We know from the start that this film is going to explore shades of grey. The pre-credit Warner Brothers’ emblem is not the usual gold and blue shield against a sunny sky, but grey on black.
At one level this film is about the moral questions and human dilemmas that fall between reassuring white and black. It is about good and evil; but it is not straightforward. Good people do bad things, sometimes to the people they love and for what they think are good reasons. They do bad things or they allow someone else do them. Is this the good cop, bad cop thing? asks the prisoner in the interrogation room. Not exactly says the good cop, leaving his partner to do his worst. His partner is not a cop.
At one level this film is about the moral questions and human dilemmas that fall between reassuring white and black. It is about good and evil; but it is not straightforward. Good people do bad things, sometimes to the people they love and for what they think are good reasons. They do bad things or they allow someone else do them. Is this the good cop, bad cop thing? asks the prisoner in the interrogation room. Not exactly says the good cop, leaving his partner to do his worst. His partner is not a cop.
Heath Ledger is the villain, The Joker, the wild card, the agent of chaos. His anarchy is loosed upon the world like a tsunami, and Ledger holds the screen with a fascinating, intriguing, shocking and dreadfully attractive performance that blows Jack Nicholson’s earlier and celebrated attempt out of the water. One of his first lines is whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger, a huge improvement on the old Norse nostrum, and a warning to us, the audience, that this man is very strange. The film is worth seeing simply for Heath Ledger, without any of the sentiment attached to his death. It is also worth seeing because of the issues it raises, even if it fails to explore them in any real depth. You have nothing to threaten me with; nothing you can do with all your strength taunts The Joker, and in the shadow of 9/11 and 7/7 we in the mighty West know the futility of our nuclear and conventional strength when opposed by the suicide bomber or the terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction in a suitcase. We are still living in the contradiction and uncertainty of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, to quote another line from The Joker.
He also asks why the violent death of an innocent civilian on our streets is given more moral and tragic weight than the deaths of half a dozen of our soldiers in a war zone. Is it, as he suggests, because the soldier’s lives and deaths are part of the plan, the inevitable consequences of our deliberate political and military actions? Is that why we accept these deaths, daily, with regret but not outrage?
Torture is also a tendentious question. Does it make moral sense to torture one person in order to save the lives of many? If we choose not to use all the means available to us to extract the information needed to save them are they simply paying for our moral scruples, to salve our consciences?
Jon Barnes’ review of The Dark Knight in the Times Literary Supplement quoted from Yeats; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. I think a longer section of that poem provides an appropriate commentary.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats. The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre; Batman is the falcon, wheeling and swooping from the high towers of our civilization through our concrete canyons, seeking his prey. But The falcon cannot hear the falconer; now he does not know where to find his moral footing. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold because mere anarchy is loosed upon the world by The Joker, the man who recognises no laws of logic or conventional reward. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed by The Joker’s disordered violence and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned despite the best intentions of its guardians. The best lack all conviction, confused and lost in the world of The Joker, or of the terrorists who think they are moral heroes, or of the abused who need no justification to inflict upon the world vengeance for their own suffering. The worst are full of passionate intensity, and they fascinate us.
Yeats wrote these words in 1921, in the aftermath of The Irish Rising, amid the bombs and tanks, riots and arrests in Belfast, Londonderry and Dublin. This was a time of enormous political, moral and social confusion, marked by passionate intensity, betrayals and civil strife. Everyone was having to ask who do you trust?’ This film constantly repeats that question.
In the first scene bank robbers discuss cutting their boss out of the proceeds. Their boss is The Jocker and they little know how terminally he will cut them out. The District Attorney Harvey Dent is betrayed by a prosecution witness who changes his evidence in court and then tries to kill him. The Policeman Jim Gordon has, we later learn, been betrayed from the start. Dent and Gordon both suspect that the other’s office leaks information. They hold their super-grass witness at Police HQ because neither of them trust the officials ‘at county’ with his safety. I don’t trust them here either says Dent. Then he, the best hope for Gotham, nearly throws his reputation away by threatening another prisoner with torture. The Jokers asks Gordon if he is safe to assume that his police officers are still ‘his people’ and advises the Batman that you’ll be dropped at the first sign of trouble, and when the chips are down these people will eat each other. We are even reminded that when Rome suspended its constitution to give war-time power to Caesar he betrayed that trust by taking it for life. Time after time the question is asked do you trust him? Do you trust them?’ And the answer usually turns out to be no. Betrayals pile up, be they for gain, out of fear, or even from of what seems to be love. There are very few major characters who do not betray, and are betrayed in one way or another.
The Batman develops a massive monitoring system using mobile phones in order to track The Joker. I have to find this man he tells Lucius Fox, his friend and technical wizard. At what cost? asks Lucius. This is unethical and dangerous. This is too much power for one man to have. Too much power for one man, and for any government, we might surmise.
