The site of some of my best meetups, honestly. Don’t be pooh-poohing romance among the stacks.
AWESOME. Yeah, my husband did math problems for his midlife crisis.
I forgot about that one! Yes, I think I lasted about a chapter before I closed it in complete disgust.
Yeah, my mom is Korean and grew up in the aftermath of the Korean war, and she is tough!
Yeah, we didn’t see it until later, but in the original premiere Serenity*, there’s a similar incident.
[spoiler]So they’re on Mal’s ship, and a government agent grabs someone as a hostage. He starts instructing Mal, and Mal tries to negotiate and make nice and do what he wants, blah blah blah, and eventually they get the drop on him.
Later, the guy escapes and grabs Kaylee at gun point and tries to take control again. Except right at the moment this is happening, Mal discovers there are Reavers coming for them. Like barrelling down a canyon practically on top of them. So he is walking in the loading bay while the agent has the gun on Kaylee, the agent starts to make his demands, and Mal whips out his pistol and puts one shot through the guy’s eye - no hesitation, no negotiation, no argument, no pleading - boom, dead.
Because the situation was that serious. Now that’s a “Han Solo shot first” moment.[/spoiler]
*The pilot episode of Firefly, the series, that Fox didn’t air but is on the DVD, not to be confused with the movie Serenity that aired in the theaters.
The whole point of a moral dilemma is that it’s part of the character’s development. It may not be a moral dilemma for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a moral dilemma for others. If you can’t understand how it is for the character, either you’re not really understanding the character well, or it’s poorly written. In the case of the OP, though I haven’t read the book, it sounds like the author wrote the story into a corner and couldn’t satisfactorily resolve a moral dilemma for them. And though I’d agree that it’s not a moral dilemma for me, I can understand that another person my value the life of one person above the suffering of another; after all, someone suffering is still alive, even if their life isn’t what it could be. I disagree with that perspective, but isn’t part of the point that characters have moral flaws?
And this is very much the case with Batman in The Dark Knight. Through both of the first two films they make it very clear that the one moral absolute that Batman cannot break is killing, that that’s what separates him from the evil he pursues. And he struggles with that intently in the film, which is why he almost turns himself in. He realizes that he is essentially responsible for those murders by not turning himself in. Of course, there’s nothing he could have done about it short of turning himself in, and even if he did, it wouldn’t have stopped him, but it was such an important rule for him it nearly broke him. The only time he even had a chance to kill the joker was at the end of the film, but killing him wouldn’t have accomplished anything, while saving the Joker as much saved himself as well, and he could let the law handle him.
I think it’s a false dilemma to imply that Batman should kill him. It’s one thing if he’s in a situation where he’s about to kill people and he can only stop him by killing him, but not only is that rare, but even if it is true, he’s probably inclined to believe he can save those people without killing him in the process. Otherwise, you’d just suggest that when he captures him he should kill him either because he deserves it for what he’s done or because he believes he’ll escape again and end up killing people in the future, but then it gets back to him becoming an executioner. It’s precisely that depth of character that I find fascinating and I think makes it the real dilemma, that even if it might seem like a simple answer from our perspective, we ought to see it from his and understand.
On Star Trek though, I will agree that the Prime Directive is often ridiculous. As I understand, Gene Roddenberry insisted that there shouldn’t be any real conflict between the characters, so they often ended up in a lot of contrived situations, many of which ended up being let these people die or violate the Prime Directive. The problem is, these are supposed to be highly intelligent, highly ethical/moral people, so the idea that it conflicts with so much of our modern feelings on it makes it difficult to swallow. I suppose we could presume that maybe morality has changed a lot in the hundreds of years between now and then, not unlike how much morals have changed in the same period to now regarding things like race and gender equality. But the universe is well developed enough that that shouldn’t be so much of an issue.
I don’t blame Batman so much, as he’s clearly nuts. It’s everyone else in the DCU, who isn’t nuts, that I blame for the Joker’s constantly growing body count. Why hasn’t Superman shipped him off to The Phantom Zone or marooned him on an empty planet? Why hasn’t one of the heroes who isn’t unable to kill, like Wonder Woman or Green Arrow, offed him? For that matter, why hasn’t some shadowy US government agency dispatched an operative to visit ARkham Asylum and put a bullet through Joker’s eye? Sloughing off all the blame onto a crazy guy for what some other crazy guy does isn’t right.
Either Rorschach or The Comedian would have made short work of The Clown Prince of Crime. I don’t see The Punisher having any moral qualms, either.
i wonder who did it first, but Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element did it earlier.
i guess it was serious, but mainly it’s simply because that was the fastest way to negotitate.
They did a Batman/Punisher crossover back in the '90s – and you’re right, the Punisher of course had no moral qualms about killing the Joker; Batman of course saved the Joker’s life, because, oh, let’s say Moe.
