Dark Knight – Dark Ideas

Dark Knight Article

Dark Knight, Dark Ideas by Peter Turner

Summary of Key Points

  • Batman isn’t necessarily a hero. He is shown as a vigilante, who is unburdened by laws and rules, he isn’t afraid to be seen as the villain for the greater good. Batman, however, needs a villain, he needs disorder and chaos so he has something he can fight against. This is why Batman, with his seemingly-limitless wealth chooses not to spend it on something more productive than new toys to play with when beating up criminals.
  • Batman’s ethics are murky and, despite choosing not to kill anybody, he does resort to disturbing decisions such as torturing The Joker and spying on the entirety of Gotham. This makes it difficult to distinguish good from evil, and parallels can be drawn between Batman’s actions “fighting” crime and the decisions of America in trying to fight terrorism.
  • There is a clear class divide in Gotham, and it’s important to consider that Bruce Wayne is a millionaire who doesn’t have much of an idea of poverty or its prevalence in Gotham. Batman has a reactionary role, in that he does not fight the cause of crime, he just fights the “bad guys”.
  • Nolan represents the people of Gotham as docile and keen to let Batman save them rather than do anything for themselves.

The Importance of Reading Articles

Reading articles and reviews of films we’re studying is important because it helps give us ideas of exactly what we’re talking about. Different people will always have different interpretations of each part of a film and by reading reviews and articles, we can get more ideas on how to interpret the film along with some social or political context we may have otherwise missed.

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