The 9 year old son of a friend I visited while in England was mad on Batman. Not the latest dark incarnation or even Tim Burton’s gothic version, but the 1960s TV shows. He had all the episodes on DVD and watched them continually so was able to tell us what was coming next and quote key lines. I asked his Mom & Dad if he liked the recent movie versions and they said that he hadn’t seen them yet. This was a deliberate policy on their part to preserve the innocent pleasure he is getting form Adam West’s camp depiction of the caped crusader. I grew up watching these shows so could understand the appeal. They are hugely dated now and were oddities pretty well as soon as they were made.
Certainly, the contrast between the colourful comic strip action and the shadowy sense of menace in the new Dark Knight film could not be more pronounced. At the cinema in Brighton where I saw it, the parental guidance alongside the 12A rating said that the movie contained “moderate violence and continuous threat” which I’d say was quite accurate.
The censor’s classification is a massive fudge as it allows young kids of any age to see it provided they are accompanied by an adult (responsible or otherwise!). It effectively dares children to watch with the added frisson of viewing something that is perceived as being on the margins of suitability. The more feature articles are written warning concerned parents against taking their young children, the more those kids will pester until a designated adult will take them.
What makes it hard for censorious souls is that it is difficult to point to any one scene that shows explicit sex or violence. Heath Ledger’s incredible performance as The Joker is the embodiment of a demented terrorist with sadistic tendencies but it is his unrepentent rejection of moral codes and logic (“Do I look like someone who has a plan?”) that makes his character so subversive. Some would argue that this is enough to merit an 18 rating on the grounds that it provides a negative role model for impressionable young minds but they are not really living in the real world.
It is understandable that for parents to want to protect children from the cynical and corrupt world depicted in Christopher Nolan’s makeover of Gotham City for as long as possible. Nevertheless, they know in their hearts that this is merely to postpone the moment represented in one Simpsons episode when Bart was persuaded to watch a violent movie by his peers on the basis that the time had come for him to be de-sensitised.
