hulk of a man burning with resentment
Speaker 2: against a society whose only provocation is being prosperous, generous, welcoming,
Speaker 2: and content instead of miserable like him. That is not
Speaker 2: Bain's gripes, but anyway, in Gotham sewers Bain recor fruits
Speaker 2: those like himself, the insecure thumbsuckers, raging with a sense
Speaker 2: of entitlement, desperate to justify their own laziness and failure,
Speaker 2: and to flaunt a false sense of superiority through oppression, violence, terror,
Speaker 2: and ultimately total and complete destruction As expected, The Dark
Speaker 2: Night Rises is a love letter to Gotham City, its
Speaker 2: flawed but ultimately decent people, its industry and generosity, all
Speaker 2: of which are by products of liberty, free markets, and capitalism.
Speaker 2: In other words. In other words, just as The Dark
Speaker 2: Knight was a touching tribute to an embattled George W.
Speaker 2: Bush who chose to be seen as a villain in
Speaker 2: order to be the hero, Rises is a love letter
Speaker 2: to an imperfect America that, in the end always does
Speaker 2: the right thing. And Nolan loves the American people, the
Speaker 2: wealthy producers who are more often than not trickled down
Speaker 2: their hard earned winnings, the workaday folks who keep our
Speaker 2: world turning a financial system worth saving because the benefits
Speaker 2: it's all, And those everyday warriors who offered their lives
Speaker 2: for the greater good with every punch of a clock.
Speaker 2: Nolan's love for this country is without qualifiers, and is
Speaker 2: symbolized and all of its unqualified sincerity in the form
Speaker 2: of a beautiful young child sweetly singing a complete version
Speaker 2: of the Star Spangled Banner, just before Occupy attempts to
Speaker 2: fulfill its horrific vision of what equality really means. Nolan, sorry,
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 1: Like this is this is one passage, this whole thing is.
Speaker 1: It's such a great explanation if you weren't around for it,
Speaker 1: for how the Trump guys just completely blew aside all
Speaker 1: of the old George Bush coalition because all of the
Speaker 1: George Bush guys were fucking like this. They all talked
Speaker 1: like this. It was this like absolutely insufferable. Like since
Speaker 1: it's completely completely sincere nonsense, it's crazy. It's still all
Speaker 1: this shit because it.
Speaker 2: Fundamentally misunderstands Nolan's a filmmaker. He is purposely juxtaposing a
Speaker 2: British child singing the Star Spangled Banner at a sporting
Speaker 2: event with this destruction inherent to America. He's he's, he is,
Speaker 2: He's making these things kind of combat each other like
Speaker 2: this is this is actually pretty good framing, and this
Speaker 2: guy fundamentally misunderstands this. Nolan's genius is a filmmakers. Well,
Speaker 2: Nolan's genius as a filmmaker is, without question, the pacing,
Speaker 2: the editing, the performances, the humanity of the duc Knight
Speaker 2: Rises will be talked about for decades, which it doesn't.
Speaker 2: This is by far one of his worst films. This
Speaker 2: is widely seen as one of one of his worst films.
Speaker 2: The editing, pacing, performances are all heavily criticized. This is
Speaker 2: actually like a bad movie. I do like the juxtaposition
Speaker 2: of the star spangled banner at the sporting event with
Speaker 2: this like spectacle of destruction. I think that plays very well,
Speaker 2: but like that is this is come on, come on,
Speaker 2: like these are the people who and this is this
Speaker 2: is the thing. This is this.
Speaker 1: This is why the sort of trumpest like the sort
Speaker 1: of sort of like ironic detachment stuff became so popular,
Speaker 1: because these are the people who listen to Born in
Speaker 1: the USA and are like this rules this rue like
Speaker 1: this is this is this is about how America is good.
Speaker 1: And it's just like like these people they have nothing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing going on with them. There's just just like
Speaker 1: there's nothing going on in their heads. They don't have
Speaker 1: any ideas whatsoever. They just have that like they just
Speaker 1: have this like reflexive flag worship stuff and that it's awful.
Speaker 1: It's it's like the whole fucking American right was like this.
