Encefalus

I had the luck to watch the Dark Knight in the world premiere. This movie just stuck in my head and I couldn’t get it out. I believe that it has steered many issues and there are a lot of things to say about it, so I decided to write a post and publish some of my thoughts.

First of all, I believe this to be the first superhero movie that shows the superheroes in a realistic setting. Romanticism is gone here. You won’t find superheroes who are happy to fight the crime or super-vilains that look as if they came out of a fairytale. Bruce Wayne is a troubled person who has to resort to being Batman to deal with his issues (or is it Batman who has to resort to Bruce Wayne in order to hide?). Joker is the incarnation of chaos and they story Harvey Dent/Two-Face provides a different sense of tragedy to the movie.

This work has its roots back to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. This is, probably, the most important superhero comicbook and the first one to bring superheroes to a human level.  Batman Begins (Nolan’s first Batman movie) tried to encapsulate this spirit, but I believe that The Dark Knight, not only captures it, but maybe even surpasses it. And that, in the notion that while Frank Miller’s the Dark Knight Returns still adhered to the superhero universe of DC (including Superman and Green Arrow for example), the Dark Knight denies any such relation and concentrates on the real world. Of course, someone might say that this made Miller’s work even more worthy of praise, since it’s more difficult to provide a realistic setting and explore Batman’s psychology in a world that includes Superman, because in a world where an alien demi-god crashes enemy aircrafts, a psychopath dressed as a bat might not look as strange. However, I still adhere to the opinion I expressed previously.

The second issue I’d like to address, has to do with the the psychological subjects this movie raises. It’s for the first time that psychologists have really started to take seriously the superhero culture. Take a look at these examples: 

1) The Psychology of The Dark Knight « The Situationist.

2) The Dark Knight: A Psychologist’s View

3) Chaos Theory and Batman: The Dark Knight Part I

History Channel even had a 60-minute show discussing the Psychology of Batman

And why would that be? Aren’t superheroes supposed to be a geek thing only, shunned by high culture and science? What I believe makes superheroes important is that they are a part of the american mythology. Pretty much, like all ancient civilizations had their own heroes the american civilization has its own heroes. The ancient Greeks had Hercules and Achilles for example. The Sumerians had Gilgamesh. American has batman and superman. All these heroes have some common characteristics. They are stronger than the average human and they fight with forces that are also above the average human. One more common characteristic they have, is that in the ancient times all heroes had some relation with the metaphysical. For example, all greek heroes had the blood of a god in them. The reason for that was the concept of Hubris according to which, an ordinary human could not surpass the limits imposed on him by the gods. Therefore, he needed to have the help of a god, (like Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad) or have the blood of a god (like Hercules). In later times, Beowulf and Lancelot both come from the sea, and the story tells that Lancelot was raised by the Lady of the Lake, clearly showing tha heroes had a relation with the metaphysical.

What pattern can we see here? The first superhero, superman, came from the outer space. He wasn’t a human at all. And he combined a number of extreme powers.

Superheroes of different times

It seems probable that the human civilization has a propensity towards creating superheroes and in every age they exhibit some of the same characteristics.

By telling that the superheroes are a part of the american civilization, I mean that they are self-evidently a part of USA’s culture. As the politics and society of the country evolved so did the superheroes. The X-Men for example was the first comic to address the issue of racism in the modern society. And Spider-Man had as a protagonist a troubled geek with everyday problems who couldn’t pay his rent.

And so, we see how comics, as a form of art, do what every true form of art does. They express the spirit of their age. When I say true art, I leave out the art of the elite (which has always existed during different times under different forms), but popular art, which is derived from the civilization and the society that the common people constitute. And in that aspect, this art is ageless, since through the expression of a specific era, it provides the material for future generations to understand that era somewhat better. Mind you that when I am talking of popular art, I don’t have in my mind, for example, the hits of popular music. I consider this to be mass art directed at a consumer audience. What, in my opinion, makes popular art important is that characteristic of agelessness. I believe mass art to have this characteristic as well, but in that case not concerning certain works of art, but the phenomenon itself. In the aspect of comics, I believe that certain comics, manage to escape from the simple superhero phenomenon and are elevated to a different tier, all by themselves.