Because every single time that someone tries, Batman finds out in advance and stops them.*
Which, given that Bats knows about the revolving door nature of DCU prisons/asylums, IMO, makes him an accessory to all of Joker’s crimes.
*The few times Bats doesn’t get involved, the Joker invokes his unmentioned, but omnipresent super-power: Control Over The Marketing Department. When invoked, it forces Absolute Obedience from The Writers. Joker is (IIRC) DC’s second or third best known, easily recognizable character (Superman, Batman, Robin (or Joker), Joker (or Robin), Wonder Woman, everyone else (Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash, etc). Joker uses this power to insure that no-one ever changes him in any serious way. Death=serious change. 
Well, the men interviewed in the This American Life episode were all convicts doing time for violent crimes, and as the episode points out they have a special perspective on a play about a man contemplating a violent crime. While I’m not a violent criminal myself and can understand reluctance to commit violence for moral reasons, this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue for Hamlet.
In the This American Life episode, the prisoner Big Hutch argues that once he’s spoken to the ghost Hamlet is never really in doubt about Claudius’s guilt. The TAL interviewer suggests that Hamlet wasn’t sure whether he could trust the ghost, but Big Hutch points out that if you believe you spoke to a ghost at all it should be pretty easy to believe the ghost was telling the truth about who it was. While this isn’t a flawless argument, he does have a point.
Such prudence about checking the accuracy of one’s information is also inconsistent with Hamlet’s later behavior. He arranges to have his old pals Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed even though they’re not clearly guilty of anything worse than trying to kiss up to the new king. It’s unlikely that they knew the contents of Claudius’s letter to the King of England, and Hamlet didn’t attempt to confirm that they did.
I think this is a theologically questionable conclusion for Hamlet to draw, especially since he cannot be sure that Claudius has sincerely repented of his sins. (And indeed Claudius admits in his soliloquy that he has not.) Hamlet also says he’s going to wait to kill Claudius until he’s doing something sinful so he’ll be sure Claudius goes to hell, but this could be interpreted as Hamlet just making excusing for putting off the killing.
Goddamn, you know a good writer could turn this into a really twisted and tragic love affair, both men cannot be truthful about their feelings so they arrange constant escapes from Arkham for their trysts.
A sort of Brokeback Gotham if you will.
I’m 99% sure there’s gigabytes of Batman/Joker slash fiction out there. With pictures. With LARP pictures, even.
I dare not Google it.
Hamlet would have been brought up to expect to have to kill people as a soldier, so yeah, the killing itself isn’t an issue. But Claudius is a close relative, and the leader of his country, and even hardened criminals usually have qualms about killing such people.
Hamlet doesn’t just believe he spoke to a ghost, he knows it; two other people also saw it. But that doesn’t prove it was actually the ghost of his dead father. It is equally plausible that this phantasm that astounded them all was conjured up by the devil.
WRT your TV show, you’re talking about present-day people; even those who have a life of violence, would they really just up and murder their uncle on the say-so of a ghost? They wouldn’t think, man, I should sleep more/take drugs less!
It’s not inconsistent - like you say, it’s not killing per se he has a problem with, but the killing of this particular person. R&G were underlings. Hamlet was the heir to the throne of Denmark. If he caused them to die, no biggie, and they weren’t close friends, like Horatio. And he was a bit mad.
See, I’m not arguing that Hamlet was sane, merely that hesitating to kill your uncle on the say-so of a ghost is not actually that odd. It’s not odd now, when we don’t usually believe in ghosts, and it wasn’t then, when they did believe in the devil and also weren’t that sure about ghosts. (The former is general history from the Elizabethan age and from the text; the latter is from the text).
Claudius’s ineffectual prayer was revealed to the audience, but not to Hamlet. That’s significant. *We *all knew that he could have killed Claudius then and there and nobody else would have died - but Hamlet never saw that. All he saw was Claudius praying.
Yes, he can’t be sure Claudius was really praying, but it’s not like that would be his only ever chance; why risk sending his father’s murderer to eternal bliss? And Claudius the politician, used to pretending, and genuinely trying to pray, would have looked devout.
Besides, who knows - maybe at least trying to pray is a sign of repentance, and that’s a huge deal.
Obviously, Hamlet, the to-be-or-not-to-be man, wasn’t sure about life after death. Expressing that uncertainty was quite a big deal at the time; not everybody had the same opinions about the way Christianity worked, but atheism was literal heresy, and doubting Heaven verged on it. Precisely because he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t say ‘my priest would say it is right to kill Claudius now.’
But he also had logic on his side, an Elizabethan Occam’s razor (yes, I know the timelines) because he could have killed Claudius soon enough after he’d finished praying, such as when he was was shagging his mother.
