Dark Knight allegory

Have been meaning to blog a whole bunch of stuff but not had any free time to speak of in months. Just got back from the cinema - watched The Dark Knight. Very good film, although perhaps not as good as some have suggested; Heath Ledger's Joker is fantastic however - a truly Chaotic character. I read Andrew Neil's interpretation beforehand and, although he's quite flippant about these insights, I totally agree with him. If the film doesn't work as well as it might, it's perhaps because the comic-book fluff doesn't sit well alongside these heavy-weight themes:

"Batman is really an allegory for America. He thinks he stands for truth and justice but his penchant for vigilante violence is deeply suspect as a means of spreading these virtues (think of G Bush's invasion of Iraq) and actually attracts the sort of evil he is meant to be destroying.

The Joker is obviously al-Qaeda and you are given the strong impression that he wouldn't exist if Batman wasn't there in the first place. Like al-Qaeda, his demands are non-negotiable and there is no real purpose to his criminality, beyond a desire to spread chaos (he even burns the dollar bills he steals, much to the chagrin of the local mafia).

Batman doesn't mind what he destroys in the course of his violence (think Iraq, again) and is not averse to beating a confession out of the Joker (Gitmo, Abu Ghraib). Americans, of course, are beyond redemption: they vote to blow up a ferry-load of prisoners to save themselves. Batman (America) wins in the end, but since most of Gotham (Baghdad) is trashed in the process - even the city's biggest hospital gets blown to smithereens - you wonder if it was really worth it."

Posted by monoman at 10:47 PM on July 27, 2008