Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight occupies a unique space in the recent American film canon.1 It manages to engage with issues that deeply alienated members of the Republican and Democratic parties from each other while garnering praise from leaders in both those parties. This has led some critics to argue that the film is intentionally indecisive in order to appeal to a broader audience. In an essay criticizing what he sees as the confused cultural politics of the Dark Knight franchise, Martin Fradley remarks that “In the run-up to the 2008 U.S. election, for example, Barack Obama endorsed Batman as his favorite comic book hero at the same time as the National Review voted The Dark Knight onto twelfth place in its ‘Best Conservative Movies’ poll.”2 Both politicians and pundits focused on Nolan’s obvious nods to post-9/11, Bush-era counterterrorism tactics but arrived at different interpretations of the film’s attitude towards those tactics. The Dark Knight was released at a time when the American public was becoming more aware of the bold strategies the Bush administration had adopted in its response to the devastating attack. The public was also debating the ways in which civil rights might have been violated in the name of national security. Fradley argues that the cultural politics, that is, the extent to which popular media can shape public opinion, of Nolan’s franchise as a whole are purposefully indifferent. While he focuses the brunt of his criticism on the third film in the franchise, The Dark Knight Rises (which enjoyed far less critical acclaim than The Dark Knight), he also argues that Nolan is playing it safe in The Dark Knight with such a politically polarizing issue.
However, Nolan aims to make a far deeper critique than a simple, didactic endorsement or rejection of Bush-era counter-terrorism tactics. The Dark Knight is more concerned with the ways in which its imaginary city, Gotham, teeters from one kind of dystopia to another. While The Dark Knight cannot be categorized strictly as a utopian or dystopian film, it does depict a city at a crossroads. Nolan’s heroes attempt to stop the Joker from creating an anarchic dystopia but instead almost bring about its opposite, totalitarianism. This instability is a symptom of placing the burden of saving the city on one person, which Nolan explains through the idea of the Roman noble dictator. Initially, Batman is presented as the only man capable of taking up this mantle, but an alternative soon presents itself in the ambitious District Attorney Harvey Dent, a champion of law and order who is beloved by Gotham’s citizens. Seeing an opportunity to strike a blow to Gotham’s spirit, the Joker tears down Dent by killing his fiancée and driving him to criminality and madness. In order to preserve Gotham’s faith in the justice system, Batman and his allies cover up Dent’s fall by pinning his crimes on Batman instead. This deception is modeled on Plato’s notion of the noble lie from The Republic, another classical allusion to illustrate the ways in which the film’s heroes struggle to contain the chaos bubbling up in their city. However, this deception seems unnecessary, considering the courage displayed by the people of Gotham in the face of the Joker’s most trying schemes. Nolan’s film consciously evokes the ethical and moral dilemmas faced by Americans in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as they implemented new counter-terrorism policies. In doing so, Nolan crafts a narrative that reveals the thin line between avoiding anarchy through the abuse of power and losing faith in the resiliency of ordinary people.
The film opens with the crime families of Gotham on the wane, crumbling under the combined efforts of Batman and district attorney Harvey Dent. The crime families turn desperately to the Joker, an unknown agent of chaos who promises to kill Batman in exchange for half of their accumulated fortune. The Joker then goes on a spree of high-profile assassinations, killing a judge and the police commissioner, and even carries out an attempt on the mayor’s life. In response, Batman, Dent, and newly minted Police Commissioner Gordon plan to capture the Joker. However, the Joker had anticipated this eventuality, and he kidnaps Dent and Rachel Dawes, love interest of both Batman and Dent. The Joker forces Batman to choose to save one of them. Rachel dies despite Batman’s efforts, and Dent is brutally maimed. The Joker then convinces Dent, maddened by grief, to seek revenge on those whom he sees as responsible for Rachel’s death. The Joker’s final plan is to present two barges, one holding civilians and the other convicted criminals, with a deadly scenario: both are rigged to explode, and he threatens to detonate both charges unless one of the groups choose to blow up the other. To his surprise, the passengers on both barges throw their detonators overboard, and Batman captures the Joker. However, the Joker reveals that Dent has gone on a spree of vengeful murders culminating in the kidnapping of Gordon’s family. Batman manages to save them, at the cost of Dent’s life. Gordon and Batman, persuaded by the belief that Gotham can never know about Dent’s crimes, decide to pin them on Batman to preserve Dent’s legacy. The film concludes with Batman feeing from the police, having accepted responsibility for crimes he did not commit.
