'Pumped Up Kicks' is Not Offensive. In Bad Taste? Possibly. Poor Storytelling? Yes

  I know I'm way behind the curve here and at this point who really cares, right? but the few times I've heard this song since its release the question has kept springing up in my mind; 'why does this bother me?' I always experience this knee-jerk, semi-nauseating reaction that hits when I hear Foster The People's song Pumped Up Kicks. I've decided that it's probably best to reflect on and validate or dismiss those feelings since I don't want to end up being one of those people who just takes offense for the sake of taking offense, and not really knowing why (or if) it's a real issue. At first my thought was; well it's inappropriate to juxtapose this subject matter (a song about a school shooting) with a throwaway candy-pop tune. But is it inherently in bad taste or does it simply go against songwriting convention that sad/dark lyrics need "sad" instrumentation? And am I unfairly blaming the song itself because of the fact that people don't really listen to the lyrics of catchy songs? (Brown Sugar?) Although I would argue that lyrics and music function in much of the same way that a film's score does with the image, I'll just give Foster the benefit of the doubt and say that he was attempting to go against songwriting norms.
His explanation of the song? To be clear, I don't care what the reasoning behind any art is (and I use the term 'art' loosely here). With a few rare exceptions art exists and should be judged for what it is, not what's it's supposed to be. Nevertheless, he says;   

"I feel like the youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated. It's kind of an epidemic. Instead of writing about victims and some tragedy, I wanted to get into the killer's mind, like Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood. I love to write about characters. That's my style. I really like to get inside the heads of other people and try to walk in their shoes." 

For me this whole issue would have been a moot point if Foster's reasoning behind the song had been "I just wanted to prove that people don't pay attention and you can say whatever you want if it's catchy enough" or "I wanted to show how bland, mass consumerism drowns out and dilutes real-life tragedies." A more cynical answer in this case would have made perfect sense, but that wasn't his answer, so I'll judge the song according to his given excuse. Foster is saying that the song is meant to take us inside the head of a killer. Alright, this approach (identification) is done all the time, in fact it represents the MAJORITY OF ART so the real question is why are you exploring this subject? For the sake of this argument I'll use the lyrics to Peter Gabriel's 1980 song Family Snapshot as contrast; an introspective tune that takes us into the mind of a Lee Harvey Oswald-like assassin. The difference? Well, Foster's song gives us one reason (possibly two if you count the repetitive, superficial jealousy of the chorus) behind the kid's actions; his absent, careless, possibly abusive father...

"Yeah! He found a six-shooter gun in his dad's closet, with the box of fun things"
"Daddy works a long day, he be coming home late, and he's bringing me a surprise 'cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice"

The song has two short verses, verse 1) the kid has a plan. Verse 2) it's implied he is physically abused.
Beyond that the song doesn't actually explore the kid's motivations, or even his immediate flood of jumbled emotions. It's just a detached, generic synopsis. Every line and action are details that could have just as easily been conveyed by an uninvolved third party. There's nothing that only the kid could know, no inner monologue or private detail. The whole point in a song like this is not necessarily to make you feel sorry for, or establish a person's motives (this isn't a trial), but to explore the actions. It's voyeurism to a lesser degree. It's why people enjoy tabloids and true crime shows. It's why people are endlessly fascinated by violence. What are the mechanisms that drive the action? What is the person trying to accomplish in their warped soul?
Peter Gabriel's song demonstrates:
1) The killer's desire to shake people out of what he perceives as their apathy: "I have been waiting for this, all you people in TV land, I will wake up your empty shells"
2) The desire to be remembered "peak time viewing blown in a flash as I burn into your memory cells, 'cause I'm alive" - "I wanna be somebody, you were like that too" - " I need some attention, I shoot into the light"
3) Obsession: "I don't really hate you, I don't care what you do, we were made for each other, me and you"
4) Never learned to give love: "If you don't get even you learn to take, and I will take you" 
5) Because he was never given love (absent parents): "All turn quiet, I've been here before, a lonely boy hiding behind the front door, friends have all gone home, there's my toy gun on the floor, come back mom and dad, you're growing apart, you know that I'm growing up sad"

