The Psychology of The Dark Knight: Batman, superheroes, popular culture,art, Friederich Nietzsche, terrorism and the politics of George Bush
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)
July 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[...] Encefalus Tags: Batman, Batman Art, Culture Art, Dark Art, Dark Knight, George Bush, Knight Art, Nietzsche, [...]
July 27th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I believe that the movie has primary entertaining value and such allegories can never be proven.
That’s certainly true. You could even make the argument that all the various talk about The Dark Night (not that it’s not fun) is proof of just how unfocused and chaotic the film is.
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.
Do you think Batman wins? I’m not so sure…
July 29th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Thank you for your comments and yes, I believe that Batman wins in the end. The whole point was to show superman that he was strong enough to beat him, but after that he fakes his own death, in order to continue to fight crime. Remember his last words
“I want you to remember the one man who beat you”
And after his (faked) death Miller makes another point, when we see batman in the cave with all his “apprentices”. That Bruce Wayne never really existed. It was batman all from the beginning.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
hi. i want to say first that, your artical is very well written and has greatly intrestedme. Your ties and showing how the hero fits the time, and how the human beats the alien, brings everything into a better view ( at least for me) I love how you have put the whole thing together and am glad to have come a cross this.
“That Bruce Wayne never really existed. It was batman all from the beginning.” that is what i belive as well
~Thejoker
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:35 am
I thank you for your reply. I believe that superheroes have a lot more to offer than special effects, and that was one of the things I tried to prove by writing this article
November 16th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
i like u
January 11th, 2009 at 8:16 am
hi
the one thing i found wrong in your critism is that you called Nietzsche nihilism,and i suggest you to read about nietzsche more!
thanks
yes to joker
January 15th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
In what aspect you think that Nietzsche was not a nihilist? After all, his name is connected with nihilism.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:54 am
hi
you know, when you say “his name is connected with nihilism” it’s like saying that psychologist are connected with mad people. Nietzsche called himself the first nihilism of a west it means he was a first person who found the nihilism in himself but he started to killing it.and he predicted the nihilism in 20 century ,because he knew that
the christians believe’s will start to failing and it will made them nihilism because they’ll have nothing to believe and they need sth new to believe in, as nietzsche did in his life’s period, so nietzshe was a nihilism but in especial period of his life.
and joker was not a nihilism too because he enjoyed what he did.
thanks
May 8th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Nietzsche was an existentialist.
August 7th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
that is so sad that that hapend and i wus a live i wus 1 i think wen that hapend
August 7th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
that is so sad that hapend and i wus a live i wus 1 i think wen that hapend.
linda
August 7th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
thay shud go to hell ass
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Order<<<<<>>>>>Randomness
Like phosphorescent desert buttons…
Everything was like the Arcadian-circular rhythmic beating of the drum. The inner beating… the inner being… the inner light of the earth… the inner being of us all… I perceived this illumination of such beings and was (briefly) connected while moving in and out of them frequently… until it resembled a slow moving vibration. No longer could music enhance my human experience, because I was surrounded with the tones of wonder… silent music that I was not aware of. The sound of my jacket’s zipper… the twitch of my hand… the rustler from the friction between my fingers… the whisper of the wind through trees that seemed unmatched in chaotic maneuverability…unmoved and unchanged as far as I conceived… these silent partners in our experience came to the foreground and presented themselves in their most primate primordial state. I was made aware of their essential beauty and existential empirical existence. Furthermore, each carried a different tone that coincided with the adherence of some congruent, consistent-coexistence with respect to the notion of a dominant conceptual law or principle. In this labyrinth of paradigm shift into amazement, I discovered (instead of mechanically mimicking these memes) memes in the form of monotones.
Then there came to be another beat (this one different in tonality from the previous). Its resonance took on another and distinctive form that I could recognize in the sense of understanding but nothing more. I comprehended what music was, moreover, I was creating it at the same time. I was the conductor of this massive orchestra while simultaneously an audience member in awe. I was putting together two dichotomous forces in rhythm that I could not naturally understand but through processes of bestowment… the knowledge for understanding was understanding; therefore, I understood. It was the rapid succession of humanity… of information… of knowledge. The inner beat was moving rapidly toward the future and I felt the ground shrouding all around me. I gazed upon its manifestation… it was moving fast, almost flying toward the speed of light… 100… 200… 500 hundred years into the future… until the dichotomy ceased to clasp inward on itself. In this inward clasp of catastrophe magnitude our intellectual existence was made “one” or the notion of ignorance was forthcoming- with it- its generosity.
I established that we are not moving forward in our intellect, as many may think, but backward into something we have not experienced since the dawn of man. It was at this heightened sense of things that… nothing seemed to exist (no motion), but everything did accordingly to the laws that governed it. This immensely sized mechanicality of universal membrane embodied motion (because for I understood it as having stopped at this pinnacle… apparently, the potential energy of kinesthetic intelligence was pronounced, at any rate, I could not empirical understand because of the limitations of the mind) and the slow intervals of dichotomous ideas, light, phenomenon’s began transversely moving back and forth again in the systematic progression. The process, consequently, personified the construct of an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Through wise passiveness, I was a percipient of the origin of the universal membrane and, with my eyes, seen the birth of thought. I sensed the energy through perception of the “big bangs” radiating through me with knowledge again… with understanding again… with wisdom for the first time. It was still moving forward in time… this transverse of immediate energy displaying before me… but at any rate, moving backward unto plateau.
