If Hitler had made superhero movies, the Dark Knight is what they would’ve looked like. A veritable orgy of misogyny, racism and random violence, this disjointed and psychotic cinematic creation is a window into the conflicted subconscious of the American mind.
The movie begins promisingly with an excellent heist sequence in which we are introduced to the Joker. The heist is tightly written and edited, with each step to its conclusion played out masterfully. Our introduction to the Joker is powerful and startling. Heath Ledger clearly channeled some inner demons to create this version of the famous supervillain. While Cesar Romero’s joker was a kook and Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a sinister jester, Ledger’s joker is a deranged sociopath—and barely funny at all. Watching Ledger we see the heart of anarchical sadism. And this is the first glimpse into The Dark Knight’s window of the American subconscious.
The portrayal of the Joker as a villain is reflective of our American sense of what constitutes the height of criminal danger at any given moment. In the 1960’s Romero’s joker was a gangster-prankster. He knocked off banks and pulled a few corny gags. He was the incarnation of the nation’s hippies, poking fun at American culture and challenging some of it’s tenets. To the modern eye, it’s an almost quaint notion of simple danger to the social order.
Nicholson’s Joker was very much the product of the 1980s. He was Ivan Boesky, slick and cool, dark in humor and looking for the big score. He didn’t represent a threat to the social order so much as a financial “player” who felt it was his right to break all the rules if it meant he could get all the toys and stand atop that order.
Ledger’s Joker is a beast of another color. His danger is chaos, anarchy, total destruction. He’s not looking to challenge the social order so much as he’s looking to obliterate it. He is after destruction for destruction’s sake. He’s the kind of man that would kill you just to see the look on your face when you die. This is a terrorist in the definitive sense; there is no ideology behind his terror, only terror itself.
And what of the Batman? Well, he’s certainly no straight-laced parody of a do-gooder played completely for laughs as he was in the 1960s TV series. He isn’t the ironic, quirky Michael Keaton Batman. This Batman is a humorless vigilante, a rich guy with a weird fetish for bodysuits and bad guys.
The Dark Knight is essentially a series of action sequences interspersed with supposedly deep dialogue which more or less tells us what we should think the movie is about. The plot involves Batman trying to stop an Asian crime boss, Lau, battle The Joker, and resolve a love triangle among District Attorney Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes (the apparent female love interest) and Bruce Wayne, who is, of course, Batman’s alter-ego. As if that’s not enough, Harvey Dent becomes yet another supervillian, Two-faced.
The movies seems to actually be three films in one and none of them are satisfactory. These story cycles render The Dark Knight far too long in run time. Over and over, I kept hoping it would end just so I could use the restroom.
The story of the Asian villain completely disappeared at one point only two reappear out of thin air, very briefly towards the end. The “love triangle” is hardly engrossing (especially since it hardly seemed believable). Only the story of The Joker is the least bit interesting and only because Heath Ledger is so demonic as to be disturbing.
An actual discussion of the plot or the plot points is completely pointless since what is supposedly a plot is really an excuse to get the viewer to more scenes of trucks crashing or buildings exploding or Batman fighting people in the strange spasmodic way he fights in the movie.
No, more fascinating frankly is that for which the plot is used as a vehicle: Fascist notions of (false) manliness and it’s role in the state.
Throughout the film, Batman is faced with situations where he must take unlawful use of force to defend the citizens of Gotham city. The situations are set up so that we, supposedly, see that Batman has no choice to take power into his own hands to stop the forces of evil, much like a dictator or excessive president would to stop threats to the state. We’re meant to see that sometimes a powerful man must bend the rules of law to preserve the rules of law. I would argue that the very bending of them destroys them rather than preserves them.
Any republic that uses extremism in defense of liberty is a republic in name only. A nation is only as strong as its citizenry and legislation. When we allow strong men to unilaterally decide what is best for us, we become no better than those we are fighting. When Batman is “forced” in The Dark Knight to eavesdrop on the cell phones of all citizens (even though he relinquishes that power), the filmmakers are telling us that, sometimes, the “strong hand” of the state is good for us.
How fascist and how false.
Even more galling is how the film treats race and gender within the context of the story. Women and people of color serve as foils to show us how powerful and masculine the male leads are. (All I could think of after watching The Dark Knight was the old Saturday Night Live skit, Miles Copperthwiate, which features the character of Captain Ned, commander of the ship The Raging Queen.
Above ship, Captain Ned liked to make macho pronouncements about how he ran “a man’s ship,” and how they did “manly things” on it. At night, below deck, he preferred to spend his time attempting to “comfort” the small boy, Miles.)
What we get is racism and sexism used as some sort of bizarre signifier of manliness.
I’ve tried to think of the last time I saw a film where the leading lady got blown to pieces by a bomb. Let me see.. um… Oh. Never.