So, then... what's the point of Pumped Up Kicks? It certainly wasn't to make a statement, because we don't learn anything about ourselves via the character. Action A leads to consequence B, rinse and repeat chorus. We don't learn anything about the kid other than that he shoots up his school-mates for two reasons that a large percentage of children in America can claim; lousy, possibly abusive parents and jealousy. Nihilism? Is the point that anybody could be that kid? Well, that's not really true, most of us have enough of a filter or moral compass to not do something so drastic... and haven't. And that's where storytelling comes into play; somebody did do it and we want to know what's going on (as much as can be understood from an outside perspective). What is the traumatic link to the listener? What catalyst could we conceivably identify with where we could therefore imagine ourselves put on that slippery slope or terrible trajectory? But Foster doesn't really tell us anything; just a sing-songy hook pleasantly gift wrapping a horrifying incident.

Again, Peter Gabriel, who's talented at taking on the personae of deranged individuals, demonstrates this well in another of his songs; Intruder (from the same album as Family Snapshot), this time playing a voyeuristic burglar. I bring it up because it's probably closer in line with Pumped Up Kicks in that it's not about anything else, really, just the act: burglarizing and defiling others' belongings and private spaces. But here the intruder tells us what he likes, what he wants, and we are taken deep inside his psyche by showing the fetishism involved. If Pumped Up Kicks was intended to be a character study then it is an abject failure. Regardless of whose perspective this is meant to be seen from - outside narrator, perpetrator, or an open morality play for the listener to project themselves - the effect is the same: ironic detachment. And here one might say "well, that's the point, it's the detachment that allows a person to be able to commit such acts".
But the clinical sterility and coldness only comes from the lyrics. The music itself, as well as the singer's tonality, makes the kid sound like a mindless killjoy... not as someone committing a desperate act in an attempt at finding some warped sense of meaning. So, then, who is the narrative voice? Is the kid cold and detached or is the narrator? A narrator-driven perspective sounds deeply unsympathetic as well and, with the vocal delivery, almost unaware of the subject matter altogether.

The objection here is not to violence, of course. I have no problem with Johnny Cash singing about "shooting that bad bitch down" or the numerous Blues or Rock songs about the dispatching of people. The question is in how it's presented; is it autobiographical? Is it tongue and cheek? Is the artist making commentary on said event? Do we learn anything from the troubled mind of the perpetrator? I don't feel any of those things listening to Pumped Up Kicks. Hell, the song barely even attempts basic metaphor. What conclusion can we gather about the song then if there's 1) no voyeuristic character study 2) no consequences to actions/moral 3) or statement on how "youth in our culture are becoming more and more isolated?" Because this song is certainly not a commentary, it's merely saying 'this happened. The end.'  The song itself feels isolating. It's presenting a scenario with no implication: either through the inflection of the vocals or the instrumental choices. It just drifts off into a nihilistic haze.

And that's where I'll leave it; the narrative is superficial. Irresponsible? Nah. In poor taste? Maybe? The overall effect is just... "cool." An off-putting "coolness" that just seems to absolve itself of any need to frame the subject matter. Which is weird considering Mark Foster decided to write about it in the first place...
Which brings me to my own personal theory: that the chorus existed long before the rest of the lyrics and that Foster simply filled in the rest because it sounded too good to change. That the line "all the other kids... better run faster than my bullet" existed before any of the other lyrical content and he shaped the rest of the "story" around that phrase, doing his best not to make it sound too sadistic.

Some might say "dood, it's just a pop song", but that's precisely it, if you can't use the format to do justice to the subject matter, then you probably shouldn't bother at all. Truman Capote had three-hundred-odd pages to construct a profile of the men involved in In Cold Blood. Perhaps Mark was drawing from far too ambitious a character-exploration model to compare to his 3 minute, 4 chord pop song. What I'm saying is that, maybe, in the end, pop isn't the best avenue to explore certain subjects... especially if those pesky lyrics that delve into the dark recesses of life interfere with the effectiveness of your radio jingle.

