Defending Gotham in Hockey Pads: The Lie of the Hero

Yesterday the Oscar nomination were announced; to no surprise, Heath Ledger has a spot on the list of Best Supporting Actors (and will certainly win) for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight; to much outcry, The Dark Knight failed to recieve any other major nominations, such as Best Director or even Best Picture. I don't care, really. As much as I love it, I don't think it deserves Best Picture (though admittedly I haven't seen any of the actual nominees this year, to my failure). But the hullabaloo got me thinking about the film again, and why it's so problematic to me. Because as I addressed in my original essay on the film--the first piece written for this site--I have a lot of issues with The Dark Knight. I already explained what I think is wrong with it, with regards to the ethical position presented by the narrative; now I'd like to expand on that, a bit, but more importantly, explain how to do it right.

The Dark Knight is a film about the myth of the Hero. A cursory view might say that it is a film deconstructing the Hero: it emphasizes, after all, that Batman/Bruce Wayne is not a hero, and this is true, depending on how we define "hero". The film seems to mean the popular sense of an individual who acts ethically to eliminate injustice and preserve society's righteousness. I'm not going to dispute that definition too much; in fact, I want to look much closer at several parts of it and what they mean, and how they impact the status of Batman as a Hero.

The Hero is an archetypal figure, defined by Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as the the protagonist of the ultimate archetypal story, the stand-in for every person in the stand-in for every person's journey through life. The most important aspect of the Hero is that he (the Hero is generally considered to be an inherently masculine concept--it is, after all, a character whose story is defined by penetration) is an individual. While he may (and usually does, e.g. Campbell's mentor) have friends, assistants, sidekicks, whatever, when it matters the responsibility is shouldered by the Hero alone, and he acts alone to achieve victory.

Despite being an individual, however, the Hero's actions reverberate across society. The Hero may act by himself, but he saves the entire world (or city or tribe or whatever; enough that it is something larger than himself). The Hero is a protector (a knight!) who is intrinsically separated in his actions but connected in their effects. The Hero is intrinsically positioned in a hierarchical structure above those he protects; he is an authority, who acts according to his own will but but restricts the ability of others (those beneath him) to do the same.

Bruce Wayne claims that as Batman he is not a hero, and does not want to be; but the position of Batman is intrinsically Heroic. He is an individual, a lone actor, whose decisions are made without (apparent) regard to the larger community but which affect the larger community vastly. Bruce Wayne positions Batman as not a man but an incarnation of Order, the ultimate imposition of his will on reality--what could be more Heroic? And, his fatal flaw, despite repeated statements that he hopes to find someone to take his place, he refuses to allow anyone to share the throne.

Batman first appears in The Dark Knight during a sequence involving a drug deal between Gotham gangsters and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). The deal is interrupted by a figure in a bat suit, but it is clearly not Batman, for this bat wields firearms and is accompanied by several accomplices dressed similarly. These batman-pretenders engage in a messy brawl with the gangsters until the real Batman arrives and saves the day, as expected. At the end of the sequence, after Batman has told the pretenders to go home and let him do the work, one of them asks why he alone has the "right" to protect Gotham. Batman's infamous response: "I'm not wearing hockey pads."

The moment is played for laughs--and like much comedy, it reinforces an assumed foundation without ever examining the integrity of it. In this case, the foundation is that fighting crime in Gotham City without the resources of a billion-dollar multinational corporation is dangerously foolish and unnecessary. That idea is played tragically later in the film, when the Joker releases a video of him interrogating a captured, beaten, and tortured batman pretender named Brian Douglas. Douglas explains why he dresses up like Batman: "He's a symbol that we don't have to be afraid of scum like you." The Joker responds:

"So you think Batman's made Gotham a better place? Hmm? Look at me. LOOK. AT. ME. You see, this is how crazy Batman's made Gotham. You want order in Gotham? Batman must take off his mask and turn himself in."

At the end of the film, Batman destroys any status he has a symbol. Having shouldered six murders to prevent the demise of Harvey Dent's public reputation, he destroys his own, forces the police to end their clandestine cooperation with him and hunt him as the criminal he is. At least Batman won't have to wory about people like Brian Douglas.

The problem is, Brian Douglas--and those like him--are the only real possibility Gotham has for saving. The absolute authority of Batman only birthed the absolute chaos of the Joker. This is always the result of an attempt at absolute authority, supreme centralization: dissolution, failure, collapse. Batman defeated the influence of Gotham's gangsters only by making himself more influential; the people of Gotham are still not free, still subject to others' will. This lack of freedom is manifest physically towards the conclusion of the film with the cell phone surveillance system that allows Batman to observe the entirety of Gotham from one central terminal--the centralized authority's ultimate dream of observation and thus control.

Brian Douglas was wrong, in that he believed Batman was a symbol of people taking back control of their city and their lives. Batman doesn't want people to be free--the Joker, after all, is the ultimate incarnation of freedom, a nihilist free of ethics, reason, even belief in general (he "just do[es] things"). But Brian Douglas was right to try, because Batman is wrong, too, and much moreso. Batman wants to save the world--which is really just another way of saying he wants to make the world into his own image. He wants to be God--the original personification of absolute authority. Brian Douglas simply wanted the freedom to decide for himself who he wants to be.

Brian Douglas believed that people can save themselves; that they don't have to be afraid--of scum like the Joker, or Batman. He talked back to Batman, after all: why do you have the right, he demanded, and I don't?

The lie of the Hero is that anyone has the right to impose their will on another. That anyone can save the world--that anyone can be God--or that anyone can be saved by anyone besides themselves. The lie of the Hero is that someone can do something to someone else "for their own good"; that lying or concealing the truth can ever be the right thing to do.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of the individual: that anyone can act alone, without being influenced by others. The lie of the Hero is that order and reason and belief are more than arbitrary illusions and crude attempts to understand the infinitely complex networks that are our existence.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of the villain: that some people are bad, or evil, or wrong, and must be stopped. That some people cannot be reasoned with, and just want to watch the world burn, and must be stopped. That that which is not us, that which is other, must be made into us, or eliminated.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of fate: that every person does not choose who they want to be, every single moment, and that that freedom is ever escapable.

Brian Douglas (Andy Luther)