The Dark Knight and Postmodernism
I have watched the movie 12 times in three consecutive days last week. I recorded it while inside the cinema. And yes, it was different but having watched Begins, having read Dark Knight Returns and Long Halloween, I certainly got what I expected from Dark Knight. Long before this movie, starting from Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Moore's The Killing Joke, Batman is already an established postmodern mythology. Every night, I listen to the movie from my recorder; the obsession for a closer study is obvious. I will not explain further. I found these snippets to satisfy my perception of the movie: intelligent, intricate, insane.
"The Dark Knight is a battle between the post-modern world view and that world view of absolutes. In fact, the Joker is the poster boy for post-modernism. He absolutely believes (and yes, I understand the irony of using that emphatic to express a post-modern viewpoint) that everything is relative, that the world would be better off if it let go of its delusions of order and a civilized society governed by laws. What’s more, the Joker believes that all it takes is some nudging and people will naturally embrace his style of relativistic thinking. When the circumstances are extreme enough, people will see there are no absolutes beyond what they believe is right for themselves. The Joker embraces this way of thinking so completely, that he has multiple realities to explain his scars and his creation, all equally plausible and real in his own relativistic mind.
The Dark Knight also demonstrates what happens when one completely embraces the post modern belief of relativisim: it destroys everything. Everything descends into chaos, fear, uncertaintly, hopelessness, and darkness. Of course standing against this is Batman, the Dark Knight. He believes that order and law are necessary, and he’ll do whatever it takes to enforce that belief… even if it means breaking the very laws that he believes are necessary. If that sounds contradictory to you, then you’re beginning to understand what makes Batman such a fascinating and complex character."
"The Dark Knight is a battle between the post-modern world view and that world view of absolutes. In fact, the Joker is the poster boy for post-modernism. He absolutely believes (and yes, I understand the irony of using that emphatic to express a post-modern viewpoint) that everything is relative, that the world would be better off if it let go of its delusions of order and a civilized society governed by laws. What’s more, the Joker believes that all it takes is some nudging and people will naturally embrace his style of relativistic thinking. When the circumstances are extreme enough, people will see there are no absolutes beyond what they believe is right for themselves. The Joker embraces this way of thinking so completely, that he has multiple realities to explain his scars and his creation, all equally plausible and real in his own relativistic mind.
The Dark Knight also demonstrates what happens when one completely embraces the post modern belief of relativisim: it destroys everything. Everything descends into chaos, fear, uncertaintly, hopelessness, and darkness. Of course standing against this is Batman, the Dark Knight. He believes that order and law are necessary, and he’ll do whatever it takes to enforce that belief… even if it means breaking the very laws that he believes are necessary. If that sounds contradictory to you, then you’re beginning to understand what makes Batman such a fascinating and complex character."
---------from Jewish Journal
"The Joker espouses a nihilist philosophy concerning the arbitrariness of the code of morality in civilized society; it is but a thin veneer, a construct intended for our consolation. If you tear away at the surface, “civilized people will eat each other.” As The Joker puts it, “madness is like gravity; all it takes is a little push.” In a wonderfully comic take on a Nietzschean sentiment, he sums up his beliefs: “Whatever does not kill you makes you stranger.” His character also illustrates the parasitic status of evil and nihilism. A thoroughgoing nihilist could not muster the energy to destroy or create. As The Joker puts it at one point, he’s like the dog chasing a car; he has no idea what he would do if he caught it. Dark quests for redemption, whether religious or secular, abound in contemporary culture. As Nolan’s films indicate, these quest films owe a great debt to classic film noir. Classic noir takes aim at some of the treasured assumptions and promises of modernity. In noir, the modern world, embodied in an urban setting, is hardly the world of light, happiness, and peace that utopian thinkers of the Enlightenment foretold. Modernity is about human beings exercising control over nature and thus taking control of their destinies; in our modern technological project, knowledge and power are one. The postmodern turn in noir is about the loss of control, the absence of intelligibility, and the threat of powerlessness. But the quest has something pre-modern about it—a sense of human limitations, of the dependence of human beings on one another and on events not in their control. In this world, the outcome of the quest is tenuous and uncertain. The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. "
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