*WARNING* This Post Contains Spoilers!! *WARNING*.
Un-Politics and the Evil Genius
by Jonathan Heaps
The opening scene of Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is a meditation on the balance between the intelligent conceptions of the individual-as-genius and the instrumental effectiveness of social cooperation. Robbing a bank, while not the most amiable of cooperative endeavors, does require collaboration to succeed. However, the implicit or explicit agreements that provide the dynamism and cohesion of such an enterprise need not be honored for that enterprise to be efficacious. In other words, a sufficiently intelligent (and in this case, nigh genius) betrayal of the communal-yet-criminal understanding allows the master-mind to reap the benefits of social collaboration without having to remain beholden to the internal expectations thereof. This is unsettling enough when an individual agent turns his back on the shared understanding of the group, but The Dark Knight's mysterious villain, The Joker orchestrates a more chilling dismantling of human accords.
Grumpy: I'm bettin' The Joker told you to kill me soon as we loaded the cash.
The Joker: No, no. I kill the bus driver.
Grumpy: Bus driver? What bus driver?
[a school bus drives through the wall and kills Grumpy]
In convincing his fellow robbers to betray each other, the structure of their collaborative activity crumbles. Instead of a single, grand act of betrayal in which the one acts against the many, he allows his collaborators' greed and malice to do his work for him. He does not so much manipulate the fracturing as provide the setting for its inevitability. However, the manic conceptions of his own mind are still in play. That each particular betrayal within the group of robbers only occurs after some necessary task has been completed demonstrates this. The alarm is shut off; BANG, you're dead. The vault is open; BANG, you're dead. The victory is clearly with The Joker's machinations of disorder, which are a product of a powerful individual mind. The interplay of the individual mind and will with the potent instrument of human collaboration is the thematic engine of The Dark Knight. In fact, the opening scenes of the film are a case study in what The Joker will reveal to be his intelligent-and-insane philosophy of un-politics.
In the following scene, a drugs-and-weapons deal between mobsters and (recurring villain) The Scarecrow is interrupted by both Batman-wannabes and Batman himself. In an inversion of the scene before, we find a more pedestrian form of collaboration (in this case, a vigilante gang) undermined by it's more radical and radically individual inspiration. Batman helps police capture both the criminals and the vigilantes. Motivated by a desire to participate in the idea of Batman as a force to overcome evil without the constraints of official justice, these faux Batmen risk their lives in a fashion that would be courageous if it weren't so bumbling. They clearly lack the genius of the true Batman, but they might have some success through the strength of their collaboration. None the less, the power of Batman's genius (intellectual, as well as financial and physical) can become abstracted from Batman-as-individual and become Batman-as-ideal, the dynamism for the instrument of social cooperation. The meaning of Batman can be as efficacious as the individual, Batman.
The Joker: Are you the real Batman?
Brian: No.
The Joker: No? Then why do you dress like him?
Brian: He's a symbol... that we don't have to be afraid of scum like you.
The Joker: Yeah, you do, Brian. You *really* do!
To recur to The Joker, one can imagine how The Joker-as-ideal might be a dynamic factor for Gotham's criminal element. Now, by The Joker-as-ideal, we don't mean exactly The Joker himself in his singular particularity, but rather the principle of absolute rebellion incarnated by The Joker. In order to oppose the accepted order of law and society, a criminal must identify with some kind of devil-may-care destructive impulse. This ideal can provide the strength needed for his or her combative way of life. A Joker "type" can provide the dynamic idea to breathe new life into a criminal enterprise. In a further unfolding of the theme presented in the opening scenes the The Dark Knight, we see The Joker present himself to the criminal element of Gotham as a savior from their woes under the reign of Batman, both as ideal and reality. If legal order has a hero who's reality is effective and idea is powerful, then the illegal order ought to have one too.
However, the opposition of criminal enterprise to the accepted order of law is not exactly an abandonment of the principle of order, per se. The primary reward for crime is currency, the value of which is guaranteed by social convention. Interestingly enough, the direct opposition presented by organized crime in the world of Gotham is also a kind of affirmation of the value inherent in official forms of organization, like an economy. So, though a community of nefarious intent might appeal to a principle or ideal of disregard for social order, it's presence as organized and participating in the economic order (broadly construed) betrays the shallowness of their commitment to destruction. However, if taken to its full fruition, the The Joker-as-ideal, incarnated in The Joker-as-concrete-individual will ultimately become the enemy of both structures of order, official and criminal. The good of order, found in both communities, can't bear the destructive force of his genius and strength. That power comes from an absolute commitment to the dismantling of society. The Joker's commitment comes with sufficient foresight to use the latent power of society as an instrument against itself, much like in a bank robbery gone "wrong."
Harvey Dent is to the official order of Gotham what The Joker is to the criminal order and Batman is to the disenchanted, unofficial order. Dent believes in the absolute universality of the official order. As a result, the decay of the official order is unbearable for him and he makes it is singular vision to redeem that societal structure. He will operate to the letter and full extent of the law and he will risk himself as an individual. However, though he might not be able to tolerate Batman under ideal circumstances, Dent recognizes the complexity of Gotham as a community attempting to emerge from the depths of a precipitous decline. The profound "success" of Gotham's criminal enterprises has factionalized what was a unified order of benevolence. The wealthy geniuses (Wayne Enterprises) supported the development of the community in collaboration with those in public office. Corruption inverted that social understanding and left the official order's status as benevolent ambiguous amongst the community. The unofficial work of Batman might provide sufficient stability to Gotham's structures of benevolent order that the official can regain its status as the universal source of social collaboration.
