Christopher Nolan's Kangaroo Court

The latest Batman movie carries the burden of being the occasion for the murderous assault in Aurora, Colorado, in July. A deranged graduate student named James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 59 in a shooting spree in a suburban theater during an opening-weekend screening of the film.

As the legal process for Holmes takes its course, the film itself is winding down its theatrical run. With video and other distribution channels in the pipeline, films don’t stay very long in theaters these days. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the theater in Burnsville, Minnesota, where I saw The Dark Knight Rises was one of the smallest I’d ever been in.

It was so small that the disparity between the large screen and the tiny room was quite incongruous.

Rather incongruous, too, is director Christopher Nolan’s plotting of the film. Strangely enough, in a movie featuring such over-the-top violence, Nolan at times seems on the verge of raising the question of whether violence is ever justified — even when responding to violence.

Unfortunately, that theme never really crystallizes. But the film contains some memorable individual scenes. Naturally, for purposes of this blog, I was struck by the sessions of the kangaroo court that is capable of issuing only death sentences.

Ostensibly, prisoners are given a choice: exile or death. Exile, however, turns out to be over the not-quite-frozen river, and therefore a de facto death sentence.

What was the context, I wonder, in which the term “kangaroo court” was coined? It dates, according to Webster’s, to 1853.

The larger question, however, is whether the entire film is a type of kangaroo court. One definition of such a court, after all, is of "a judgment or punishment given outside of legal procedure." In effect, the entire film comprises that kind of court.

From the Crosshairs to the Cross

Frank Rich’s March 27 column dissecting the reactionary Republican resistance to healthcare reform has gone viral. And for good reason − it’s a brilliant essay, laying out the irrationality, hate-mongering, and even outright violence coming from the right wing. From death threats against members of Congress to armed militias in Michigan, it’s an ugly time to be an American.

The desire to find a quick-fix scapegoat for our country’s ills isn’t likely to let up, either, even in the week Christians call holy. For all our supposed enlightenment, the tendencies toward mob mentality and political power plays that characterized Jerusalem two thousand years ago are all too familiar to us.

Sarah Palin and others who pander to white Americans’ basest fears deserve to be called out for their race-baiting, gay-bashing, common good-denying ways, which threaten to pull our country apart. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value, to be sure. But surely it is a misuse of freedom to target political opponents with rifle-site crosshairs on your Facebook page, as Palin is doing.

The connection between violent rhetoric and violent action is too close to make “lock and load” references responsible adult behavior. Just ask the widow of George Tiller, the Kansas doctor murdered by someone influenced by hateful anti-abortion publications. At some point, hate-inciting words become a clear and present danger - even when you claim to be a "soccer mom."

I’m not saying Palin should be jailed, like the socialist leader Eugene Debs was during the First Word War. I know politics is war by other means, and I’m familiar with Clausewitz.

What I’m saying is that there is another way: the way of the cross. The Jesus I follow urged us to love our enemies, not put them in the crosshairs.

The irony is that so many of those uncomfortable with racial and sexual diversity in America call themselves Christians. Thankfully, the singer Todd Snider stands ready, courtesy of You Tube, to offer a glimpse of what it's like on the other side of the cultural barricade.

The Noblest of the Acheans (er, Vikings)

In virtually every other country in the world, “football” means soccer. For good reason − American football is excessively violent, with a devastating injury toll. Small wonder, then, that we’re almost the only country that plays it. And the violent imagery it promotes seeps into American culture.

(Example: ESPN, in its game-summary of the AFC championship game, said of Peyton Manning: “If he’s given enough protection, he’ll kill you.”)

If anyone needed a reminder of football’s violence, it was on display today, as the New Orleans Saints administered a harrowing pounding to Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Brett Favre. Favre holds nearly every significant NFL passing record, but that doesn’t mean he got any slack. The New Orleans’ defensive players went after him with a passion.

(Baseball may be American’s pastime, but football is America’s passion.)

(Passion, on one level = suffering)

Yet Favre was undaunted by the Saints’ constant assault. He displayed, as an ESPN analyst put it, “pure courage.” If one were to mythologize the game, he was like Achilles, the noblest Greek fighter in the Trojan War.

Like Achilles, however, he was not untouchable. The race does not always go the swift, it says in the book of Ecclesiastes; in the hurly burly of the arena, contingency can intrude. Sometimes in the form of a penalty for too many men in the huddle.