Excellent break down of the joker… now break down me. Haha!
December 6th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Encefalus,
I was not trying to make a mockery of your website. I understand you have put a great deal of effort into the manifestation of your conception. It is a good webpage. I appreciate your corner of the web. It is people like you and the attribution of free thinking/never ending pursuit of “truths” and “knowledge” that aspire and inspire people such as myself. Again, kudos to you.
Furthermore, my take on the psychology of the Joker is that he is the every man. Universal and dynamic, the one and the many, singularity and plurality. He is the every day man… the layman… the low-man, if you will or our basic fundamental level of psyche or innate intuition. To get his point of view across it does not require money, hence burning the mountain of cash on the cargo boat scene in The Dark Knight. The joker is unrelentless in his approach. He has overcome the obstacle that holds the entire Western Civilization in CONTROL and that is fear. He is fearless. He is intelligent and to manifest his ideas, he does so in a manner that affects people. It affects people on so many different levels but mostly emotional. He is similar in nature to JigSaw in the Saw series. He allows people to choose (thus granting them the idea that they are in control and making a free choice) but his intellect already knows their nature, therefore, it is setup to teach a lesson. He has witnessed society walking around all day bouncing off one another like ants in excursion. He takes them out of their hollow shell (everyday mundane, mediocre life) and puts them in a perspective that most do not wish to perceive. He is not pure evil, but rather an ambassador to the construct.
Batman is his exact and opposite equal. Now the fact that Batman is confused with his alter ego (Bruce Wayne) is another story. The Joker (we shall call him Mr. White for names sake and keeping with the congruence of his other half) is the truest character in the film The Dark Knight. Truest in the sense that, he saw where he was mentally and where he wants to be and found a way to bridge the gap producing an enlightened state of being. I say this because he knows and understands who he is and how he wants to portray himself, though in not so good means by any standard. At any rate, Mr. White is the most recognizable figure in the comic book era. I believe that for the masses he represents absolute evil and Batman represents absolute good. This dichotomy is the basic premise for all plot that involves the duo. Mr. White said it himself at the end of the film, an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. He recognized his place while Batman was still trying to come to terms of with his– “reality.”
Batman/Bruce believes in justice and order, so how can he be so naive that once he found his exact opposite, not recognize that? One of the basic premises of the film is the evolution of Batman through means of evil. Through out the film, Mr. White gives us clues into his background but upon further review he has given us nothing about his background. He gives us situations that happen to people or children everyday (ie. Why so Serious? scene). The psychology of him giving different stories to different people could be seen as schizophrenic but we must understand his purpose of doing so. I believe he does so to represent the (nature vs. nurture) environment of which some people live in. How can we total ignore the problem of evil in our everyday lives? Mr. White has, obviously, done tremendous self reflectivity and his conclusion to evil was to laugh. Why so serious? Now, this may seem cynical to some but to others they completely understand.
Why is that? Why can we relate to darkness? Do we really need to have the dark to appreciate the light? I believe so, so why then is Mr. White painted as this immoral unethical figure? In actuality to better understand the parable of the justice system and rationalize our laws “we” NEED people of his caliber but it is not understood. We only have laws to battle evil (sidenote: but I lean more toward control of populace), but what if there were no evil? Many find it easy to be dismissive this character… oh its dark… oh it’s witty… oh it’s evil. Society does not want to understand the nature of Mr. White because they are AFRAID (fear vs. laziness). Or is it too painful? (pain vs. pleasure) After all, he is JUST a man like the rest of us. Could we possibly possess such qualities in ourselves? Absolutely! But will we adherently and actively seek to understand ourselves? No. Even though, in our modern day Western Civilization we promote… belligerently and obliviously advocate the individual/individualism. And the basis for this Western Civilization/Philosophy/Culture/Society idea of individualism stems from the church (Presbyterian…WASP). In society, either most people are afraid of themselves (their being, their soul, their energy, whatever) or they are too lazy to put forth the effort to find themselves/understand being. They put faith in other people, other systems, and other entities besides their own, thus giving up control. It is difficult not to feel disappointed. Because I personally envision more… something much much more.
Furthermore, I firmly adhere to the notion that Mr. White can teach us more than meets the eye (the perception that is most deceiving). The phenomenon of my inquiry merely mimics that of my peers and others that are so drawn to the utter fascination of serial killers and murders. The acquisition to this erroneous claim can be better understood by a modern day proverb: To better understand a mad man, one must become one. I intrinsically think, Heath Ledger embodied this. With his joker journal (making fun of disfigured babies, people with aids), the fascination with Nick Drake, the divorce, the depression and not sleeping– he gave us more than a performance. He gave us a physical manifestation of pure evil. I applaud him. These are not just stories (comics, tales, fantasy), they are ways of life. Through such knowledge as making an emotional response to cinema we can (for that brief moment) experience (or enhance) vicariously our human element, as to grow… the entertainment factor is nothing more than a byproduct of this process.
Kratosfury2006
March 20th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Kinship: it`s all relative!