The Dark Knight of Longing for Sovereign Justice

The Dark Knight I have been meaning to write about since I saw it at Imax on its Opening Day. It is the most impressive and amazing Hollywood blockbuster in ten or so years. The last decade has seen 15 to 20 yearly stupid big budget, no idea, special FX driven, dreck storms hit our screens ad nauseum. I mean The Spiderman films, Harry Potter, Narnia, The new Superman, X-men, etc, etc. All piles of various types of shit. Some not so bad as others admittedly. Never has there been such a drought in Blockbuster quality. Lucas and Spielberg aren’t hitting them like they used to. James Cameron vanished… but is back soon. If your a fan of the Blockbuster, you have to see rubbish like two bad Hulk movies in a row, the one supposed to reboot the other, that is just as bad.

The major problem has been over use of CGI. If its done well like early films like Terminator 2 and Starship Troopers its great. If its used to devise a new aesthetic like Sin City, its great too. But its over use has literally polluted big budget film making for years. When Tarantino bagged the Matrix sequels saying no one cares to see someone fight a million digital Agent Smiths, he was spot on. Real people doing real stunts, that actually impress, this is what works in cinema and in action flicks. Kill Bill 1 and Death Proof prove Tarantino’s conjecture, blowing the above films out of the water action wise. Its a question of action film integrity.

New subscriber to this ideology is Christopher Nolan. He reduces the CGI to be an unnoticed extra in The Dark Knight unheard of for a modern blockbuster. Not only that, he sets a new aesthetic tone, much the way Tim Burton did with his first Batman. Burton is partly responsible, due to his misappropriation by imitators for some of the crap that followed, I’d say. I wasn’t that big a fan of Nolan’s Batman Returns, it still had some of the trappings and ear marks of the crap blockbuster, like that those training scenes with Liam ‘Qi Gong’ Neeson, but I dug what Nolan tried to do making Batman more real and the film more gritty. It boded well for the future. Here, in The Dark Knight Nolan succeeds completely.

He delivers a tight, black Michael Mann style super hero. Tough, real, gritty, dark. Not only that the film, a major Hollywood blockbuster, actually has ideas in it! Shock, horror. Like the dark 70’s blockbusters, I grew up on! Joy, joy.

For this Nolan deserves a dark knighthood. Apart from the film being 2 and half hours of brilliant action packed well written entertainment and containing an amazing swan song performance from Heath Ledger as The Joker. This film actually makes you think.

About what? Well, here is my take.

Superhero films are about one thing. The longing for a fascist style sovereign justice. Yes, thats right people. The longing for vigilante, no trial, no jury, no recourse to appeal, style justice. Immediate and irreversible justice. Divine justice. Most of us live such pathetic lives filled with no spiritual, ontological or political freedom that the thought of there being actual real justice, just for one night on the big screen, draws us back again and again to see these superhero flicks. Sometimes the justice is comical, sometimes nonsensical… or sometimes its real, like a hunger or a thirst. As it is in The Dark Knight.

Nolan not only mines the fascist sovereign dimension of Batman, his decisive, individualistic personal executive justice, he is also clever enough to present two other forms of justice, with which we must debate, through the narrative of the picture. The other two notions of justice are the Jokers brilliant anarchist justice and Harvey Dent Capitalist justice of chance. The real villian here is Harvey Dent, Capitalism’s Golden boy turned Jekyl and Hyde monster, who operates on the pure chance of the market (a literal flip of the coin) to determine how people live and die. Just like in todays political reality. Pure blind, pointless, directionless chance. The emptiness of this form of justice is portrayed appropriately by Dent’s half ugly burnt face, that resembles interestingly the pedophile revenge freak Mason Verger from Hannibal. The Jokers justice is more playful and philosophically interesting. He mocks any plans of man and beast and happily, joyfully goes about bringing destruction to Gotham. He wreaks havoc on authority and the underworld alike, no one is safe from his purifying anarchic fire. The Jokers justice is a legitimate option as we all face planetary doom of one sort or another. Fidel (yes, Castro) while Rome burns, Heilogabulus in Gotham central.

