Post 4 Group B- Sound of Music and the Perfect Wife ~ Dianesa Sanon

The Sound of Music is a movie based on a real-life story of the Von Trapp family living in 1930s Austria with war looming just around the corner. It released in the 60s and is, in a way, a product of its time and a romantic historical film. The war that is only hinted at in the beginning is made more obvious towards the end of the movie. The father of the Von Trapp family is a widowed strict navy general of seven unruly children. A nun, Maria, is introduced to the family and despite their rocky start the children start to love Maria who also finds herself in love with the Captain who in turn is falling in love with her but he is engaged to a Baroness who eventually makes herself sparse and Maria wins the heart of the Captain and they get married. All the while the Captain is being encouraged to fight in the war with Germany against his home and eventually the family, quite literally, runs for the hills.

The Sound of Music highlights what the ideal wife is supposed to be like. This movie, in my opinion, is more about Maria’s nurturing and loving personality. The war is a component to but it is just used to the support Maria. The film follows the optimistic and bright young woman fresh from a nunnery whose faith in God is as important to her as it is being kind to every person she come across. Throughout the film we can see how she manages the children, is slow to anger, is resourceful and is small and innocently beautiful.

Maria’s bright personality and optimism is a big a part of why the Captain and his children fell in love with her. She could turn thunderstorms into a list of pleasant things, she could turn a day into town a music lesson, she could keep the children orderly while the Captain needed his space to do his military stuff. Maria is presented as the buffer that subdues the catalyst. She is the epitome of what a good woman is. In every other scene her display of compassion and nurturing hardly ever falls short.

In the 60s women were expected to be well rounded in taking care of not only then home but the children as well. In the movie she’s met with the task of taming seven children who were so horrible they ran away all the other nannies that came before her and not only does she gain their trust and affection she sings her way through it all like some type of Disney princess. She even teaches the children a couple of songs that they sing to entertain the Captain, the Baroness, and a houseful of guests.

Post 4, Group B: Fear of Failure and By Jacob Bothell

    This weekend I returned to Wichita in order to work with the production company that I have been a member of for 2 years now. The event was a mixed martial arts fight (MMA) at the Kansas Star Casino just south of Wichita. I had somewhat of an odd experience in this particular journey that I have not had in quite a long time: the fear of failure. This fear was odd for me. I am not sure why this particular event made me feel this way, but it did and I would like to understand more about why and attempt to not have that again... because it makes my job REALLY difficult.

    What was it that a stage tech veteran (approaching 10 years) would feel anxiety about? Well this particular show I was to be running 2 jobs that would have me in 2 separate worlds of the production environment; the first was the job of audio for video, and the other is being a PTZ camera operator. The job of audio for video is where I sit in the video trailer and mix/produce the audio that people watching the live stream or pay-per-view hear. This job honestly on its own is exceptionally boring because once everything is setup all there is to do is maybe make adjustments during a video playback or if an announcer gets excited or if you want to make a moment emotionally interesting. The other job takes full attentiveness of the event and what and where the action is happening, and the interesting part of this particular job because it is a PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) camera I am operating it remotely a.k.a. I am probably 200 feet away from its perspective and am not even in the same room as it which makes situational awareness difficult. So my only info on what is going on in the room is from my and the other cameras... very limited.

    Combining these 2 jobs is actually much more difficult than it may seem; because while I am trying to frame up a shot that the production manager wants I am also attempting to make sure that the audio for the people that are not at the event is still engaging and informative. The interesting part of that is that the times that concentration is required for both of those tasks is exactly the same. For example, think about while 2 boxers are going at it and one begins to corner the other and more or less finish the fight. This is the emotional climax of the action and as such the audio should reflect that (turn up the ambient mics to hear the crowd/ring sounds and keep the announcers levels in check), and by golly the camera should never be pointed away from the action because you never know when your camera will have "the shot."

    So I think that I am beginning to understand why my fear of failure began to emerge in this context. It is not because of some sort of stage fright, and I don't think it was because the job was crazy intimidating (mainly because I knew what I would be doing when I agreed to show up). I do think that it was because the job pulled me in a multitude of directions, that while being used to being aware of and being able to be critical of and fix things if I had to, there were simply too many different facets of the job(s) at hand to be able to appreciate and refine enough of them to feel that I was doing an adequate job.

