Batman and Ted

We just spent the weekend with my partner’s niece, who arrived Thursday evening to hang out with us for a few days. We always enjoy spending time with her, and we had planned a relaxing, laid-back time with lots of good conversation, visits to some favorite haunts, a theater outing (“Jersey Boys”), and whatever else popped up. Instead, we awoke Friday to the news of the shootings at the midnight opening of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.” For us, like for many people, the day's trajectory turned on a dime.

This is the story of two movies we saw over the days that followed. There are so many contrasts here, so many paradoxes and “messages,” that I’m sort of at a loss as to how to explore them all—or any of them. But I feel compelled to talk about them, hoping something will emerge that gives me some perspective on all this. Some life lesson. We’ll see …

We had no particular plans for Friday, the day we awoke to news of the murders in Aurora. So we talked. About the shootings, about the yearning to understand the “why” and the consequent rush to “explanations”—encapsulated, simplistic, easily transmitted packets of supposed understanding that would make the senseless appear to make sense. We talked about the futility of pre-dicting and the easy satisfaction of retro-dicting. We talked about how fashioning an answer to the “why” allows us to believe that somehow the world is really under control. To believe that if we just knew why people do these things, surely we could stop such acts in the future. We want to believe this even though history shows that we cannot, that these acts are not predictable. Our desperate wish to make sense of it all points beneath the surface: it is precisely its senselessness that is so terrifying. We talked, too, about terrorism in the broad sense—not Al Qaeda, but hometown terrorism whose effect is to leave us terrorized—terrified and paralyzed.

Trying to create something positive from this impossibly difficult day, one of us floated the idea of a movie ... and then suggested, and we all quickly agreed, that we should go see “Batman.” We talked about two reasons to do this (and as we revisited it through the weekend, the three of us placed different emphases on these reasons). One reason was that we needed to refuse the urge to cower, to be terrorized. If we avoid all the places and things that might put us in danger, we would be totally paralyzed—and the “terrorists” would have succeeded. We would be giving over our personal and collective power to the few folks whose goals are most antithetical to our goal—living expansive lives. The other reason was that the movie industry in general and individual theaters, both already ailing (our local theater has sparse attendance on a good day), would suffer from this terrorist-initiated fear. And their losses would be magnified by lost employment when jobs are already uncommonly scarce.

So, we went to “Batman.” And we were glad, all weekend, that we had done that. It was a pretty good movie (remember, this is from someone who is definitely not a movie critic or even a Fandango “fan”), and I would have been glad to have seen it anyhow. Going under these circumstances also made it feel empowering—to us moviegoers, that is, and therefore not to the fear mongers. The film carries a redemptive message that was a nice counter to the awful events that greeted this same film at shortly after midnight on this same day. 

What a convoluted, twisted, complex, confusing knot of meanings: terror and senselessness, empowerment and refusal of fear, redemption and helplessness, determination to do evil and determination not to be paralyzed by evil. It makes my head spin.

The next couple of days moved along gently, as we let Aurora subside to an occasional conversation. We spent many lovely hours together cruising the Pearl Street Mall, eating, shopping, visiting a coffee shop, eating, talking about life’s ups and downs, eating, seeing some sights (without going sightseeing), eating. Sunday afternoon, we decided to take in another movie to chill out for a bit—which is to say, both to get out of the 90°+ heat and to relax for a bit. We couldn’t find much of interest, this being the summer blockbuster bonanza season, but from the promo and the fans’ recommendations, “Ted” looked good for the sort of light, mindless entertainment that fit our energy level. Bad, very bad choice. I have never found a movie so relentlessly offensive. In the space of a couple of hours, this film managed to weave in, quite seamlessly, sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, abelism, ageism, sizeism, religious and ethnic bigotry, and flat-out gratuitous scatological “humor.” It put to shame every movie of this “men behaving badly” genre I’ve ever seen. Why did we stay? Good question. Each of us was thinking she would walk out if she were alone … we should have talked about this then and saved ourselves the misery and the time that this thing exacted. I guess the teddy bear was cute … sometimes. Any other merits? Maybe a faint glimmering of some lessons: don’t behave like a total jerk and your life and relationships will be more satisfying. Keeping a Teddy bear from your childhood is sweet, but it does not excuse all things. Thin gruel for 2 hours.

It’s all so ironic. The film that was so closely associated with terrorizing cruelty, that was billed as an action movie complete with explosives, car crashes, and really bad people became a truly positive moment in the weekend. The one that we expected to be light, funny, and escapist was the greatest downer I’ve encountered in a while. So what life lessons am I to glean from this?

Maybe it’s simply the reminder that life isn’t as simple—ever—as the superficial versions of it would have us believe. Cruel, maniacal deeds cannot be encapsulated in sound bites or simple reiterations of stereotypes about “loner,” “odd,”misunderstood people whose acts we could have predicted if only we’d paid attention. Super-hero stories about men who wear black capes and masks with pointy ears aren’t necessarily silly or superficial. Confronting fear and acting anyway is empowering. The range of things that people find funny is extremely wide.

I don’t want to sound too preachy here. OK, maybe I do. Maybe I want to sound like an idealist on the one hand—“Refusing to be paralyzed by senseless acts is empowering”—and a cranky old woman on the other—“Making fun of other people (presumably to point out one’s own elevated status) is actually not funny.” But there is it, there I am. A cranky old woman with some hope that we can lead large, respectful lives even in the face of terror.

By the way, “Batman” had some genuinely funny lines. Just in case you thought cranky old women don’t get to have a good laugh.