Batman Begins and the Importance of Ideology
A good movie needs a good villain; most villains, however, are simply too good. There is a certain quality of evil that every villain worth his cold heart must cultivate. We have all seen some disappointing bad-guys: the generic Evil Overlord—wreathed in the darkness of his own unpaid electric bill—plotting the demise of civilization as we know it; or your cold and sexy witch who has bent her will on genocide for all things cute, cuddly or green; or one more second-in-line-to-the-throne Prime Minister with his pre-mortem Royal Funeral Arrangements. But can you really take these people seriously?
I mean, if you take away the Masks and the Magic, the Minions and the Murky lighting and you’re left with a Mass of Mediocre Menaces whose Absurd Obsession with Absolute Authority Only Announces their Immaturity. These villains act like adolescents: they think that the universe revolves around the wishes and become unreasonably violent or sullen if their desires are thwarted. Some experts have connected this type of villain with a specific genre of arrested psychological development induced by a severe trauma involving cute, furry woodland creature (which explains why the villains have such an aversion to the “happiness ethos”.) Mature adults realize that absolute power is an illusion, even if you theoretically have absolute authority. If nothing else, this realization is confirmed when they are trying to reason with their adolescent firstborn.
I have no respect those sad, stereotyped bad-guys, which is why I was so pleased with Batman Begins. It is a gentle solace for those of us who oppose mediocre movie menaces. Most movies have a single villain, but in Batman you can pick your favorite. Corrupt cops and bureaucrats, a mad scientist, an Italian crime lord, and a secret society of ninjas. This movie dregs deep into the decades of the Batman tradition and has let loose a Legion of matured malevolence. A hero hardly knows where to begin.
My personal favorite is Dr. Crane/ Scarecrow. I don’t know whether it is calm detached superiority, or his strangely androgynous features, but there is something unsettling, something almost human about him. The alarming objectivity he displays in his horrific work is a demonic icon depicting Amoral Science. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, he transforms into Scarecrow (“I’m sorry, Dr. Crane isn’t in right now…”) and triumphantly returns as Fear on an Apocalyptic horse (or the Headless Horseman, both seem to have been implied). For darkness reveals the truth of his character which was hidden behind his suit, his glasses, and the sterile florescent light of the “normal” world.
But the award for best evil character (alone or in a group) goes to the League of Shadows. And for good reason. Keep your dime-a-dozen demagogues, or your wizards seeking their Object of Power. You see, we are no longer simply dealing with a despot out to enforce his whims upon a populace. No; hell reaches deeper. For there is one Name that humbles the hearts of tyrants, and draws fear and prayers from the souls of those who lived through the 20th century; that Name is Ideology.
Stalin’s reign brought slavery upon the lives of hundreds of thousands—but Stalin died. Communism did not die. Racial Superiority (Nationalism, Imperialism, Racism) has crossed border to border, age to age: the German Jews, the African Americans, the civil genocide in Africa, the Japanese conquest in Asia…that sad list goes on and on. History has yet to tell us what Capitalism (and her bastard-child Hedonism) will do to Western Society. Could a group do intelligentsia (who also happen to be ninjas) plan to destroy a city based on an Oriental-Gnostic Jihad for Justice? Nothing about that seems odd to me.
The danger of Ideology is that it is so seductive. “There—Utopia! Paradise! If only the (Bourgeoisie, Jews, Fill in the blank) weren’t in the way.” So the Ideologists take the next logical step: remove the "problem." What they don’t notice at the time is that they are also amputating themselves.
Humanity is filled with all sorts of paradoxical opposites: freedom and commitment, consistency and diversity, justice and mercy, community and individuality. Each one is vastly important, yet they must be emphatically balanced. This need for balance leads to all sorts of compromises, inefficiency, trial and error, cooperation, antagonism, failures, and a host of other things some people like to call Human Life but other people call a terrible nuisance.
Ideology always chooses one, never two. Communism promises equality, and forfeits its citizen’s individuality. Pure capitalism affords freedom but in the end it can’t cost-justify commitment or fidelity. Justice could be attained if mercy was despised. Not regarding the Creator’s design, the Ideology cuts off a parts of Humanity: a leg here, a brain lobe there, or a tongue perhaps. How does it have the strength to mar Humanity? That is the second part of an Ideology: it always has a Heroic Power forcing action into a crippled Humanity. This century that power is supplied by factories, or modern warfare and weapons, or mass media. What seemed like such a seductive answer to a host of human problems only succeeded in making Humanity a monster that is progressively disintegrating by its own super-human strength.
I would propose that there is an even deeper reason why Ideology is so seductive. The temptation of Ideology is not that it’s an easy answer; the temptation is that it is a difficult answer. It is something that demands man’s whole heart, mind, and will. When people stop worshiping God, they don’t stop worshiping. The foolish ones worship money, pleasure and the illusion of authority. The very cleaver and disciplined ones worship justice, or equality, or national security, or freedom. Ideology grows from Idolology.
This is why a good villain is possibly more important than a good hero. Without these deep, subtle evils, the hero is simply playing a colorful game of “Save the Day,” while an Ideology silently enslaves the years.
Christmas Eve, and things have finally slowed down enough for me to look at the blog again. I’ve been home for a little over a week now, but time passes different when I’m at home than at school. There are so many daily concerns which make the time pass fast, but at a lazy, unstructured pace. The past week has been a constant string of visiting and receiving visits, playing with the little ones and cleaning up after them, family meals and doing the dishes, carols, wrapping gifts, enough Christmas lights to rival the winter sky—I’ve once again fallen in love with domestic life. 