Throughout the film’s plot Nolan finds opportunities to weave in elements of 9/11 and antiterrorism efforts. He consciously evokes images that have become familiar to the average American since the terrorist attack on 9/11. Although he often reworks these images to suit his narrative, their resemblance to actual events is striking. Nolan’s use of practical effects and intentional mimicry of the depiction of the 9/11 attack in the media are designed to reflect the audience’s experience of the attack. These images may even recall a viewer’s trauma associated with the attack. Fran Pheasant-Kelly’s essay, “The Ecstasy of Chaos: Meditations of 9/11, Terrorism and Traumatic Memory in ‘The Dark Knight,’” details the ways in which Nolan’s cinematography might “recreate imagery embedded within the memory of those who witnessed 9/11.”3 Nolan filmed the sequence in which the Joker confronts a scarred and unhinged Harvey Dent in the hospital by securing an abandoned factory set for demolition. The Joker, as part of his plan to sow terror throughout Gotham, blows up the hospital after releasing Harvey. This sequence is particularly vivid because Nolan captured the abandoned factory’s destruction in real time.4 Rather than depending on visual effects artists to simulate the explosion, Nolan filmed the sequence in a single take. Kelly also notes that in the scene, “Fragments of paper shower from the falling building, resembling one of the most memorable images of the Twin Towers’ destruction,” another conscious choice by Nolan to both ground his scene in realism and recall the audience’s traumatic memories of seeing the World Trade Center fall.5 Nolan’s choice to shoot the scene live reflects more than his preference for practical effects; it also creates a more visceral reminder of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Nolan uses more scenes of destruction to recall the trauma of the audience’s experiences with the War on Terror. Kelly identifies another, later shot which is even more suggestive, where the destruction of the hospital is being relayed on television and writes that “this spectacle replays once more on a news bulletin, much in the way that 9/11 was repeatedly replayed.”6 In another sequence, Nolan shows the aftermath of the destruction of a warehouse where the Joker killed Rachel Dawes, the love interest of both Harvey Dent and Batman, with firefighters picking through the rubble. The composition of this scene intentionally mimics the photographs of firefighters in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the attack. Kelly notes that the use of sound in this scene, or rather the absence of it, “dissects it from the film’s narrative as an arresting image, thereby amplifying its spectacular/emotional resonances: imagery reminiscent of ‘Ground Zero’ after 9/11.”7 Nolan incorporates other elements that intentionally recall the 9/11 attack and prolonged conflicts that followed it. The Joker surgically implants an IED into the abdomen of a jailed criminal in order to escape custody, in what is certainly meant to be seen as a grotesque approximation of a suicide bomber. However, the practical realism and framing of the hospital destruction scene are particularly effective at creating a connection between the events of the film and the viewer’s experience of terrorism during and immediately after the 9/11 attack.
Nolan does more than mimic the images that were associated with 9/11; he incorporates some of President Bush’s more controversial counterterrorism policies into his narrative. John Ip, in his essay, “The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism,” explores Nolan’s representation of these tactics and how their depiction in the film might have influenced popular culture. He identifies three key plot points: the rendition, or the covert extradition, of a mob-financier (known only by his surname, Lau) from Hong Kong; the frequent use of coercive interrogation; and the film’s climactic takedown of the Joker, which was made possible by the use of cell phone surveillance technology. Rendition is probably the issue that is least familiar to the average filmgoer. Ip writes that rendition “grew out of the difficulty of bringing certain terrorist suspects to trial through a formal process of extradition. Rendition in this context involved the capture and transfer, sometimes forcible, of a suspect for the purpose of allowing that person to face charges in the United States.”8 In the film, Batman essentially kidnaps the financier, Lau, so that he will be forced to testify at trial against the mob. During the Bush administration, the potential violation of civil rights centered around a specific form of rendition, called extraordinary rendition, that delivered suspects into the custody of law enforcement for coercive interrogation. The capture of foreign nationals without their government’s express approval is a thorny legal problem that is further complicated by the use of torture. Ip notes, “The conventional view, and virtually the consensus outside the United States, is that extraordinary rendition is illegal under international human rights law.” However, he is also careful to say that “What is depicted in The Dark Knight is not extraordinary rendition,” as Lau will not be tortured by Gotham City offcials.9 Additionally, the capture of Lau does little to aid the fight against the mob; it merely allows the Joker to justify moving the mob’s money to a secure location known only to him, enabling him to control their crime syndicate. This imitation of extraordinary rendition sets out a pattern that Nolan will continue to explore through the issue of torture.