Post 4, Group B: If Christ Came to Chicago by: JJ Leath

             In class, we discussed W.T. Stead’s work If Christ Came to Chicago. In the excerpt we read in class, Stead wrote about a prostitute in Chicago by the name of Maggie Darling. Stead spent significant time within the brothel that Maggie worked at. He was there and observed their “monotonous existence” and observed when they were “pulled” by the police. Stead could have focused on their vices, or Stead could have also focused on police corruption in Chicago, for he witnessed this first-hand. Rather, he chooses to spill the most ink about Maggie’s past. This conscience choice made by the author is revealing about his purpose of writing this work. Stead has directed this work at the upper-class so that they can gain understanding of what it is like to be a person in Maggie’s position and to humanize people on the fringe of society. 

            To analyze a work, it is crucial that you examine the context from which it was written. The context of If Christ Came to Chicago can be gleaned if you consider the audience that Stead was writing for. This account was published in 1894 as a book. Lower-class audiences wouldn’t have the money to buy the book, the leisure time to read it, and the illiteracy rate in the lower-class at the turn of the 19^th century was much higher than the illiteracy rate in the upper-class. Further, I'm not sure that the audience was meant to be citizens of Chicago, I believe that this work was meant for those in Stead's home-city of London. This may have been written about Chicago, but it was widely circulated and published in England. When the time period is considered, it becomes clear that this book was written for the upper-class (possibly specifically the upper-class in London) with the specific goal of educating them on the realities of living life in the shoes of a person like Maggie Darling.  

            Given context, I believe that you can start analyzing Stead’s intentions. While on the surface Stead was just showing the life of a prostitute, I don't think Stead wanted to simply show what it was like to live like Maggie Darling. Stead wanted to humanize Maggie, and by doing so, humanize every “Maggie Darling” that we all see daily, if we live in a large city that is. The social elites of London, Chicago, and New York would likely run into “Maggie Darling” often (especially if they were frequently clients of their corner’s ‘Maggie’). They would see the impoverished on the street, and they would likely keep their distance. It is easy to blame their vices and poor decisions when you can keep a distance from them and their story. When you can keep your distance from a group, it is easy to "otherize" them. What If Christ Came to Chicago did was remove that distance. Stead threw Maggie’s story in your face; you can’t escape it. 

            Stead then took this one step further. He starts by showing the realities of Maggie’s life, he then humanized her, and he finished by telling the account of the villain of the story. The prostitute wasn’t the villain, it was a rich catholic. As a reader, I had to ask if there was anything significant about this. Given the context of the piece and Stead’s purpose, I believe that he was inadvertently telling the upper-class that the social ills that occur in the city’s underbelly is somewhat their fault. When Maggie told her story, she accounted that she was able to get out of the prostitution scene in San Francisco, and if it weren’t for the self-righteous action of the rich catholic Mrs. McD, Maggie wouldn’t have been pushed into prostitution again. She could have been an “up-standing citizen”. I believe that this aspect of Maggie’s life is what creates the most powerful social commentary of the piece – Maggie's lot in life wasn't entirely her fault. I think that this is supposed to be a metaphor to Victorian England and the economic system that was propping up the London elite. It was the economic system that was pushing the "Maggie Darlings" of London into desperate situations. The message of If Christ Came to Chicago ultimately is that the world’s “Maggie Darlings” aren’t all bad, they are desperate, and those with power and influence are somewhat responsible for this.   

            The fault of the upper-class in Victorian wasn’t explicit, but they were definitely exploiting the lower classes of London. During the Victorian period in England, the Industrial Revolution was raging in London. This became the source of much of this newfound wealth, and while industrialization created a great deal of wealth, there were many in Victorian England that were left behind.  In “Economic Development and the Demographics of Criminals in Victorian England”, the authors examined the trends of crime in this time period. The authors noted that “As industrialization proceeded, workers increasingly found their human capital unsuitable to the technology level, which forced some into crime”. In this paper, the data from Victorian England showed a 20% increase in economic crime (or non-white collar crime done for economic gain). The crime statistics in this paper show desperation within the lower-classes. While I don’t think the upper-class is guilty for their success, it is indisputable that the system propelling them was burying others.

