Top this, Klosterman:
2008’s “The Dark Knight” was more of an intellectual thriller than an action movie.
Is a misanthrope one who wants to watch the world burn? Is an anarchist a misanthrope without faith in the civility of mankind? There must be some sort of transfer function where you stir together one part misanthrope with one part severe lack of morality, and you get a terrorist! A la the Joker!
Is “The Dark Knight” as simple as order versus chaos? No! Batman is the embodiment of vigilante order while the Joker is just plain psychotic. Of course, for the laypeople, “order” is referred to as “good” in the film since modern storytelling is completely enthralled in the battle and eventual triumph of Good over Evil. So Batman represents order while the Joker represents chaos even though this scenario exhibits a skewed vigilante order (Batman) versus a relentless unrestrained terrorist (Joker). The Dark Knight may not embrace conventional processes of law enforcement, but he holds to his own creed (primarily: thou shalt not kill). On the other hand, the Joker adopts his creed of no compliance to any rules, whether it originate from civilization or from his own mind. The Joker seeks not personal gain, fame, or wealth; he just wants to watch the world burn via manipulation of average citizens.
Does the theme of the film boil down to civilization (Batman) versus Darwinism (Joker)? You remember the crux of Darwinism: survival of the fittest, kill or be killed. If your competition is superior, then you shall be destroyed. As long as the Joker continues to murder his competition, he remains the fittest. Furthermore, the Joker applies two strategies to devolve the citizens of Gotham City into blood-thirsty apes: [1] Darwinism and [2] infiltrating our psychological circles of loyalty.
Machines are driven by cold indifferent logic. Unfortunately, mankind is more animal than machine. Due to our animalistic vicissitude, we’re driven by emotion and instinct. These emotions overwhelm us within our concentric circles of loyalty: family first, then close friends, then provincial community, then city or state, then country, then major global civilization, then all humanity, then all mammals, then all land-based creatures, then multi-cellular life, then all life, then the entire Earth, then our solar system, and so on.
For examples: you would help a dying whale rather than a dying dung beetle because, since you are a mammal, you are more loyal to the mammalian family of animals. If you’re a Christian, you would rather aid a fellow Christian before any Muslim, Buddhist, or Taoist. To carry the theme, you would rather kill a stranger than allow a family member to perish in an exploding hospital. This is because the family member is in your tightest circle of loyalty, so family always takes priority over those people you don’t know and don’t really care about in the context of your personal life. The Joker simply plays these instincts programmed into us all, thereby turning Gotham’s innocent bystanders into mindless swine.
Now, most predictably, we enter Theme of Balance: creating more “good” results in automatic creation of more “evil” elsewhere so that the net sum (all good + all evil) remains zero. This balance compliments fundamental physics such the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Conservation of Energy. This also reinforces the theory that we live in a universe with equivalent quantities of matter and antimatter (sorry, I just read Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons”). Despite mankind’s finest engineering efforts to maintain order, time eventually crumbles then recycles absolutely all of existence. Or as the Joker quaintly stated, “everything burns”.
Keeping this balance in mind, all rules, laws, or attempts to control humanity get automatically undermined by subconscious firmware embedded in each of our brains. The Joker admits “it’s fear” that devolves us into Beasts, thereby ridding ourselves of the pain of being Men.
In turn, the Joker reveals that Batman himself served as the Joker’s inspiration to throw conformity in the dumpster. The creation of a hero automatically spawned a villain, keeping the net sum of order and chaos equal to zero. However, somebody threw a greasy monkey wrench into this theory: like the Joker, Batman is also an existential individual. They both break the rules established by civilization! They’re like two valence electrons speeding along a molecule’s outer rim: one trying to keep its resident molecule, Gotham, inert while the other tries to blast all of Creation with Photons of Bedlam.
Anyways, poor Batman’s dilemma as the protagonist is when “an unstoppable force meets an immovable object”. The Joker admits these perceived polar opposites are “destined to do this forever”. Order and chaos will negate each other forever, amen. Also notice neither our hero nor villain get annihilated at the film’s conclusion, hence maintaining the balance. Or, more likely, it was a setup for a sequel. And this is totally tragic given Heath’s finest career performance followed immediately by his death.
