Yes, It's Come To This

Boycott Batman. It's The Christian Thing To Do.

Here's a great piece on why all good persons of Jesusy inclination should not spend their money on a movie that promotes the pro-buttseks views of known sodomist, Batman:

The accusation that Batman was a homo, as strange as it might sound to our own ears, was taken quite seriously by government and public alike. It wasn't leveled by a marginal nut or crank, but by a world-renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Frederic Wertham.

Wertham was the Chief Psychiatrist for the New York Department of Hospitals and an important figure among the New York City liberal intelligentsia. His writings were respected enough to help form part of the legal strategy for Brown v. Board. In 1954, Wertham published a scathing indictment of comic books, The Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic books were an invidious influence on American youth, responsible for warped gender attitudes and all manner of delinquency. Wertham's accusations garnered the attention of Senator Estes Kefauver and his Senate Sub-committee on Juvenile Delinquency, where Wertham repeated many of his central claims.

Batman and Robin, Wertham charged, inhabited "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." They lived in "sumptuous quarters," unencumbered by wives and girlfriends, with only an aged butler for company. They cared for each other's injuries, frequently shared quarters, and lounged together in dressing gowns. Worse still, both exhibited damning psychological characteristics: proclivities for costumes, dressing up, and fantasy play; secretive behavior and double-lives; little interest in women; and, most damning of all, neurotic compulsions resulting in their violent vigilantism. Indeed, Wertham argued, depictions of Batman and Robin were frequently homoerotic, visually emphasizing Batman's rippling physique and Robins splayed, bare thighs.



If Bruce Wayne was a paragon of upper-middle class white masculinity - wealthy, cultivated, and amiable - his secret identity represented the dark liberation found in the lurid city, cruising strange corners. Even if Batman's genitals were never portrayed coming into contact with Robin, Batman's crime-fighting lifestyle still embodied a fantasy of freedom from male familial responsibilities and, in a very real sense, from women altogether. Batman's world of the 1940s was almost exclusively male.

The few females who appeared in the pages of Detective were usually for show or comic relief (Bruce Wayne's earliest fiance, Julie Madison, was frequently duped by his double-identity and played for laughs). Like many closeted men, Bruce Wayne dated women to keep up appearances, so that no one would suspect that beneath his placid veneer lurked the sort of fellow who wrestled with criminals in dark alleys.



In 1950, a subcommittee chaired by Maryland Senator Millard Tydings convened to investigate Joseph McCarthy's notorious list of "205 known communists." Tydings worked to discredit McCarthy's claim, but, in the process, the subcommittee at least partially validated concerns that the State Department was overrun with "sexual perverts." During the hearings, Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry memorably claimed that as many as 3,000 homosexuals were employed at State. By the end of 1950, 600 people had been dismissed from positions at the State Department on morals charges.

How deeply this context specifically informed the creative forces at DC is difficult to tell. Regardless, the charges levied by Wertham against Batman were bad for sales. Parents might steer their children away from the title toward more "wholesome" comics and some communities might attempt censor the comic book altogether. In an effort, to combat the perception that their product was morally suspect, DC made a number of changes.



Attempts to contrive a heterosexual "history" for Batman have always rang false, precisely because what rang true about Batman had nothing to do with "normal" heterosexual romance. That hardly necessitates Batman occupy an all-male world and the next Nolan film would benefit from a compelling female villain. Nevertheless, this much is certain: a character locked in any banal romance, either with Dick Grayson or Rachel Dawes, hardly seems believable as someone willing to endure the deprivations and burdens required of the Batman.

via Bilerico

io9 Weighs In On Dark Knight

Semi-spoilers in the article, but def a great read:

On its surface, The Dark Knight is a typical franchise sequel, bringing in (familiar) new characters and amping up the Bat-action as we move from the race car fu of Batman Begins to this flick's awesome truck-and-motorcycle fu. Our central figures, the Joker and Gotham's "white knight" district attorney Harvey Dent, are perfect foils. The former is unfathomably evil and the latter unfathomably good. And for a while the balance between these two, with Batman hovering in a profoundly unstable place between, works to good (disturbing) effect. Dent is the unmasked hero that Batman could never be, leading us to question Batman's dubious vigilante tactics in the first place. And Joker is the supervillain Batman could never defeat because his love of mayhem draws out the worst in our dark hero, turning him into a sadist.

Oscar?

From NY Post:

It's hard not to wince a little when Ledger's character gets going on the topic of death, as he frequently does. It's been only six months since the actor was found dead from an accidental overdose in his SoHo pad.

Playing the Joker, slumped on the floor of a police interrogation room, his character explains that he prefers a knife as a murder weapon because it's slower.

"In their last moments," he says eerily, "people show you who they really are."

In this flick, Ledger showed us what a masterful actor he was - certainly deserving of a posthumous Oscar nomination.