We thought we could be decent men in an indecent world, Harvey Dent tells Jim Gordon, but The Joker wants to prove that even the best of us can fall. And he is right, the best can be driven to despair and in despair forsake their ideals, even their sanity. ‘When the people see the real Harvey Dent all the good things he has done will be brought down to The Joker’s level. So they must never know what he did. But the only way to prevent The Joker’s moral victory is to lie to the public, to deny the fall of the District Attorney hero, and turn the Batman into a scapegoat. Who do you trust?
This is also a film about heroes and villains, and the symbiosis between them. Who needs a hero if there is no threat? Does Batman need to act out his need for vengeance? Does The Joker need the Batman as a suitable adversary and nemesis?
‘I don’t want to kill you. You complete me.’ he says to the Batman. But as he falls to what ought to be his death he cackles with glee; or is it despair? He knows that the Batman will not let him die, out of his silly sense of righteousness?
The Batman’s new costume is more flexible and more vulnerable than the old, and it is not black, but grey. We know how mixed his own motives are; how deep is his need for revenge on the criminal world that robbed him of his parents; how impatient he is with the slow arm of the law; how distrustful he is that the courts will dispense justice. That is why he is the vigilante, and that is why he is a popular hero. We the people share his impatience and distrust and desire for vengeance. But now the Batman wants to hand over the safety of Gotham to a hero with a face, to a true hero.
He has seen what kind of man he would have to become to stop men like The Joker. The Joker warns him to them you’re just a freak, like me. But he is wrong here, the Batman is the only super-hero who is not a freak. That notwithstanding, one of the disturbing aspects of this film’s reception is that to some The Joker himself has become a kind of hero.
Could the Batman be seen as following in the long line of comic book a Christ figures? He is trying to defeat the forces of evil but he rejects their tactics. He will fight but not kill. He will use no weapon other than his own flesh, and he bear the scars of each battle. Like Jesus, he has no superpowers. He falls from the heights, physically and symbolically, with his arms spread wide to save us. He is determined not to become like the Joker, the tempter who shares his wilderness. Like Christ he operates beyond the law, believing that is the only place where the true battle can be fought and won. The Law will not save us, only the one who is prepared to live without its protection and its inhibitions can do that. And he must be prepared to be the scapegoat, not the hero; to be despised and rejected and acquainted with grief.
The film plays out an old moral conundrum. There are two ferry boats in the harbour, one filled with criminals, the other with innocent civilians. All of them now hostages. Both boats are filled with explosives and each boat has been given a remote detonator to blow up the other. They are told that at midnight both will be blown up - unless either of them blows up the other one first. As Reinhold Neibhur told us long ago in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society we will do things by committee we would never do as individuals. Here the ‘innocent’ on one boat put blowing up the ‘criminals’ on the other to the vote. But even if this little society does vote to use the detonator will any individual actually do so?
The Joker believes that the whole world is corrupt or corruptible. He may have been persuaded of that by whatever event made him who he is. We never learnt The Joker’s true back-story, the origin of his horrific scars and madness. He may have come to believe that whatever happened to him was not the exception, but the norm. This is how things are, so nihilism is the only way to live. The only hope is hopelessness. At one stage The Joker wears a suicide-bomb jacket, and who does not believe that he would pull the detonator cord?
Batman’s butler and confidante Alfred tells us a story of bandit terror and jewels in the Burmese jungle. Some men only want to see the world burn says Alfred, they cannot be bought, bullied or negotiated with. The Batman asks how did you defeat the bandit? Alfred replies we burnt the jungle down.’ The Joker is sending a message. Everything burns. We may remember Apocalypse Now, the burning jungle of Vietnam and mad Colonel Kurtz who The Joker resembles in one deeply shadowed shot. Kurtz had a revelation of the true nature of his adversary and it came to him, like I was shot with a diamond bullet right through my forehead. What he realised was the absolute nature of his opponent’s moral code, a code so extreme and alien that we would consider it insane. Bullets, burning, jewels, madness. The horror.
Do I really look like a man with a plan? The Joker asks, again with glee or despair. Schemers try to control their little worlds. I’m just trying to show them how pathetic their little plans are. Look what I can do with a some cans of gasoline and a few bullets! The Joker is an agent of chaos, and for him only chaos is fair. If nothing makes moral sense then everything must be a joke.
But when the people on the ferry-boats are told to kill or be killed they refuse. Both the so-called innocent and the so-called guilty refuse to conform to The Joker’s dark expectations. He is denied his fireworks and is ultimately defeated morally, not by the police or even by Batman, but by the people.
An article by Geoffrey Macnab in the bfi magazine quotes Christopher Nolan, the film’s producer, director and co-writer, saying we just tried to write the most entertaining script possible within the terms of storytelling that this genre of film demands and to meet audience expectations. We try and do it in such a way that we’re really writing about the things that move us and excite us and frighten us. (Sight & Sound September 08 p10.) I think they have succeeded. This film moves and excites and frightens. The performances are all well judged, the action is spectacular, the photography luminous and the script witty and tragic without descending to burlesque or sentimentality. I think it is a shame that despite its two and half hour the film’s over-long and complex plot leaves us little time to consider the issues it raises. In some ways this its a two and a half hour trailer for a more thoughtful film. Maybe one day we will see it, as we eventually saw Ridley Scotts longer and more coherent original version of Kingdom of Heaven.