Dark Knight Rises Review

   I'm just going to skip the setup and say that I thought this was very mediocre. Director Christopher Nolan takes the predictable, safe route and throws the kitchen sink into his final Bat outing, while at the same time finally realizing his ultimate goal of making a Batman film that doesn't have Batman in it. What would have been brave, an actual risk, is if he had gone smaller, had Batman come back a worn out man to solve that one last case. Or just a tired Batman going through the motions night after night in a relatively safe Gotham until something catches him off guard, maybe a simple serial killer mystery. 
Instead we have a movie with just way too much shoehorned in, most of which has little emotional payoff. There's so much going on that the film constantly has to make assumptions and vast leaps in logic. Characters simply tell us what is or what has happened in order to speed up plot details because there isn't time to satisfactorily show it.
Examples: Bruce immediately getting back to Gotham through the power of editing. Alfred knowing all about Bane as if it were common knowledge to everyone but Bruce. Blake knowing who Batman is (and seemingly everyone else except Gordon). Bruce having a vertebrae protruding from his back and then returning to fighting form in a few months (even though he's living in a hellish dungeon) The scientist making the reactor functional in just a few seconds.
And with the added layer of thin characterization and pounding, Albert Glasser-caliber film score, you have an overly ambitious film that forgets the value of simplicity and instead projects "big" for big's sake. High concepts and lofty ideas that when glossed over seem to suggest "epic" but which are rarely explored to any meaningful degree.

First of all, Bane - the lynch-pin of most of the film - is a complete dud. Because of the mask and the obviously dubbed voice I almost immediately found myself not even watching his face as he spoke. There was a clear disassociation with him and the voice coming out of the speakers. To me Bane almost felt like a mute because it never seemed like he was actually speaking or emoting to anyone in a scene, only standing there while Hardy narrated from a distance... a man trapped behind a mask, as opposed to Darth Vader whose large "eyes" added a kind of detached mystique. And on top of that the voice was a rather silly choice*, he phrases everything like a question and after a while it started to actually feel comforting, not alien and creepy (like they were probably going for) There was no reason why he couldn't have had a gruff whisper or something. Modelling himself after Dr. Zoidberg probably wasn't the best choice. Not only that but his character ended up being little more than a thug. Whatever justification or drive he felt for wanting to destroy Gotham and Batman was not at all conveyed in an intimidating or meaningful manner. He was programmed to destroy and we're supposed to accept that. Unlike the comics Bane doesn't have a personal vendetta against the symbolic creature of Batman, he's merely an obstacle for his brainless League of Shadows cleansing. And in the end he just wanted to break the bat to prove his love to Talia, of whom he is a pet.
We have over two hours of buildup which attempt to turn Bane into a kind of uber-Napolean/ultimate-death-machine-of-reckoning, and in less than a couple minutes he turns second-fiddle and then goes out like a total, irrelevant chump, all for the sake of a pointless twist-ending revenge plot. Why? Because it was never about Bane, it was just about the bomb from act 1 onward.
Why did Bane and Talia necessarily need to have the same objective? 
In the comics he wasn't out to destroy Gotham (or watch it fall apart like the Joker), he was out to own it. Talia could have simply manipulated Bane's arrogance and lust for dominance into unknowingly carrying out her own secret desire for revenge against Bruce Wayne, who killed her father. Perhaps the League of Shadows had come back once more to eliminate Batman specifically, whom they see as having become too powerful, and to do what they do; restore the balance. With this initial goal both villains could use the plan to suit their own purposes: Bane supplanting Batman's dominance and Talia getting her own brand of slate-cleansing, psychotic revenge. 

