What Do You Do with a Problem Like the Joker: Bringing Order to Gotham City

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Joker on a Joy Ride
Joker on a Joy Ride
If you’ve seen the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, then you might already be in a debate about whether or not TDK was commenting on the War on Terror. See the NYT post here:
Batman and the War on Terror

I’m finding the discussion interesting. I’m not sure that I agree that Batman and Co. are supporting a Bush doctrine of the Need for wiretapping, or taking away rights for the good of the city. At least they restore the rights to the people after Joker is caught. But I think there’s a nice cross-section of theories on how to restore Order in the movie—or what to do with chaos.

Gotham is overrun with crime, and in TDK, it seems that you can’t trust anyone. But Gotham needs Order and obviously Batman is not providing it completely—witness the opening sequence where there are pseudo-Batmans and other criminals afoot. The problem of Order is complicated by each group out-robbing each other and all of our assets are about to go to China. There is a semblance of order before the Joker shows up: Druglords and Mafia, who keep each other in check through greed and force. But Joker fights against all order–he is the Chaos Bringer–so he’s bad news for anyone hoping to install order–good and bad alike.

There are four ways to bring order to Gotham presented in the film, and each method gets weighed by the audience:

1. A strong police force, or Rule of Enforcement, represented by Lieutenant, later Commissioner, Gordon and his police. For all his police force, the problem is individual cops–and they can be manipulated through bribes, blackmail, or threats. One leak and the baddies always know where the cops will be. Just to enforce laws does nothing to prevent them from being broken if the enforcers can be corrupted. And, in this movie, cops can be corrupted, and cops can also be empowered to the point that they are the problem.

2. A strong vigilante, or Rule of the Individual, represented by Batman. Batman can only do so much as one man. The problem, as TDK shows, is that vigilanteism promotes more vigilantes who are outside the law (or who take the law into their own hands). Vigilantes do not stop crime in the end. Because they have no legal restraints, as cops do, and because they are often “unnamed heroes” they have the potential to be both hired guns and loose cannons–causing as much damage as they seek to stop, or promoting themselves and their own code over the rule of law. Batman has a strong sense of justice, but Joker is able to chip away at this by pointing out that Batman is as much “outside” the society as he is, and likely to remain that way. The public, Joker implies, can be turned against him. Vigilantes can be turned easily–and Batman shows us that he is often one step away from legitimizing killing as a way to stop the chaos.

3. A strong Judicial system represented by Harvey Dent, or Rule of Law. This is the movie’s strongest case, really, about how to make order from chaos. Bring those responsible under the rule of law and laws will decide their fate. Laws take the morality or culpability of individual decisions away, and make them corporate decisions. So a death penalty is dictated by law, not by a vigilante or a cop, and therefore the decision has no human face. Why is this important? In giving order to chaos, order has to be corporately decided because each individual’s order is wildly different. And laws can’t be corrupted–they can’t be bribed. They can be twisted a bit, but there are ways to untwist them. For Dent, good people can reshape society. They can create order where once there was chaos. They become the superheroes. The problem that the Joker offers in the movie is that every road to order comes through a person eventually–and people can be corrupted. Dent’s idealism blinds him to his own possible corruption. By taking down Harvey Dent, Joker proves that order is, yeah, human-led and therefore fallible, never a constant, and always subject to human variables. Good can reshape society—as long as those good people shaping it are happy. Make Dent crazy, and craziness will reshape society. Joker destroys the hope of Order through Rule of Law. Batman and Gordon know this, which leads to their pact in the end to lie. If Rule of Law is proven to be corruptible– through Dent, then people’s faith will be lost.