But this dark, grey film deserves and rewards a second viewing. It does shine a beam of light, and not to project the Batman profile onto the clouds seeking help. It searches the human heart and finds hope there. It is not easy to find it amid the pessimism and despair but the hope lies in this; we are not perfect and the battle with our own moral greyness will go on., but despite our corruptibility and self-delusion, despite our moral uncertainty, despite our habit of creating and depending on heroes - and then scapegoating them, in the end we have no one else to trust but ourselves. We, are not perfect, but we are good enough. So the white search-light eventually says trust the people. Perhaps there is a message here for our guardians, elected and self-appointed. Guardians need power, and power tends to corrupt. Guardians, even with the best on intentions, mislead and even lie to those they are guarding - for the good of the people or course. But we should not lie to those we are responsible to. We should not lie to those who ought to be able to trust us. We should not lie to those we trust. Trust the people.
Rays of light in The
Dark Knight
A Study Pack for Individuals or
Congregations.
The Dark Knight is, at one
level, simply a piece of entertainment. It is the kind of film that costs more than a million
pounds to make - and must therefore attract a huge audience to recoup its
costs. These are
sometimes called ‘tent
pole movies’. But this
British Director, who studied English Literature at University
College London, has never been
content simply to entertain.
I hope this little
study opens a few windows on its serious intent; its concern with private
morality and public ethics; individual and corporate responsibility; the ambiguity of heroism and violence, good and evil, power and vulnerability,
the temptations posed by ends
that justify means; the human and
moral cost of ‘collateral
damage’; the role of the
scapegoat in society and our own psychology; the personification of evil; the nature of ‘Christ-likeness’ and the possibility of human
redemption.
It also illustrates my
conviction that ‘tent pole’ movies can have serious artistic, philosophical and
even theological intent and content, and that films have a central part in 20th
and 21st century literature.
How could you use
this pack?
Obviously it
can be used for individual reflection, but a group discussion is a much richer
stew. Even if group members
have already seen the film I suggest it is good to see it again, together,
maybe a week before the discussion starts. There may well be enough material here for a number of
sessions, particularly around the final question.
A group discussion is
not a democratic process. You do
not have to come to a consensus.
It is better used as an opportunity to listen, and to have our own individual
opinions and perceptions challenged (as politely as possible, of course!). A good discussion might change
everyone’s ideas, but it does not
have to change them into the same thing.
A discussion needs a
facilitator, or chair. Their
role is to encourage everyone to contribute – and to be heard - and this may
mean being a little shy about their own opinion – especially if they are clergy. The group ought to be careful not
to look to their Priest or Minister for ‘enlightenment’ or for an acceptable
view. As an audience we are all
equal. It can also be
a great relief for a Minister to be occasionally freed from their leadership
role. And of course
you are all free to disagree with my own opinions implicitly and explicitly
contained in this pack.
My ideas should not be
privileged in any way. You might
well choose to have your own group
discussion before looking at my own responses.
If
you are new to the world of
Batman…
he
first appeared in 1939 in The Detective Comic,
the creation of artist Bob Kane
and writer Bill Finger.
Batman soon became popular enough to have his own comic and these publications were joined in the
1960’s by a television series, but this camped him up considerably and was detested
by aficionados. In the
1980’s (and maybe in response to the television series) he became the subject of highly
regarded graphic novels exploring his inner darkness, such as Frank Millar’s The
Dark Knight Returns and Batman; the Killing Joke, by Alan Moore. The Batman has battled against The Penguin, and The Joker, The
Riddler, Two Face, Catwoman
and various other villains, sometimes assisted by Robin, sometimes by
Batwoman. The
Batman is the only popular
super-hero with no super-powers.
Who
is he?
When
Bruce Wayne was a young boy a family outing to the cinema in Gotham City ended
in tragedy. His father
Thomas, an industrial tycoon, and
his mother Martha were confronted
by a mugger who shot Bruce’s parents dead. The child swore to avenge them. Alfred Pennyworth, the family butler, arranged matters
so that Gotham City's Social Services did not take the orphaned Bruce into
care, and virtually brought him up himself.
When
he was fourteen
Bruce left America to learn a variety of martial arts, and also studied forensic criminology and
criminal psychology in order to
eventually make the streets of Gotham safe. When he inherited his vast fortune he used it to
support this secret mission.
A bat, crashing through the study window, inspired his new identity as
The Batman. He built his
headquarters in the caves beneath his mansion and Alfred became his confidant
and occasional A & E nurse.
