/lit/ - Literature

>>12007345
and here's the other thing. if either Mifune's Sanjuro or Eastwood's Blondie had been a *dark* figure who posed a threat to a *happy* society, the films would have been very different. it's why the Joker is such a problem for Batman like that, and his defeat requires not only a Holy Lie, but also a fundamental *leap of faith* taken by the people on the boat: namely, to Not Press The Button.

turn the Joker around, and you get those guys, nomadic figures who *clean out two warring tribes* precisely because they have completely hollowed out the place where they are, and in the end they can't actually be wiped out except by being set up to wipe each other out.

the Outsider/Nomad figure, when he enters the political arena, is either a force for good or for evil, depending on the polis; but they're *figures of balance* in both cases.