ah, dichotomies, the bane of every person who isn't a... well, actually dichotomies hurt everyone, but i'm not here to talk about real life ones (atm anyway). i here to talk about the one i mentioned in my last post: the good/bad dichotomy in chris nolan's female characters. (i'm only focusing on the tdk trilogy because i haven't seen any of his movies outside of it except inception.)
like i said, this thing is really, really false. even without factoring characters and characterization, i can tell that the thing was something inadvertently made up by the fans. it probably started as them pointing out a flaw and now they're trying to stick all the girls in there. "but frankie, but frankie, why is it so easy to put them in there at a first glance though?" that's answered easily: it's because nolan doesn't write enough women. when you make a series of three movies with a big cast of characters you should have more than six females among them. that even number makes it more than easy enough to separate them into dumb groups without a second glance. for two, this dichotomy in general ignores nolan's work deconstructing yet another dichotomy: the one between good and evil. also, misogyny, because you sure don't see anyone trying to force the male characters into these limited moral spaces!
but yeah, to the girls. i mentioned the four main female characters in my other post - rachel, anna, selina, and talia - and how they 'fit' into the dichotomy. of course, it doesn't work that easily. for one, three of these four girls slide around the grey area more than batman does, really. rachel is the only girl that can be called good, but that's because she dies before she can be forced to do things that would put her into the grey area as well. the good/bad thing really flattens the characters into two-dimensional caricatures of the things nolan actually wrote.
i wanna talk about talia next because she's the only one who might fit into the 'bad' category, but even then it's only because she doesn't care about what her father really stood for - if she did she would be an antivillian like her dad and bane. her revenge makes her a bit more shallow in terms of morality compared to selina and anna.
i like anna because she's one of the characters that sits right in the grey; she's a cop on the mob's payroll but it's only because she wants to help her mom. she has a hand in rachel's death but it was unknowingly. she refuses to sit firmly in the 'good' or 'bad' area - she's the epitome of what nolan was trying do, really.
selina is a fun one as well, because she's also firmly in the grey; she's a jewel thief, but only because she can't get any higher in life because of her record. she has no qualms with killing, but the only people she kills are people who are endangering her (of course, us having spent so much time with batman skews our perspective on this). she even has a sort of code when it comes to her stealing. she's a darker shade of grey, but still grey nonetheless.
and this isn't even counting the fact that to put the dichotomy in effect you have to erase the three neutral female characters from the story: barbara gordon, judge surillo, and talia's mother. all three put into the plot of one of the movies in some way but aren't there enough (or are too dead) to reallly have an established moral compass.
like i mentioned above, the real problem here is the fact that there are only seven of these guys amongst a sea of complex male characters. let's not make it worse by trying to erase pieces of their characterization, please?
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