While Nolan shies away from extraordinary rendition, he does not hold back in his representation of coercive interrogation, or torture, in the film. Harvey Dent, Lieutenant Gordon, and Batman himself all either give their tacit approval to or actively engage in torture. Suspects are dropped from rooftops, thrown about holding cells, and even tortured psychologically, with Dent threatening a suspect with death if a coin flip does not go their way. As his coin is a trick coin, there is no chance that Dent will actually shoot the suspect, but the behavior is troubling nonetheless. There is much debate around the ethics and effectiveness of torture, and as Ip points out, “Given the impossibility of conducting ethical research on the matter, discussions about the effectiveness of torture and coercion inevitably take the form of a battle of the anecdotes.”10 In media, torture is often justified in what is commonly referred to as the “ticking time bomb” scenario. This scenario involves a member of law enforcement torturing a suspect who has critical information that will help stop an imminent attack. Nolan purposely avoids that stereotype. Ip argues in his essay that “the use of torture and coercion in The Dark Knight is uniformly ineffective.”11 Indeed, in one scene the Joker endures Batman’s torture only to run down the clock on a pair of bombs he has planted, thereby forcing Batman to choose between saving Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes from certain death. Ip uses this departure from the typical representation of torture in media as evidence that Nolan is critiquing Bush-era counterterrorism tactics.
However, that argument is complicated by Nolan’s representation of arguably the most controversial aspect of President Bush’s policy. In the film, Batman and his allies invent a technology that uses the cell phone of every citizen in Gotham to create a sort of sonar map that enables Batman to track down the Joker. The specifics of this technology differ wildly from the cell phone surveillance employed in the War on Terror (it almost amounts to science fiction), but on a basic level the film mimics reality. Like the United States government in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, Batman uses the cell phones of civilian non-combatants to conduct surveillance that would be considered by many to be a violation of civil rights. Ip argues that this surveillance “is a clear allusion to the surveillance program run by the National Security Agency.”12 This program, known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program or TSP, “involved the NSA monitoring certain communications between people inside the United States and overseas, where one party was reasonably suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda or associated terrorist organizations.”13 In the film, Batman relies on Lucius Fox, the intrepid inventor behind his crime-fighting technology, to monitor the sonar map and direct him to the Joker’s hiding place. However, Fox is appalled by the surveillance, calling it “unethical...dangerous...you’ve turned every cell phone in Gotham into a microphone,” and he tells Batman that “as long as this machine is at Wayne Enterprises, I won’t be.”14 Ip sees this as Nolan’s own rejection of such measures, but unlike the previous tactics borrowed from President Bush’s counterterrorism policy, the surveillance actually leads to the capture of the Joker. Ip cites a number of reasons why this representation of surveillance differs from the counterterrorism policy of President Bush, noting that unlike the United States government, “Batman is looking for one specific person,” and that the surveillance technology was destroyed once the Joker was disabled.15 While that is true, this incident still does not fit the pattern that Nolan established with rendition and torture, when those tactics were ultimately ineffective and even helped the Joker further his own ends. Lucius Fox criticizes the surveillance technology, but it is instrumental to the Joker’s down- fall. Batman ultimately gives Fox the means to destroy the device, and he does so, mitigating the threat that it poses to society. Nolan thus approaches these tactics with restraint, questioning their efficacy and the ethics surrounding their use, but stopping short of a clear criticism of Bush-era counterterrorism. However, Nolan’s choice to include these issues in his narrative signals to the audience that his film should be taken as an allegory for the War on Terror, and his characters flesh out that allegory further.
