tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5917430.post8689878129120874606..comments2023-10-31T13:15:07.875+00:00Comments on Subversive Puppet Show: Fight Knight Round 2Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891504714516423410noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5917430.post-12437201540474960682008-12-02T02:08:00.000+00:002008-12-02T02:08:00.000+00:00hmmm...interesting rejoinder. This inspired a lot ...hmmm...interesting rejoinder. This inspired a lot of thoughts in my head. <BR/><BR/>First, I would have to say that applying a psychoanalytic approach might be useful here. I think the Joker and the Batman form competing sets of desire systems that are nonetheless linked in some essential manner. This is the horrible reality that the Joker wants to prove to Batman: that they are essentially the same--yet not necessarily in the way the Joker thinks. <BR/><BR/>Consider this from Slavoj Zizek's essay "Kant and Sade: the Ideal Couple": <BR/><BR/>"Of all the couples in the history of modern thought (Freud and Lacan, Marx and Lenin…), Kant and Sade is perhaps the most problematic: the statement "Kant is Sade" is the "infinite judgement" of modern ethics, positing the sign of equation between the two radical opposites, i.e. asserting that the sublime disinterested ethical attitude is somehow identical to, or overlaps with, the unrestrained indulgence in pleasurable violence. A lot-everything, perhaps-is at stake here: is there a line from Kantian formalist ethics to the cold-blooded Auschwitz killing machine? Are concentration camps and killing as a neutral business the inherent outcome of the enlightened insistence on the autonomy of Reason? Is there at least a legitimate lineage from Sade to Fascist torturing, as is implied by Pasolini's film version of Saló, which transposes it into the dark days of Mussolini's Salo republic?"<BR/><BR/>Of course, Zizek ultimately argues that this is reductionist and it is, in fact, Sade who is Kant -- not the other way around: <BR/><BR/>"Lacan's point, however, is the exact opposite of this first association: it is not Kant who was a closet sadist, it is Sade who is a closet Kantian. That is to say, what one should bear in mind is that the focus of Lacan is always Kant, not Sade: what he is interested in are the ultimate consequences and disavowed premises of the Kantian ethical revolution. In other words, Lacan does not try to make the usual 'reductionist' point that every ethical act, as pure and disinterested as it may appear, is always grounded in some 'pathological' motivation (the agent's own long-term interest, the admiration of his peers, up to the 'negative' satisfaction provided by the suffering and extortion often demanded by ethical acts); the focus of Lacan's interest rather resides in the paradoxical reversal by means of which desire itself (i.e. acting upon one's desire, not compromising it) can no longer be grounded in any 'pathological' interests or motivations and thus meets the criteria of the Kantian ethical act, so that 'following one's desire' overlaps with 'doing one's duty.'" <BR/><BR/>So, translating this into Batman and the Joker -- the Joker does have a constructive goal (though what defines constructiveness is based upon what the Joker wants, namely Batman compromised). But in order to get to this goal, he is precisely not the anarchist we might initially make him out to be. For the Joker, it is a duty to form an opposition to order. Yet the opposition of order is not always chaos -- or at the very least, chaos must form a plan an order to oppose order. "It's all part of the plan."<BR/><BR/>But, at the same time, Batman (the one who has limits) also must be the one without limits. Kant indeed becomes Sade just as Sade becomes Kant. Following one's duty obsessively is pathological, yet following one's desire likewise exceeds pathology. By having to be without limits (he doesn't kill yet he can be the one who is made into the murderer of the cops Harvey kills), Batman paradoxically makes limits. By having a plan, the Joker anarchically shows he has no limits. <BR/><BR/>So, perhaps the new ideal couple is Batman and the Joker?Roger Whitsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09728434263500252895noreply@blogger.com