Sunday, July 22, 2012

Occupy Gotham City

Occupy Chicago,
October, 2011
"We say abolish the prison system--amnesty for all!" Crystal Vance Guerra, Occupy el Barrio.

"Gotham, take control... take control of your city. Behold, the instrument of your liberation!" Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

I just got home from seeing The Dark Knight Rises. I highly recommend it, particularly if you dislike the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Little Marathon Pundit and I were among the roughly 80 people who viewed the film at the 300 person capacity theater in Niles, Illinois. Were they scared off by the horrific shootings in Aurora, Colorado? Perhaps.

This post isn't meant to be a full-blown review, I'm just going to analyze it from a political perspective.

Occupy Chicago, April 7, 2012
As they say in the movie business...imagine a world...where a sadistic group of thugs takes over a city in the name of The People. A stock exchange is violently attacked, and the police and the well-off are the new villains. Prison inmates become heroes. There are Stalinesque show trials, presided over by an intellectual. (I'm not saying who.) The Catwoman, when she feels guilty over being in someone's ransacked house, is consoled by her friend who explains "this is everyone's home."

Yes, this storyline seems to more Black Bloc anarchist movement-incited as opposed to Occupy, but as I've remarked before, it's difficult to see where one ends and the other begins.

Chicago Black Bloc "F the Police"
march,  May 15, 2012
And of course there is no way this movie could have been inspired by the excesses of Occupy, principal photography began months before Occupy Wall Street forced itself on the world. However, the Black Bloc has been around much longer.

And yes, the film's director, Christopher Nolan, denies that this movie or of his other Batman flicks are political.

Still...you have to wonder.

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