This is an abbreviated version of our weekly Patreon show. To access the full-episode and support the pod, head on over to http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest movie from DC called "The Batman" and how it is plugged into the political and social issues of our times, giving us a simultaneous glimpse into our past, present, and future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| - Fear is a tool. | |
| When that light hits the sky, it's not just a call. | |
| It's a warning. | |
| If this continues, it won't be long before you've nothing left. | |
| I don't care what happens to me. | |
| It's only gonna get worse for you. | |
| Hey, everybody. | |
| Welcome to the weekender edition of the Book Break Podcast. | |
| I'm Jared Yates. | |
| I'm here with Nick Halsman. | |
| We're going to do another installment of Going to the Movies. | |
| How about that, Nick? | |
| I love it. | |
| I always like to go to the movies. | |
| Me too. | |
| I admit it. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| I'm not ashamed. | |
| Oh, the best. | |
| You know, we enjoy doing these episodes. | |
| We're gonna do THE Batman. | |
| Not Batman. | |
| Not Batman Beyond. | |
| Not The Dark Knight. | |
| The Dark Knight Rises. | |
| THE Batman. | |
| How do you know it's not THE Batman? | |
| Do you say thee? | |
| Thee, Batman? | |
| That doesn't sound good. | |
| There is a rule, by the way, when you use the and thee. | |
| I have no idea. | |
| You're the English person, but... Listen, if you think, coming from Greene County, Indiana, that I've got a decent understanding of grammar beyond, like, a veneer, you are dead wrong, my friend. | |
| Wow. | |
| Okay. | |
| Thank God for editors? | |
| So, we got... No kidding. | |
| Tip one out for the editors of the world, absolutely. | |
| But we're going to jump into the Batman and not just talk about the movie itself, but get into the political ramifications, because there's a lot happening in this movie. | |
| Of course, whenever you get into a movie, you get into a film, a piece of art, whether intentional or not, it is always commenting on the moment that it exists within, that it was made. | |
| This movie, I think, is making a very specific and intentional Sort of of remark on our moment and we'll get into that Here in just a moment and sort of dissect the ideas behind there. | |
| There's a lot of neoliberalism a lot of ideas of justice Class warfare and the such we'll get into all that but before we do Nick What is your what's your general take away from the Batman? | |
| Pattinson better than Affleck Oh, I think that's yeah, that's undisputable And I keep saying this, and people have heard a little bit, so I have to be saying this, but I have to say it again. | |
| A close-up of Pattinson just gazing off with the mask on and everything is so much better acting than anything Affleck ever did, talking or otherwise. | |
| So, I gotta say, that was a really welcome, you know, change to this series, is that we had a guy who could emote in a way that was subtle and interesting and kept me, you know, focused on the movie despite, you know, how long it was. | |
| So I completely agree. | |
| And something just occurred to me that that hadn't I hadn't thought about until right now, which is that Ben Affleck's Batman was a Batman that existed with other superheroes. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Like, like, you know, he's interacting with Justice League, with Superman, all these different types of things. | |
| That's a different Batman. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| That's like a different character than brooding in the dark, taking on these sort of things. | |
| He existed more sort of to be around these people. | |
| And like when I was little, I don't know what your experience is with with Batman. | |
| I was growing up, I was watching, you know, the the Adam West series on like Nickelodeon. | |
| I was watching Super Friends, a lot of Super Friends, and that Batman is different. | |
| You know, he's flying around with Superman and having all those. | |
| Robert Pattinson, I think he's a good actor. | |
| I truly believe that. | |
| I've enjoyed him in a lot of different films. | |
| I thought he brought a real brokenness to this role. | |
| This is not a Batman who can coexist with the other Justice League members which I think is why we're not going to see him with other Justice League members. | |
| I think that this is a very particular type of movie and universe for this character to exist within. | |
| I thought he was really good with the eyes, like you were saying. | |
| But that said, he does interact with Zoe Kravitz as the Catwoman in a way that there is an example of like, okay, he's sharing screens, you know, whatever, but he clearly wasn't happy that she was involved in the actual, you know, breaking up of the criminal aspects of that. | |
| Well, time out. | |
| What you're dancing around is This is a Batman with sexual tension. | |
| Yeah. | |
| There is a lot of sexual tension in this Batman. | |
| There is a lot of wounded individuals being very close to one another and proximity and making out on weird rooftops. | |
| I mean, this ain't your dad's Batman. | |
| No, no. | |
| And by the way, there could even be a little bit of ambiguous sexuality here as well with it. | |
| And, you know, I thought that was interesting, too. | |
| I mean, I'm sure. | |
| Do you ever see the Quentin Tarantino monologue in Sleep With Me when he talks about Top Gun being a homosexual? | |
| No. | |
| You ever said this? | |
| Sure. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And that's way out there. | |
| It's taken a movie that doesn't have that in there. | |
| Although maybe it does. | |
| I disagree with that completely. | |
| There's been a lot of scholarship, actually. | |
| The idea that it's queer text. | |
| That is a big thing. | |
| And actually, that's right. | |
| The volleyball scene is enough. | |
| And Quentin Tarantino, that's not his realm. | |
| That's just Quentin Tarantino bullshitting. | |
| But the academics who follow this stuff, they absolutely think a similar thing. | |
