Holy Singing Old Ladies, Batman!

This weekend I had the immense pleasure of being one of the many Americans that bolstered BOTH of the top two movies at the box office above their competition. Friday night, my friends and I got straight up hammered and saw that film about a crazy psychopath with a painted face who runs around cackling maniacally and torturing people. Obviously I'm talking about Christine Baranski in Mamma Mia!.Not much to note about Mamma Mia! beyond what's expected (guilty pleasure plus Pierce Brosnan's GOD AWFUL singing voice), but I must say I'm a little disappointed with the audience at the 19th Street Regal Cinemas. Granted we were like two giant margaritas and two Bud Lights ahead of everyone else, but we were also the ONLY bitches singin in that theater! Seriously, we brought it on home. I know it's not the Broadway production or anything, but I sort of expected all the memaws to get up and shake it like there's no tomorrow. I dunno - just sayin. And to the two gay guys I sat in front of, I'm sorry for ruining the movie for you. I mean like, ruining whatever Pierce Brosnan didn't. And if anyone's interested, coming home to a drunken screening of Grease 2 makes the perfect double feature experience.

Saturday I had the cosmic luck of catching what seemed to be the only showing left in Manhattan to The Dark Knight. I was so in awe of what Christopher Nolan did to the Batman franchise. I remember when I was in, like, third grade, and my babysitter brought over a VHS of Batman Forever - the one where Val Kilmer was oversexed Batman. It was like, my first "adult" movie and I cannot tell you how differently people approached a superhero flick back then. In 1995 Batman was smothered in color, comedy, and sounds, and no one thought twice about what he really stood for (although there ain't NOTHIN wrong with watching Chris O'Donnell run around in a wife beater... mmm). The Dark Knight was so politically fueled and sociologically charged that it actually incited a conversation about religion between my friends on the N train.

It's such a cartoony question but really - who is Batman? Someone insisted that Batman was Jesus, which I totally disagree with but I can see where she was coming from. Really, why do we need superheros? Is the Christian reverence for Jesus the same admiration we feel for Superman? In this conversation, I mentioned that when comic books became popular (1930s and 40s), DC Comic books in particular, Americans thrived on that morally upright, wholly capitalist, polarized theater of good versus evil. That's the formula for the perfect superhero breeding ground. Unlike in the Marvel Comic books (and before you think I'm turning into the Comic Book Guy here bear with me), DC Comic superheros lived in allegorical fantasy worlds (consider the fact that these men live in places like Gotham and Metropolis, unlike Spiderman's actual New York). Their adventures did sort of emulate the Bible: they were escapist reflections of an ideal society.

Right? Can I get a "hey ya?"

But seriously, Batman ≠ Jesus.

Also, inspired by how hard Heath Ledger rocked our world in that powerhouse of a movie (as Kevin Smith puts it, he "disappeared completely into that role") and rolling along the same history-of-comics train, here's a time line that the LA Times put together documenting the evolution of the Joker - a character that Ledger proved is much more complex than what we've come to envision.