So, I wanna talk about The Dark Knight.
I know, I know, the movie came out twelve years ago and there’s other stuff going
on in the—
Twelve years?
Seriously?
It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.
But yeah, 2008.
Obama wasn’t even president yet when this movie opened in theaters.
Since The Dark Knight premiered, the entire Obama presidency came and . . . and went.
God, Obama being president seems like it was a long time ago, though, doesn’t it?
No.
Don’t do that to yourself.
Just talk about Batman, brother.
Just talk about Batman.
I watched The Dark Knight a couple of days ago.
It’s one of my favorite superhero movies — I think it is the best Batman movie, all
due respect to Batman ‘66.
I’ve seen it more times than I can count over the years, but it had been awhile since
I watched it, and this time something jumped out at me: the Joker is full of shit.
Obviously, I already knew that.
One of the film’s best known running jokes, if you want to call it that, is how whenever
the Joker explains to someone where the scars on his face came from, he tells a different
story.
Like many elements of The Dark Knight, that bit evokes a detail from the comics without
directly adapting it — in this case, a line from Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s classic
one-shot The Killing Joke, where Joker explains that he prefers his past to be multiple choice.
That’s one of the fun things about The Dark Knight from the perspective of a lifelong
Batman fan such as myself — picking up on all the little indirect references and echoes
of things from the comics.
But I digress.
What I noticed this time is how all-encompassing the Joker’s dishonesty and duplicity is.
It goes well beyond his invented stories about his scars.
And I know to a lot of us this isn’t really breaking news — “The Joker said something
that wasn’t true?!
The JOKER?!” — but I wanted to talk about it a little because there’s an interpretation
of the film that’s still somewhat common which posits that the Joker is actually the
good guy.
And I think that’s just . . . no.
First, I wanna make it clear that I’m not arguing against the various theories I’ve
read which propose that the Joker is the real hero of The Dark Knight in the structural
sense — that is, he’s the actual protagonist of the film.
I don’t read the film that way personally — in fact, one of the things I enjoy most
about the Christopher Nolan trilogy is that its films are largely about Batman, whereas
the other live action movies, particularly in the Burton/Schumacher series, do seem much
more centered on the villains — but I can see how someone else might come away from
The Dark Knight thinking that the Joker was the stealth protagonist of that film.
He does drive the plot forward, he’s a lot more active, whereas Batman is largely reactive,
and depending on how you look at it, you could even argue that he does much more damage to
organized crime in Gotham City than Batman and the police ever do.
I’m not arguing against that particular take on the movie.
I’m arguing against the notion that the Joker is somehow right, that he’s an amoral
teller of difficult truths, that he has a point.
A certain number of fans were reading the film this way from the very beginning, and
this interpretation is still easily found on the internet today.
There are numerous versions of the same basic meme: childhood is when you idolize Batman;
adulthood is when you realize the Joker was right.
Viewing the Joker as the hero in this sense, as the one who has it all figured out, the
one whose worldview is the most valid in our broken, corrupted society, has long been the
hip, edgy thing to do.
And it’s not as if I don’t see the appeal.
The Joker is a fantastic character, generally speaking, and Heath Ledger’s take is the
best version of that character — sorry, Joaquin . . . and Mark . . . and Cesar; you
never get your due these days, you were terrific.
Ledger’s Joker is darkly funny, he creates tension in every scene he’s in, he comes
across as legitimately dangerous and unpredictable, and every second he’s on screen you can’t
take your eyes off him.
The Dark Knight’s Joker is a work of genius on every level: writing, character design,
performance.
He’s brilliant.
His brilliance is so overwhelming, that I think it blinds some folks to how utterly
full of shit he is.
And just as importantly, and perhaps more controversially to some, on the few occasions
when the Joker doesn’t appear to be full of shit, he’s ultimately proven wrong.
I want to look at two scenes which are typically cited as examples of the Joker being right.
The first is when the Joker speaks to Harvey Dent in the hospital following the explosion
that transforms him into Two-Face.
This is where he gives his “all part of the plan” speech, and boy, you “the Joker
is right!” folks really love that one, don’t ya?
Harvey’s distraught over the death of Rachel.
He blames the Joker, saying it was his plan that resulted in her death, but Joker counters
that killing Rachel was nothing personal, and hey, come on, what plan?
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”
And how you interpret that line is crucial to how you interpret the rest of the scene.
If you take the Joker at face value, then you probably attach a lot more gravitas to
what he tells Harvey next.
When he characterizes Gordon and the cops and the mob as “schemers trying to control
their little worlds,” while describing what he does as showing the schemers “how pathetic
their attempts to control things really are,” you might nod along and think, “Yeah, that
makes sense.
Look how much chaos he was able to create by interrupting their plans.”
Or when the Joker puts the gun in Harvey’s hand, points it at his own head and says,
“You know the thing about chaos?
It’s fair,” you might hear that and go, “Wow, that’s deep.”
