Unbalancing Justice: Overcoming the Limits of the Law in Batman Begins

Abstract

From Star Trek to Star Wars, popular culture is replete with images and signs of what might be called theological ‘bad infinity’ — that is, a law of endless binarism, of recurrent dualities of good and evil, the one (Anakin Skywalker) turning into the other (Darth Vader). I want to interrupt this disseminatory flow, in order to investigate how this essentially ‘pagan’ cosmology — of replicating balance, of law’s symbolic harmony — is challenged, even undone, by an alternative, radical ‘Christian’ theology as embodied in the figure of Batman-as-Christological type. In so doing, I will ‘use’ popular culture (specifically Batman Begins) to propound a theology, as well as legality, of ‘the Real,’ drawing upon such sources as Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, and Joseph Campbell.