Dreaming 5GW

Made the note on Twitter.

Here’s the review that particularly catches my eye: “The Dark Knight”, rated with an A by Emanuel Levy, who goes on for some length but writes this nugget:

The story’s most dangerous enemy is Batman’s infamous nemesis, the Joker, the maniacal, remorseless fiend. In this tale, the Joker is the ultimate arch-villain, as much an icon as the Dark Knight is, presenting the filmmakers the challenge to exploring an utterly perverse character with a distorted point of view (actually more of a philosophy of life). Perhaps following the tradition of villains in German expressionist cinema, this Joker represents the most extreme form of anarchist, a force of chaos, a purposeless criminal who is not motivated by money and greed; in one the film’s most disturbing scenes, he [burns] down a mountain of cash. A massively destructive force, he is truly unsettling, appearing out of nowhere, when he is least expected and taking great delight in his murderous nature.

As interpreted by the inventive actor Heath Ledger (in his last screen role), the Joker is colorful, outrageous, and dangerous, devoted [to] the spectacle and excess for their own sake. Ledger throws himself completely, in looks, body, and soul to the exploration of the multiple effects he can have as a solitary figure on the entire population, the scary ways in which he upsets the social order, the specific means he uses to take the citizens’ rules, values, ethics, and humanity and turn them on themselves.

Bent on destruction for destruction’s sake, including at a later point self-destruction, the Joker is a man devoid of any norms or principles, a formidable foe defined by total lack of morality. This element posits the Joker in direct opposition to Batman, a man who has a very strict moral code for what he will and will not do, which the Joker uses to his own selfish advantage. Under the Joker’s escalating influence, though, Batman needs to reassess his philosophy, make sure that in chasing an ultra monster, he doesn’t succumb to the temptation of becoming a monster himself.

Then there are these nuggets written by Todd Gilchrist at IGN.com, in “The Dark Knight Review”:

Meanwhile, a new adversary named The Joker (Heath Ledger) proves particularly dangerous because he seeks not only to advance the cause of Gotham’s underworld, but obliterate the foundations of liberty and order that Batman protects.

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More important than this, however, is the idea that Batman is not just a guy in a suit, but a symbol and there are people in the film - most notably The Joker - who want to destroy that symbol. While Batman’s identity remains secret and his motives unknown to Gothamites, he represents hope in a city that has little to spare and embodies a pursuit of justice - and further, a code of behavior - that quite literally threatens these criminals’ way of life. By throwing Gotham into chaos and testing the limits to which Batman holds himself, The Joker is not merely plying death and destruction but willfully destroying the philosophical foundations of organized society.

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While all of this sounds lofty - and it is - Nolan examines these themes in beautifully human terms, projecting his examination of “the hero” into the hearts and minds of his characters. Wayne, less outwardly conflicted than in Batman Begins, sees Dent’s ascension as an opportunity to stop playing dress up and reunite with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) - the one woman who knows his secret. Meanwhile, Dent and his sometimes partner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) look at Batman’s existence as a good thing, a fulcrum against which they can enforce the law and sometimes bend rules to accomplish loftier goals. And, of course, The Joker wants to destroy all of that, albeit less because of some law of movie villainy than because he sees his existence as the necessary antithesis - or perhaps ultimate extension - of the murky morality of Batman’s brand of justice. When, after all, was the last time a movie criminal wasn’t merely mad, but had a deeper ideological motivation for his dastardly deeds?

And this from Peter Travers in Rolling Stone:

If there’s a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Network, sign me up. Ledger’s Joker has no gray areas — he’s all rampaging id. Watch him crash a party and circle Rachel, a woman torn between Bale’s Bruce (she knows he’s Batman) and Eckhart’s DA, another lover she has to share with his civic duty. “Hello, beautiful,” says the Joker, sniffing Rachel like a feral beast. He’s right when he compares himself to a dog chasing a car: The chase is all. The Joker’s sadism is limitless, and the masochistic delight he takes in being punched and bloodied to a pulp would shame the Marquis de Sade. “I choose chaos,” says the Joker, and those words sum up what’s at stake in The Dark Knight.

The Joker wants Batman to choose chaos as well. He knows humanity is what you lose while you’re busy making plans to gain power.

Over at Phatic Communion, I once posted an article on 5GW, “There Are Times, Admittedly,” in which I also considered a Joker, but this one was from W.H.Auden’s essay “The Joker in the Pack” from his book of essays, The Dyer’s Hand. (My favorite book of essays, next to Montaigne’s.) In the essay, Auden used Iago from Shakespeare’s play Othello to give a picture of the practical joker in action. Iago’s actions are intended to give him a better understanding of Othello. I.e., the manipulation he practices is not entirely meant to destroy Othello but rather to reduce Othello to an object for study, only:

Iago’s treatment of Othello conforms to Bacon’s definition of scientific enquiry as putting Nature to the Question. If a member of the audience were to interrupt the play and ask him: “What are you doing?” could not Iago answer with a boyish giggle, “Nothing. I’m only trying to find out what Othello is really like”? And we must admit that his experiment is highly successful. By the end of the play he does know the scientific truth about the object to which he has reduced Othello. That is what makes his parting shot, “What you know, you know,” so terrifying for, by then, Othello has become a thing, incapable of knowing anything.