            What makes If Christ Came to Chicago interesting and so important is its applicability today. We are in the next Industrial Revolution. Computers are affecting our economy like machines did in Victorian England. The wealth that has been created has been incredible. It has created billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. And just like the Industrial Revolution, there are members of our society being left behind. How many different homeless people have you seen while you drive to school? How many times was the widening wealth gap brought up during the 2016 election? We are living in an Industrial Revolution remix, and the question is whether we will learn the lessons being shown in If Christ Came to Chicago or if we will continue to blame the misfortune of the forgotten on "their own poor choices".

Source:

Vickers, Chris, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth. “Economic Development and the Demographics of                              Criminals in Victorian England.” The Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 59, no. 1, 2016,                  pp. 191–223., doi:10.1086/684303.

Group B Post 4: Outsider Looking In-Sherman Alexie's Perspective: Kathleen Paxtor

Alexie writes his poems and short stories to recount parts of his life in his perspective. He uses themes of alcoholism, racism, colonization, despair, and resentment to capture the audience into feeling what he felt. For most of Alexie’s characters they “struggle to survive the constant battering of their minds, bodies, and spirits by white American society and their own self-hatred and sense of powerlessness” (Casey). For example in the poem On the Amtrak from Boston to New York he writes with what could be considered resentment. This poem is about the overwhelming colonization of American culture overriding Native Americans and their culture. The protagonist of this poem resents the lady for bringing up the history of something that was part of his history first; she was ignorant to the history beyond what she was taught. He call this “her country’s history” not “his” or “our”. He feels the need to be quite and keep his thoughts to himself, he views the ‘white American society’ as his ‘enemy’. He writes: “while I, as all Indians have done since this war began, made plans for what I would do and say the next time somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own;” in this he clearly separates himself from the other, the enemy vs. him (Alexie).

Sherman Alexie in his writing uses his ‘outsider’ perspective to make the reader interact with his identity. Alexie is a Native American that was born and raised in a reservation in Spokane. Alexie continuously writes himself into his characters and uses themes that have affected him his whole life; “he is roused to consciousness about his own entrapment within clichés and culturally constructed ways of reacting” (Garic). The influence his youth had on him is seen in all of his writing, he uses themes of despair, racism, and lost identity to show what it is like to be a “part time Indian” in world that is socially constricted.

By seeing things through Alexie’s eyes we can try to understand his world. Alexi writes to “understand the world and to make fun of the world (Garic). In his short story Indian Education he writes about his personal experiences at school. Victor (the main protagonist) describes his education through specific episodes of his life that really stayed with him. Much like Alexie, Victor learned lessons that didn’t necessarily come from attending school and books but from experiences and life lessons. He uses specific experiences of others and compared them to his perspective. For example, in 8^th grade Victor could hear “the white girls’ forced vomiting” and asked them to “give [him their] lunch if they were just going to throw it up”. In the end, Victor concludes with “there is more than one way to starve”(Alexie).  By using an eating disorder as a metaphor Alexie is able to show that starvation goes beyond just food; “other forms of starvation are not explicitly tied to food, as those on the reservation are starving for a real education, for dignity, and for a better quality of life” (Battaglia). While these two girls were throwing away their bodily nutrition, Victor (Alexie) saw it as throwing up opportunities. This correlates with his past because Alexie chose to go to a public school for education he had more opportunities, his friends back home were not so lucky. The opportunities that were being thrown away were ones that were wanted by others who are starving for more.

Through Sherman Alexie, you can learn life lessons through different accounts and perspectives; lessons he learned through his youth, perspectives formed from a socially constrict universe that labeled him as an outsider looking in.

References:

Battaglia, Soheila. Theme of the Short Story “Indian Education. https://penandthepad.com/theme-short-story-indian-education-1669.html. 2017.

Casey,Rob. Poetry Foundation. Sherman Alexie. Poetryfoundation.org

Garic, Vanja. "Part-Time Identities and Full-Time Narration as an Absolution in Alexie's the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, vol. 44, no. 1, 2017, pp. 189

Group B - Post 4: 'A Tragic Recounting' Hiroshima and In This Corner of the World - Kenneth Butcher

In the wake of the Nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the second wold war there have been many a stories across multiple mediums depicting the life of non active combatant military Japanese folk shortly preceding and in the aftermath of this catastrophic event. Over Spring Break I had the opportunity to experiences a fairly new iteration of one of these stories in the form of an animated film entitled, "In This Corner of the World" and I thought I'd takes this opportunity to compare and contrast the rhetorical and cinematic devices the film employs with those that the excerpt from the story "From Hiroshima" does, in order to see how the help us formulate empathy, as well as get a similar message across in two different ways.