While Nolan does not condemn the heroes of the film for abandoning their ideals and engaging in extralegal activity, he nevertheless demonstrates the dangers of these tactics. Batman and his allies in law enforcement fit well into the role of the United States government. Harvey Dent, Lieutenant Gordon, and Batman all either tacitly approve of or actively engage in tactics similar to those of the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11. Nolan’s failure to condemn these tactics should not be taken as tacit approval of their use. The challenges facing Gotham City are unprecedented and place a considerable strain on Batman, Gordon, and Dent as they try to cope with the threat of the Joker. However, Nolan unequivocally shows that they all flirt with danger throughout the film. They each take on considerable responsibility for saving the city, and Nolan demonstrates the risks that arise when that accountability is not diffused to a wider group. Lucius Fox’s discomfort with the power of Batman’s surveillance technology stems from its potential to defeat the Joker while introducing a greater threat to society. Its capacity for fighting crime is determined by the person utilizing it. If Fox or Batman had wanted, they could have used the technology for personal gain by violating personal privacy and suppressing those who stood in their way. Rendition and torture are violent, but Nolan shows that they are ineffective against the Joker’s erratic behavior, and the characters learn that utilizing those tactics will not help them protect the city. The surveillance technology is not violent, but it is nonetheless the most dangerous strategy because it is effective, and therefore an argument exists for its continued use. As Lucius Fox knows, he or Batman could eventually succumb to the temptation of using the technology for their own ends, or someone else lacking their restraint could abuse it. Without oversight, Batman’s vigilante crusade could eventually become Gotham City’s downfall rather than its salvation. The irony of this surveillance technology is that by preventing the Joker from spreading anarchy, it brings Gotham perilously close to a dystopic state of totalitarianism.
While the heroes are explicitly meant to be representative of United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the Joker can be seen as an expression of terrorism in its purest form, unpredictable and free from ideology. Most terrorist organizations are known for having a specific political agenda, which the Joker lacks, but the definition of terrorism is much less specific. In the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1566, terrorism is defined as “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”16 The Joker’s actions in the film fit this definition. Every act he commits is designed to cause terror in his victims, and he makes demands of the city on a number of occasions, such as when he asks the city to murder a corporate attorney, Coleman Reese. The Joker also expressly endorses these tactics with the line “If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan,’” which is not only another reference to the War on Terror but also an encapsulation of the Joker’s method for sowing terror.17 His plans force the citizens of Gotham to deal with events that are out of the ordinary or beyond the limit of what they consider to be acceptable losses. The Joker continues: “But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.”18 The Joker targets civilians because their deaths are seen as more shocking, just as terrorists often do. Batman’s butler, Alfred, in a conversation with Rachel Dawes, even refers to the Joker as a terrorist. What makes him so dangerous is his lack of a discernable agenda. Alfred describes him as a man who “just wants to watch the world burn.”19
However, the Joker goes a step further and tries to enlist the help of the people of Gotham in burning down their city. His plan centers around compelling Gotham’s citizens to lose confidence in the government, the police, and Batman so that they will hurt one another in order to survive. He wants the people of Gotham to see their current society as a dystopia controlled by higher powers who are now powerless to help them so that they will embrace anarchy, which is a dystopia in and of itself. By understanding The Dark Knight as an allegory for the War on Terror, the viewer gains an appreciation for the precariousness of Gotham City’s situation. It teeters dangerously close to both a totalitarian dystopia and an anarchistic one, which highlights the unsustainability of the vigilantism and extra-legal activities of Batman and his allies.
Although Batman foils the Joker’s plan to destabilize Gotham, the Joker’s perversion of the city’s white knight, Harvey Dent, is a heart-wrenching success. He is the most tragic figure in the film and can be seen as a fallen civil servant, undone by his hubris in shouldering the burden of cleaning up Gotham’s streets within the confines of the law. Dent initially promised to be Gotham’s salvation from organized crime; he was the incorruptible district attorney who fearlessly prosecuted mobsters, even under the threat of constant assassination. Batman (in the guise of Bruce Wayne) unironically endorses him in a fundraising speech, using his campaign slogan: “I believe in Harvey Dent.”20 That belief runs so deep that at one point in the film, Batman is willing to hang up the cowl and cape and let Dent carry on his crusade against crime. Of course, viewers with some knowledge of the Batman universe know that Dent eventually becomes the villain Two-Face. Nolan uses Dent’s transformation as an example of the fallibility of a single man, as Dent tries to live up to an impossible ideal.