That’s if you take him at face value.
But I don’t think the movie wants us to take him at face value, at least not in this
scene.
If you interpret the Joker’s “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”
line the way I think the filmmakers do — that he’s full of shit and just trying to convince
Harvey to do what he wants him to do — then his ensuing speech isn’t clear-eyed and
frank, it’s cynical and manipulative.
Because the Joker does have plans.
Lots of plans.
And while he describes what he does as just trying to upset other people’s plans, the
truth is, he’s trying to control his little world just as much as the mob, or Gordon,
or Batman.
Once Harvey survives the explosion and becomes Two-Face, he’s an important part of that
plan.
Near the end of the film, the Joker tells Batman that Harvey is his ace in the hole,
his irrefutable proof that anyone, even an idealistic crusader against organized crime
like Harvey Dent, is capable of abandoning their principles if pushed far enough.
So, it’s reasonable to assume that when the Joker enters Harvey’s hospital room,
his agenda is to get Harvey to seek vengeance on those he blames for his tragedy, those
who are truly responsible for the death of Rachel and Harvey’s disfigurement: the mob,
the corrupt cops working in Jim Gordon’s major crimes unit, and Gordon himself.
He’ll tell Harvey whatever he has to tell him to get that result.
When Harvey initially lays the blame for Rachel’s death and his own injuries at the Joker’s
feet, where it belongs, Joker deflects — who, me?
No, no, it’s not my fault, I don’t have plans, I’m a dog chasing cars!
He just needs to convince Harvey to get out there and start killing people!
And it works!
Not only does Harvey go full Two-Face and set off on a rampage of bloody revenge against
those he blames for what happened to him and Rachel, he seems to mostly accept that the
Joker isn’t ultimately responsible.
Yes, we can assume the reason he doesn’t shoot the Joker in the hospital room is because
of how the coin flip came out, but later, Sal Maroni argues that Harvey should be going
after the Joker, since he, ya know, killed Rachel, and Harvey replies, “The Joker’s
just a mad dog.
I want whoever let him off the leash.”
Chalk up a successful gaslighting for Mistah J!
Can you imagine if Heath Ledger’s Joker had a Harley Quinn?
I can’t.
A lot of the admiration of the Joker, the arguments that he’s right, are based on
the assumption that he’s honest, or more honest than the other characters.
I don’t think that’s the case at all.
The Joker lies to almost every person he talks to in the movie.
He’s constantly trying to coerce people into serving his purposes.
In fact, I think he’s only being honest when he’s talking to Batman.
The best example of this might also be the best scene in the whole movie: when Batman
interrogates the Joker at the GCPD’s Major Crimes Unit.
The Joker’s big speech in this scene is even more celebrated, and more frequently
quoted, than his talk with Harvey at the hospital.
This is where he gets in some of his most famous lines, like when he promises to show
Batman that “when the chips are down, these so-called civilized people, they’ll eat
each other.”
Now, it’s worth noting that the Joker is trying to manipulate Batman in this scene.
He ultimately reveals that he’s orchestrated a scenario where Batman will only be able
to save either Harvey or Rachel, which means he’ll have to choose who he saves and who
he allows to die, forcing him to break his rule against killing, thereby proving — the
Joker thinks — the absurdity of having such rules in the first place.
But even though it turns out the Joker is playing a game with Batman, I still think
he’s being honest with him when he’s describing his worldview.
When he says the only reasonable way to live is without rules, or insists that people will
drop their morals at the first sign of trouble, I think he sincerely believes that.
But here’s the thing: The Dark Knight makes a pretty big point of demonstrating, at least
within the context of the events depicted in the film, that the Joker is wrong.
The Joker sets up an elaborate social experiment involving two groups of people trapped on
two ferries attempting to escape the city, each being given the ability to save themselves
by blowing up the other ferry.
But that doesn’t happen.
No one on either boat chooses to blow up the other, and when this becomes apparent to the
Joker, he is visibly annoyed and attempts to blow up both ferries himself before Batman
stops him.
“Ah ha!” some of you might be saying, “but what about the fact that Batman has
to violate his principles in order to catch the Joker by using Wayne Enterprises’ cell
phone sonar technology to illegally spy on the citizens of Gotham City?
Doesn’t that demonstrate that the Joker is right about the morals of the heroes being
dropped when they become inconvenient?
Doesn’t it prove that, as Harvey says a bit later, it’s impossible to be decent
in an indecent time?”
Maybe.
Sort of.
It is true that Batman has to act against his own ethics in order to achieve that greater
good of capturing the Joker.
His tactic of spying on everyone in order to pinpoint the Joker’s location is likened
to burning down a forest to capture a bandit.
Lucius Fox objects to it in the strongest moral terms; he agrees to help just this once,
because he recognizes the danger the Joker presents to the city, but tells Batman that
when this is over, he’s resigning in protest.
So, the Joker is right, but it’s also not nearly that simple.