The modern film series started with Tim Burton’s
1989 Batman. Other directors helmed less successful
sequels, but Burton’s Batman and the three Christopher Nolan films are faithful to the
later comics, being darker and more ambiguous about Bruce’s psychology and his
vigilante role.
In the first of the Christopher Nolan
films, 2005’s Batman Begins, Bruce publicly adopts the
guise of a playboy and his childhood girlfriend Rachel rejects. She then learns of his secret
identity, but would not be his romantic partner until he stopped being The
Batman. He did, however, find a friend in the Gotham police force, Jim Gordon. Jim may not approve of Batman's methods, but sometimes
he needs the results of his
extra-legal methods and summons his help by projecting the Bat image onto the
clouds.
Alongside
his bulletproof and fire-resistant suit The Batman uses a cape that allows him
to soar and a variety of hi-tech gadgets.
He also has a Batmobile and Batcycle. These have all been secretly developed by Dr Lucius Fox, the scientific officer of Wayne
Industries. Only Lucius,
Albert and Rachel know who The Batman really is. At the end of Batman Begins, Jim
Gordon tells The Batman that there is a new villain on the street, who leaves
The Joker playing card at the scenes of his crimes. This is where we come in.
It is not
necessary to see Batman Begins, but if you have time they do form
volumes I and II of the trilogy.
The Dark Knight Rises is volume III. This pack does not directly address either the first
or last film.
Question. 1
Before this film starts we see the Warner
Brothers emblem. Usually this
is a gold shield on a blue sky, but here it is grey on grey. How might this connect with the
film’s title and what clues might this give to the film’s moral content?
Question
2
You have nothing to
threaten me with; nothing you can do with all your strength The Joker taunts The Batman. What might this say to us, the
powerful nations, in our post 9/11
and 7/7 situation?
Question
3
The Joker also asks why
is
the violent death of an innocent civilian on our streets given more moral
and tragic weight than the deaths of half a dozen of our soldiers in a war
zone? Is it,
as he suggests, because the soldier’s lives and deaths are part of ‘the
plan’, the inevitable consequences of our deliberate political and
military actions?
Is that why many of us seem
to have accepted the almost daily reports of deaths during the Iraq invasion
and the war in Afghanistan with personal regret but not public outrage?
Question 4
The Batman is prepared to torture The Joker to save the
innocent. Does it make moral
sense to torture one person if this might save the lives of many? If we choose not to use all the
means available to us to extract the information needed to save the innocent
are their casualties the cost of our moral scruples?
Question
5
Jon Barnes’ review of The Dark Knight in the Times
Literary Supplement quoted from W B Yeats. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Might a longer section of that poem also provide an appropriate
commentary?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(W. B. Yeats. The Second Coming)
Do any of these images speak to you about the film’s characters and
themes?
Question
6
This film constantly
repeats the question who do you trust?’ Does it offer any hope
about who we should trust?
Question 7
The
Batman develops a massive monitoring system, the panopticon, using mobile phones in order to track
down The Joker. I have to find this man he tells Lucius Fox, his friend and
technical wizard. At what cost? asks Lucius. This is unethical and dangerous. This is
too much power for one man to have.
Are
there technical means of surveillance available today that you think are too
powerful to be used by our own governments against supposed enemies and actual
allies, even in the fight against crime and terrorism?
Question 8
Could The Batman be seen as one of the
long line of Comic Book Christ figures?
All Christ figures are approximate and
ambiguous. They are not the
Christ, but
share some aspects of Christ-likeness.
Can you see any of these in the (unlikely) figure of The Batman?
Question
9
This is a film about heroes and
villains, and the symbiosis between them.
Who needs a hero if there is no
threat?
Does Batman need to act out his need
for vengeance?
Does The Joker need the Batman as a
suitable adversary and nemesis?
‘I don’t want to kill you. You complete me.’ he says to the Batman.
As he falls to what ought to be his
death The Joker cackles with glee; or is it despair? Does he know that the Batman will not let him die, out
of his ‘silly’ sense of righteousness? Or does he really want to die?
Question
10
Is The Joker Satanic?
(You may want to devote an entire session
to this question, as it really needs to be supported by an informed
consideration of scripture.
I provide some notes below, but they inevitably come from my own
theological perspective.)
Question
11
These are some of the questions raised in
one person’s heart and mind by this film.
What other questions does it raise in
yours?
When I first saw this film I wrote that it
is worth seeing because of the issues it raises, even if it fails to explore
them in any real depth. But seeing it again, and
having had more time to think about it,
I revise that opinion. The
film does raise a lot of questions, but I think it gives us the material to
explore them in depth and think
through the answers ourselves. It
might be well worth watching The Dark Knight again, after your discussions. I have seen it a number of times, and
been rewarded by each viewing.
Some thoughts towards
exploring these questions.
Question 1.