Prior to Dent’s fall, Nolan refers to the story of Cincinnatus, the ideal Roman noble dictator, in order to show the audience what Dent aspires to become. In an early scene when Wayne and Dent are eating dinner together, Nolan heavily foreshadows Dent’s demise. During dinner, conversation turns to the Batman, and one of the dinner guests indignantly asks Dent how a democracy can let a masked vigilante operate outside of the law. Dent replies that, “When their enemies were at their gates, the Romans would suspend democracy and appoint one man to defend the city, and it wasn’t considered an honor, it was considered a public service.”21 The Roman who historically best exemplified this public service was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. During a crisis in 458 B.C., Cincinnatus was appointed as an emergency dictator “in order to rescue a consular army that was surrounded by the Aequi on Mount Algidus.”22 Although Cincinnatus triumphed quickly over his enemies, he longed to return to his farm and “maintained his authority only long enough to bring Rome through the emergency.”23 However, not every Roman statesman lived up to Cincinnatus’ ideal. Rachel Dawes objects, “The last man they appointed to defend the republic was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.”24 Dent replies, “Ok fine. You either die a hero or livelong enough to see yourself become the villain.”25 That last line perfectly encapsulates Harvey Dent’s fate. Dent is acknowledging the fallibility of a single man who takes on the responsibility of protecting his people. However, he also argues that “Batman is looking for someone to take up his mantle,” and he heavily implies that he believes himself to be the right person for the job.26
The Roman noble dictator is held up as the ideal in Gotham’s corrupt society. Batman and Dent see the city as so fundamentally broken, and its people so unwilling to act, that they decide to single-handedly take on the duty of saving the city. Dent is positioning himself as Gotham’s hope for a legitimate crusader who fights crime strictly within the confines of the law. However, the Joker realizes this and tears him down by killing his fiancée and warping his view of the world. Batman’s anonymity is the only thing protecting him from the same fate, as the Joker has no personal leverage over him. By comparing the two men, Nolan makes the implicit argument that Batman too will either die a hero or see himself become the villain, which is strengthened by the threat of Batman’s surveillance technology. This highlights the unsustainability of one man taking on responsibility for the whole city.
Batman is blind to the dangers of his one-man crusade, and in the wake of Dent’s death he conspires with Gordon to pre- serve Dent’s image as Gotham’s white knight, thereby perpetuating the idea that the city can only be saved by one extraordinary person. Having fought for so long against crime and corruption without the support of others, it is understandable why the two would embrace Dent as a savior. For them, Dent represents the possibility that their solitary struggle is at an end. In order to keep that hope alive, Batman takes responsibility for the crimes committed by Dent after he was corrupted by the Joker so that Gotham can continue to hold him up as an ideal. Their perspective is also skewed by the Joker, who fixates on Dent as the key to breaking down Gotham’s trust in its institutions. After losing a fight with Batman, the Joker asks him, “You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fist fight with you?”27 He claims that he has an “ace in the hole,” the once-incorruptible Harvey Dent brought low. The Joker believes that once the people of Gotham see what he has done to Dent, “their spirit” will break completely.28 Batman and now Commissioner Gordon mistakenly buy into that theory, and the film ends with a desperate bid to keep Dent’s downfall a secret. Batman tells Gordon that “sometimes truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more.”29 They prefer that Gotham City sees Dent as a man who died a hero. In the minds of the two men, belief in Dent and the ideals he represented is critical for social cohesion, and they are willing to conceal Dent’s crimes in the name of that ideal.
Fabricating an ideal in the name of social order is not a new idea. In his dialogue on the ideal city, the Republic, Plato detailed what has come to be known as the “noble lie.” In Book III of the Republic, Plato describes the so-called “myth of the metals,” a system for classifying the souls of human beings into three categories, bronze, silver, and gold. Plato characterizes this myth as a “needful falsehood...one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city.”30 The bronze citizens were destined to be laborers; the silver citizens auxiliaries, or guardians of the city; and the gold citizens were to be the ruling class. This fiction was designed to encourage the citizens to have faith in the leadership, secure in the knowledge that the leadership was superior to them. Plato wrote that, “Fostering this belief will make them care more for the city and for each other.”31 Like the myth of the metals, the image of Harvey Dent as Gotham’s white knight was seen as inspiring to the people of Gotham. Batman and Gordon assumed that the citizens of Gotham were unwilling to believe in justice unless they followed someone who was incorruptible, better than they were. Gordon tells Batman, “The Joker took the best of us and tore him down. People will lose hope.”32 That shared assumption, that people cannot deal with the idea that their leaders are imperfect, is the essence of the noble lie. It is important to note that Nolan does not mean for his audience to condemn the two for their actions. It is laudable that Batman would allow himself to be vilified for what he sees as the greater good; he and Gordon have been fighting a lonely war on crime for many years without much help. However, even as the heroes commit to a deception that they hope will save the city, Nolan casts doubt on their assumptions.
