Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself — such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance.

–Jean Baudrillard

Let’s play a game:  I’m going to say something ridiculous, just for the fun of it.  Okay, here goes.  “The Terminator franchise will come to an end with the upcoming Christian Bale movie, Terminator: Salvation.  It will be the very last Terminator story ever told in any medium; the franchise will die when the credits roll.”

So why is that so absurd?  Obviously a franchise is endlessly renewable as long as a corporate entity believes the property has value, and yet franchises do die.  There is nothing inherently ridiculous about the claim that there will not be another Ghostbusters movie.  The two that already exist present us with closed narrative forms, both individually and as a unit.  If another Ghostbusters movie were to be created, it would be a resurrection of a dead property.  The same is not true of the Terminator, which, as of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, exists outside of time.

Pan’s Labyrinth, the gorgeous film by Guillermo del Toro, was on TV again the other day, and just seeing certain scenes brought all the feelings I had upon my first viewing flooding back.  I should say at the outset that it is easily one of the best fantasy films in recent memory.  Nevertheless, I left the theater with a niggling discomfort.  Where the discomfort came from I didn’t know.  Until now.

Big old spoilers after the jump.

Or: Holy plaisire du texte, Barthes-Man!

The plot of The Dark Knight, like that of Batman Begins, is honestly kind of shapeless and waffle-y. And yet, as Memento proves, Nolan is capable of writing narratives that are drum-taught and mongoose-agile. Why is he churning out these behemoths? Why, despite the wafflage, are they so dang good?

To answer this, I’d like to take a minute to consider Batman as a piece of storytelling, to consider the properties of the tale as it’s told. You’re probably taking it as given that there are spoilers for The Dark Knight ahead. But I should warn you that there are also spoilers for Batman Begins, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, the Superman comic books, and The Hunt For Red October. Be warned.

In his famous - for a certain value of “fame” - book S/Z, Roland Barthes strip-mines Balzac’s Sarrasine, wringing every scrap of meaning out of the text and classifying his findings into five narrative codes: Hermeneutic, Semic, Proairetic, Symbolic, and Cultural. The wikipedia definitions of these codes are pretty solid as of this writing (I mean, they could be “Taco! Taco! Taco!” by tomorrow), but they’re easier to understand when you see them in action. Like after the jump! Convenience!