The destruction of Rachel Dawes is an apt metaphor for the essence of the gender outlook of this would-be oeuvre. The film establishes Dawes as the contemporary stock character of the "Independent Woman," yet though we are supposed to view her as having some internal power, she's little more than window dressing for Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent. Yet even that aspect doesn't work as her character is written with so little to make her interesting or charismatic, that it's hard to figure out what these guys see in her. (Which I think is what the filmmakers wanted, since it's clear that we're really supposed to be focusing on the boys.) This is no fault of Maggie Gyllenhaal, the actress who plays Dawes. She's shown herself to be a fine actress in many films, but even her talents could not overcome this thankless role.
And what does she (as her character) get for her efforts? Blown apart by a bomb. "Good-bye `Uppity Woman,'" say our creators.
Then there's Detective Anna Ramirez, played by Monique Curnen, our lone woman of color in the movie. She's established as a sort of a butch lady cop, another female interloper in a man’s world. And what do our filmmakers tell us about the nature of this butch woman of color? What are we to think of this lone representative of a large segment of our population? Well, we find out that she’s not just a bossy butch lady cop—she’s also corrupt! Yes, our butch little Anna isn't just a mannish woman intruding in a Captain Ned manly world, she's also a crooked intruder. I guess this is supposed to what happens when you let a “skirt” in men's spaces. Anna, in our lovely story, is partially responsible for the death of Harvey Dent's love, Rachel Dawes. Yeah, let those women kill each other.
And what does Anna get for her intrusion? She gets decked by Harvey Dent (as the supervillain Two-face). That's right. A guy decks a woman in a mainstream movie and the script is written in a way that we're supposed to cheer it. You go, boys!
Finally, we have the throwaway arm candy women (or, clearly from the filmmaker's point of view, “bimbos”). There is the blonde Russian ballerina who spouts vapid analyses, and later is mocked by Alfred the Butler when she wants him to put suntan lotion on her back. (Now I think the world of Michael Caine as an actor, and he's excellent as Alfred, but only in The Dark Knight could you be expected to believe that a 70-year-old man wouldn't want to rub suntan lotion on a beautiful young woman's back.) We also get treated to a lovely exchange between mob boss Maroni (played by Eric Roberts) where he tells his lucky lady to shut up (for the viewers’ laughs, of course).
Pretty girls are to be seen and not heard-- or in The Dark Knight world, preferably not seen at all.
And what of our "little minority friends"?
Look, when your film’s main crime boss is, Lau, an Asian man, and he’s shown to be inscrutable, duplicitous and craven, I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re playing on hateful stereotypes. In an age when Asian nations are on the rise as world powers in every aspect of global, dusting off racial stereotypes from the 1930s seem more than a little retro. Not only does the character of Lau get the “Charlie Chan” award for the Most Ridiculous Asian Stereotype, he even gets to be humiliated by being dragged by his feet from his office and essentially hogtied to a plane by the caped crusader.
Holy throwback, Batman!
But they didn’t stop there. What would a contemporary action movie be without it’s obligatory tortured dichotomous view of the contemporary black man? There are the "good ones"-- you know, the kind who aren't too threatening, are always deferential, and with an easy smile and a full laugh. Then there are the bad ones-- youthful, physically imposing, unwilling to tip their cap. Well, they are here for your Jim Crow days viewing pleasure.
We have the always brilliant Morgan Freeman cast as Lucius Fox. This gifted actor seems to have been cast in what seems to be a reprisal of his role in Driving Miss Daisy, only this time it's Driving Mr. Wayne. Now to be honest, his character is not all that bad. He's smart, elegant, honorable. It's just that this character is the typical white-haired (or sometimes bald-headed-- but always old) "Magical Negro" who exists to help redeem mainstream the hero. And he's almost always contrasted to the "dangerous" black man. (Probably so they can dismiss any arguments of racism. “Hey, what do you mean? We have a good black guy in our movie!”)
That dangerous black man in this film is the character of Gambol, played by Michael Jai White. He's got muscles on top of muscles. He brutish. He snarls. He's arrogant. He needs a comeuppance! And boy does he get one. He and his two black bodyguards, get beaten down and then thrown on all fours and made to fight for their lives at the feet of The Joker.
Yes, it’s a manly ship that Captain Batman runs in Gotham!
Finally, let me just say something here: I don’t want to hear any sort of malarkey from the ant-p.c., sexist, xenophobic apologists who will say that none of these things actually mean what I say they do. People who write for a living don’t just throw things on the page for the heck of it. They use character and scene structure to make a point.
Now, sure, sure, I know you'll say, "Hey, it's just a coincidence that in the Dark Knight all strong women get killed, all beautiful women get mocked, all men of color are humiliated or shown as lackeys! Come on! Stop reading into things!"
Well, let me say this to you:
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it must be…
The Dark Knight!
I don’t care how many billions of dollars this film makes. It’s a pile of fascist shite and belongs on a cinematic dung heap.
Put that in your fanboy pipe and smoke it.
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