In describing the practical joker (as archetype), Auden zooms in on the sinister nature of playing practical jokes:

The satisfaction of the practical joker is the look of astonishment on the faces of others when they learn that all the time they were convinced that they were thinking and acting on their own initiative, they were actually the puppets of another’s will. Thus, though his jokes may be harmless in themselves and extremely funny, there is something slightly sinister about every practical joker, for they betray him as someone who likes to play God behind the scenes. Unlike the ordinary ambitious man who strives for a dominant position in public and enjoys giving orders and seeing others obey them, the practical joker desires to make others obey him without being aware of his existence until the moment of his theophany when he says: “Behold the God whose puppets you have been and behold, he does not look like a god but is a human being just like yourselves.” The success of a practical joker depends upon his accurate estimate of the weaknesses of others, their ignorances, their social reflexes, their unquestioned presuppositions, their obsessive desires, and even the most harmless practical joke is an expression of the joker’s contempt for those he deceives.

Given the persistent mention of “manipulation” in discussion on Dreaming 5GW, the above is worthy of consideration, if only because the near-godlike powers of manipulation through an extreme number of domains is often assumed to not only be possible but desirable. However, since maintaining secrecy will be key in such efforts, the 5GW manipulator would not quite fit the practical joker archetype.

The 4GW warrior — and the Global Guerrilla, which is not necessarily the same thing as a 4GW warrior — quite possibly would fit the archetype.

In context with The Dark Knight’s particular Joker, Auden’s practical joker might share one other thing in common. Following the last consideration of contempt for victims, Auden expands his view to consider what the practical joker is to himself:

But, in most cases, behind the joker’s contempt for others lies something else, a feeling of self-insufficiency, of a self lacking in authentic feelings and desires of its own. The normal human being may have a fantastic notion of himself, but he believes in it; he thinks he knows who he is and what he wants so that he demands recognition by others of the value he puts upon himself and must inform others of what he desires if they are to satisfy them.

But the self of the practical joker is unrelated to his joke. He manipulates others but, when he finally reveals his identity, his victims learn nothing about his nature, only something about their own; they know how it was possible for them to be deceived but not why he chose to deceive them. The only answer that any practical joker can give to the question: “Why did you do this?” is Iago’s: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.”

In fooling others, it cannot be said that the practical joker satisfies any concrete desire of his nature; he has only demonstrated the weaknesses of others and all he can now do, once he has revealed his existence, is to bow and retire from the stage. He is only related to others, that is, so long as they are unaware of his existence; once they are made aware of it, he cannot fool them again, and the relation is broken off.

The practical joker despises his victims, but at the same time he envies them because their desires, however childish and mistaken, are real to them, whereas he has no desire which he can call his own. His goal, to make game of others, makes his existence absolutely dependent upon theirs; when he is alone, he is a nullity. Iago’s self-description, I am not what I am, is correct and the negation of the Divine I am that I am. If the word motive is given its normal meaning of a positive purpose of the self like sex, money, glory, etc., then the practical joker is certainly driven, like a gambler, to his activity, but the drive is negative, a fear of lacking a concrete self, of being nobody. In any practical joker to whom playing such jokes is a passion, there is always an element of malice, a projection of his self-hatred onto others, and in the ultimate case of the absolute practical joker, this is projected onto all created things.

These considerations were brought back to my mind when reading Peter Travers’ review. Near the opening, Travers gives this nugget:

How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil — expected to do battle — decide instead to get it on and dance. “I don’t want to kill you,” Heath Ledger’s psycho Joker tells Christian Bale’s stalwart Batman. “You complete me.” Don’t buy the tease. He means it.

That’s extremely close to Auden’s description of the practical joker and his goal: “His goal, to make game of others, makes his existence absolutely dependent upon theirs; when he is alone, he is a nullity.”

Addendum:  I had written in the Twit that TDK could “accelerate” the GG process, on the basis of a few very subtle hints — mostly meaning at the time that more than one reviewer commented on how the ideas, images, etc., of the movie, and particularly the Joker, stayed in their minds after the viewing.  Essientally I wonder if the Joker, as epitome, may really become an icon for GG for those so inclined, even those not quite on that side of the fence.  The movie could serve as a kind of primary memetic hub, via which disparate individuals and groups are inspired toward global guerrillaism of one type or another.  Of course, so much depends on the entire movie, which I have not seen.  I do think however that the case is already being made to make Heath Ledger an iconic star of the James Dean variety; more than one reviewer suggests an Oscar for the performance.

Filed in The Vault and tagged 4GW, Global Guerrillas, Movies, The Joker, W.H.Auden