It's not cliché, it's archetype

This post, which marks a much-delayed return to the venue, with no promises on when I may reappear again (I'm about to start that terribly grown-up thing called "working a real job"), contains some quasi-critical thoughts on a certain pop cultural canon. Brace yourself.

More specifically, I'm writing partly in response to recently seeing a movie you may have heard of, Chris Nolan's third Batman installment, The Dark Knight Rises, and partly in response to reading a review of said movie on Tor.com. I actually liked the review--I thought it made several good points, although not all of the reviewer's responses were identical to mine (I read it after I saw the movie, and I recommend that anyone who is planning on seeing the film wait until after they do to read any further; spoilers lie ahead). However, reading and reacting to the review got my thoughts spiraling around, particularly in relationship to one of the questions the reviewer asked: Is the movie's story cliché?

Does this outfit make me look predictable?

The conclusion the reviewer, Ryan Britt, came to is yes, in some ways, and no in others. I agree (although I saw different parts coming than he did), but I would go a step further than that and say that what makes the movie work and not work (and mostly it does work), isn't whether or not it's formulaic. It's something else, something more rarefied.

Lets take one of the clichéd elements of The Dark Knight Rises--incidentally a part I thought was predictable, although Britt did not. It's one of the central pillars of the story, the emotional journey Bruce Wayne takes from beginning to end. In fairness to Britt, his point was not that the story was original, but that it was one he didn't see coming in this particular context. My point, however, is that the character's development arc is one of the oldest of them all; one that can be traced back through the canons (literary and pop cultural), appearing over and over again as one of the basic stories that humans tell each other.

It's not a coming of age story (that would be a whole other post). It's a story that picks up in the middle--after all, there were two installments to lay the groundwork. Who else begins a story in the middle? Oh, only EVERY EPIC in the western tradition.... At the beginning of the movie, Bruce Wayne has lost his way ("Midway through my life's journey, I was wandering in a dark wood.") He is isolated from the world (Like Odysseus stuck on an island in the middle of the ocean, but without the attractive nymphs for company). He has touched greatness, and then lost it. He is mostly reacting to things that happened a Long Time Ago. This should look familiar, too. It's kinda like a captain who lost a rebel war and now has to make do by flying around the universe without a particular destination. It's also sort of like when you and your best friend conspire to kill a king, and half a generation later, the memory of that conflict starts everything festering again (well, that one's not really a story with classic heroes, but my point stands). That point is: the story of the hero who begins the story carrying his memories as a weight is an old and well-used one. Don't we all know it? Haven't we all felt the same?

The emotional path Bruce Wayne/Batman's character takes after this beginning is equally well-trodden. He is inspired--tempted--to take up his old mantle again; he is overconfident; he fails; he passes through the lowest trough of despair, where his old abilities are reforged in the crucible of this nadir of suffering ("the sword that was broken is remade"); he regains his powers, and is able to return to take up the fight one last time. It is a classic story, not of the emergence of a hero, but of the rebirth of the hero, the renewal of the protagonist who has been ill-used by the world but is able, ultimately, to learn from that usage. It's been done and done and done, but when it's done well, it still evokes something in us.

The word I would use for this is not cliché, but archetype. It's a story we keep coming back to, because it reflects an experience we all share--that of being experienced. We all feel burned by memory, at one time or another, unable to return to the paths that we've walked before. Frequently, it doesn't end like the story, we don't return stronger to fight another day, but we want that to happen, and we appreciate watching characters who pull through their dark nights of the soul (no pun intended, I promise!!!), with the hope that we would be able to do the same. The story progression rings true to us, and that's why, even though I could see the shape that Batman's story was going to take from the beginning of the movie, that didn't prevent me from enjoying it--and being moved by it--as it happened.

One last note: archetypes, as I define them, have to reflect human experience, but they don't have to be realistic. They can be the experiences we yearn for, that we feel we can almost taste, even if they never truly happen to us. At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne makes the sacrifice of his life, his career as a superhero, but somehow he survives, and in surviving is freed from the suffering of his past. Again, this is an image that echoes back through many traditions--the moment when, through some magic, a character is miraculously freed of the conflicts that have haunted him or her. It is the moment when Athena descends to decreed peace from unending feuds of family honor, or when Dante climbs down through the lowest bowels of Hell and experiences the twist of the world that allows him to emerge immediately under the stars. In reality, there are very few moments that allow us to leave our past behind with one momentous step. But we know what that desire feels like--and that is what keeps the stories with the clichés, the archetypes, coming back. They show us partly what we know, and partly what we wish for.