August 25, 2008

• Delurking because it's a shame no one has commented on this yet-it's a very interesting post. While the ferry scenes are more obviously linked to game theory, I was more interested in the analysis of the bank robbery. I love game theory and there are a lot of great links in the mind your decisions blog. !Thanks
• I am a really long-winded fucktard, sorry: Ah, I've been meaning to comment on this all day, but I got seriously rogered at work and have been dealing with fleas at home, grumble grumble. Weird that you posted this, because I've been thinking about it some today -- not the opening scene from your main link, but from the final prisoner's dilemma-ish boat scene at the end. The thing that strikes me about the two ferries scenario is how utterly doomed to failure it was, from a film storytelling point of view. Ambitious as all hell, but really ultimately destined to fall flat. The problem is that the ending can only go down one way. The outcome simply cannot be that Batman prevents both boats from blowing each other up. No, that means we're not good enough as a species, and must be saved by a more enlightened other, some sort of, I dunno, "superman" or something. On the contrary, the only way Gotham and humanity "win" is if they show the Joker through their own free choice that, as terrified and fucked up as he's made them, they won't resort to killing their own, not while they're still human. But that, to me, just simply isn't a believable ending. Though I take the opposite viewpoint of one of the links above -- I have less trouble believing that there could be one very intimidating convict with the principle to chuck the remote overboard than in believing that Angry White Guy wouldn't have turned the key. Start with this Radiolab podcast about morality, for instance. Studies such as the one outlined in that podcast have shown that people are all too willing to commit murder to save lives, and the more technological distance between them and that death, the easier it gets. Turning a key is easier than pulling a trigger is easier than slitting a throat, because more distance gives more room for moral calculus and rationalization. Shoving someone onto train tracks (or, say, drowning them with your bare hands) touches something older and much more primal in the brain that says NO NO NO YOU CAN'T. Turn a key, save the lives of the people you're looking at (including the children! Think of the children!) and lower Gotham's crime rate substantially without having to look a single one of your victims in the eye? Where's the remote? But though he painted himself into a corner there, Nolan was wise in using the Joker to set these dilemmas up, especially with those unbearable and irrational twists, throughout the whole film. Burton's Joker certainly has its support in the comics over the years, probably more so than Nolan's, but Nolan's vision makes more sense, the Joker as an agent of pure chaos who really just wants to turn our own rules against us and force us to make horrible choices so that we're forced to confront the emptiness of the social and power constructs we've so carefully built. I don't want to see the Joker gas people or steal the Hope Diamond or deface a Monet. I want him to terrify me, make me question the soundness of my safe little assumptions, and have me half rooting for him by the end. And it's in that final exchange between Batman and the Joker, who's swinging around like a crazed purple angel strung out on Kickin' Chicken and bad blotter, that I find myself half-sympathizing with the bad guy. Batman's all full of sermons and growling and "no, we're just better than this, you lose because we're all good," but it's the so-called psychopath who seems to offer the most penetrating and believable insights. Of course he's confused about what happened, because it simply doesn't make sense. He's just like The Comedian: he gets the punchline to the joke that most of us can't even hear.
• .. but the guy dressed as a bat running around in a tank beating up crooks was believable, though.
• You guys realise that you're talking about a kids' comic book, don't you?
• I was talking about a recent movie, personally.
• I am a huge fan of that movie. Huge. Seriously. I can't imagine enjoying a movie much more than I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed the boat thing. A lot. But part of me was thinking, "Isn't this really just 'Saw' on a really large scale?"
• Let's say it was believable enough to merit a post discussing it in terms of economic theory.
• I can't stand when people dismiss comics as "kids" stuff. Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss wrote work that was ten times more thoughtful than most of the crap sold to adults. Please read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.
• And thanks for the article, Hank. I rarely read the whole thing with pages like this, so I can tell it's good stuff when I do. =)
• I found that movie quite disturbing, in a couple levels. Just how much more bleak can they make Batman go? Does it make sense in his comic universe that he goes all over the world and kidnap people? The fact it shows authorities as little more than bumbling loons that can't cope with anything bigger than a traffic accident was grimly accurate, though.
• Hi everyone, last person in the world to see the movie, raising her hand here.* After seeing the movie, I came straight home and checked out this thread to read all the links. Good stuff, Hank, thanks! I too find game theory absolutely fascinating, but I only know it from movie references. Can anyone recommend a good primer? Preferably a nice, easily-digestible, armchair theorist sort of book. * Loved it, by the way. Loved. It. I kept thinking how much the other Hank would enjoy it.
•          18+ demographic  ┌───────────────────────  │         HAPPY  PSYCHO C│         BATMAN BATMAN H│        ╔══════╦══════╗ I│HAPPY   ║      ║      ║  L│BATMAN  ║ $,0  ║ $,$$ ║ D│        ║      ║      ║ R│        ╠══════╬══════╣ E│PSYCHO  ║      ║      ║ N│BATMAN  ║ 0,0  ║ 0,$$ ║  │        ║      ║      ║  │        ╚══════╩══════╝
• China to miss out on 'Dark Knight'
• So a depiction of corrupt cops in China angered the Chinese government, so WB isn't even going to try for release there. I'm sure the bootleg DVD market is very happy about this.