"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum..."

Batman: "I don't know what it was that bent your life out of shape, but who knows? Maybe I've been there too. Maybe I can help. We could work together. I could rehabilitate you. You needn't be out there on the edge any more. You needn't be alone. We don't have to kill each other."

"What do you say?"

The Joker: "No. I'm sorry, but... No. It's too late for that. Far too late. Hahaha. Y'know, it's funny. This situation. It reminds me of a joke..."

"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum..."

Alan Moore, The Killing Joke

Great things are being said about the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, with a lot of attention being given to the late Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker. I was surprised to discover that the look of the original Joker was inspired by a 1928 silent film entitled The Man Who Laughs, based on a 1869 Victor Hugo novel and starring Conrad Veidt in the title role. The bizarre grin sported by the protagonist is caused by deliberate mutilation when he is only two years old.

I haven't seen the new movie yet (I like to give it a couple of weeks in order to let the fanboy community get out of the way) but I've heard a couple of people comment with surprise on how the Joker is portrayed as a complete anarchist, a villain with no motive other than the creation of chaos. I've also heard some media commentary on how the Batman is presented in a darker fashion, more brutal than previous incarnations.

Really? My god, where have you people been? Oh, sorry, I tend to forgot that the mainstream only knows Batman from the 60's TV series and the movies - which is unfortunate, since they really haven't done justice to any of the characters. In fact, the closest that the popular media have come to a satisfactory portrayal of the Batman and his villains is in the three animated series done over the last few years. (For you trivia fans, Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame was the creator of the superb Joker voice in Batman: The Animated Series.)

Recommended reading would have to be DC Comic's The Killing Joke, now celebrating its 20th anniversary. Brian Bolland, the artist, is not at his best with Batman, but his portrayal of the Joker as a grotesque clown is perfect. Alan Moore's script is equally perfect, and leads one to wonder about the difficulties of writing from the perspective of a character who is insane.

Less approachable is the 1989 graphic novel Arkham Asylum, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean. This experimental work, done with a combination of illustrative techniques, points out the essential truth of the Batman series: all of the characters, including Batman himself, are insane.

Notice that no one ever goes to prison - the criminals are all incarcerated in an asylum for the criminally insane. And Batman, as much as any of his opponents, is psychotic: the product of a childhood trauma that created an obsession with cold, hard, rigorous justice that has extended to a schizoid alter ego that dresses like a bat and stalks the night in search of criminals, each of whom represents, in some way, the man who killed his parents. As the Joker observes in Arkham Asylum when one of the other inmates says that they should take off Batman's mask and see his real face, "Oh, don't be so predictable, for Christ's sake! That is his real face."

- Sid

P.S. I feel like someone who's gone into the supermarket for milk and come out with $200 of groceries. Originally all I was going to do was mention the Conrad Veidt connection for the look of the Joker, but an hour later, which included digging out The Killing Joke and scanning the cover, I end up with a psychological treatise...

"The beacons are lit!"

Now all roads were running together to the East to meet the coming of war and the onset of the Shadow.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

"The beacons are lit! The beacons of Minas Tirith! Gondor calls for aid!"

Aragorn son of Arathorn stands panting as Théoden and his council look up to hear his news. There is a brief pause - what will Théoden King do? Will he honour his people's commitment, to fight and die in battle for allies who are distant both in miles and in friendship? A pause, and then:

"And Rohan will answer. Muster the Rohirrim!"

To purists, Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings is full of omissions and changes, most of which - to purists - are considered to be for the worse. For myself, I consider Jackson's work to be a brilliant attempt to adapt the unadaptable, and as such his compromises with the original material are made in the best interests of his vision of the work. Whatever your opinion, it's hard to deny that Jackson took the best swing at the ball that he possibly could, and the results have a visual impact that is undeniable.

In the original text, the lighting of the beacons and the summoning of allies to Minas Tirith as the hand of Sauron begins to close upon it is a relatively minor event, accompanied by foreshadowing comments about Denethor's ability to "read somewhat of the future" and "at times search even the mind of the Enemy".

 

 

In the movie version, Gandalf arranges for the beacons to be lit through trickery, and we see a long line of flickering signals, bursting into flame one after another, marching across the mountains to Rohan where Aragorn sits. The speed and immediacy with which the beacons light is obviously a narrative tool, allowing a quick transition from Minas Tirith to Rohan.

But imagine for a moment the realities of such a situation. Imagine the watch at the beacons, men who have been all but exiled to mountain peaks hundreds of miles from their homes, doomed to know nothing of the events that have prompted the lighting of the message fires. Freezing, probably close to starvation on whatever meagre rations have been transported to their posts on the peaks of the mountains, sentenced to an unknown period of sentry-go, and yet, when the moment arrives, remaining faithful and vigilant, acting almost instantly to perform their duty and initiate a war which will be resolved for good or ill long before they would be able to busk themselves and make their long weary way to the field of battle.

And when all is said and done, one can only wonder if such men would be honoured or forgotten.

- Sid

We'll go with "incestuous" for this one.

Over the last few years, television science fiction series have become oddly...recursive? incestuous? - you know, I couldn't find a term that was appropriate. I refer to the practise of casting both guest spots and ongoing roles using actors who have appeared in other shows. Ben Browder and Claudia Black from Farscape ended up on Stargate SG-1, as did Robert Picardo from Voyager, (who then moved to Stargate Atlantis, along with Jewel Staite from Firefly); James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a recurring role on Smallville and a guest spot on Torchwood, and Anthony Head did one on Doctor Who; Andreas Katsulas from Babylon 5 showed up on Enterprise; and in the great recursive coup of all time, Richard Hatch returned to Battlestar Galactica.

But somehow all of that seems to pale against recent events from Doctor Who. Rumour has it that David Tennant, the Doctor, has recently started dating Georgia Moffett, who appeared in an episode of Doctor Who entitled "The Doctor's Daughter" in the titular role of the Doctor's daughter. Just to make the situation a little weirder than it already sounds, Ms. Moffett is actually the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. So, just to clarify that, they cast the daughter of the fifth Doctor to play the daughter of the current Doctor, who then decided to ask her out. I realize that there's nothing actually wrong with any of that, it just seems odd, somehow.

- Sid