But, I conjecture the film and the filmmakers, I believe favour the fascist justice option of Batman. It is a new fascist justice, not old and stale, its built for the new millennium. A decision of right and wrong based on traditional and changing standards, and applied as rigidly and immediately as possible. The films popularity, I believe, is based on a longing for such justice today. Do we not see all around us, so many injustices and unfair practices, so much stupidity, so many swine and swindlers, both here and overseas. Don’t we all want a benevolent Batman to come along and sort the wheat from the chaff, once and for all. To do so ruthlessly and immediately. Christopher Nolan has realised this and has given us the first thinking transcendental fascist block buster of the 21st century. The play of the Joker and Batman is left open at the end of The Dark Night of our soul…do we choose to mock our doom with The Joker or try and fight to avoid it? I, for one, am for the later… and so too, I believe, is Batman.

Why so serious, indeed…

The Poetry of Radovan Karadzic

They have finally caught up with Serbian guerilla Radovan Karadzic, one of the Serb architects of ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian conflict.

My interest in Karadzic stems from his status as a warrior/poet. Yes, he wrote poetry and has continued to do so from in hiding! There are a number of interesting articles online about the mythical warrior/poet aspect of the Karadzic phenomenon. Considered a National hero to many Serbian’s and with his pursuit dramatized by the Richard Gere movie The Hunting Party, this former psychiatrist turned genocide exponent, wrote some interesting poems. Two of which I reprint below.

Maybe, we can expect a new volume of poems from The Hague, before he suddenly has a ‘heart attack’ like his former chum Milosevic. But wasn’t the whole Bosnian thing just a warm up to the Democratic West’s own war on Muslims? I mean Karadzic has killed far less innocent citizens than Bush and Blair after all? When are they’re dates at the Hague? Karadzic was no fan of Muslims and if this race war of Bush’s is to continue, maybe the US and Israel can ask him to continue his poetry and other activities, in their own theatre of operations?

Regardless of his career, I find the idea of the warrior/poet fascinating. Byron, D’Annunzio, Mishima. Now Karadzic.

Enjoy his poetry…

Mad Spear

Measure your steps, your hand’s twists
That spear you throw is mad
The landscapes awaiting it are full of no names and no reason.

Something like a chill is nesting within you
That spear, that stretched arm, glows in your head
You feel that mortal metal, its presence
You don’t think of it and it is still a metal.

You think of it and it leaves you as super metal
As metal which lives but is no metal
And the difference is reason enough to become a set of events.

It sets landscapes unseen to its serpent-like spine
It changes and glows while doing it
Does it only threaten or glisten for its beauty’s sake
Full of love for the blade which is itself?

Brought to madness thinking about its purpose
And becomes a hero
Before the gap, before the irreversible one that stays.

Twittering from time to time and also tired and vulnerable
It always returns to your abandoned self
Devastated by the new finding.

Sarajevo

I hear the misfortune threads
Turned into a beetle as if an old singer
Is crushed by the silence and turned into a voice.

The town burns like a piece of incense
In the smoke rumbles our consciousness.
Empty suits slide down the town.
Red is the stone that dies, built into a house. The Plague!

Calm. The army of armed poplar tree
Marches up the hill, within itself.
The aggressor air storms our souls
and once you are human and then you are an air creature.

I know that all of these are the preparations of the scream:
What does the black metal in the garage have for us?
Look how fear turned into a spider
Looking for the answer at his computer.

The 2am Lock Out Protest rethought

I’m no attendee of public protests; you couldn’t get me to protest the war in Iraq, the treatment of refugees, etc. But, if you want to close nightclubs at 2am in Melbourne, there’s an issue I’ll take to the streets to defend!

I have hardly ever been to street protests, as I believe them utterly ineffectual and stupid in their current form. If you aren’t really going to challenge authority through tactics and even strategic force. i.e. by entertaining the strategic use of surprise, the taking of buildings and sit ins, and even violence, if the gravity of the issue warrants it. Then what is the point? And this was completely true of this event.

Kristen and I, got a park nearby Parliament house and we waltzed into Catani Gardens ready to invade Poland. But we were immediately disillusioned to find a rave atmosphere in the park, like a free Earthcore event. Saw some good pals from my nightclub days, who too are equal strangers to attending street protests; like Rob Furst from Beat, Hank from onesixone and Dean Sunshine. Not many people there overall, about 3 or 4 thousand, but not too bad.