As Hamlet thought had happened, at first. After all, who else would he have expected to be hiding behind the arras in his mother’s bedroom? Claudius was the only person to be expected in her room, hiding, and he’d not be praying there! Quite the opposite - hell beckons! Strike!
His downfall was that his mother apparently had a habit of hiding men in her curtains. 
Now that I think about it, why hasn’t the em-effing Spectre dispatched The Joker in some horrifyingly poetic fashion? I refuse to blame Batsy for all the Joker’s crimes when The Wrath of God Incarnate is letting it all slide.
How is that equally plausible? Anything could be an illusion created by the devil, but Hamlet has no particular reason to suspect the devil is at work in this instance. Neither “My father’s ghost appeared to me to ask me to avenge his death” nor “The devil created an illusion of my father’s ghost to trick me into murdering an innocent man” are terribly plausible explanations due to the supernatural element, but the former at least has simplicity on its side.
It’s actually a radio program, and yes, the man called Big Hutch seemed very clear that he’d kill Claudius right away were he in Hamlet’s situation. (FWIW he was already serving a 120 year sentence for multiple counts of armed robbery.) He suggested an interesting modern reworking of the play set in a prison. Hamlet and his brother are both in the same prison, and the brother is murdered by another inmate. Hamlet is due to be released within a couple of years and has good prospects once he’s out. Avenging his brother’s murder would mean spending the rest of his life behind bars. Not avenging it would mean dealing with constant abuse until he is released, because the other inmates would consider him the worst kind of coward.
That’s the thing though, it’s doubts as to the existence of ghosts rather than the honesty of ghosts that would cause most people to consider it a bad idea to commit murder based on a ghost’s say-so. Hamlet doesn’t doubt that he had a conversation with some sort of specter that looked like his father and claimed to be his father. The two guards also noted that the ghost looked just like the late king. Hamlet initially seems convinced that the ghost is indeed his father’s spirit. I just pulled up the text of the play, and it looks like the first time he expresses any uncertainty on this point is at the end of Act II, immediately after berating himself for not yet doing anything to avenge his father. There are many different ways to interpret Hamlet’s behavior, and I think there is room for a reasonable reader to wonder whether Hamlet ever sincerely doubted the ghost or if he was just making excuses for himself.
Because Claudius is a murderer who’s willing to kill close relatives for power, and Hamlet had already tipped his hand with the “play’s the thing” scheme. He should not have expected that Claudius was going to wait for Hamlet to make his next move.
It also occurs to me that if Hamlet had barged in and said “Hello! My name is Hamlet, you killed my father, prepare to die!” then Claudius presumably would have stopped praying and done something less-than-holy – either lied about it or attacked Hamlet.
Yeah, I’ve got a scan of that scene somewhere.
“I’m sure that with enough therapy I could be cured!”
<Punisher points pistol at Joker’s face>
“I’ve got all the therapy you’ll need right here, clown.”
I wrote a paper in college showing that the ghost is not trustworthy. The quick version: Hamlet’s father says he’s in purgatory, which is essentially a temporary hell for rehabilitating lesser sinners so they can still go to heaven eventually. Seeking revenge is considered a sin in the Bible, so he’s piling more years on his sentence by seeking revenge on Claudius. No one who is being tortured would voluntarily add more years to his punishment.
It would make far more sense for him to be a demon who is trying to stir up trouble. Throw in that Hamlet himself thinks this could be the case, and the highly anti-Catholic sentiments at the time the play was written (something I didn’t know about when writing my paper), and I think it’s rather convincing.
:eek: How is this not already a movie?
They did a Justice League story where the Spectre took our heroes to meet a warm and friendly guy who seems a bit surprised to see 'em but amiably invites everyone inside his home to relax; it turns out they’re seeing the Joker’s wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly soul: an innocent passenger along for the ride, unable to stop the actions his illness compels à la Tourette’s, or something; the Spectre therefore refuses to punish him.
I didn’t say it was a good story.
I know, right? Somebody needs to get Big Hutch an agent.
I think you’re underestimating just how much people believed in the devil back then. I suppose anything could be an illusion created by the devil - maybe everything he’s ever seen! - but actual illusions - things which are clearly not real despite being visible - are one of the things the devil was specifically supposed to be able to do.
That sounds like an interesting adaptation.
But just because a criminal in prison reckons he would kill his uncle and leader of his country with no real evidence at all, that doesn’t mean most people would. I mean, I wouldn’t, would you?
There are many ways to interpret his behaviour, true, one of which is ‘he hesitated, gave a reason for it, and that was the reason.’
But Hamlet would still have stopped him praying in order to kill him. He only needed to wait a very short time, not days.