The plot of 'In this corner of the world' follows the life of a woman named Suzu who lives in a seaside town called Eba in Hiroshima City. In 1944, 18-year-old Suzu, working for her grandmother's small family business of cultivating Nori (edible sea weed), is told by her parents that an unknown young man has come to propose marriage to her. The man, whose name is Shusaku, lives in Kure City, a large naval port city 15 miles away from Hiroshima City, as a navy civilian. He remembers that he and Suzu had first met during one of Suzu's childhood visits to the city. Suzu decides to marry him and moves to join Shusaku's family in Kure. As Suzu adjusts to her new life in Kure, the threat of the Pacific War slowly begins to encroach on the daily lives of the townspeople. Most of the first half is spent establishing Suzu as kind of a regular, lovable, artistic ditz to both endear us to her on a personal level and to later heighten the emotional impact of what we know is going to happen to her. It isn't really till the second half, after she goes to live with her husband and his family in Kure, that we start to see the realities of war start to encroach into her everyday life in the way of things like, the military police presence begin to grow in her town over time, certain food and resources progressively becoming more scarce to the point that the government has to give them out in extremely small rations, and randomly being forced to stop whatever it was they were doing at the time and go into an underground bomb shelter every time there was an air raid. All of this coming to an extremely emotional head when her sister in law is killed by a previously thought to be inactive bomb shell that had crashed on the beach after an air raid; and the explosion causes her to lose her right hand. This is where the characterization that the first part created comes into play because we see someone who we've spent the better part of 40 to 45 minutes getting to know and are for suffer at the hands of something preventable, with the intended purpose of wanting to create anger in the viewer particularly towards the situation and or the circumstances that led to it and sympathy and empaty for her loss. The significance in this scenario being (though she is a fictional character) Suzu is a stand in for all the Japanese folk who had to live in a similar situation or even bombed for a war they may not have been 100% behind; who we in the U.S would usually only get to hear about and see as statistics or a really high percentage rate.

From Hiroshima by John Hersey seeks to elicit the same feeling but It chooses to do so through the medium of written text and through the lens of the peoples lives in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Phrases like "Dr. Fuji lay in dreadful pain throughout the night on the floor of his family's roofless house on the edge of the city" and "Dr. Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so terrible and so compelling that it had not occurred to him to ask any questions about what had happend beyond the windows and doors." (pgs 112 in The Art of Fact) are meant to put a face to what would otherwise be just another casualty of war. Thus making the realities of the destruction it causes more real and unavoidable to the reader.
I read and that sought to critical analyze another academics use of Numbers to attempt to explain the rational for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I found pretty interesting. Kimura choose to state, "Heartbreaking stories have been recorded,2 for example, as illustrated by the testimony of a sixteen-year-old boy, Akira Onogi: We found this small girl crying and she asked us to help her mother. Just beside the girl, her mother was trapped by a fallen beam…we had no choice but to leave her. She was conscious and we deeply bowed to her with clasped hands to apologies to her and then we left.3 " (Kimura pg 21) as a preface before diving into the factors at play he felt that didn't justify the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan twice. The reason I found this to be particularly interesting is because this piece was written in 2013 and I believe Kimura feeling the need to preface this article like this really encapsulates and generation shift in looking at the event. One that is in many ways far removed from the more detached and numerical/mathematical way of looking at war and it's effect that were very prevent in the past on a societal scale. And I also believe that ultimately looking at war through the lens of it's affects and not the short term of whatever the dispute is over is a good thing, if not a little idealistic, because of how things like the aforementioned retold accounts (fictional or otherwise) help us better empathize with our fellow man, and ideally not want to see them in such catastrophic situations.