Bored, I suggested to Kristen she go and get interviewed by channel 10. And she did. But she gave long, intelligent answers to the journo’s questions and I thought, “The moronic news media will never use those”. They interviewed me next and, so, I spoke in sounds bites, one of which was “They are bringing back Prohibition, which is totally absurd”. That channel 10 used after the footy on Saturday evening, hehe.

Socialists were handing out leaflets, but lacked any ‘esprit d’core’. The protest started moving and Kristen and I moved with the dreaded mob, to the Parliament house steps. There, some Green tit, said a few fairly inoffensive things about why the 2am lock out is a bad idea. Applause. Then a lawyer announced some legal victories. Applause. Then some screaming and shouting from the mob. Then all dispersed calmly, under the eyes of about 40 cops. I yelled “Attack” a few times, but those words could not have fallen on more foreign sets of ears. Is this the same people who once spawned the heroism and outright bravery of Gallipoli? I think not.

Pathetic really. I mean what is the point. The Herald Sun is beating up this whole issue, like in recent issues of the rag, shooting shots of the odd fight or two that happens in the CBD every Saturday, and has done since the 60’s. Brumby, an unelected bumble headed booby, is bringing in stupid laws that will wreck the Melbourne club scene, yet grant yobbo land Crown, all the exemptions its piggy bank afford. So, it’s all very programmed in advance.

How about a little Transcendental Fascist anarchy!

Put me in charge of that demonstration. I would have trained two thousand protestors in marching techniques, with the aid and morale building leadership of old RSL diggers and ex military men. I would then get one of Melbourne’s top fashion designers to whip up a suitably Fascistic style Uniform of; boots, military dress style wear with a new edge with leather ecoutrements, and a new exciting symbology. We would then march in procession to the steps of Parliament house, and while the police slept at their posts, during the speeches, a crack squad of fifty shock troops, would sneak up on the mounted police, peacefully dismount and disarm them. We would then attack Parliament house and break our way in, as peacefully as possible. The protestors would then, fired up by our true revolutionary zeal, all rush inside the top of Spring st., in a matter of minutes. Then, I fucking guarantee you; the protests would get worldwide media attention.

Simple, really. A little will, discipline, fashion and training and ‘Voila!’ – the 2am curfew would be stopped forthwith. Democarcies like ours can’t handle this kind of thinking. That’s why you’ve all been brain washed since birth to hate anything vaguely fascist i.e. anything that may make you actualise real power in your lifetime, you know the way people have done throughout history. Your supposed to sleep on like children, while the adults make money destroying the planet. Forget the past errors of the Right! They are there on the Left too, do not forget, comrades… and do they make you burn your Marx? Of course not. We must all rethink ‘the great game’ of politics and break down this Left/Right oppositional rubbish. Its the future thats at stake, our future and that of our planet. And its worth fighting for, no?

The issue of licensing law issue is probably not serious enough a cause, for such tactics just canvassed, but the model stands. These tactics can be used for any form of public protests, and would get results. Socialists, Anarchist and other political Volk, listen up! You have to think outside the polite restraints, that are the code of this democratic Western beige land. Capitalist Democracy is shit, and is a crime against the human spirit itself. This eternal sleep festival of Dasein’s potential can and must end…

Until we realise that Capitalism is itself, a soft form of ‘fascist light’ politics. And then confront it with a disciplined, palingenetic and idealistic new version of the real thing, Australia, and what’s more, the West itself, will remain politically dead and in the post modern nowhere land of Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard and fiends.

Post Modernism is the discourse of Western Capitalism and must be rejected as the main canon of our intellectual society, a better finer, weighter canon awaits in history and ahead of us. With a few acknowledgements granted, of course, to the more radical and innovative ideas of the post modernists.

Fascistic style tactics work, history is testimony to this… and can be applied to even the most Socialist ideologies or causes of today.