| By the way, are you aware that there's a whole thing about the Piano Man Billy Joel song? | |
| Have you heard of this? | |
| I don't know the Piano Man. | |
| I'll check this out. | |
| Check it out. | |
| It's fascinating. | |
| It's hilarious and it's interesting and it actually makes a lot of sense. | |
| Anyway, getting back to the Batman. | |
| THE Batman. | |
| I'm going to go with THE Batman, because I think, you know, it's more of like a, it pops, you know, THE Batman. | |
| Yeah, so at any rate, it was interesting because there definitely felt like a lot of levels of whether he didn't, he didn't want to commit to the Catwoman to help her. | |
| He wants her, obviously it's too dangerous. | |
| She's a woman. | |
| She can't be part of this, whatever. | |
| He's got to protect her. | |
| And then I think that also permeates into this notion of can they really even be together ever or not? | |
| And, and that's certainly an open question that doesn't resolve, which is kind of nice. | |
| Well, and it's a nice sort of a thing. | |
| I gotta tell you, I... Man, I went back, actually, the other night and I started watching The Dark Knight. | |
| Because, of course, you know, you gotta go back and see the seminal thing from the Christopher Nolan trilogy. | |
| First of all, it struck me how much, and I think I said this the other night, how much it feels like a James Bond version of Batman. | |
| All the gadgets, all the subterfuge, sneaking in here, doing that, these really, really brutal fights, all of this. | |
| This particular one is obviously inspired by movies like Seven. - Absolutely. - This is, it's very much a version of that. | |
| You know, a lot has been made about how this is like Batman as a detective, which is really good. | |
| I actually enjoyed that quite a bit. | |
| Within all of that, like the Nolan trilogy really has some very strange philosophy at the heart of it that it doesn't always nail, which is what Christopher Nolan does. | |
| He puts forward a lot of interesting ideas, but they never really settle and he never really nails something. | |
| This one, I think you're right. | |
| I think at the heart of it is whether or not a wounded person can heal and transcend the trauma that they've gone through. | |
| And to watch that sort of interaction between Batman and Catwoman, I thought was A really interesting thing. | |
| I thought Joey Kravitz was great in this movie, by the way. | |
| And I think that their chemistry back and forth and the will they or won't they sort of a thing, I thought was a really nice basis for this. | |
| A much more human sort of an idea. | |
| And I enjoyed that. | |
| I do have my problems with this movie, but that is not the problem. | |
| Okay yeah and what was interesting in the James Bond stuff is also it's always sort of been an element in that in the Dark Knight and the Nolan stuff with all the cool gadgets and and with Morgan Freeman and that but that actually existed even in the Adam West versions too he had the cool bat belt with all the stuff on there that they could do that was really | |
| You know intoxicating so I do feel like even in the comic books Batman had a detective side to him where he'd be you know like that and that goes back to Michael Keaton's Batman where they were putting together clues and kind of figuring being smarter than everybody else and then also is the nature of this particular movie because they use the Riddler which now requires the kind of what's the thing that Sherlock Holmes had element whatever he has that | |
| Deduction, you know, the whatever the heightened version of that that he can solve these riddles easily where we're I'm still thinking gosh What's the I'm still trying to actually remember what the Riddler said and he's already got the answer of what what the answer is But you know, so I'm speaking of the Riddler Paul Dano is one of my favorite actors. | |
| He kills it in this movie He is perfect in it. | |
| And for those who who watch this it is the Riddler as the Zodiac Yeah, is what it is. | |
| He is wearing a very similar outfit to the Zodiac and much more updated. | |
| The glasses are a dead giveaway that that's what's happening here. | |
| Paul Dano, I thought, was excellent. | |
| The Riddler, I thought, was a wonderful villain. | |
| Perfect for this scenario, I thought. | |
| That being said, I will say, Nick, that one of the problems with this movie is that for a movie based on riddles and based on trying to piece together things through detective work, the movie does not give the audience enough information to figure anything out. | |
| Like there's like some of the riddles you can sort of figure out. | |
| The larger plot, and we'll get into spoilers here in just a second, the sort of the climactic piece of action that ends this, while kind of interesting, is sort of Yeah, but it's a hodgepodge of things. | |
| They're taking the James Bond stuff, they're taking Seven. | |
| some real storytelling sort of problems with that I thought yeah but I mean it's a hodgepodge of things they're taking the the uh the James Bond stuff they're taking seven I mean honestly the the final set piece to me was Hurricane Katrina like it felt like that They're in an arena, it's flooding, we're having a major, you know, disaster. | |
| I really, that was, I was getting, which again, I don't know when we're going to get to this part of the social, you know, political aspect of this movie, but it definitely is channeling a lot of those, you know, the inner city, You know, crime, you know, liberal cities that can't control the crime and control the people better. | |
| It taps into a lot of different things and so that's what might be why the movie doesn't be like completely successful because it's got, they're just throwing so much shit at the wall, which a lot of it works, I will say, but some of it ultimately you just, it's just, they could have cut about 30 minutes out of it and maybe made it more focused. | |
| It could have cut 30 to 40 minutes off of this thing. | |
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