At one level this film is about the moral
questions and human dilemmas that fall between reassuring white and black. It
is about good and evil, but it is
not straightforward. Good people
do bad things, sometimes to the people they love and for what they believe are
good reasons. They also do bad
things, or they allow someone else to do them on their behalf.
Is this the good cop/bad cop thing? asks The Joker in the
interrogation room. Not exactly says Jim, the good cop, leaving his partner to do his
worst. His ‘partner’ is not even a cop. This moral ambiguity runs throughout the film, and
colours most of the questions below.
Question
2
We
in the mighty West now know the futility of our nuclear and conventional
forces’ strength when opposed by the suicide bomber or the terrorist with a
weapon of mass destruction in a suitcase. We are still living in the contradiction and
uncertainty of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable
object, to
quote another line from The Joker.
We know that might is not
right,
but if military might is not effective in our present day situation what does
that say about our massive expenditure on nuclear weapons, justified because they
will keep us safe? Safe from whom?
Question
3.
The Joker
may well be a psychopath, but he is not insane, and some of his challenges are
appropriate to our situation.
Why do we feel ‘accidental’ deaths as tragic, and sometimes even
question God’s benevolence when they happen, but often accept operational casualties - and so-called
collateral consequences - without questioning them? Why do the unintended and direct fatal consequences of
political/military choices not
make us question our leaders?
Question
4.
Can
we defeat the monstrous by becoming monsters ourselves? If we do so is that a real
victory? If we behave
like evil people haven’t we simply replaced one evil with another?
Those
who argue the pragmatism of the end justifying the means (Machiavelli’s classic and
still popular advice) have never yet found an actual example where torturing
someone revealing a ticking bomb
before it exploded.
Is
this why our governments seem to be unable to own up to the truth about the
extradition and torture of British subjects during the early years of the 20th
century?
Do
they know that the ends
do not justify the means,
or even succeed in meeting those
ends?
Question
5
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre - The Batman is the falcon, wheeling and swooping from the
high towers of our civilization through our concrete canyons, seeking his prey.
But
the falcon cannot hear the falconer; now he does not know where to find his
moral footing.
Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold because
mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world by The Joker, the man who recognizes no laws of logic or
conventional reward.
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed
by The Joker’s disordered violence and everywhere
the
ceremony of innocence is drowned despite the best intentions of its guardians.
The
best lack all conviction,
confused and lost in the world of The Joker, be they the guardians of law and
security, or of the terrorists who think they are moral heroes, or of the
abused who need no justification to inflict upon the world vengeance for their
own suffering.
The
worst are full of passionate intensity, and they fascinate us.
Yeats
wrote these words in 1921 in the aftermath of The Irish Rising, amid the bombs
and tanks, riots and arrests in Belfast, Londonderry and Dublin. This was a
time of enormous political, moral and social confusion, marked by passionate
intensity, betrayals and civil strife.
Everyone
was having to ask who do you trust? This film constantly repeats that
question.
Question 6
Who
do you trust?
In the first
scene bank robbers discuss cutting their boss out of the proceeds. Their boss is The Joker and little do
they know how terminally he will ‘cut them out’.
No honour
among thieves here then.
The District Attorney,
Harvey Dent, is betrayed by a
prosecution witness who changes his evidence in court and then tries to kill
him.
The policeman Jim Gordon
has been betrayed from the start by some of his own officers.
Dent and Gordon both
suspect that the other’s office leaks information.
They hold their super-grass
witness at Police HQ because neither of them trust the officials at County with his
safety. I don’t trust them there either says Dent.
Dent, the best
hope for Gotham, nearly throws his reputation away
by threatening another prisoner with torture.
The Jokers asks Gordon if
he is safe to assume that his police officers are still his people.
The Joker advises The
Batman that you’ll be dropped at the first sign of trouble, and when the
chips are down these people will eat each other.
We are even reminded that
when Rome suspended its constitution to give temporary war-time power to Caesar
he betrayed that trust by taking it for life.
Time after time the question is asked do you trust
him? Do you trust them?’ and the answer usually turns out to be no. Betrayals pile up, be they for material
gain, out of fear, or even from what seems to be love. There are very few major
characters who do not betray, or
are not betrayed in one way or another.
The
film plays out a moral conundrum. There are two ferry boats in the harbour, one
filled with criminals, the other with ‘innocent’ civilians. All of them are now
hostages. Both boats are filled with explosives and each boat has been given a
remote detonator to blow up the other. They are told that at midnight both will
be blown up - unless either of them blows up the other one first.
As
Reinhold Neibhur told us long ago in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society we will do things by
committee we would never do as individuals. Here the ‘innocent’ on one boat put blowing up the
‘criminals’ on the other to the vote.
But even if this little society does vote to use the detonator will any individual actually do so?
When
the people on the ferry-boats are told to kill or be killed they refuse to kill. Both the so-called innocent and
the so-called guilty refuse to conform to The Joker’s dark expectations. He is denied his ‘fireworks’ and is
ultimately defeated morally, not by the police or even by Batman, but by the
people.