Sources:

In This Corner of the World (film). (2018, April 02). Retrieved April 09, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_This_Corner_of_the_World_(film)

Applying Taurek’s ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ to (un)justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A combination of historiography and applied ethics by Tets Kimura
http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/sis-files/history/FJHP/Volume%2029/Tets%20Kimura%20vol%2029%202013.pdf

Post 3, Group B - Neo-Noir, Nolan, and the Batman by JJ Leath

                          

Before Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck made Batman a pop-culture disaster, the Caped Crusader was interpreted by the British filmmaker Christopher Nolan. In class, we discussed the theory that a movie directly reflects the director’s vision, thoughts, and subconscious. This was shown through recurring themes throughout the body of Hitchcock’s work. Because Hitchcock was in control of so much in his films, his essence was reflected in them. I recently watched The Dark Knight, the second film in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and thought it would be interesting to look at Nolan’s interpretation of Batman and how his Neo-Noir styling was reflected in these movies. Through the use of a central theme of good people falling into ruin along with classic Noir styling, Nolan not only portrayed a Batman that was completely unique to any film portrayal before, but he also furthered the genre of Film Noir in the process.

To understand Nolan, you first have to start with a foundation in classic Film Noir. Nolan’s films are riddled with classic archetypes within the Noir style. What it means to be within the Noir styling is somewhat loose, but there are certain themes and character archetypes that are nearly always present. As Nathaniel Rich puts it in his book San Francisco Noir “…[the term Noir] describes, in its most narrow application, a series of American films made during World War II and the years following, punctuated by violence and pervaded with a profound sense of dread and moral uncertainties. The heroes tend to by cynical, tough, and overwhelmed by sinister forces beyond their control. Film Noir tries to make sense of the complexities and anxieties of the postwar urban experience by exploring the rotten underside of the American city, a place where the American Dream goes to die.” Later in his book, Rich goes on to say that what it means to be Noir is somewhat loose. In other words, there are no rules, only conventions and themes. In the video we had to watch for class, some of these themes were stated. A major theme is a dive into chaos and misery for the main characters. There is no riding off to the sunset in Noir. Things either go from good to terrible or bad to worse. Further, Noir is often interested in breaches of human morality and challenges moral conventions and ideals. In a time of sexual prudence, Noir was increasingly suggestive. In a time where the heroes were good and triumphed, Noir heroes were flawed and had lives riddled with failure. Noir is dark, gritty, and often based around stories of crime and corruption. This makes Noir a perfect style for Nolan, who throughout his career has made it his style to comment on epistemological and metaphysical concepts along with the nature of human morality. And with themes of misery, crime and corruption, Noir is perfect to depict the life of Bruce Wayne.

For those of you who don’t know (spoiler alert), Bruce Wayne is Batman. In 2003, Nolan approached Warner Brothers in order to passionately pitch his version of the life of Bruce Wayne. Why would Nolan be so interested in a superhero movie? Nolan is no Michael Bay. While many directors and studios do superhero movies for the action and consequential revenue, these motivations would be extremely out of character for Nolan, especially early in his career when he was trying to make an artistic name for himself. So, if it wasn’t for the money, why would Nolan be interested in the life of Bruce Wayne? I think it is ultimately because he had a vision for what he could do with Bruce Wayne. The actual story of the Batman is simply a vehicle for Nolan, a vehicle that allowed him to push the genre of Neo-Noir to new areas and a vehicle to comment on human morality and the condition of life.

Before Nolan’s moral commentary and genre expanding endeavors are discussed, I think it is important to note many of the classic Noir homages Nolan tipped his hat to in this trilogy. First, he reused many classic Noir character archetypes for the supporting characters. For example, Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of Catwoman falls within the classic “Black Widow” archetype in Noir. She is dangerous and empowered. She meets Bruce as she is robbing him, and she pickpockets the keys to his Lamborghini at a charity event. Most importantly, she takes care of herself. As women grew more independent after World War II, this became an increasingly common character in Film Noir as an alternative to the “damsel in distress” archetype in classic film. 

