As a Symbol, I Can Be Incorruptible, Everlasting

Dinner dinner dinner dinner: The Batman

Elvira and I watched The Dark Knight Rises last weekend. If you know us, you’ll know that our having gone to the cinema to see it when it first came out was a big deal – we don’t get out much.

And these films today are so bloody long that you need to watch them twice to make sense of them.

The conclusion was that we liked it more second time around than first – not least as (i) knowing the plot twist helps you look out for the signs and (ii) we had braced ourselves so as not to start laughing every time Bane speaks.

Two things will I say about the Blu-Ray experience:

• Just take me to the main menu. Do not FORCE me to watch trailers by telling me it’s “forbidden” to skip through them. Forbidden by whom?
• Special features you have to download? Piss off. Why do you think I’m still watching discs at all?

Re the above: Lovefilm – sort it out. Because I will ditch your punk ass and go to Netflix just like I ditched Blockbuster for you. 

Anyway, it started me thinking...which is always a bad sign in any piece of entertainment media.

In these films (I won’t call them movies because this is ENGLAND NOT AMERICA) the Batman could be anyone.

I say “the Batman” rather than “Batman” not to show my complicity in the idea put across by these films that featuring a man who dresses up as a bat is not inherently ridiculous. No – I say it because "Batman" cannot be anyone: he is, of course, Adam West.

So, the Batman could be anyone because he’s a symbol of something rather than an individual. Which means that the boy from Third Rock from the Sun can be him in the next one.

It occurred to me that this is an idea that our politicians need to adopt. Because every time a political idea gets out and achieves some sort of popular support, the media tears apart the politician at the forefront of that idea’s movement on the basis of his or her human frailties.

So the theory goes – and let it not be said that ODHSNM is unbalanced politically (psychologically is another matter) – UKIP’s ideas are implicitly invalidated by the “colourful” lives of their candidates, or the idea that Amazon and Google ought to be some sort of tax is invalidated by the MPs quizzing them taking perfectly legal and rational measures to minimise their own liabilities. 

This being the internet, we might as well see that through to the Reductio Ad Hitlerum and declare that vegetarianism was to blame for the Holocaust.

My point is that the failings of the person putting across an idea do not necessarily condemn the idea itself. 

So politicians – put on a mask, and become a symbol of your cause instead of a mere mortal! 

Just like the criminals of Gotham City can’t kill a symbol, an idea can’t be caught avoiding tax, molesting children or strangling prostitutes.

POST SCRIPT: This is my 150th post - please help me to celebrate by sending me money or booze. Preferably money. No vouchers.