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The Dark Knight vs. Dr. Horrible
By Corvus | July 21, 2008
This post is spoiler laden. For those of you who aren’t on the boat yet, I’ll lead with my mini reviews.
I wanted to like Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog much more than I actually did. NPH was awesome, as was Nathan Fillion. What it lacked, however, was Joss’s characteristic insightful commentary. It was cute, but I found elements of it to be problematic.
The Dark Knight broke the summer movie curse for me. As someone who’s a bigger fan of the Joker than he ever was of Batman, I have to say that not only did Heath Ledger nail the character, the script did as well. I didn’t walk away from Batman Begins wanting to own it on DVD, but The Dark Knight has me considering buying them both on Blu-Ray when I finally break down and buy a PS3. This offering contained more narrative, more grit, more substance than I thought any studio would pack into a super hero movie. So well crafted was it, that I wasn’t even bothered that it featured two villains (usually a comic adaptation’s curse).
This post is going to talk about the element that both media shared and my reactions to them. For those of you getting off the bus before I drive into Spoiler Town, the following joke, which I unsuccessfully tried to incorporate into this post’s title, will give you a hint about the content you’ll be missing:
Q: What’s the collective noun for hetero-sexual Caucasian males?
A: Tyranny
Okay, now the gloves are off. Spoilers will abound. If you’re wandering away (and even if you’re not)–I’ll start my dialog challenge posts tomorrow, so feel free to swing by the challenge post and suggest some characters.
Are you familiar with Women in Refrigerators (WiR)? The ever-helpful Wikipedia has a nice overview of the history of the site. The basic idea behind the site is to list out all of the female characters in comics that have been killed, raped, or maimed in order to drive the male hero’s character development. The list was compiled in 1999 and has 111 characters listed.
I’m going to lead off by saying that while I think data could be taken to say any number of terribly unflattering things about misogyny in the comics industry, I interpret it a little differently. The first thing it leads me to believe is that comic book writing is by and large an incestuous exercise. In other words–this sort of sweeping trend indicates to me that too many comic book writers primarily read comic books. It’s one of the same problems I see in the video game industry–failure to pull in ideas from a wide variety of sources. The second observation I have is that the majority of comic writers are most likely hetero-sexual Caucasian males and therefore the heroes they write about are as well. And the senseless slaughter of a woman they love is the greatest motivation to action they can think of. And that, more than anything, is a sign of problematic gender imbalance in the industry. Where are our compelling heroines? Where are our universally acclaimed gay heroes?[1]
If we don’t assume the WiR phenomena is inherently wrong and misogynist (and I welcome arguments to the contrary), what we should then turn our focus on is the questions–how were these women portrayed before their victimization?
In Dr. Horrible the love interest of both the hero/villain (Dr. Horrible) and villain/hero (Captain Hammer) of the piece is Penny. Penny is sweet and caring, petite and pretty. She’s crusading for the homeless, but meekly and ineffectually–until she falls in love with and begins dating Captain Hammer. Captain Hammer is an arrogant opportunistic man. He lewdly suggests at one point that he’s going to get to have sex with Penny twice–a first for him. He helps her with the cause, quite transparently, because he wants to sleep with her, not because he actually cares. Dr. Horrible, on the other hand, does seem to care about her, but seemingly just because she’s an unattainable goal. He’s sympathetic to the homeless plight, but sees it as a symptom of a corrupt system that he wishes to overturn. His continued friendship with her seems to be based on his skepticism about Captain Hammer. Penny, of course, dies. Violently. At the hands… well, the Death Ray of Dr. Horrible. Of course, Captain Hammer was the one who actually pulled the trigger, so the nemesi can now blame each other for her death. Although Penny had just witnessed, and was uncomfortable with, Captain Hammer’s true motivations in helping her, with her dying breath she still manages to whimper to Dr. Horrible, “Captain Hammer will save us…”
Now, I get that this was very much a parody piece and it reverses the emotional stances of hero and villain. The hero (so called) is vain and egotistical. The villain wants to make a difference in the world. The love interest is weak, vapid and gullible. Hm. Nothing is turned on its ear there, is it? That’s pretty much how a lot of comic book love interests are portrayed. Given some of Joss’s awesome female characters in past productions, I was disappointed with this characterization choice. I never grew to care about Penny, so while her death seemed like a pointless waste, it didn’t effect me overly much.
