Batman and Bataille

I'd heard tell some grumbles on the internet about the purported anti-populism of The Dark Knight Rises--conservatives celebrating and liberals declaiming the supposed portrayal of Occupy Wall Street-style rhetoric being employed by a psychotic-terrorist to literally occupy (and destroy) Gotham City, reducing it to mob-ruled failed-state of French Revolution proportions.  "If only the squalid masses would follow and defer e to the benevolent, Bruce-Wayne-esque billionaires above them" appears to be the hue and cry.

Such a reading of the film of course has obvious problems--the primary "occupiers" were mostly released felons and foreign terrorists, not actual poor people; the majority of the rich herein portrayed are either decadent socialites or evil back-stabbers actively plotting Gothom's destruction (i.e. Talia al-Ghul and John Dagget), not benevolent hero-capitalists or whatever; Bruce Wayne loses his billions, is un-bothered by it, never seeks it back and runs off with the populist thief; and etc.

Any who could glean a defense of the super-rich (and by extension, one presumes, of laissez-faire capitalism) from this film, reminds me of all those who somehow identified Obama's healthcare bill with the Joker blowing up the hospital in The Dark Knight, conveniently forgetting that Rachel and Harvey Dent were sold out by a cop in said movie because the mob offered to pay her mother's exorbitant hospital bills, a situation that would have been avoided in a Universal Healthcare system.  But I digress.

Really, when I hear a defense (sarcastic or otherwise) of the super-rich based upon The Dark Knight Rises, I can only say to myself: If only our super-rich were that courageous.  To commit a full expenditure, you see.

Batman/Bruce Wayne commits a full-on, Potlach-level, Bataillan complete expenditure of everything. George Bataille was a early-20th-century French philosopher who commented upon the "Potlach," a Native American ceremony endemic to the Pacific Northwest, wherein rival chieftains meet to show off their wealth, but then more importantly, destroy all their wealth as well.  They burn all their canoes, slaughter all their flocks, kill their servants, and etc.  It's the "conspicuous consumption" of the rich mentioned by Marx, taken to its logical and final extreme.  As Bataille himself writes, "At no time does a fortune serve to shelter its owner from need.  On the contrary, it functionally remains--as does its possessor--at the mercy of a need for limitless loss, which exists endemically in a social group."  Bruce Wayne's fortune never does shelter him from need, does it.  And he must make a limitless loss to save Gotham, mustn't he--"You don't owe these people anymore," please Salina Kyle to Batman in one key scene, "You've given them everything."  "No, not everything.  Not yet," Batman replies.  And he's right, isn't he.

By the end of the film, he has literally burned through everything--his massive fortune, his health, his life, his very identity, everything.  He has demonstrated his immense wealth by throwing it all away.  In a way, The Dark Knight Rises is a potlach, wherein the opposing chieftains of Bruce Wayne and Bane meet to show how much each could destroy of themselves.   Bane thought he could expend everything--his own minions, the entire city, himself.  But Batman showed he could expend more--he could even jump without the rope in the prison, showing he could forsake everything that gave him any sort of security, from his fortune clear down to his last rope (something Bane could never do)--and thus, as his expenditure was the deepest, he won the potlach.  As a result, Batman could redeem and rejuvenate Gotham, for he who stands lowest is he who can stand highest.

Bataille makes a big deal about the "Big Toe" you see, how man's ability to stand up the straightest of all animals is dependent upon the lowest part of our body, the big toe.  Our highest height is based upon the lowest low.  We saw this in The Dark Knight, when Batman took the fall for Harvey Dent's crimes to redeem Gotham from the Joker, as he lowered himself to raise Gotham higher--Bataille, raised a Catholic, of course pointed out how Christ found his greatest and most redeeming exaltation in his deepest degradation. 

And what is the end result of this complete expenditure?  Rejuvenation may be part of it, for when all things are burned to the ground, life can grow from the ground again.  There is indeed a redemption of Gotham, one not based on a lie, at DKR's ending.  Yet more, I suspect, is a sense of freedom--the dominant theme of the Batman franchise in general is Bruce Wayne's inability to leave Batman alone.  Even as he risks his life each night to fight crime, he still had his fabulous riches to fall back on.  But no more.  That final ending (spoiler alert) shows how the complete expenditure of Bruce Wayne's potlach left him free--free of his riches, free of his tortured commitment to the cape and cowel, free to pursue his love at last.   

The Dark Knight Rises ends with Bruce and Catwoman together at last, with clean slates, presumably broke but free, a love consummated that the comic books will never be able to show, because the comic books aren't brave enough to make a complete expenditure.  Just as our own super-rich will never be courageous enough to make that complete expenditure, to leave behind the false security of wealth and burn it all away.  I found this final Nolan-directed Batman film to be extremely affecting--I found its ending braver than actually just killing Batman off.  To show Batman expending actually everything, including Batman, so that everyone--including Batman--could be free.  Remember that Christ died on the cross, but rose again.