Socialist groups out there… want worldwide media attention? Invite me to organise your next rally. I’m down with Green causes and anything to do with saving the planet from us and protecting indigenous cultures. I’m happy to advise, just give up or at least reconsider, some of own absurd ideas of equality, fraternity and justice. Power and its achievement is all that matters in politics. Zizek, through Stalin, will tell you that. I mean what planet are you living on, the same one as the rest of us and human history or some other fantasy ‘utopia’ of your own idealising?

Whatever happened to the Space Age?

I know we have Phoenix on Mars and that Nasa somehow goes on, but really, gentle reader, what happened to the Space Age?

In the decade of my youth (the 1970’s and early 80’s) the Space age was all around us. You could have sworn that by 2008, I’d be organising trips to the moon. I mean, where is my flying car by now! All these things were, well promised by culture and media by around our current date but they show no sign of appearing. Just as we are entering what looks to be the second and final dark age started by the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘global warming’ crisis. The planet is closing down, not going up… into space.

Where did we go wrong?

I have been rewatching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” and what a fucking beautiful and inspiring TV show it is and was. I find myself getting teary eyed at some odd moments, that explore the vast depth, beauty and wonder of the Cosmos and Sagan’s semi dorky, but completely sincere and passionate evocation of it. Where is this idealistic reaching forward of science today?

All the internet dot coms, billionaires and businesses are funneling millions of dollars to feed the wretched of the earth, but can’t some of this money go to NASA and to space exploration?

I mean human beings, we got plenty more where they came from. But Space and our first steps in it or onto another planet like Mars, are truly what, I thought, my generation was going to be about.

But, no, everyone is breeding without thought, stupid in their liberal ‘intelligence’, buying things endlessly without purpose and being so fucking bourgeoise, it makes me want to puke.

The soft Aldous Huxley style brain wash and dumbing down of the human species is so vast and complete, I don’t think many of us are left that really care about and are passionate about such subjects as space exploration any more. Outside the field itself, of course.

I mean 108 years after Nietzsche’s death, vain ‘last men and women’ run around making complete asses of themselves trying to be Jesus and setting up charitable institutions. Just so they can be God to the starving masses and reap the vast public relations benefits, that will push their companies or themselves forward… to nowhere. All the while the Cosmos awaits us and our small window of opportunity to explore it, closing as humanity turns this planet into a Mars like desert, whether it takes 200 years or 2000 or more. Wake up to Cosmic questions and the billions of years of evolution it took us to get here. And for what? Just so we can ruin it in a short time span of a few thousand years?

Its all in Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Evolution, Natural Selection, Mutation, Survival of the Fittest. We must evolve to the stars, or perish as a species, in the big picture.

Its like Jarvis Cocker, said “We were brought up on the Space Race, but they expect us to clean toilets”. The Toilet is fast becoming the world and the sooner we turn our attention to the heights of human endeavors, our greatest aspirations and away from pitiable retrograde charity, the sooner humanity may find itself back on the track to the stars. And our future, if we have one.

But, a Schopenhauerian voice tells me a second dark age has began. A great forgetting of Being underway, just with Nike’s, light entertainment and Playstation’s galore.

Can the supposedly educated West be so stupid? Such heights are possible and yet we stay in the gutter, looking down at the wretchedness and stupidity, like a reversed Oscar Wilde dictum. I for one may be in the gutter, but I still look up at the stars. And I sincerely hope some of you may still do so…

The Emperor Palpatine Fan Club

A lot of shit is written about Star Wars. So, I thought I’d write about who ‘is’ The Shit in Star Wars. Yes, none other than your friendly neighborhood Ruler of the Universe Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious. I mean, what a legend!

He got rid of those pesky religious nut jobs and terrorists, the Jedi. He brought much needed order to chaos in the Republican shit pile of discord. Some of Palpatine’s innovations include separating Church and State, getting rid of the ineffectual Senate, founding the mighty Galactic Empire and being an excellent multi tasker on many political fronts like domestic security, industrial relations, military strategy and foreign policy. Add to this being the boss of unruly minister without portfolio, Darth Vader, and you have a mighty accomplished political animal.

