Dark and Stormy

It never was a comic book film. It was always the Jack Nicholson kind of movie that I thought we'd grown up away from in the 1980s. The thing that makes it deep is our cognitive bias — expecting a comic book but getting a dark and melancholy, violent, perhaps horrific piece of powerful cinema — this makes us impute extra value to it.

It is not your grandfather's Gothamite avenger, with his chirpy sidekick. It is the psychic residue of a hero who got darker and darker in his own little circle of hell as his writers Reichenbached him to a farewell.

The only versions of him I really liked, of all his latter-day incarnations, were Neil Gaiman's caped crusader and Jeph Loeb's madcap running-around-after-all-the-villains version. These were perhaps the furthest anyone should have taken the character as far as dark and stormy were concerned.

I've left out, of course, Frank Miller's on-the-verge-of-retirement classic version. I loved that one. But it's since become conflated with the no-man-is-an-island clock-ticking Hitchcock version. See first paragraph. Gah.

Batman Returns

I was brought up partly on Kipling by my father's judicious intervention, as I've mentioned before. (It brings to mind an old British cartoon which I've always found amusing, but I digress.)

It occurs to me that because of this kind of paternal education, I actually came across the word 'Batman' a long time before I came across the Caped Crusader in comics or on TV. A batman is a commissioned officer's orderly — his runner, valet, and general dogsbody all in one. There's also a Batman province in Turkey and all kinds of other Batmen (Batmans?), including one that has a mass of 16.4 metric tons.

This kind of education has an odd effect on the young. It makes them grow up with a terrible urge to make funny associations that nobody else will get, laugh like a maniac at a particularly pleasing but abstruse joke, and ask riddles with answers that will either elicit groans or require explanations (this latter then makes the riddle lose its humour and die).

All this came to mind when my 7-year-old niece started asking me riddles from one of those '1001 Riddles' jokebooks (like 'jukebox' but with different vowel sounds in it). We had a lot of fun inventing better answers than those provided. My niece approves of that kind of thing. She has said to me before, "Uncle, you're a tricky man!"

She means it in a good sense, I think. At least, she laughs a lot when saying it.

The Greater Trumps: (22) The Accuser

Here is a high mountain or perhaps, by trick of perspective, a deep abyss. Whatever it is, it enthrones a bat-winged entity of gross but compelling aspect. Around it are strewn chained human beings engaged in all manner of debauchery. This is an unpleasant image altogether.

In Christian symbology, the Accuser, le Diable, il Diavolo, el Diablo - this is Satan, the proud angel who was thrown out of Heaven. In pagan symbology, this is Pan, the all-power, the force of nature given free reign. To many, this is the same thing, and so the image represents Violence and Randomness. The Mayans of old worshipped a bat-god, Camazotz the Night Stalker; in some ways, the modern image of the Batman is parallel.

But what does this image mean? On closer approach, it can be seen that the people at the Accuser's feet are chained by their own chains, their own desires. It is by their lusts and urges that they are forced to remain in his presence. And the odd thing is that he seems as much a prisoner as they, unable to break out of the cycle of natural forces because there is no higher authority present to free them - or him.

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The trap of freedom leading to slavery is a subtle one. I've often pondered the paradox that when limitations and constraints are given to creative people (for example: choice of medium, size of work, colour selection), they transcend these constraints and produce more creative work than when they are not given any constraints at all. The same is true for many disciplines - creativity can best be seen against severe discipline and constraint.

As often the case in this particular matter, it is John Milton who best portrays that frame of mind which is the reverse - that freedom must be won at all costs from such restraints:

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome.
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.

It's common to humans that the quest for freedom of expression leads us to disdain the idea of hierarchical sovereignty. None of us likes to have a master, and all of us sometimes think that expression without constraint is good. This is what the image of the Accuser teaches us - not all that gleams in this way is gold. A heavy price will be paid for abandoning free will for 'freedom'. I remember saying some things related to this matter a few years back.

A Sense Of Wonder

I spent most of today marking essays. Tall ones, short ones, long ones, brief ones. It struck me that they all lacked one thing: a sense of wonder. I mean, here you have young men writing about God and philosophy and transformation and power and technology - and yet it sounds so dry, so dispassionate, so bloodless. The Greek word is anaimosarke - lacking blood and fleshly substance, and it is the adjective used in a very famous classical poem to describe the cicada, who is happy to be that way.

Yes, they lack a sense of wonder - a sense of numinosity - that deitropic sense which seeks and finds a hidden fundamental glory behind the apparent firmament of this world. Agnostic physicists have it; Feynman could marvel at how his simple diagrams of the subatomic world were so apt, so descriptive of the unseen. But where to find it, if they don't have it?

That's a serious problem. It goes beyond philosophy and sometimes, even religion. It goes beyond modern culture or society or whatever. I think that a sense of wonder only forms when two things happen: 1) the human entity realises how small it is, and 2) the same entity realises how big everything else might be. Note: 'might be' and ' not 'is'. If you know how big something is, then it isn't big enough, or perhaps it's really big and all that, but you have set the seal of finity on it, and it will someday end.

So I tried delving deep in me to find instances of that sense of the numinous. Where have I ever felt that, when, and why?

I found numerous examples. I shall share just one, though.

In my life of idle wandering, I have seen many comicbook heroes die. Some companies kill them off in huge numbers (maiming is sometimes almost as good) just to raise sales. I will talk about three. I saw Jean Grey (Phoenix) die - we all did, in X-Men #137 all those years ago; I saw Superman die, beaten and pounded to a pulp by Doomsday, on 18 Nov 1992. And I saw the Batman die, at the hands of his best friend, at the stroke of midnight and Frank Miller's pen.

I was saddened greatly by Phoenix's death, but she had killed a world, and besides, her Cyclops was there to mourn her and I closed the book and it was never as sad again. I was stunned by Superman's brutal demise, because he was Superman - Last Son of Krypton - and could never die; and of course, he didn't. But the one which kicked me in the guts was when a bruised Wayne crumpled in his armoured exoskeleton, the ultimate knight felled in his defence of a free land.

Why?

Because Batman was human, purely so. He had triumphed over evil, both within and without, with nothing but bare humanity and the excellence that can come with it. If he had ever taught anything to any of his colleagues, it was that humans can be much more than anythng humans can imagine; that a driven, focused, intelligent perseverance could be more telling than X-ray vision, an emerald ring or a golden lasso. I wept when Batman fell. He was the darkness in us that was also the dark before the dawn. Unlike Superman and Phoenix, he was really one of us - perhaps not the neighbour of our choice, but the defender who would always have our concerns at heart.

I saw a lot of the Batman in the defenders of New York three years ago. Helplessly, they watched loved ones die. Tirelessly, they fought to save the living, and they swore, 'Never again.' It was one shining moment which could only come out the darkness, the cape blackly flapping in the midnight wind of Gotham. And it was that moment, when humanity in all its frailty looked into the darkness and found light, that I felt again a certain sense of wonder - not certain, as in 'specific'; but certain as in 'sure and steadfast'.

As long as a sense of wonder remains to be evoked, humanity has hope. The true heroes are among us.