In addition to characters, visual themes in Nolan’s Batman trilogy are largely derived from classic Noir as well. Most of the scenes are at night, it is often raining, and the use of light and shadow is heavily relied on. There is a particular moment in The Dark Knight that references the Noir trick of using of shadow to imply something nefarious is going on off screen when the subject matter is too risqué to show explicitly. In classic Noir, this was often done to imply sex. In The Dark Knight, this is used to imply grotesque violence. In this film, the Joker carves open the face of a mob boss using a pocket knife while murdering him. This is particularly gruesome, so it is shown by focusing on a shadow off the frame. These are clichés in Noir, and I think Nolan used them to make sure that there was no confusion about the fact that this is a Noir film. In order to push the boundaries of the genre, he needed to establish it as a movie within the genre first.

The major deviation from classic Noir for Nolan was the character archetype used for Bruce Wayne. In classic Noir, main characters are “sinners.” This was mentioned in the video we watched for homework in this class. Main characters fall into chaos and misery in Noir, but the causation of misery is the result of their own poor choices and immoral behavior. In Double Indemnity, the main character falls into chaos and misery because of murder and sexual desire. As an audience, this allows us to observe this chaos but not feel too particularly sorry for the affected character. Nolan’s Bruce Wayne, however, couldn’t be any more moral and his misery isn’t caused by deviant decisions. This is a significant deviation from Noir. From this, the main plot driver in Nolan’s Batman Trilogy comes forth: innocent decisions and moral behavior doesn’t guarantee you happiness or freedom from misery. This theme can be immediately seen in Nolan’s portrayal of Bruce’s parents murder. This event has been portrayed 100 different ways, but the main theme has always been Bruce’s parents were randomly mugged and murdered. Nolan, however, made the murder occur after Bruce wanted to leave an opera because he was afraid of the bats being portrayed by dancers. If Bruce would have stayed in the opera, his parents wouldn’t have been killed. It was innocent, he wanted to leave because he was scared, but he still blames himself and despises his own cowardice all the way into adulthood. An innocent decision led to unimaginable misery.

Upon his parents’ death, Bruce becomes a billionaire, but wealth doesn’t save him from misery. It is evident through the series that Bruce couldn’t care less about his wealth. When the before-mentioned Lamborghini was stolen by Catwoman, he didn’t care. Nolan makes sure to make it clear that wealth was an ineffective refuge from Bruce’s misery. Nolan then follows Bruce through a journey to escape the scars of his parents’ death, and this eventually results in him becoming the Batman. He does this for good; he wants to help Gotham with his wealth and courage. Bruce is a good man, and his mission is moral. The plot-driver being a moral main character behaving morally is another significant deviation from classic Noir. This is crucial though, for this theme of the “miserably moral hero” is what Nolan uses to comment on morality and the human condition. The noble decision to become Batman just causes more misery for Bruce. The woman he loves refuses to be with him while he is Batman, and in the end, the woman he loves is murdered by his archenemy, the Joker. Further, Bruce bankrolls Harvey Dent’s campaign for DA, and Batman helps Dent lock away most of the mob in Gotham. But as the Joker causes Dent to fall into madness and become Two Face, Bruce has to have Batman take the fall for Dent’s eventual death, or all of Dent’s work would be undone. This sacrifice doesn’t bring him glory, it brings the city he loves to hate him. From here, Nolan makes important commentary: you won’t always be celebrated for being the hero, and further, doing what is right isn’t a recipe for happiness. Misery is a part of life, and it isn’t always your fault that you are miserable.

Through the use of classic Noir elements, Nolan screams at you “THIS IS A NOIR!” But, through deviation from main themes, Nolan screams at you “MISERY ISN’T ALWAYS YOUR FAULT!” This does three things. First, Nolan extends the genre of Film Noir. There is now another character for the Noir archetype – the moral, miserable hero. Nolan would use this archetype in many more films, one of the most notable being Interstellar. Second, Nolan created a unique interpretation of Batman. Before, the portrayal was generally cheesy. Now, Batman is shown as a complex character with extremely dark, philosophical undertones. Third, Nolan comments on the nature of morality. Moral behavior can still lead to misery. Those who are downtrodden may not be inherently bad, they may just be unlucky. Further, doing what is right doesn't guarantee that you will be the hero in the eyes of the masses, and, in fact, it may just make you the villain. But, with Bruce as an example, I believe Nolan is saying do what is right any way. With these three elements as his vision, Nolan made a silly superhero movie something much more meaningful.

References:

Nathaniel Rich, San Francisco Noir (New York: Little Bookroom, 2005), 8