4. Chance is the only order, represented by Two-Face. Two Face believes order is decided by an outside force. We don’t affect our reality (not as Harvey Dent believed we could–that good people could actually be in control of reshaping society). Chance and fate affect our reality and one must succumb to their rule. Well, that’s one step up from Chaos, maybe. At least you can hope that the outside force is good. What’s interesting is that Dent had always used a two-headed coin and then lied to other people when he flipped it, making them think it had two sides. In reality, Dent always got what he wanted by making other people believe the coin had a fair chance of landing either way. The accident, scarring the coin, actually makes the coin a real game for Dent because he can’t control the outcome anymore. Unfortunately, there is no controlling an outside force like God, or Fate. So, this method only works if you’re mad. Even God allows for police and rule of law.

The Joker has no Order, but he rightly believes that Order is constructed by people. He delights in proving that every person is corruptible, that at their heart there is disorder. He uses human compassion to manipulate the cops, the crowds, Batman–turning human compassion into favoritism or elitism–making us choose who we love, who is worthy to live. We don’t want to see that side of ourselves and the Joker lives to make us confront that clown in the mirror. Personally I love the message the movie gives in regards to the two barges, one full of Gothamites, one full of prisoners–that no one is worthy to destroy. Not even, in the end, the Joker.

What then brings Order to Gotham City?

A scapegoat, and an illusion of Rule of Law prevailing. Now that’s interesting. To reboot the Rule of Law, Batman has to absorb all the negative attention and criticism for the way things are in the city, and the cops have to chase him, declare war on him. And the corrupt Harvey Dent must be forgiven, and polished up to serve as Batman’s opposite; he must absorb all the heroism. (Dead, Dent can’t argue the point.) Illusion then is what brings some order, hopefully, to the chaos of Gotham—illusion that Dent caught the Joker, illusion that Batman is a villain, illusion that Rule of Law is stable and secure. This will calm the public.

It isn’t, then, CRIME we’re after, nor is it CRIMINALS. It is the PUBLIC who needs to be assured that things are safe–and the criminals afraid–to establish order, it seems. As in the first movie, Nolan talks about FEAR and how it drives us to “become” criminals. Fear causes men and women to kill or be killed in the Haunted Gotham that the Scarecrow sets up in Batman Begins. And Fear nearly takes its toll here, though the impulse for changing people seems to be more about corruption–about our moral compasses–and how we feel about each other. Joker exploits that. But giving people the illusion of Justice served, and of a criminal to chase (the Batman) who is responsible for everything bad, gives an illusion of safety and security from which order can come–since individuals will find less need to become criminals.

It’s the illusion of established order–that there is now a good and a bad– that re-establishes order.

Well, these are my thoughts. What are yours?

Rocket Fuel is Relaunching

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The City of Whitehorse is launching a new time and space for Rocket Fuel, the science fiction and fantasy writing group for teens, this year. Watch for times and place here, and in the leisure guide. We’re hoping to have it after school at a Whitehorse school, once a week. We’ll be exploring more ways to write science fiction and fantasy and doing exercises that build writing skills. I think there’s gonna be food too! So, food, science fiction, and other people who like science fiction–all right after school. How can this be a bad thing? No more will you have to give up Saturdays or evenings! I’ll add the blurb from the Leisure Guide when we have all the places and times set!

Tell your friends–we’d love to have 10-16 people, or more. So, if you know anyone who wants to write their own science fiction and fantasy stories and read and comment on other people’s work— invite them. We’d love to have enthusiastic learners and writers!

Novel Writing for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers

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The Little Girl and her Giant Crocodile, Mauro Lira
The Little Girl and her Giant Crocodile, Mauro Lira
Well, I found a way to offer a companion course through the City of Whitehorse for anyone interested in working on a science fiction/ fantasy novel. It’ll be programmed just like the Yukon College course, with everyone joining up with NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) in November, but all the examples and focus of the course will be on sci-fi/fantasy writing.

In fact, we’ll be picking up some tips from some of the oldest fantasy epics: Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, Journey to the West, the Ramayana, Beowulf, 1001 Nights, the Bible….

There’s a companion lecture series on what people might enjoy about those epics today, offered to the general public, called We All Began With Fantasy that will begin in September. It’ll be broader than just fantasy writing in the lectures, but I’m hoping to make a case for the relevancy of fantasy today–since it plays a prominent role in most world cultures.