The Joker might have succeeded in breaking Harvey Dent, but his ultimate plan was not successful. The Joker’s other plan to demoralize and destabilize Gotham was a twisted rendition of the prisoner’s dilemma. Generally speaking, the prisoner’s dilemma is a game that sets two players, or parties, in opposition to one another, forcing them to choose between their own self-interest or the well-being of the other party. In its purest form, two prisoners are separated and offered the same deal: testify against their compatriot in exchange for a reduced or suspended punishment. The prisoners are motivated to testify by the promise of freedom and the fear that their counterpart will betray them. If both prisoners testify, they would likely both go to jail. If both choose to remain silent, they risk going to jail anyway. Although the game has been adapted countless times since its creation, at its core it studies how people behave when they have to choose between personal gain and the needs of others. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that there are many interpretations of the game, but that “A common view is that the puzzle illustrates a conflict between individual and group rationality.”33 Furthermore, it notes that “A slightly different interpretation takes the game to represent a choice between selfish behavior and socially desirable altruism.”34
This choice between selfishness and altruism is the interpretation that the Joker’s plan exemplifies. He rigs up two barges transporting people out of Gotham City with explosives. One barge carries civilians, and the other is transporting convicted criminals to a more secure prison outside of Gotham. He tells both barges, “Tonight you’re all going to be part of a little social experiment.”35 Their only way to survive is to detonate the explosives on the other barge, and if they fail to do so in an hour’s time, he will trigger the explosives on both barges himself. The trap is made even more devious by the fact that one barge is occupied by criminals, who are seen by some of the civilians as being less deserving of life and more likely to blow up the civilian barge. This scenario bears all of the hallmarks of the prisoner’s dilemma. The Joker put the passengers in a situation in which they have to choose between their personal well-being and the lives of the passengers on the other barge. Furthermore, if they choose not to blow up the other barge, they face certain death at the hands of the other barge or the Joker himself. This plan is designed to demonstrate that, given the choice between selfish behavior and social altruism, the people of Gotham will sacrifice the lives of others.
The Joker’s aim is to dissolve Gotham’s society and reduce it to a dystopic state of anarchy. He believes that his plan will definitively show that the people of Gotham can be motivated by the threat of death to abandon their moral and ethical code. If the passengers on the barges act in the way that the Joker expects them to, it would show that the preservation of society is worthless in the face of the Joker’s unrestrained chaos. During his interrogation scene earlier in the film, the Joker expresses his belief in the fallibility of social structures and the conventions of morality. He tells another police officer that Gotham’s citizens are “only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you, when the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other.”36 His plan hinges on the passengers acting in accordance with his belief.
Despite the Joker’s ability to predict every move that Batman and his allies have made thus far, he fails to anticipate the sacrifice made by the passengers on both barges. On the civilian barge, the passengers vote to destroy the other barge and save themselves, but the man who offered to detonate the explosives finds that he is unable to pull the trigger. However, it is the behavior of one of the criminals on the barge that is the most shocking. This prisoner pretends to take the detonator from one of the guards in order to “do what you should’ve did ten minutes ago.”37 Then without hesitation, the prisoner throws the detonator off the barge. This scene is an affirmation of the resiliency of ordinary people in the face of terror. John Ip comes to the same conclusion in his essay that by making the decision to defy the Joker, the passengers “hang onto their humanity.”38 Significantly, that decision also makes the case that Gotham’s people are ready to stand on their own against crime and chaos.
Although Dent has been held up as the ideal giving the citizens of Gotham the hope to fight for justice, he is at no point mentioned in this scene. Furthermore, the prisoner who throws the detonator overboard would certainly have not been inspired by Gotham’s white knight, as Dent was the prosecutor who put him in jail. By failing to establish a clear connection between the actions of the passengers on the barge and Dent’s potential as a symbol of hope for the city, Nolan casts doubt on the heroes’ assumption that the people of Gotham will lose hope without him.