This
film does shine a beam of light, and not to project the Batman profile onto the
clouds seeking help. Instead
it searches the human heart –even those of convicted criminals - and finds hope
there. It is not always easy
to find it amid the pessimism and despair, but the hope may lay in this; we are not perfect and the
battle with our own moral greyness will go on, but despite our corruptibility
and self-delusion, despite our moral uncertainty, despite our habit of creating
and depending on heroes - and then scapegoating them - in the end we have no
one else to trust but ourselves.
We are not perfect, but we are good enough.
So
maybe the white search-light eventually says trust the people.
Perhaps
there is a message here for our guardians, both elected and
self-appointed. Guardians
need power in order to guard, and power tends to corrupt. Guardians, even with the best on
intentions, can mislead and even lie to those they are guarding - for the
good of the people
of course. But we should not lie
to those we are responsible to.
We
should not lie to those who ought to be able to trust us. We should not lie to those we trust.
The
Ferry scenario surely says that in the end we should not trust vigilantes, and
remember that The Batman is a vigilante,
but we should – and maybe we can only – trust the people.
Question
7
Edward Snowdon has shown that the US and
British Governments have illegally
‘hacked’ tens of millions of mobile phones and private internet
communications. They have
also hacked the mobile phones of charities working in conflict zones, UN
officials and other, allied,
government leaders.
The American National Security Agency
(NSA) and our GCHQ have worked together for decades, sharing resources and information in order to
protect their nations’ security. Intelligence experts often feel that they cannot
take the risk of not
doing anything that can
be done. They suspect that if, after an enemy struck
us, and we discovered that our
spies had the technical means available to have detected and avoided that
strike and did not do so, we would
blame and condemn them. And
so the rubric is to do whatever can be done, even if it is illegal.
If invading the privacy of millions of
innocent people without their – our – consent is possible, and might one day
yield a result, then is must be done, say our politicians. But they only say that now that their
secret, and probably illegal,
strategy had been revealed.
Trust us. If you are innocent you have nothing to fear, said the British Home
Secretary.
It is very hard to justify not using whatever power we have
to protect those in our care, but
to do so illegally and without the public’s knowledge and consent is an abuse
of their trust and our power.
Now that other ‘allied’ governments know about this secret and illegal
activity and are properly outraged by it,
it may well be that we are actually less safe than we were before,
without their cooperation and
intelligence sharing.
Question
8
Could
The Batman be seen as following in the long line of Comic Book Christ figures?
He
is trying to defeat the forces of evil but he rejects their tactics. He will fight but not kill. He will use no weapon other than his own flesh, and he
bear the scars of each battle.
Like
Jesus, he has no superpowers. (You may want to discuss this!)
He
falls from the heights, physically and symbolically, with his arms spread wide
to save us.
He
is determined not to become like The Joker, the tempter who shares his
wilderness.
Like
Jesus, he operates beyond the law, believing that is the only place where the
true battle can be fought and won.
The Law will not save us, only the one who is prepared to live without
its protection and its inhibitions can do that.
And
he must be prepared to be the scapegoat, not the hero; to be despised and
rejected and acquainted with grief.
Question
10
This is a profound question, and deserves
considerable attention. You may
wish to make this a separate session.
It is so central to the film, however, that it might be the first, or
only question tackled!
What
do we mean by Satanic?
First
of all we need to distinguish between Satan and the Devil.
Why? Because although we often use the
two terms as interchangeable the words the Devil never appear in scripture.
Devil is the English translation of
the Greek word diabolos and in Greek this is a common noun, not
a proper noun. In
Hebrew we would also read the devil, rather than the Devil. It is a description rather than a person or name.
We
may also associate the word satan with Beelzebub. This is a corruption of the ancient Aramaic name Baal –
zebub, the
pagan god of the Philistine city of Ekron. ( 2 Kings Ch. 1. 1 – 8. )
Baal
is understood as Lord, Master or husband, part of the fertility religion of
Canaan. Baal Zebub could mean Lord of the Flies
(hence William Golding’s Lord of the Flies) or may be derived from Baal Zebul, Lord of Heaven, which makes more sense for a
fertility god.
So what
about Satan?
In scripture the words satan, shaitan or satanas all mean adversary, a human
or heavenly figure given the job , or role, by God of blocking the way of a wrong doer, testing the faith of a
believer or being an agent of divine judgment. Satans are God’s creatures.
We
first come across a satan (note the common noun again) in the story of Balaam and the
Ass in Numbers Ch. 22. Please read
this chapter and note the role of
the angel of the Lord. This angel is in fact called the adversary in the original.
In
2 Samuel Ch 24 the anger of the Lord is kindled against Israel and God incites David. But the much later account of
this incident in 1 Chronicles Ch. 21 says that the satan incited David. Why the change? Maybe because when, 500 years after the
books of Samuel were written, the
Chronicler rewrote this ancient story in the light of his faith he believed
that God could only do good things, so it must have been satan, not God, who incited David
in anger. The satan may still be doing God’s
work, but the writer has established a distance between them. This uneasy distance between God and
his satan or satans has pre-occupied theologians for millennia.
