This weekend, I sacrified a lot of my time to go and see 'The Dark Knight.' It took me a while to decide whether or not I was going to see it because I couldn't tell if it was mainstream or alt, but deep down, I wanted to fit in. If it is going to be the biggest movie ever, I thought it would be a good idea for me to 'connect with the human race as a whole.' I thought it would be a rewarding experience to 'connect' with my fellow audience members as we watched a wonderful piece of art that achieved mainstream success.
Another thing that really bothers me was that 'The Dark Knight' had themes that were made to appeal to people who didn't-go-to-college-but-like-feeling-smart. Basically, the movie exposes the audience to themes that are so complex that smart people don't bother trying to apply the themes to our modern society but they can convey an abridged version for mainstream dummies to feel like 'they are actually thinking about important issues/philosophy.' This makes them feel deep. They went into the theatre solely looking to be entertained, but since they were also exposed to ideas that a freshman in college would have been exposed to in his Political Science 101 course, they feel like they come out of the theatre a better person. I feel like movies like 'The Matrix' or 'V for Vendetta' are some of the most popular films in this genre. They usually deal with concepts like 'why is our society so zany/capitalistic/controlled by 1 person?' or even 'what makes us human, yall?' It would have been nice if Heath Ledger just read some Foucault to me for 3 hours. I mean srsly..what's the deal with society/prisons/social systems/'the world'/'how history has altered the way things are(that's kinda unfair--especially 4 minorities)'.
This weekend, I was walking down the street and I saw a little Mexican kid dressed as the Joker. He had facepaint, a big red smiley, green coloring sprayed over his dark mexi-hair, and was dressed just like Heath in the movie (aka he was wearing the church clothes he used to wear before he rebelled against his ever-loving Catholic mother's dead ideologies). I'm sure last week the same kid was into identifying with Linkin Park lyrics that commented on how 'people r full of shit, there's no such thing as love, and I hate my dad, too.' Ultimately, exposing impressionable tweens to concepts that they don't really need to be aware of is bad for humanity.