It is ironic that The Dark Knight, considered by many to be the foremost film in the superhero genre, makes such a compelling case about the necessity of placing trust in ordinary people. Batman’s takedown of the Joker is the first time we see the people of Gotham support his efforts in a tangible way. When the passengers on the barge throw away their detonators, it surprises the Joker, and it gives Batman an opening to disable him before he can detonate the bombs himself. Nolan reaffirms that although the passengers on the barges foiled the Joker’s plan to break the spirit of Gotham’s people, in that moment they still need Batman to save them. However, their heroism does set out the model that Gotham will need to strive towards in the future if they want to escape the city’s unsustainable status quo. Nolan means for his audience to see Batman’s actions throughout the film as heroic, but he also shows that the time must eventually come when Gotham City no longer needs Batman. Through the film’s parallels to 9/11, Nolan shows that the heroes put the city at risk of becoming a totalitarian dystopia while preventing the spread of anarchy. He uses the ideal of the Roman noble dictator to show that Batman and Dent are aspiring to an impossible ideal. The audience is therefore left with a sense of unease when Batman and Gordon concoct a lie, modeled after Plato’s political philosophy, to perpetuate this ideal, although they believe it is necessary for social cohesion. The two ask the citizens of Gotham to place their hope in the illusory infallibility of one man rather than praise them for their own resilience. Although Batman and his allies are responsible for ultimately stopping the Joker, the city is left to an uncertain fate because Gotham has yet to fully understand that it must reach a place where it can survive without them. Nolan deliberately avoids a didactic statement about the film’s parallels to 9/11 so he can highlight the necessity of trusting ordinary people to do the right thing. The film must be understood as a nuanced study of what binds a society together in the face of terror and an example of how to find meaning in the middle ground. Batman’s vigilantism is necessary to protect the city in the short term, but in order to build a stronger society Gotham must learn to depend on the resiliency of ordinary people. Nolan argues that their collective strength is stronger than any one man, which is a resounding message of hope for an audience grappling with the threat of terrorism in their own lives.
ENDNOTES
1. The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan (2008; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008), DVD.
2. Martin Fradley, “What Do You Believe In? Film Scholarship and the Cultural Politics of the Dark Knight Franchise,” Film Quarterly 66, no. 3 (May 2013): 15-17, on 16.
3. Fran Pheasant-Kelly, “The Ecstasy of Chaos: Mediations of 9/11, Terrorism and Traumatic Memory in The Dark Knight,” Journal of War & Culture Studies 4, no. 2 (September 2011): 235-49, on 235.
4. News Service, “Holy fireballs, Batman! The hospital exploded,” Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL), August 30, 2007, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-08-30-0708300264-story.html.
5. Pheasant-Kelly, “The Ecstasy of Chaos,” 244.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 240.
8. John Ip, “The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 9, no. 1 (September 2011), 209-29, on
215.
9. Ip, “The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism,” 216.
10. Ibid., 219.
11. Ibid., 220.
12. Ibid., 221.
13. Ibid.
14. “Chapter 31,” The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan (2008; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008), DVD.
15. Ip, “The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism,” 223.
16. “Resolution 1566,” United Nations, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.un.org/ruleofaw/blog/document/security-council-
resolution-1566-2004-on-threats-to-international-peace-and-security-caused-by-terrorist-acts/.
17. “Chapter 29,” The Dark Knight.
18. Ibid.
19. “Chapter 14,” The Dark Knight.
20. “Chapter 11,” The Dark Knight.
21. “Chapter 5,” The Dark Knight.
22. “Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, June 19, 2019, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucius-Quinctius-Cincinnatus.
23. Ibid.
24. “Chapter 5,” The Dark Knight.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. “Chapter 36,” The Dark Knight.
28. Ibid.
29. “Chapter 38,” The Dark Knight.
30. Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 2nd ed. (Luton: Andrews UK Limited, 2012), 225, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cua/reader.action?docID=4460786.
31. Ibid., 225.
32. “Chapter 38,” The Dark Knight.
33. “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ̧ Winter 2019 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed May 1, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/prisoner-dilemma/.
34. Ibid.
35. “Chapter 33,” The Dark Knight.
36. “Chapter 23,” The Dark Knight.
37. “Chapter 35,” The Dark Knight.
38. Ip, “The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism,” 225.