Earlier
in 1 Samuel Ch 29 we see that the Philistine elders are afraid that David, who
has previously worked for them,
might now be their adversary, an angelic or human satan.
In
The book of Job Satan is an Elohim, a member of the heavenly court, entering
into a conversational bet with God to test Job’s faithfulness. This is a
theological dramatic poem, not an historical event, but see here how close this Satan is to
God.
In
Zechariah’ fourth vision the High
Priest Joshua is on trial in the heavenly court, and Satan is his accuser, the council for the prosecution, appointed by God. Interestingly, although Satan seems to
have won the case, God does not impose judgement, preferring mercy.
In
the New Testament Satan may be the
father of lies,
(John 8. 44), but again only operates within the will of God (Matt. 4. 1) Jesus is led into the
wilderness by the Spirit,
so the temptations he encounters there are necessary for God’s purposes. Satan is also used to sift the
disciples commitment
(Luke 22. 32 –34.) When Jesus says
to Peter get behind me satan it seems he means exactly what he says. At that moment Peter is his adversary,
blocking his way to true messiahship.
Why
do we seem to want to keep Satan separate from, and in opposition to God?
Maybe
because we need some one to embody the dark side, the evil that roams the
world like a roaring lion seeking whom it may devour (1 Peter 5. 8).
Or
some dark power to explain the undeserved, non-educative and non-redemptive
suffering in the world.
Maybe
we cannot cope with the banality of evil (Simone Weill) and want it to have a
more dramatic and personal form.
Or
do we want to move the source of evil outside ourselves, not owning up to our
culpability?
The
demon Azazel
(Leviticus Ch 16. verses 10, 21f and 26) is an evil spirit living in the desert
who kills the scapegoat, the bearer of our sins, punished on our behalf. Has Satan become our scapegoat, the one who is
blamed for our
sins?
Eerdman’s
Dictionary of the Bible
points out that even in Inter-testamental and New Testament times, when this
individualized Satanic identity became more prominent, he is always an agent of God and
even in his wickedness functions still as a divine servant, wittingly fostering
in the world various aspects of God’s righteousness.
People
sometimes (often?) project Satan back into Eden, but the reference in Revelation to Lucifer as a serpent
should not be taken to contradict the specific description of the serpent in Genesis 3 simply as a
serpent.
We
can see the temptation to blame Adam, who blamed Eve, who blamed the serpent,
but 900 years ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, argued that Satan
was not responsible for our fallen humanity. He called what happened in Eden the Blessed Fall, saying that without the
knowledge of good and evil we could not be free, we could not choose good over
evil, we could not be responsible
for our actions. We could
not be human.
So now we can ask is The Joker Satanic?
Why
did this man choose to be known as The Joker ? The Joker card is usually discarded from the pack
before the hands are dealt.
It has no face value. Does
this man see himself as a discard, having no value? It seems he has been abused and abandoned, discarded
as valueless. He certainly seems
to give his own life no value.
When he enters the Gangster’s lair his jacket is a bomb; do we believe
that he would pull the detonating cord and blow himself – and them – to
pieces? They do.
He
is a criminal, but he is also a victim.
We do not know how he acquired his dreadful physical and emotional
scars, and maybe he cannot allow himself to tell us, as he gives differing
accounts. He tells the men it was
his father who did this to him.
He tells Rachel it was his mother.
He
has given up all hope in humankind, and that makes him very dangerous. He doesn’t think he has anything
to lose. If all this
stems from the abusive behaviour of his father or mother should we have some
sympathy with his plight, if not
with his violent response.
Abusers abuse.
Damaged people damage people.
Maybe
he is a scapegoat, the
focus of all our guilt, violence and sinfulness. In the Bible the scapegoat is symbolically laden with
the repentant society’s sins and sent out into the wilderness to die. The philosopher Rene Girard describes
how even today a society can
single out a victim, channel their violent emotions toward that victim and do
away with him or her, providing themselves with a cathartic release and finding
a new sense of unanimity and purpose. But in this film the scapegoat is self-selected. The Joker has offered himself up
for the role. The Joker does
not die of course, but surely his life is hellish. It is noteworthy that at the end of the film The
Batman offers himself up as scapegoat, taking upon himself the sins committed
by Dent.
Is
The Joker Satanic? Girard's theory of
violence describes satan not a individual person but
rather as the sum of violent
processes, processes that include scapegoating, alienate people from God and
persuade us to want what we have not got, to envy those who have whatever we do
not have. These processes kick
envy up a notch
into rivalry, conflict, and chaotic violence. This satanic process encourages the lynch
mob, and urges those with power to believe that one man must be sacrificed
for the sake of the many.