The course will be 12 weeks long and start in late September. We need 8 people to have it make and can hold up to 16. If you are interested give the City of Whitehorse some contact through their Leisure Guide in the Fall or contact Mia Lee at mia.lee@whitehorse.ca and ask for times and ways to sign up. Come write that novel this Fall.

Wall-E makes the New York Times Opinions Page

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I love it when Science Fiction is taken seriously. I just saw Wall-E, the Pixar film, and it is truly wonderful. Frank Rich wrote a great column about how much more this film is saying than either candidate running for President. Check out his column–and check out the film.

Wall-E for President

Wall-E, like most Pixar films, is written well–playing on two tracks simultaneously: one for kids, one for adults. Wall-E and Eve could be a silent film–but it’s also the same comedy that fuels other Pixar short films, where there is usually no dialogue, and also has E.T. and the droids of Star Wars to thank for their non-verbal comedy.

The film does have great characters–again, I am shocked by how well minor characters are portrayed. Full arcs for the Captain of this floating Cruise Ship; for the two cruise passengers; for the cleaning robot; for AutoPilot. The heroes are well drawn too–ultimately sacrificing what they wanted for each other. When I got to that moment–call me a writing geek–but I smiled because it was just thing to complete these main character arcs–that sacrifice, especially in a love story. It had an O. Henry moment for a minute.

But in this age where all we can do is stare down a variety of Tunnels to Apocalypse, science fiction is telling the tales we are listening to. We’re either looking at a life changed by climate change, mass consumerism, lack of exercise…etc. Wall-E serves as a cautionary tale slipped in through the side door of a romantic comedy. When you get to the line “We have to get off our butts and do something” you know that the film has nudged you just a little. But it’s okay because the story is so compelling. It’s not a story written to tell a message; it’s a story that happens to have a message.

That’s a profound difference.

New Course at Yukon College in Novel Writing

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Check out the new course I’m teaching at Yukon College for the Fall and Spring. If you’ve wanted to write a novel but haven’t put a first draft together then come in the Fall to write with us–we’ll be hooking up with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which collects thousands of people online who are all writing a novel’s first draft. If nothing else, this course will kickstart your novel writing!

If you’ve already got a first draft, join us in the Winter of 2009 for the Workshop part of the course, where we’ll be revising, editing and showing each other our chapters, writing synopses, chapter outlines, and such, all to work on the novel we’ve now got in our hands.

Just click on the Introduction to Novel Writing link above to go to the page and learn more.

Join us in September or January! We’ll be a Novel-Writing Battalion meets Support Group. Monday nights, starting in September.

When Writers Come Together

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Perhaps it was my nostalgia for Clarion, or maybe it was the weekend I had in Calgary that all the science fiction writers had their weekend of writing.  All I know is that for two and a half hours, our group wrote.  We set up in the library and worked on our laptops and I was happy.

It’s funny, the communal aspects of writing.  Why was I so excited to do this?  Why was it so much fun to be in a room writing with others?  Why is it so hard sometimes doing this alone?

Because I’m a social creature perhaps.  Being by myself is very very difficult—professions that make me have to be away from people are hard on me socially.  But I loved having them in the room, so I could do both at once.  I’m suggesting we do these on a regular basis–so once a month right now, but maybe more later….

Anyway, it was good to do.  I worked on a short story, though it took a turn I’ve decided to abandon–too dark for me.  I got the willies just writing about it and it overpowered my story….

Still, the exercise is good–and I plan on doing this when I offer my novel writing course in the fall.

Nostalgia, thy name is Clarion

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It was this time last year when I had the greatest experience of my science fiction writing life. I’m talking Clarion’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, held in San Diego (really La Jolla) at UCSD (2007).