Batman recognizes that he’s violating his own principles, and builds in limitations
to ensure he can’t do this sort of thing again — only Lucius can operate the cell
phone spy console, and the machine self-destructs after the Joker has been apprehended.
And, even though Batman succeeds in capturing the Joker, he isn’t allowed to enjoy his
victory.
He’s able to save the lives of Jim Gordon and his family, but only at the cost of the
life of their former ally Harvey Dent.
And then, to protect the progress Dent made against organized crime before he became Two-Face,
Batman takes the blame for Two-Face’s crimes, turning himself into a fugitive.
Batman violates his principles and saves the day, but he pays a terrible price for it.
And it’s a price he chooses to pay in order to protect the greater good.
One could argue that, in doing so, Batman demonstrates exactly the sort of selflessness
that the Joker claimed didn’t really exist.
Batman proves the Joker wrong in another way.
When Rachel, Harvey’s girlfriend, is murdered, Harvey reacts by becoming a murderer himself.
He does adopt the Joker’s nihilistic worldview, dropping his morals in favor of the “fairness”
of random chance, as determined by a flip of his coin.
But Batman loves Rachel, too.
He’s known her since they were children, and hoped that they might have a romantic
relationship someday.
Her death affects him profoundly.
But he doesn’t become a murderer.
He doesn’t adopt the Joker’s worldview.
He even saves the Joker’s life during their final encounter, which occurs after the Joker
murders Rachel.
He remains a hero.
Let’s also remember that the thing which compelled Bruce Wayne to become Batman in
the first place was the murder of his parents.
And yeah, becoming Batman isn’t the best choice he could have made.
The Nolan Bat-films take a sufficiently nuanced view of the character to regard him with some
moral ambiguity.
But overall, I think we’re meant to think this version of Batman is a good guy doing
a problematic but ultimately good thing.
Stated simply, his response to personal tragedy isn’t to become a supervillain — it’s
to become a superhero.
He doesn’t spend his life revisiting the pain he’s felt on others; he spends it saving
others, and stopping those who would harm them.
That’s not the response the Joker tells us we should expect.
According to him, when things get rough we’re supposed to turn into wild animals fighting
desperately to survive, not dedicate our lives to helping others.
Batman’s character arc in The Dark Knight is largely about him proving himself to be
the sort of hero even he doesn’t think he is.
This version of Bruce Wayne has enough self-awareness to realize that a private citizen dressing
up in a costume and fighting crime isn’t how things are supposed to work.
He looks to the idealistic and effective new District Attorney Harvey Dent as being Gotham’s
true hero, the one who can fight crime and clean up the city within the bounds of the
law, without wearing a mask.
It turns out, sadly, that Harvey isn’t up to the task.
But Bruce, as Batman, is.
He even allows himself to be hated and condemned as a murderer in order to spare the city the
disgrace and disillusionment that would ensue if Harvey Dent’s crimes as Two-Face became
widely known.
He is, finally, the hero Gotham needs and deserves.
Actually, that’s one more thing the Joker turns out to be right about.
During their final confrontation, after Batman has tossed the Joker off a building only to
snare his leg with a cable and pull him back up, the Joker is finally forced to admit,
to his own rueful amusement, “You really are incorruptible.”
The most compelling evidence that the Joker is wrong is the existence of Batman himself.
If the world really worked the way the Joker says it does, people like Batman wouldn’t
exist.
Batman is troubled, and much of what he does is extremely questionable at best, but ultimately,
he’s a good guy.
He tries to help people, to stop criminals from harming innocents.
And at the end of the movie, it’s Batman whom the filmmakers want us to admire.
When you get right down to it, this, like so many other things, comes down to a matter
of perspective.
I don’t think this is the case for everyone, certainly, but I do think that a lot of people
who argue that the Joker is right are simply feeling validated that they heard someone
in a movie espouse a worldview they already had.
And that’s fine.
Art speaks to us all in different ways, and what we hear it saying to us depends on what
we’re listening for.
Maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle.
Maybe, when the Joker tells Batman that people are only as good as the world allows them
to be, what he’s saying is true.
Maybe the important question isn’t “is the Joker right?” but rather “how is he
right?”
Because, if we are only as good as the world allows, it still matters what we do, it still
matters who we choose to be.
The Joker chooses to murder, terrorize, sow chaos.
He sees how fragile the wall separating order from pandemonium is and says, “Might as
well tear down the wall!”
Batman sees that same fragile wall, but instead of trying to destroy it, he defends it.
He works to hold back the chaos, and fights for a more just order, even when it comes
at a great personal cost to himself.
And that’s why he’s a hero.
Would he be more of a hero if he spent his immense personal wealth to fund public assistance
programs and push for transformative criminal justice reform and other kinds of major social
and political progress that would benefit the less fortunate and require billionaires
like him to act more responsibly and pay far more in taxes than they currently do?
Yes!
But that’s not what this video was about!