The Dark Knight tell the story of the famous Batman on his newest crusade against evil, only this time around evil takes a mature political face and intensifies it’s definition. The story starts with the Joker’s plot to bring Gotham City to it’s knees and beg for mercy. As the story progresses another villain is revealed in the form of Harvey Dent, an important and well known political figure who’s bent on revenge against Batman for failing to rescue the love of his life.
On a literal level, we see aspect of darkness portrayed through insanity from complete loss of identity in the Joker and revenge in Harvey. The plot shows how evil can be triggered through loss and how it is often used to disposition personal grief and suffering. In one of the key scenes of the plot, Harvey states, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. This line claims that evil is within every being, and to say other wise is to be disillusioned by the idea that you are above humanity itself. People don’t create evil, evil is created within them by horrors they experience throughout their lives. It can be something as common as poverty and abuse as in the case of the Joker or as torturous as knowing that your life meant the death of a loved one, as in the case of Harvey. In both cases a villain is born of being drowned in grief, and being forced to blame the faults of other to cope psychologically.
Symbolically the story tells a similar tale. Batman himself becomes a wanted criminal, not because of his deeds, but because of the mystery he evokes. The people don’t understand him and so he is a threat. This may be the darkest trait of humanity, the fear of the unknown and the unwillingness to understand. This is reflected throughout society in the forms of discrimination and racism; those who are different are a threat. We can also see a deep symbolism in the way the filmmakers portrayed the villains’ former identities. Harvey has half his face and half a face of destroyed flesh, is able to identify who he once was, which allows him to minimize his chaotic effects to his original goal, unlike the Joker who wears a mask and can’t remember who he once was, allowing him to apathetically utilize chaos to vast degrees. The confusion of the character, and therefore the depth of the darkness they’ve immersed themselves in, corresponds to how much they hold of their identity.
These themes show up in society in varying degrees. We see the disposition of power that caused Hitler to begin World War II, the tragic hero of Macbeth who was forced to question who he was by a manipulative and power hungry wife, and even within ourselves, simply when we feel jealous. The end of the film states one of the saddest truths, the world needs to believe that good can’t be tainted, the unknown and misunderstood is dark and society is unforgiving. The thing that stuck out most to me was the fact that we all need a scapegoat to blame our injustices on because we can’t cope with the idea that no one is to blame. Evil is a refutation of the reality of your faults and impossibility of justice empowered by a lack of power and grief at your standing in society.
EQ: What does power have to do with fairness and justice?
The story really speaks of how power leads to justice and fairness. The plot states that those who obtain power are more likely to be rewarded with justice and fair treatment, even if it may not be fully deserved. This also speaks to the triggering of evil. In order to gain justice people feel they need to attain power, and when they are successful power corrupts them to the point where their greed over runs their original purposes and they begin to purposely keep justice out of the reach of the weaker. In the end fairness is decided through power. Human nature is to fend for one’s self and thus the weaker are often pushed to the side without intention to do so. The only way to attain fairness is to gain power enough to defend for your rights, even if that power comes in the form of another’s support.
Something I learned from watching the presentations of others was how the study of fiction and nonfiction texts influences an individual’s construction of reality. Although the plots of the stories relating to darkness and evil were different among the presentations, there was an assimilate set of morals. All the stories had common elements of revenge, loss of power and loss of identity. This however is a lie. Literature downplays the fact that evil is within everyone and highlight the evil within outcasts. This creates a sense of safety within the average reader/viewer when in actuality evil can be found in everyday life and exists in different concentrations among society. Literature creates this face because it allows us to see the good in ourselves and live free from the paranoia that evil is always around the corner, but also sets us up to tolerate everyday injustices. We see immoral action but our constructed mind frame of evil exists only in the extreme gradient. They play to our emotions and help us cope with everyday struggles by mitigating evil’s daily appearances. In short media and text allow us to believe evil is what we find different and wrong, and not something we need to worry about in our society, but the society of others.
