entertainment and entertainment alone
i received batman begins from netflix on tuesday and got around to watching it with my wife last night. i saw it in the theater and absolutely loved the movie and loved it even more yesterday. i believe it is one of those movies that i will purchase and watch over and over, liking it more each time... but my enjoyment of the movie moved me to thing about creating a blog about it.
first, i thought, i could analyze the many masks and facades in the movie: batman is a masked vigilante of justice, scarecrow uses his mask to horrify those he experiments on... then i began to think about the less tangible and more metaphorical masks in the story... but i stopped myself. why do we always do this? why must our entertainment we looked at on a deeper level? of course, many times it is made to illustrate a deeper meaning. of course, it is good to learn from everything we take in. but can't entertainment be about entertainment?
i decided not to plague this movie, in its pure form, with my misguided philosophical interjections about what the move was really about. i'll tell you right now what is was about. it was about a man who overcame his fear in order to help the world. it is a hero story and it's purpose is to uplift us and entertain us. i walked upstairs after the movie last night and i was uplifted because for those two hours i was batman. i could escape my everyday what-have-you and just enjoy the story.
this is a funny argument when you look at the fact that i began my college coursework as a literature major. finding themes that may not even be there is what literature folks do... the homoerotic subplots of shakespeare, poems that have 300 different meanings and interpretations... but it's not just literature, it's academia in general (the place in which i aspire to belong to in the coming years). philosophizing everything and using language that is above the average reader is a whole industry in an of itself now. if the common man down the street can understand, chances are it's not by a ph. d at a major university... right? but that doesn't change the fact that i look forward to joining academia or even looking for the deeper levels of classic literature, modern sci-fi novels, my favorite songs, or even batman begins at some point. i just think sometimes we need to sit back and realize that we can read a book or watch a movie and not need to turn it into a dissertation. (read my study elitism and over-analysis: the problem of academia set to be published in 2022)
are there other layers in batman begins? maybe. but i don't care. i will pop the dvd in again and just enjoy myself because that is what it really was about sometimes. and tonight i will watch the original buffy: the vampire slayer and i won't wonder if the vampires represent manifestations of her superego or communists of eastern europe. i'll just sit back and laugh.
first, i thought, i could analyze the many masks and facades in the movie: batman is a masked vigilante of justice, scarecrow uses his mask to horrify those he experiments on... then i began to think about the less tangible and more metaphorical masks in the story... but i stopped myself. why do we always do this? why must our entertainment we looked at on a deeper level? of course, many times it is made to illustrate a deeper meaning. of course, it is good to learn from everything we take in. but can't entertainment be about entertainment?
i decided not to plague this movie, in its pure form, with my misguided philosophical interjections about what the move was really about. i'll tell you right now what is was about. it was about a man who overcame his fear in order to help the world. it is a hero story and it's purpose is to uplift us and entertain us. i walked upstairs after the movie last night and i was uplifted because for those two hours i was batman. i could escape my everyday what-have-you and just enjoy the story.
this is a funny argument when you look at the fact that i began my college coursework as a literature major. finding themes that may not even be there is what literature folks do... the homoerotic subplots of shakespeare, poems that have 300 different meanings and interpretations... but it's not just literature, it's academia in general (the place in which i aspire to belong to in the coming years). philosophizing everything and using language that is above the average reader is a whole industry in an of itself now. if the common man down the street can understand, chances are it's not by a ph. d at a major university... right? but that doesn't change the fact that i look forward to joining academia or even looking for the deeper levels of classic literature, modern sci-fi novels, my favorite songs, or even batman begins at some point. i just think sometimes we need to sit back and realize that we can read a book or watch a movie and not need to turn it into a dissertation. (read my study elitism and over-analysis: the problem of academia set to be published in 2022)
are there other layers in batman begins? maybe. but i don't care. i will pop the dvd in again and just enjoy myself because that is what it really was about sometimes. and tonight i will watch the original buffy: the vampire slayer and i won't wonder if the vampires represent manifestations of her superego or communists of eastern europe. i'll just sit back and laugh.
posted by justincharlesharlan at 1:04 PM
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