Played with aplomb, in Lucas’s at times unflattering portrait of the Galactic Empire, by Ian McDiarmid. Indeed, I would go as far as to venture that I think Palpatine is being given a raw deal! Who by? None other than that channel for all things Star Wars, Mr. George Lucas himself. Palpatine is constantly portrayed as Evil, when he clearly is a more balanced figure working towards Galactic unity, strength and wholeness. Palpatine digs both sides of the Force, so is much more balanced than that Galactic dwarf and Buddhist rip off artist, Yoda. He appreciates art, politics, women, sex, intrigue and power like any normal, healthy person. He also manages to keep his thoughts hid from those annoying mind reading Jedi pests, that hijacked the Republic. All the while Palpatine goes about saving whats left of the Republic and strengthening it and creating something new, and some would argue better in the Empire.

Here at Idea Fix, we’d like to open “The Emperor Palpatine Fan Club”, the only one on the net. Probably not, but let me know others? A place to share and care about that misunderstood, humble Galactic ruler with da cool cloaks and da even cooler rhetoric.

Add your comments and send me Palpatine poop to post here on Idea Fix.

What up with this new animated Star Wars movie? It looks shite. Lucas, stop playing with Jar Jar Binks genitals and let new blood who appreciate the Dark Side as well as Light, direct a new episode each of the famed 7, 8 and 9 in the Star Wars saga. And bring the damn Emperor back, as a ghost if necessary, to train new Sith. That sounds sexy.

Multiculturism is racism

It really is! Think about it people. All so called exponents of the Multiculturist worldview always expand upon ideas of the Other, respect for different cultures and tolerance, etc. But these opinions are always broadcast by those in positions of power and privilege, to keep the Other at a safe distance. i.e. usually operating in some demeaning lower strata of the Capitalist system. Our country is multicultural, but who drives our cabs? Works at 711 or service stations, etc? Capitalism is merely importing for itself new exploitable working class units. More easily exploited, in fact sometimes, due to lack of knowledge of Western notions such as unions, access to education before arrival here and even knowledge of the local language and tongue.

Slavoj Zizek noticed how at the same time talk of class struggle was fading from public discourse, the rise of Multiculturist speak was growing. It became an ersatz class struggle. Zizek considers multiculturism a part of Global Capitalism’s hegemonic totality. Zizek notes how whenever we talk of the Other, it is always in a condescending way of what he calls ‘the reduced Other’. The poor Aborigines needs us to say sorry to them, owww, the poor Asian’s need our help with language, aren’t we sweet?, etc. Zizek also notes that we respect other cultures as they fit ours. When issues of Muslim misogyny or religious based terrorism are raised our tolerance ends, or the example Zizek uses of respecting Hindu’s… but even their custom of throwing the wife on the funeral pyre with her dead husband?

Zizek also notes the only way to truly not be racist is to be able to exchange racist jokes with other races and to be comfortable about it. When we play the Political Correctness game its a form of reverse racism, that is equally as insulting as open racism. We consider the Other too ‘sensitive’ to hear racist jokes, we must protect her from our unspoken notions of superiority, etc.

I have long been deeply suspicious of multiculturism as a forced political concept. It can be used to destroy national cultures to create a mish mash nowhere land, ripe for Capitalist exploitation. The ideal ‘wasteland’ where Capitalism’s code can play out in its endless emptyness.

Hiding behind the PC Multiculturist, is always privilege. An understanding that, yes, we tolerate you ‘the Other’, as long as you fit into our general Western humanist liberal perspective. Slightly left capitalist newspapers, theatre, a little tennis, wine tasting, a nice brie, a walk in the park, riding a bike, a little ABC TV, some alternative radio and culture. It’s all so fucking trite and bourgeoisie.

I should like to expand these ideas in another post but for now I’ll leave you with a cool quote from our Slovakian provocateur Mr. Zizek, who says:

“Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all
positive content . . . but nevertheless retains this position as the
privileged empty point of universality from which one is able to
appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures — the
multiculturalist respect for the Other’s specificity, is the very form
of asserting one’s own superiority’

Brumby brings back Prohibition

If you want a drink after 2am in Melbourne, its going to be a dry argument.

