Batman is a Neocon? Pulease

I think Doug Jones is reaching to make this case. The Batman in Nolan's portrayal is the classic dark knight. He goes back at least as far as the Reagan administration, to Frank Miller's book which was utterly critical of neo-conservative. Miller's Batman saw Reagan as dangerous and a fascist, and defeats the naive Superman in hand to hand combat because he'd become a puppet to that administration. If anything, Batman is an anarchist. He works with law enforcement when it suits his needs, which are usually specific to some specific crime he's investigating. Batman believes that government is corrupt, and that the rays of light coming out of it are so rare as to be trivial and ignored.

I think Jones really has in mind certain things in the new movie. Like the cell phone tapping thing, which some are saying is reminiscent of the wiretapping in the US. Notice the differences, though, which I suspect were purposefully inserted by Nolan so as to draw strong criticisms of the US wiretapping. First, Lucius Fox tells Batman it's unethical, which is decidedly a non-Batman take on these sorts of things. (In a recent storyline in DC comics, Batman's spy satellites were taken over and used against humanity, showing Batman that even his own efforts to be a watcher comes at high risks). Secondly, Wayne acknowledges this and says the cell phone system will only work if Fox orchestrates it. And then when he's done with it this one time, it'll be discontinued. In other words, Nolan tries to build checks and balances into the entire last act.

But, I also think Jones is missing some of the more interesting messianic parts of the movie, and is mistakenly seeing those messianic elements as statism or contemporary neo-conservatism. (Were we to interview Nolan, how much would you be willing to admit the man is as far from being an advocate of the Bush administration as we can find?). What of the final scenes of the movie where Batman willingly takes on the sins of Harvey Dent in order to save Gotham City from itself? Surely there's more going on here than simply a weak allegory of American politics. The movie is a story about Batman learning exactly the kind of hero he is going to have to be, and it is one that will require complete self-emptying for the sake of the people he loves and wants to save. Sounds an awful lot like a retelling of the gospel than a retelling of 9/11 to me.