…and that doesn’t even begin to address the whole, “women only fall for the good looking assholes and the poor sensitive geeks always get short shrift,” conceit that pervades Hollywood screenwriting. Someday I want to see a movie that shines the light on geek culture and shows blind-worship and adoration-from-afar (or worse–via fantasies based on comic books, Robert A. Heinlein and, quite likely, porn) isn’t enlightened at all, but merely another form of potentially dangerous gender ignorance.[2]
Switching gears to The Dark Knight now, we take a look at Rachel Dawes. Again we have a female character at the center of a love triangle, but not between hero and villain, but hero and hero. Unlike Penny, however, Rachel is a smart, capable, effective, and confident woman. Sadly, her screen time in this movie is very much over-shadowed by Harvey Dent. Dent’s position as DA robs her of much of her professional function and the movies focus on understanding your limits casts her more as fate’s cats-paw, even as she sets healthy boundaries with Bruce and works to keep Dent from becoming a crusading egomaniac. Ultimately she is eventually relegated to the role of being the victim that drives the two men’s plot arcs. Her death plays a major role in Dent’s mental decline and motivates Wayne to keep fighting for what he believes in. I honestly believe that the Nolan bros did a pretty good job with an unfortunate convention, but one wonders why they felt the need to follow the convention at all.
I actually had an even bigger problem with the fact that two of the other three prominent women in the film were portrayed as helpless victims. Barbara Gordan [3] is portrayed throughout the entire movie as a potential victim, right up to the point that she becomes an actual victim when the Joker kidnaps her and her children. Gordon doesn’t even let her in on his fake death, for fear of her (seemingly inevitable) victimization. I suspect that the next movie will kill off Mrs. Gordon and her son, leaving Jim to raise young Barbara by himself. The third victimized woman was Detective Ramirez, the only female detective in the MCU (that I saw) and a bent cop. Bent because she needed to pay for her mother’s hospital bills, but bent none-the-less. Two Face’s coin was kind to Ramirez and she was allowed to live so we could watch the regret and impotence overcome her momentarily before we moved on to the climactic scenes of the movie. But it seemingly didn’t motivate her to atone for her crimes, or deal with her complicity in Rachel’s death.
No, the women in Batman were merely pieces moved about the board by the motivations of the heroic trio–Wayne, Dent and Gordon. If the Nolans want to redeem themselves in the next movie, they can bring back Ramirez as a powerful, and reformed, presence and introduce a young Barbara Gordan that is outraged over the imbalances–both legal and gender based–inherent in Gotham’s corrupt and decaying system.
[1] Although according to this list there are quite a bit more than I expected.[return]
[2] Herland ought to be required reading for every pre-teen boy. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.[return]
[3] Commissioner Jim Gordon’s wife, not his daughter. The future Batgirl mysteriously remained nameless and faceless throughout this movie, despite appearing on screen during a scene where Jim confusingly let on that he cared more about his son than his daughter or wife. That whole scene, along with his follow up conversation with his son, stank of setup for the next movie, quite frankly.[return]
Tagged:dark knight, dr horrible, gender, joss whedon, storytelling, women in refrigerators. | 10 Comments »
July 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The Dark Knight had 3 villains if you count the brief cameo of The
Scarecrow/Dr. Crane. 4 if you count Morroni/The Mob. I think Batman
Begins did 2 villains better (higher cohesion for the individual villains), but
Dark Knight had stronger coupling (stronger over-arc).
I don’t have much to add on the feminism front, sorry. I’m still
working on finding where I stand on those issues, but thanks for
putting so much thought into them.