Harvey Dent is willing to bear with Batman-as-individual until the good he offers is realized. Eventually, Batman must hang up his utility belt and allow the official institutions to regain their place. Bruce Wayne might return to less harrowing acts of benevolence, primarily involving his check book and prestige. Batman-as-ideal provides a trickier problem. On the one hand, Batman as a source of dynamic meaning for the community stokes the belief that evil can be overcome. On the other, his presence reminds the community that the official institutions of order cannot be counted on, are fragile and susceptible to corruption, etc. In fact, because the community has already bought into the Batman ideal, the official institutions will need Batman to relinquish his mantle and pass it to a new individual capable of being as inspiring but who represents the recovered universality of the official structures of order. Lucky for Dent, Batman needs to be relieved of that mantle just as much as he desires to pick it up. The concrete Batman can't live up to the Batman ideal. Trying to will eventually end his life, because after all, Batman isn't a superhero. He's a crime fighter.
Being the Dark Knight of Gotham has some advantages over being the White Knight of Gotham, as Dent might aspire to be in the role of District Attorney. Batman is in opposition to nefarious structures of order (and disorder), but he does so in a way that lacks the hypocrisy inherent in a Government's self image. Government must view itself as absolute over that which it governs. It is the universal representation of the dynamic order of that place or people. However, the presence of crime or rebellion demands that the Government behave as a faction engaging in opposition of some kind, which an absolute universal would never have to do. Government is thus forced into a doubleness. It's self-consciousness is as universal, but its concrete reality is factional or schismatic, depending on the problem it faces. Batman's self-consciousness is more honest. He is a faction among confused and warring communities of collaboration. He defies the law to protect the law. The doubleness need not be hidden for Batman. The Dark Knight can be particular and fallible, because he is caught in between. The White Knight of Gotham is doomed because no person can attain the absolute universal perfection demanded of the official order. Like Dent says of those who pursue uncompromising justice, "(we) either die a hero or live long enough to see (ourselves) become the villain." In martyrdom, the White Knight as individual and as ideal can be united in the community's perception.
There's a problem though.
(to be continued...)
2 comments:
hey man, your analysis of the movie is awsome. Keep up the good work! waiting for the last bits
Excellent analysis. As a contribution to push these thoughts further along the lines of Hegel:
Could the Joker be a world-historical individual (at least in his own mind)? During the interrogation scene he describes himself a "freak" in the eyes of others who is simply "ahead of the curve." As this freakish outlier, Joker understands that his greatest potency comes from himself as ideal, rather than himself as a concrete particular--hence his willingness to put a gun in Dent's hand and point it at his forehead. It does not matter whether his life is negated then and there in an abandoned hospital with no one to observe his death--he is convinced that the Idea of the Joker is already unleashed. Or, more accurately, the Idea of the Joker already latent in the Zeitgeist is coming to presence with the few elegant catalysts of "a few bullets and some drums of oil." It doesn't take much to nudge a boulder already on top of the hill. The social decay of Gotham is simply the hotzone of a contagion spreading throughout humanity--the chilling indifference that comes from the conviction that nothing is worth continuing on (not Government, not Family, not Profession, not Art) except continuity itself (the sheer, empty life of each individual).
The Joker, then, might be adopting the standpoint of one who refuses to let the universal coalesce and crystallize out of the swirling individuals inside it. He wants fragmentation as such, for its own sake--hence his anarchy--but it's hard to imagine the Joker setting up any anarcho-syndicalist communes. He keeps attempting to show that the universal is (maybe always was) self-contradicting--that is impossible for universal order to be true to itself and without hypocrisy. Hence his social experiment with the two ferries: he is trying to show that, for all their lip-service to law and order, individuals do not desire to sacrifice themselves in recognition of the worth of the Other. All that exists are atomistic Selves, swirling and colliding chaotically, without order and without meaning--in absurdity--in the colossal practical joke that is the universe. The universe fails to be universal; the universe is the butt of its own joke.
The Joker incarnates and makes concrete the reductio ad absurdum that is this self-contradicting Absolute. When A is shown to be identical to Not-A, and each thing turns out to be its opposite, the proper thing to do is laugh. Cackle. Spread the joke. The Joker embraces the principle of contradiction with open arms, and makes this stone (rejected by the Other) the cornerstone of his system.
The Joker's principle of absurdity (which tries to work outside the principle of non-contradiction, outside the labor of the concept) is the most abstract of all principles possible. Malevolence--evil--is insubstantial, but in the non-concrete pursuit of it (i.e., without discernable motive or logic), its insubstantiality is embraced as such. If whatever Batman throws at the Joker plays into his hands, it is only because his Joke is the night in which all cows are black (or all jokes are funny?). This is a principle so effective on one level so as to seem to be the Work that the whole cosmos is doing--life as one big practical joke (see also: "The Hyena" from Moby-Dick).
And what a walking contradiction the Joker is. He mocks "the schemers" who put their trust in plans and orderliness, but he creates schemes and intricately-timed traps more elaborate and byzantine than any city official ever could. He calls himself "an agent of chaos" yet his traps work on the assumption that each element (both offical and unofficial) will click away like clockwork. In word he plays at delighting in accident, but is seriously disappointed when his ferry experiment does not go according to plan. The Joker seems to undo his own deeds just as much as he advocates a kind of nondoing (e.g., the pseudo-Taoism of his statement: "I'm like a dog chasing a car. I wouldn't know what to do if I caught it. I just...DO...things.").
Any thoughts about this?
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