The
Joker is certainly a
stumbling block,
a trap for the unwary. The
New Testament Greek word for this is skandalon,
the root of our words scandal and scandalous. Our modern use of scandalous seems to
apply mainly to the private and misdemeanors of celebrities.
The Joker’s purpose is to sow chaos, confusion, and destruction. He is a provocateur. He constantly wants to trip
people up. He immediately
intuits the romantic triangle that links
Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes, even if Dent is totally
unaware of it. "Does Harvey know about you and his little bunny?" he asks, deliberately
provoking The Batman’s rage.
The
Joker is also a tempter. He recognizes the temptations of money,
using it to control the gangsters and tempt the police. But money means nothing to The
Joker, who gleefully burns a dollar mountain. He tempts The Batman to torture him, to act like
a monster.
He
tries to use fear to provoke a ferry full of ordinary decent people to commit
mass murder. He tries to provoke a ferry full of
ordinary decent criminals to commit mass murder.
He
provokes the DA to turn to the dark side.
He
justifies his own behavior by saying that the police are just as criminal and
corrupt, believing that when we give in to despair we all become violent in our
hearts.
I am not a monster. I am just ahead of the curve.
Consider
the casting of Heath Ledger in this role.
As one of the most charismatic and attractive actors of his generation
he was not cast to be hated, and many have found his character frighteningly
attractive.
Psychopaths often are.
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan is the most interesting character, engaging us more
than Adam, Eve, the angels, or even Christ. But if The Joker is satanic he is not Lucifer. This man has not been cast down
from heaven into his own personal hell by Lucifer’s pride, but has been cruelly
and catastrophically abused.
He may be ‘possessed’, but not by Satan. He seems
to be possessed by despair, hopelessness, hatred, self hatred, pain and anger.
If
The Joker is not Satan
he could still be seen as a satan, an adversary, and (amazingly) as one who
actually fulfils God’s ultimate purposes by teaching The Batman that we cannot
overcome evil by using violence.
Charles K Bellinger, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Brite Divinity
School, points us to St.Paul, who asks in the Epistle to the Romans who can
deliver us from this body of death? (Rom. 7:24) and
replies do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans
12:21) The Batman, motivated by the
desire to revenge his parent’s deaths and to enforce law and order, ultimately has to give up his carefully
nurtured skills and strength, and become vulnerable. He becomes the scapegoat.
The
Joker’s grand and self-justifying plan to make the people on the ferryboats
kill each other was defeated by one man, a convicted criminal, who did what
should have been done at the
beginning of their trial; he
discarded the trigger, the means of destruction.
Is The Joker
redeemable? Surely we are
taught that everyone could be/should be
redeemable, so the question may be
who could
love this man enough for him to feel that he has value, and his life has
meaning? Only then
could he value the lives of others.
And if he has been so damaged that he can never recognize and accept
love, then how could he best be
protected from his own abused and disfigured self, and how could we be
protected from him?
This is the question facing those who have to deal with psychopathic
criminals. Can they be
taught empathy? Can they
learn to love? Can they repent and
be ‘saved’? Can their
humanity be redeemed?
(In writing this section I am grateful to the thoughts of Charles
K Bellinger, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Brite Divinity School, in his
article "The Joker
Is Satan, and So Are We: Girard and The Dark Knight." Published in the Journal of Film & Faith,
University of Nebraska. And to "Satan. A
Biography", by J F Kelly. CUP 2008.)
Here are a few quotes
from Christopher Nolan, and from some reviews and articles about his films
which might shed a little more light.
“Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to
the role of Greek mythology.
That’s what makes the character of Batman so fascinating. He plays out
our conflicts on a much larger scale.”
(Christopher Nolan)
“For us the purpose of The Joker was
always that he has no arc, he has no development. He doesn’t learn anything through the film. He’s an
absolute. He cuts through the film like the shark in Jaws. He’s a catalyst for
action.”
.” (Christopher Nolan)
The Joker is out to “show the schemers how
pathetic their attempts to control things really are.” As he says, “The only sensible way to
live in this world is without rules.” (Christopher Nolan)
“In going after the city’s
crime cartels and attacking their interests, Batman could provoke an event
greater response from the criminal community and now that has come to
pass. There are some very negative
consequences of his crusade brewing in Gotham City.”
“My main fear in the movie was that Batman would lose his
moral convictions and get carried away with the power he has. In real life I’m afraid of …
people who have moral convictions and might get carried away, such as Adolf
Hitler.” Michael Caine (who played Albert,
Wayne’s trusted butler, in all three of Nolan’s Batman movies.)
Nolan’s clearest inspiration
is chivalric death matches, like the ones depicted in Arthurian literature.
Batman and the Joker tear up Gotham practicing ars moriendi, the art of dying,
as knights called it. The Joker wins every round save the last, because his
only endgame is his own death.
(The New Yorker)
Bob Vernon.
This study pack, and others, can be downloaded without
permission. If any of them are republished, however, I would appreciate acknowledgment.)