Speaker 1: It's just like yeah, and then the South TRUMPI has
Speaker 1: just destroyed them because this is a really good example
Speaker 1: of nothing of the conservative political conditions that led to
Speaker 1: populace to takeover right.
Speaker 2: We have all of these guys who are lamb poooning
Speaker 2: populism and have this very like deeply sincere neoconservative outlook
Speaker 2: which then got all got decimated in three years by
Speaker 2: Trump's very kind of basic childish rhetoric. Just just blew
Speaker 2: this stuff out of the water. I think this is
Speaker 2: all this stuff is a very fascinating snapshot into the
Speaker 2: politics of ten years ago. I know there's a lot
Speaker 2: of zoomers who listened to this who may not has
Speaker 2: been as politically kind of engaged in twenty twelve. All
Speaker 2: this stuff is a very good look at that. And
Speaker 2: I know this is too long, but the final final
Speaker 2: thing to just laugh at. We will return, as as
Speaker 2: all good superhero stories do, return to the status quo
Speaker 2: of my Paranoia Conspiracy Reader magazine, which also had a
Speaker 2: review for The Cabin in the Woods movie, which it
Speaker 2: thinks is a secret Illuminati message about how there's secretly
Speaker 2: control rooms that are that are like navigating your entire life.
Speaker 2: There's like people in control rooms who are like controlling
Speaker 2: every spect of your life. The Cabin in Woods was
Speaker 2: an ironic admission of this pretty good, Pretty good. Our
Speaker 2: technico credit controllers and manipulators are crass and evil pretenders,
Speaker 2: able to get off only spectacles of pain and torture.
Speaker 2: Pretty funny. There's some quite racist stuff in the middle,
Speaker 2: which I'm is not not even gonna mention. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the everything. It was like. People were really racist.
Speaker 2: People are still really racist. People are still quite racist.
Speaker 1: Shit that like like you could say ship back, like
Speaker 1: like people who are ostensibly liberals would say shit back
Speaker 1: then that like would get you like thrown off a building.
Speaker 2: Today we have an article by someone who says, quote,
Speaker 2: my father worked with Jimmy Carter on the submarine one
Speaker 2: Killer and chased flying saucers for a Project blue book,
Speaker 2: which is a fascinating article. Then it talks it also
Speaker 2: talks about here that a cern is building a matrix
Speaker 2: like you know, like the movie The Matrix. Fucking God,
Speaker 2: we have one. When you do an episode about about
Speaker 2: the cern Concira, we should this the silliest thing. We
Speaker 2: really should do an episode about certain conspiracies, because yeah,
Speaker 2: they are they are certainly quite amusing. There's one other
Speaker 2: aspect in this article that I wanted to mention. Here's
Speaker 2: discerns to Oh here it is here? What it is?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 2: It is in the Alistair Crowley section of the article. No,
Speaker 2: oh no, you know, I think we've actually suffered enough.
Speaker 2: I will I will let you imagine what this guy
Speaker 2: what this guy says it about Alistair Crowley, Hitler and
Speaker 2: BIFA Vendetta. Oh no, so I'll let you imagine what
Speaker 2: that says. Because we've gone on too long. I' I'm
Speaker 2: happy you were able to join us in our in
Speaker 2: our deep dive into the twenty twelve disaster. The Dark
Speaker 2: Knight Rice is not very good movie. And instead, if
Speaker 2: you want to watch a Batman film about politics and Christmas,
Speaker 2: just watch Batman Returns. That's what I'm doing this week,
Speaker 2: So get your friends together. Watch Danny DeVito vomit black
Speaker 2: Doo for two hours. Watch Michelle Feifer's Catwoman in a
Speaker 2: latex suit. It is much much better. So that does
Speaker 2: it for us today here. It could happen here. I
Speaker 2: hope we learned a little bit something about constituent power
Speaker 2: police superheroes and how CERN is building a matrix and
Speaker 2: this predictive programming targeting the next Winter Olympics. It could
Speaker 2: happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 4: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 4: find sources for It could Happen here, Updated monthly at
Speaker 4: coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.