Something that's bothered me about the character of Bane in both of his notable appearances (Rises and Nightfall) is the fact that when he does face off with Batman it's with a mentally and physically depleted hero. But at least in Nightfall there was something methodical and sadistic about unleashing all of Batman's rogues gallery before finally breaking him. It was like running up the score. I understand this film is more about Bruce Wayne jumping one last major hurdle, but it further makes Bane appear rather toothless when all he really does is cripple a man who's been "peeing in mason jars" for the last eight years. He's not the beast who seizes control over the Gotham night. He's just another force of nature... like the Joker, but humorless and forgettable. 

Both times I've watched this film I've found myself totally spacing out by the time the bat-plane starts chasing the bomb through the city streets, due heavily to the feeling that the stakes are just too unrealistically high; One of the symptoms of Bane's broad characterization. There's always a certain level of suspension of disbelief in a film, you always know the good guy will come out on top, but when the stakes are many-millions of lives it just becomes too unacceptable a loss to let yourself believe and thus feel tension about the outcome. In Batman Begins we have a fear gas that's tearing a city apart and we actually see the results. In Dark Knight we see the Joker's reign of anarchy and manipulation of the various aspects of city infrastructure. Rachel is in constant danger and her fate is unclear. Will Harvey Dent's integrity stay intact? Who knows? Plenty of tension in both cases.
in Rises we have a broad threat of an impending nuclear blast which is revealed far too early in the narrative, so we spend the majority of the film knowing that nothing of such magnitude will occur. Which is why I think they should have disguised Bane's intentions for as long as possible, revealing Talia earlier and at that time revealing that they have a dirty bomb. Where did it come from and why? Who cares, they're terrorists, they have one. 
I don't think they put nearly enough emphasis on the "liberation" ruse. It could have been much more of an "oh ****!" moment when we realize that Bane has no intention of anything but destruction, but unfortunately they played their hand too early narrative-wise. The idea was similar to the Joker's populist 200th anniversary ruse in Burton's Batman (and Penguin's sympathy ruse in 'Returns'), but even there I think they telegraphed it less, and it was a more effective moment when Vicki Vale screams "he's gonna kill everybody!". (Bane: "he stole my balloons! I mean... fusion bomb") I didn't feel like there was that moment of dread realization here. Everyone in the film seemed to already know from the beginning and from there it just became a routine, ho-hum "gotta stop the bomb" picture. 

Hathaway as Selina Kyle is interesting but essentially truncated (like most every other character) and doesn't serve much purpose at all. She's living on the fringe, making her own way on the hard streets of Gotham, but other than that we have no idea as to her motivation. She's looking for a McGuffin that will erase her police record but are we meant to sympathize with her? And why? Is she really a modern Robin Hood like she claims? What was the past event that is meant to make us relate to or root for her when she finally makes the right choice? There isn't one. She's only a catalyst for the first plot point which is getting Bruce out of the house. And from that point on she is repeatedly forced back into the narrative because, you know, she's a well known character so we have to find something for her to do.
On top of that, her character arc, as involved with Bruce, required such a huge suspension of disbelief it was almost comical. She functions to lure Bruce out of seclusion, steals a necklace from him, betrays him to Bane (for some vague reason) and then disappears for a great chunk of the second half. Bruce then reappears, seemingly not caring in the least that she almost got him killed, and they proceed to share a few vague moments... and then, in the end, we're supposed to believe he leaves Gotham and the mantle of Batman to be with her. Yeah, I don't think so. 
Batman Returns' Batman-Catwoman relation was significantly more interesting because of the duality of their relationship. In Rises they both know who each other are (or least Bruce knows) so there isn't the complexity of the two simultaneous relationships between the 'freak' persona and the 'normal' persona. Selina isn't even "Catwoman" here, so there's not a clear dividing line separating her form her costume. The costume is just a costume: a tool, not a persona. It's also the same with Batman this time around who no longer acts as a separate entity, only as Bruce's work clothes. Also In the new film Selena doesn't lure Bruce to toe the line of vigilante-ism. He isn't meeting another lost soul that forces him to confront his own moral stance, he's just half-heartedly cooing after a slightly wayward cat-burglar. He seems to be drawn to Selina Kyle in the same way I'm drawn to a nice looking pie in a bakery window. In Batman Returns you could feel a kind of passion between two of the loneliest, craziest people in Gotham city.  
But really this is all a moot point since there was never enough time in this film to adequately build a convincing relationship.  