What makes Batman different from the typical superhero is that he has no special powers, other than sheer determination, extreme intelligence and lots of money. He is not invulnerable. Instead, he is the most vulnerable of all, since he has to do what he does because of childhood trauma induced by the death of his parents. In that aspect, Batman could be anyone of us.

One thing that Miller probably wanted to show with the climactic end of Batman’s battle with Superman is that since Batman wins Superman, anyone who is determined enough can win superman. What Nolan changes with Dark Knight returns, is that Batman appears weaker since his opponent, Joker, is not a superhuman, but a person just like everyone, in who’s case, something has gone terribly, horribly, wrong inside his head. However, the end obviously exemplifies for once again the determination of the Dark Knight, maybe even more so than Miller’s the Dark Knight Returns.

And now coming to the joker.

Why so serious?

First of all, Ledger’s performance is superb. He’s undoubtedly one of the best villains ever in the history of cinema. He portrays perfectly what Joker represents: pure chaos. What is so interesting from a psychological perspective concerning the Joker, is that he combines all the negative assumptions that the average person has inside his head concerning psychopaths, which, in the greatest part, are false. However, Ledger makes him seem completely realistic. And that happens in the aspect that while it would be hard to find someone who combined all these traits, it’s not difficult to find out that Joker is the representation of every negative facet of our era.

He is a true nihilist in the most pure form, just as like Friedrich Nietzsche imagined the century that was approaching. In that aspect, the Joker is maybe a true Übermensch (Superhuman). Joker, pretty much like Nietzsche visualised his superhuman, imposes his own values on the nihilism of his society. He destroys all social values and every notion of morality and he creates his own, based on his own vision of chaos. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want fame. He just wants to show his own vision of chaos to the world.

Friederich Nietzsche

What is so frightenning about the Joker is that he really enjoys the process. He finds funny what he does. Not only that, but maybe for him, this is the only source of true pleasure.

Finally, the movie, as an expression of his age and civilization, has a few political connotations, which concern terrorism. Since the 9/11 attack on the twin towers the world has changed. USA has started a series of wars and aggresive politics on the Islamic world and islamic fondamendalists have started their own round of attacks on america and its allies. Nolan’s few references to Joker as a terrorist clearly show this unconscious motive that is propagated via the american media and politics to consider every kind of attack an act of terrorism. In the notion that the Joker uses terror to reign, Nolan is absolutely right. He is a terrorist in his purest form.However, the association that exists in the western world concerning the word terrorist does not have to do with someone who simply uses terror and fear to attack his enemies, but has a historical meaning derived by the attack on the twin towers.

In that way, terrorism has become an alternative word for what really constitutes a war. A war between american imperialism and Islam who resists the attackers. The two worlds are alien to each other, each perceiving the other as simply an enemy who they cannot understand. Thus, the word terrorist also signifies a person who is not mentally stable, an alien, an outsider (without making any research to find the real causes of his behavior). So, while I believe that the Joker can said indeed to be a terrorist, the connotations that this word brings are completely out of context and simply propagate a kind of politics that the USA has supported the last years.

Of course there are also different opinions like this one: What Bush and Batman Have in Common. This article really gave me a strong laugh. I believe it to be a typical case of abductive reasoning gone wrong. Just like paranoids use abductive reasoning to conclude that everyone is after them, so the author of that article concluded that Batman is George Bush. Damn it! I thought he was Bruce Wayne!

I believe such parallelism to be of the extreme kind, since if someone wants to project a certain view on a movie (or book or anything for that matter), he will do so, no matter what. I believe that the movie has primary entertaining value and such allegories can never be proven. In that case, I believe the allegory attempted by the L.A. times author to be a comical one, since it can be very easily inversed and become something like that: George Bush, The Dark Knight? Be Careful What You Wish For.

You see? It’s easy to prove anything in that whole "allegory" context. That’s why the analysis I did above concentrated mainly on elements that can be observed via the one or the other way.  

To conclude with this article, I believe the Dark Knight to be an excellent movie. If someone has anything to comment on it or my post please feel free to do so.

Further Reading: 

Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series)

Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City

The Psychology of Superheroes: An Unauthorized Exploration (Psychology of Popular Culture series)

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under General, Socio-Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.