Holy Hypocrisy, Batman

Last updated on: July 16, 2012 at 10:21 pm by Jeremy Lott

Holy Hypocrisy, Batman 2012-07-16T22:21:28-07:00 Jeremy Lott

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

How many of you are excited about the new Batman movie this week? I’m getting there. Wasn’t sure I’d see the first showing but then I found myself Saturday night watching The Dark Knight in a friend’s backyard.

He has a whole projector set-up and so we disassembled it in his basement and put it back together outside. Slices of light that ran just over each side of the screen were finally stopped by a grove of evergreen trees in the background.

I hereby confidently predict that Dark Knight Rises will shatter the current sales record for opening day box office. The number to beat is just north of $91 million for the last Harry Potter flick. I’m guessing… $110 million.

This would be welcome news because Christopher Nolan is a big budget director who takes ideas seriously. That was obvious with Inception, but Dark Knight was no less of an idea driven movie, as I argued at the time in this Guardian piece.

The article, which pissed off a few cranky lefty Brits, made the case that the film was one long brief for hypocrisy. It got a little too bogged down with rehashing plot, so let me see if I can distill it for you here.

Hypocrisy derives from acting. The hypocrite pretends to be something that he is not, for the sake of projecting a certain appearance.

This can go a couple of ways. Some people pretend to be better than they are. We usually think of specifically these people as hypocrites. A smaller subset of people pretend to be worse. These people are also hypocrites but Mark Shea has suggested the term eupocrites (“good hypocrites”) as a way of distinguishing them. Both Batman and Bruce Wayne are eupocrites. Harvey Dent, when he is still a good guy, is a hypocrite.

The Joker is an anti-hypocrite. The dead serious purpose at the root of his murderous antics is to expose the polite contradictions that hold society together. And he thinks it’s worth burning all of the Gotham to the ground, if necessary, to do so.

There’s a lot more to the piece than that, so go read it, then see The Dark Knight, then get tickets for the new movie. For the midnight showing, if you want. I’ve just bought my tickets.

joker

Previous Post

July 15, 2012

In Need of Some Restraint

Next Post

July 16, 2012 Laffy Blood Taffy

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1600 24 Frames Per Second Adventures in Catholicism Evergreen Gay Old Time Hammockonomics Lit Crit Lit Life Paulistas Philosophy Press Crit PSA Q&A Sermons and Soda Water Shop Talk Silly Season Sounds Stupid Stupid People Uncategorized Warm Bucket Brigade Wine and Women Wisdom for the Ages

Select a Month April 2015 February 2015 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Ecclesiastes" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gatherer Prophet Teacher or Preacher Judge