I was in the middle of a move out of the country—a summer I had little money to spare–but I threw a quarter of what I had into this workshop, in hopes of learning new technique, honing my writing skills and re-invigorating my desire to write science fiction and fantasy. I had no idea what I was in for…

It was 6 weeks of writing–completely devoted to writing and learning from 18 other writers like myself, who had come to pick up skills too, and from 6 writing teachers, all published writers in their fields: Greg Frost, Jeff and Ann Vandermeer (the editor of Weird Tales), Karen Joy Fowler, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. We were visited by Stan Robinson, Vernor Vinge, and got to go to the ComiCon held in San Diego.

The core part of it –despite all the superheroes of writing around us–was the group of us, living and writing together in the dorms at UCSD. It was six weeks of hard work, but I look back and I think it was the best work I have ever had—creating. It was electric. Everyone was creating fantastic stories. I’m serious. People were on a level I have never been around–and they were pumping out stories, and what was great about it and allowed me to keep my head up above water, is that everyone else had rough stories too—we were at the same level, AND we were interested in each others ideas (not at all the competitive nature of grad school–colleagues actually cared about your success–I saw no jealousy.). And we learned from each other.

We also bonded as a family. We drank blueberry beer, and badly colored Vitamin water, we visited a haunted tree at night, we walked to the beach, we had squirt gun wars, drew mystic chalk circles on the sidewalk, we lived and breathed science fiction and fantasy writing, we lived a dream for six weeks, really….

I don’t know if I will ever have an experience like that in my life again. But it was beautiful, and taught me a great deal. Some of it I’m still sifting through. Some of it I absorbed and don’t know I gained it when I did…other stuff I can quote to you.

If you ever have a chance to go to Clarion (and I favor San Diego, though Clarion West is probably good, and other workshops have good things too, I’m sure) then scrimp, save, get your significant other’s permission to be encamped along these hills of light, where the joy of writing science fiction and fantasy is shared by 18 other people, and your teachers, where you are encouraged to write. Where others will look at your stuff with honesty and say, “This part here is miracle. This part here is crapola.” You will not regret it–though you have sold all you have, buy Clarion….

I can tell you truthfully, that I still talk to Clarion folks (not as much as I want) and still visit when I can, though once you get to the outer boonies of the Yukon it is hard. And call. And everyone is still writing and publishing.

Often I go back to that time and think now, i wish i had six weeks and 18 people breathing down my neck! Try it out for yourself.

Being Chosen: a motif that resonates deep

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Just thinking about Kung Fu Panda again. I remember as I was watching and we were coming to the part of the story where Ooglay, the Turtle, must choose the Dragon Warrior, that I smiled.

Something about that motif always pleases me. It’s a universal desire: being chosen. And not just being chosen, say, in Kickball. I’m talking about a Wise Person, someone well respected, choosing you and telling you that you have abilities far beyond what you thought you did.

Rare these days to find a well-respected Wise Person anymore–wisdom is suspect. Authority is suspect. Certainly supernatural hunches and Predestination is suspect. But we all want it, secretly. For someone to assure us that we will matter. That what we can do is far beyond what we thought we could do. And we really want someone to tell us we have that potential.

I’ve seen the motif in other films, and from really old fairy tales. But it works: Willie Wonka knows that Charlie has the potential to be great; some coach believes in some losing player; the wizard chooses the peasant boy or girl.

I don’t know why I want to talk about it. It just made me happy to see that motif in this film. It plucked that string again in me and resonated deep–that someone might see through my bullshit, through my mistakes, through my attempts, and know what I could do, know what I will do, and bet on me.

Kiss the frog, be kind to the bear, love the beast–it’s all the same. When stories use that motif it resonates with most readers–as long as we can see that the bumbling pre-hero is good and honest and trying, even if he makes a lot of mistakes along the way.

How Kung Fu Panda Gets Fantasy Writing Right

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Brilliantly concevied and executed, Kung Fu Panda soars as a Fantasy compared to The Forbidden Kingdom. And essentially, they have the same plot.