(I actually feel somewhat proud that my very weird “novel in progress”
has a “Man in Refrigerator” reversal, but I’m still not sure it
works or makes the overall story seem any less “juvenile”…”)
July 21st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I consider the mob element in this movie to be more backdrop than villain presence. I mean, the mobsters are criminals, but hardly qualify as villains.
I also don’t count the Scarecrow scene because it was really only present to introduce the copy-cat vigilantes and as an excuse for Wayne to request a new bat-suit (which they justified by having the Joker “recruit” whats-his-names dogs for the final showdown).
July 21st, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Regarding Dr Horrible I knew there was something about the ending that just didn’t click for me.
When the death ray blows up I was tickling with expectation because I wanted to see the reaction of penny and how dr horrible would react to that…
Needless to say, I was dissapointed; they took the easy road and just killed her. Then salt was poured into the wound as penny says she still has confidence in Captain Hammer even though she just saw his true egomaniacal self, running like a coward and pushing every homeless in his way.
The only upside to the ending is that if a sequel is produced, dr horrible will attemp to revive his lost love, a premise that leaves the gates open for more wackiness. Also bad horse was an actual horse! That just killed me xD
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 am
Great analysis on both counts.
Dr. Horrible was so disappointing, and coming from Joss Whedon, supposedly a self-professed feminist, as well. I had hoped that Penny would be revealed as a super hero or a super villain (Bad Horse?!). My SO also suggested that it would have been far more interesting had Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer been women and Penny had been male.
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:12 am
I haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet, and doubt I will any time soon, but I too was disappointed with Dr. Horrible on a number of fronts.
My chief problem is the usual Joss Wheden problem (for a while now): when you establish as comedy, playing your ending (or middle, or whatever) as tragedy sucks all the air out of the balloon. Even seeing it coming didn’t ameliorate my disappointment.
Really, Penny’s death is so inevitable it has no emotional force, other than disappointment that a more inventive ending wasn’t available. Single geeks may well enjoy the ending all the same.
As for portraying geek obsession over unobtainable love interests, it’s a shame my third novel isn’t going to be printed as I feel this deals with this point in a rather interesting fashion. Still, it has sufficient problems that it is probably best left in my drawer for now.
Hope all is well!
July 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
just saw it last night, and need to see it again as i’m too much of a batman geek to watch with a critcal eye the first time. I agree about rachel for the most part. it’s a shame they teased how she could be a stronger character but took the easy way out.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
(Another Alex! =P)
Having not read the comics, I had no idea Barbara Gordon (er, both of them) was even a significant character, so to me Rachel was really the only major female character. Talk about disappointment when she dies halfway through. The focus on Gordon’s son was so strong I didn’t even notice the other kid was a girl. It makes me kind of nervous for the next one that all the women are treated as such afterthoughts. What female hero or villain do you think would work well for the next movie?
July 28th, 2008 at 11:19 am
After a second viewing – “There is too much, let me sum up;” Jaques Lacan would say the Joker-Batman relationship represents the gender issues, if not the sex issues (Joker dresses like a nurse, wears makeup, loves batman, functions as the “absence” to Batman’s phallic imagery, etc). Course i’m more one to say a cigar is always a cigar, and that this is stretching to try and justfiy a very masculine-centric movie i happened to really, really like. i think i’ll start my blog with this topic since i have a lot to say about the movie
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Of the seven top-tier actors starring in the movie, only one was a female. You knew this going in. So was it somehow a surprise to you that women played second fiddle to men in this movie? I agree it’s tragic and patriarchal and all, but c’mon. If you can’t meet the movie halfway then don’t blame it for disappointing you.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Ratios do not dictate importance, viertalla.
And I very much enjoyed The Dark Knight, as I indicated in my mini-review at the top of the post. I do, however, feel it would have been a stronger movie if they’d not sold out the female characters in such a pedestrian manner.