And that brings me to the characterization of Bruce Wayne; except for when he's trying to escape from the M.C. Escher jail, and when he later unleashes on Bane, he always comes across as emotionally meek and lame, aimlessly drifting from plot point to plot point and never actually taking charge of anything. There's no intensity and I never get a strong sense of what Bruce really wants out of life. He retired for 8 years in solitude because he couldn't have Rachel, but WHY exactly did he quit being Batman? If anything he'd be absorbed by the persona but instead he just languishes in self-pity for years because crime is so thoroughly eradicated by the Dent Act that there's absolutely nothing for him to do as Batman? Please. So ultimately I assume that Bruce's only drive was to become THE symbol and that he always regretted Dent becoming Gotham's symbol of peace. If that's the case then he really is just a sad, emotionally broken man. In the comics he always loses himself in Batman to hide these shortcomings, here he runs from it and I don't know why. 
Another major issue with the handling of the character is that (besides the brief "no guns" quip) Nolan abandons the "one rule" dilemma that weighed so heavily on Bruce Wayne in the last two films. In a moment that should have been his ultimate test the writers simply use the tired device of having Catwoman show up in the nick of time - conveniently ending Batman's war with Bane - instead of posing the hard questions: will Batman let Bane die the way he did Ra's Al Ghul? Yep, and apparently with no moral qualms whatsoever. It doesn't seem like he's learned anything since the first film. In fact, after dealing with the Joker's unyielding and impossible shenanigans it seems like he's contented himself with letting another vigilante kill for him. Great message for the kids. 
Not only would comic book Batman be seriously pissed at having been betrayed by Selina Kyle, he would be even more pissed that she shot a cannon through Bane's chest. 

Now for some positives... Batman's first appearance was handled well. There was something satisfying and oddly more heroic about him just showing up without much fanfare (although I would have liked at least one grand entrance in the film) 
I enjoyed the look of Gotham City this time (compared to the last film, at least) This time (using New York mostly) It felt more like a dark, mutli-layered, murky, metropolis. 
The John Blake character was well done and had a pleasing arc and was really the only fleshed out, developed character in the film. 
The scenes between Bruce and Alfred were nicely handled per usual. 
And I really, really liked that there weren't any eye-roll inducing, comic-relief one liners from extras. The only thing that comes close is when the cop says "you're in for a show tonight". So I was pleased with that. 

On the whole The Dark Knight Rises has enough interesting sequences, spectacle and performances to make it a worthwhile viewing, and that may be enough to tide over most. But to me it felt mostly like a grab bag of assorted goodies that fail to connect in an overarching, satisfying, emotionally deep way. You get to see a lot but you don't get to see enough of any one thing for any of it to really matter. It's one great bloated skeleton infrastructure constructed with sweeping narrative signposts that lead nowhere. 

Side Note to Mr. Nolan:
Thank-you for putting Scarecrow in the last two movies and still missing the blatantly awesome opportunities to revisit his fear gas, especially with Bane. To quote Prince: "I mean real-leh?!" Of all the things that you decided to bring full circle from Batman Begins you forget THAT? It was bad enough that the Joker didn't use Crane as a source to dabble in his trademark chemical fixation, you miss yet another golden moment - a moment that would have nodded perfectly to the Knightfall series while still being based in "reality" - where Batman could have once again been dosed and seen Bane as a nightmarish behemoth. Sheesh, can't wait to get a little fantasy back into the Batman series. 

*I don't want to make any assumptions, but I got a strong impression that the "Bane voice" was a direct response to what Heath Ledger did in his Joker role; a "well, he came out of left field and surprised people, so I guess I have to come up with a weird villain voice" sorta thing. The problem is that you can't really catch people off guard a second time.