Take a fan of martial arts and make him the only one who can stop the big villain in a martial arts film.

The post-modernism of films is actually a delight to see–how “fans” are being incorporated into the films they love as plot and character. I’m sure it’s done well other places (most notably Galaxy Quest which takes actors from a show and puts them in reality, but also has a place for fans of the show as heroes too) but KFP does it with style, owing, I think, in no small part to the casting of Jack Black who has played a fan before: School of Rock and Tenacious D come to mind as well as Be Kind Rewind. So naturally, he’s cast as an adoring fan of Kung Fu–and of the Five heroes that protect the city. When he’s picked as the next Dragon Warrior, he has to learn how to become a warrior. Here’s how I think they did it, the writers, and Black, to make it more believable, more fun, and a better overall handling of the same plot from The Forbidden Kingdom.

1. Po’s training is designed for Po. First this is a comedy, so the training is a parody of Martial Arts films, and a parody of the newbie getting quick-trained by the Master. But Jason’s training in TFK is just standard training with looks of disapproval and lots of complaining and then an unbelievable transformation… Po has to be trained (SPOILER!!) using food–his desire. His training reflects his personality–so in a way, we learn more about Po through his training. For Jason in TFK, his training has no reflection of either his masters or him, and it is merely a trudge to get him to the plot. For KFP, Po’s training furthers the plot and the Po we see after training is still Po–vulnerable, quirky, just better with movees that have little style but are fun to watch…

2. Both have to believe in themselves, but Po offers the more believable moments of doubt and overcoming that doubt.

3. Jackie Chan is in both of these movies playing a Monkey like person–strange. But KFP knows that they keep the dialogue to a minimum on Jackie. And Dustin Hoffman as Shifu is a much more layered character than Jackie Chan’s mentor in TFK. There is a troubled past, some disappointment, a reason he’s gruff, and the promise that he has a character arc too….

4. Other characters have arcs as well–Tigress, Oogway the Turtle, Tai Lung the villain–they all have their pasts, and how they are connected, and how they affect each other. Yes, the crane, viper and monkey and mantis have little to no growth, but by far KFP handles more rounded characters than TFK even tried to.

5. Though we are told that Po will save the day, we don’t know how–and we really never do until he does it. We can’t see that Tai Lung can be stopped, until we watch how it happens. This is brilliant as there is only a little foreshadowing, and most of the time we are discovering Po’s potential as he does.

6. Jason in TFK is a big fan of Martial Arts Films, and Po is the fan of the Five. In KFP, they play up the fandom aspect, making it a part of Po’s character, and why he has an inferiority complex to go with his Hero Worship. Jason rarely exhibits his fanboyness–he’s too busy being a stock character, and never realizing what makes him unique–cause no writer has written it for him. he has two or three jokes in the middle of his training related to his knowledge of a certain move. But the film could have capitalized on Jason’s worship and film knowledge, but after the opening sequence, Jason could have been any kid. With Po, we know his worship is what drives the film…he believes in these heroes, wants to be one of them, is devastated when they don’t like him, and runs when he is burdened with doing what his heroes could not do.

7. Po is likeable. Unlike Jason in TFK, there are no insurmountable character flaws in Po–he just has self-doubt, a low self-image, a bit overweight. But he wants to be better. He tries, he never gives up, and he is thwarted more than once from getting what he wants. He has a dad that loves him, but a future in fast food that many of us would identify with. Jason has that awful moment when he takes the thugs directly to the old man and lets them beat him up…. viewers never recover from that. At least, I didn’t. It was unnecessary.

So, further comparisons might be done on the two movies, but I was thrilled with Panda. And yeah, it was cartoon—but cartoons should never be able to do more with plot or character than live action. In fact, if they do, it really shows the shallowness and deficit of the live action. Cartoons can do more with style and camera shots–and making animals out of everyone–but plot and character aren’t necessarily strengthened with cartoon. So, KFP didn’t win over TFK because of animation—but because the writing was SO much better.