Watching the new Batman film was both a joy and task for me. For one I am a big Batman fan, especially of the new films, and I have been waiting a long time to catch this latest installment. The movie lived up to all the hype and then some. However, my experiences in Communication Studies classes at U of M have messed with my movie going experience. I am now very analytically of films in trying to figure out how they relate to my courses and other things I have learned. In the mist of me watching one of the best films I have seen in my life, I was able to pull some useful material out of it.
In the film, Batman faces a new foe named Bane who emerges as Gotham's biggest threat in Batman's absence. Throughout the movie, Batman returns on a mission to end Bane's rampage and save the city once again. In the process he unraveled the story behind Bane but when he found out the entire story about Bane's plan, he had realized that Bane was not the brains behind the operation. In fact the person behind all of Gotham's madness was a woman named Talia, who is the daughter of one of Batman's defeated foes. Who knew right? But before Batman knew Talia was a threat to him, she played a completely different role in the story.
In a unique plot twist, Talia turns out to be the main villian when she stabs Batman and tells him the real story behind Bane's madness. Once she explains, it turn out that she has been in control of Gotham's fate the entire time and everything she had done until that point was a part of her plot to finish her father's business. It was not Bane, the overly masculine super villain, or Batman, the rouge superhero, who was in the ultimate position of power, it was a beautiful, seemingly harmless woman. Where in their relationship towards the beginning of the film, Bruce Wayne/Batman was the dominant self-assured person in the relationship. But in the twist of the plot Batman was now the unauthoritative one in their relationship as it turns out Talia had all the power until her death in the film (Hotlz, 2009).
This was a unique plot twist where one character does a 180 degree turn around from who they were originally presented as. Talia was suppose to be a harmless, defenseless, and maybe insignificant character who was romantically involved with Bruce Wayne. However, she was the major player in the story and had to be stopped if an entire city was going to survive. I say all of this to say that looks can be very deceiving when it comes to stereotypical gender roles in the media.
Denzell, very interesting post. Although I didn't enjoy this Batman film as much the others (reasons with the plot), I do agree with your analysis on the film using stereotypes as a smokescreen to hide the actual main villain. I think it was cool how they presented Bane as the dominant character and the one in control. He had all the traits of a dominant character, male, big, and strong, but in the end he was submissive to a woman. This type of script goes against the idea of women being submissive and men being dominant that we see in normal role portrayals (Holtz & Ivory, 2009). I think I'll look at the film a little differently now because of the reversed stereotypical roles that we are given at the end. Also can't forget about Catwoman saving the day!
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