In an retrograde decision all Melbourne clubs now have curfews because John Brumby can’t control law and order in his own State. The clear way to deal with additional violence on city streets is more and better paid Police patrolling the CBD on weekends and maybe even implementing a people’s militia to keep control. The redirection at train stations of large gangs (mostly of Ethnic origins) from the CBD, would be a good idea too.

Not some absurd return to 1920’s prohibition. This decision will ruin Melbourne’s cosmoploitan bar and club reputation that is world famous, all becuase the Premiere can’t control the citzens in his own state.

Mr Brumby if you can’t control your Sovereign territory, maybe a people’s militia’s needs to step into the breech, under a Transcendental Fascist structure, that could easily and peacefully keep law and order in the streets, with a little help and backing from comrades in the Police. Mr Brumby, do not deprive Victorians of their freedoms and liberties, all because you can’t keep a handle on youth Violence!

And what of the underlying issues behind youth Aggression? The youth of today are so Violent for simple reasons, i.e. they have nothing to live for. No ideals, no existential spiritual path, no leaders, no hero’s (except empty headed sport stars and moronic celebrities), basically, no future. Working with no discernible goal, empty shopping at Malls and getting drunk from depression on weekends, is the spiritual vista open to todays youth. Tiny cogs in the giant Capitalist machine, the endless “Hell with air conditioning” is their present reality

Another future is possible!

And it does not begin by restricting the freedoms of all noble citizens of Victoria.

Bring back the Noose?

Career crim Leigh Robinson killed a women 40 years ago, was released from the clink and just did it again. He was spared the hangman’s black touch, back when the world was listening to all that humanistic claptrap about reforming prisoners. He was spared a snapped neck by then Victorian Governor Sir Rohan Delacombe, who posthumously has blood on his hands it seems. Was the wisdom of the hangman the best way to go with this charming fellow? With Robinson’s first offence (at age 20) leniency was probably best…but not in hindsight. But hindsight always has 20/20 vision

But what about, now? I’m not normally a supporter of the death penalty, but in clear cases of premeditated murder, particularly second murder offences like this, its appeal is hard to ‘die-ny’.

Thoughts, people?

See here for story.

The Incredible Shrinking Palestine

Now, if your country went from this to this (see below) in just 60 years, how would you feel?

Not even the US has the cheek to do this to the Iraqi people. Can you imagine if they tried to move all Iraqi’s into similar small areas and enclaves. There be a little more than an incursion, I’d say. And rightfully, so too.

I’m a fan of Israel and a Jewish homeland. But this expansion seems a tad excessive and should have scant truck with the International community and UN. Surely, Jewish colonial exercises could be expanded to other parts of the world (ala The British Empire), that would welcome their infrastructure, investment and civilization. Some areas in Africa, Asia and various under developed Islands could be perfect locations for Israeli colonies.

But maybe, give a little land and autonomy back to the Palestinians first. Is that unreasonable?

My Birthday At Katarina Zrinski

I decided about a week ago to have an informal gathering at Katarina Zrinski’s restaurant, at the Croatian Club, in Footscray to celebrate my 39th birthday. This is the same restaurant proudly hanging a portrait of Croatian fascist leader and state founder Ante Pavelic. We applaud the bravery and steadfastness of the restaurant to not take down this portrait after public pressure. We recommend all Italian and Spanish restaurants to start sneaking in portraits of Benito Mussolini and Franco, respectively. Closely followed by German Restaurants hanging portraits of the chap with the small moustache, eventually. If its good enough for Mao and Stalin to have their visage’s gracing restaurant walls the same privilege must be given to those on the other end of the political spectrum.

How was the night? All good. The food was tasty, hearty fair enough to make you want to invade a small country, company was good (see below), no Croatian beer though (drat!) they had run out. We then hit Toff In Town, Madame Brussells and back to Bill’s house for more wine, women and song. We wanted to attend the dawn service service for ANZAC day plastered… but by 3 am wiser heads prevailed. A most enjoyable way to welcome in the last year of my thirties.

Go dine at Katarina Zrinski’s – it gets 5 stars here at Idea Fix for its wall art alone. Its got nice new decor, but an old school atmosphere.

Photo of me below with Ante Pavelic imperiously looking on, next to other Croate national hero’s. Followed by two happy snaps of some of the guests.