George W. Bush - The Dark Knight

Seit der neueste Batman-Film "The Dark Knight" in den Kinos ist, fragen sich US-Konservative, ob Hollywood zum ersten Mal einen Film gedreht hat, der eine Hommage an George W. Bush ist. Eine versteckte zwar, denn schließlich sprechen wir über Hollywood, aber immerhin.


Die Interpretations-Diskussion angestoßen hat Andrew Klavan im Wall Street Journal. Dort schrieb er: "A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . . Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W." There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past."


Glenn Beck von CNN sieht ebenfalls Parallelen zwischen "The Dark Knight" und dem Krieg gegen den Terror und dessen Maßnahmen wie Abhören. Diese würden in dem Film verteidigt werden, so Beck: "At one point the Morgan Freeman character says to Batman, wait a minute, hang on, you’re eavesdropping on everyone in Gotham? And Batman says, yes, to stop this terrorist. Morgan Freeman says, I can’t be a part of it. And yet Morgan Freeman does become a part of it, and they find the Joker. One of the ways they find the Joker is through eavesdropping. I mean the parallels here of what’s going on is to me stunning."

Andrew Bolt bläst in der Herald Sun ins gleiche Horn: "As this superb Batman retelling, The Dark Knight, makes clear, its subject is a weakness that runs instinctively through us - to hate a hero who, in saving us, exposes our fears, prods our weaknesses, calls from us more than we want to give, or can. And how we resent a hero who must shake our world in order to save it, or brings alive that maxim of George Orwell that so implicates us in our preening piety: 'Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf'. [...] So why don't Americans in particular leave the movie cheering Bush as they cheered Batman? Because in leaving the cinema they stopped being that audience and re-entered their own real Gotham City - with a real Batman they once more feel driven to hate for all the hard things he's had to do to protect them. They have become the citizens of Gotham they were watching just minutes before with contempt.
But Bush would understand. As Alfred [Batman's butler] says: 'He's not being a hero. He's being something more.'"


Der Journalist Jeffrey Lord sieht den Erfolg von "The Dark Knight" gar als Voraussage zum Ausgang der Präsidentschaftswahl: "They want Batman," schrieb er. "So they will elect McCain."