Sandwich’s young adults are preparing for the upcoming national election by focusing on the issues that will almost certainly have a direct effect on them.
The youth vote is traditionally disappointingly small, but as the November election ticks closer, political energy amongst the town’s youngest voters seems to be running higher this year than in most. The pool of serious contenders vying for their parties’ nominations is giving these and all voters much to think about.
Tyler Thomas, a 2006 Sandwich High School graduate and contractor for his family-owned business, said the economy is at the forefront of his concerns right now.
“My business is definitely feeling the pinch right now,” he said.
Mr. Thomas said he maintains confidence that the business will survive, but between the recession that many economists predict and little government support for small business, he is still worried.
“Small business needs reforms,” he said. “It’s very, very hard for small businesses to make money between insurance and liabilities, amongst other things.”
Rachel Wesley, also a 2006 SHS graduate, who is currently a sophomore at Bridgewater State College studying to become a teacher, expressed concern over the No Child Left Behind Act.
“Teaching’s already an unforgiving job,” she said. “If you’re going to make educators put in even more effort, there needs to be more incentive. I really want to see student loans for teachers forgiven if they keep No Child Left Behind.”
Ms. Wesley also hopes to see more serious action taken with regards to climate change. She believes there to be a strong chance that her generation will feel the negative effects of global warming. “There at least needs to be a stronger push for more fuel-efficient cars,” she said.
Global warming and alternative energy initiatives are a prevalent concern. Dan Rose, another SHS grad now living in Boston while studying at Northeastern University, said he supports production of ethanol and other renewable fuel sources. Mr. Rose believes that such initiatives will ultimately help the economy through job creation.
“I might not need to be worrying about how the money in my pocket is losing value every five seconds,” he said.
Social security is also on the minds of some young voters. “It needs to be fixed,” Mr. Rose said. “It’s not fair for me to be paying into it when I’m probably never going to see it.”
Mr. Thomas agreed. “It’s a joke. I’ll be shocked if I ever see that money. What’s worse is that I have no idea where it’s going.”
An independent (as are nearly forty percent of America’s voters aged 18-24), Mr. Thomas hopes to develop a clearer understanding of each candidate’s platform before choosing the candidate he supports. However, one of his biggest complaints about the present system is that he doubts he’ll be able to choose one.
“They start campaigning a year and a half before the election,” he said. “It all becomes spin way too soon, then it just becomes pandering, so I don’t actually have any idea what they stand for.”
He does, however, know that he is personally invested in and concerned about this election. The youth vote is becoming increasingly more focused on individual political desires, as opposed to the trendy candidate of choice.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Structure of The Dark Knight --- Submitted for Critical Theory and the Academy, Fall 2008
The Structure of The Dark Knight
For decades, Batman and his arch nemesis The Joker have battled in Gotham City, neither within the law and each with their own motivations. The 2008 summer blockbuster The Dark Knight explores this relationship in great depth. In fact, the movie structurally relies upon it, developing a strong binary pitting Batman against the Joker, along with the respective ideas and concepts that they characterize. Roland Barthes’s connotative and symbolic codes developed in his work The Pleasure of the Text speak to the creation of characters as a theme organized around a proper name and contrasting these themes so as to develop an understanding of reality, respectively (Barry 11). Batman and The Joker exemplify this idea as characters, contrasting through their characterizations of the concepts of order and chaos. By exploring The Dark Knight as well as the characters’ legacies as developed over the last half-century (which is essential for placing the film's renditions of the characters in a theoretical context due to a previously established understanding of their violent interaction), we can attempt to understand how chaos and order interact and whether either end of this binary can be classified as what is commonly perceived as good or evil.
Batman, historically and with emphasis in the current movie franchise that began with the 2005 reboot Batman Begins, represents order. Gotham City is a city riddled with crime and corruption to the point that law itself is considered nearly meaningless. It is also a city inherited by Batman under his alias, Bruce Wayne, who witnessed his parents, billionaires who seemed to have cared about the city’s well-being, murder in his early youth. The lack of social order in the city in tandem with Wayne’s developed hatred for crime drove him to become Batman. As a male, white capitalist, Wayne was placed in an ideal position to become the city’s source of order. And as a masked symbol of fear, he bestowed upon himself, as Batman, the duty to do so, as the government and institutions of Gotham City had failed to do so before him (Spanakos 57).
One interesting aspect of Batman’s self-induced role as enforcer of order in Gotham is his single rule when dealing with criminals: Batman will not kill. For all the order that Batman represents in his attempts to clear the streets of crime and reestablish a sense of security in the city, this rule is the only rule that he follows under all circumstances. Because Batman’s acts are a response to acts that attempt to disturb order, this response generally is reactionary and, ironically, without plan. This indicates that the agent of order must be capable of operating in a world of chaos so as to reestablish order. (The agent of chaos, too, must be fairly orderly, as we will explore further.) Nonetheless, even when establishing order requires that Batman cause serious damage to Gotham, such as the destruction of much of the city’s infrastructure in one action scene in the film, he still operates under his one rule, and in doing so he becomes structured himself. In The Dark Knight, referring to this rule the Joker says, “Killing is making a choice. Some can, some can’t.” Because Batman chooses not to kill, he is incapable of doing so. This is a very strong testament to his self-control and capacity for structure. His one rule, along with his refusal to break it, means that he himself is centered, as is the concept of order that he hopes to place upon the city.
Opposite Batman and order stand The Joker and chaos. The idea of the two characters’ polar opposition is referenced frequently in the film. Says crime boss Sal Maroni to Batman: “Nobody’s going to talk to you. They know your act. You’ve got rules. The Joker, he’s got no rules” (The Dark Knight). Not only does this indicate how entirely opposite the two ends of this binary stand, it also introduces the role of the character. Chaos, as depicted in The Dark Knight, is the lack of order. The Joker will do anything that overturns a previously established structure or system. In the film, he says, “I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are” (The Dark Knight). Political Science contemporary Tony Spanakos wrote that the historical Joker’s motivation is simply to disrupt boring and restrictive order (Spanakos 64). One of the film’s memorable images presents The Joker speaking to a mob member about his own lack of care for money while standing in front of a massive pile of cash that he had set aflame. This signifies The Joker’s disdain for any kind of system, including that of organized crime and its capitalist ideals. It also recalls a tale that Wayne’s butler Alfred told previously in the film of an outlaw he had worked with years before in Burma who had no true motivation for his acts but to “watch the world burn” (The Dark Knight). It is telling that it is not only the systems recognized by Batman, Harvey Dent, and society, but also those of criminals, that The Joker resents. The Joker’s is, in this way, comparable to the philosophy behind Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, fighting a war against all forms of oppression (Harding 68), as oppression to him is any system or set of rules.
It is interesting that The Joker opposes the schemers, yet spends much of his time on-screen carrying out large, well-planned plots to disturb a system. This is the opposite of Batman’s need and ability to operate in a chaotic system. In order to disrupt a system, The Joker must be able to access the system, which requires a plan. While the term is loaded and strongly connotative, The Joker is referred to several times in the film as a terrorist. Contemporary terrorism operates on plans in its attempt to eliminate order (regardless of whether their purposes are similar to The Joker’s or more along the lines of a reactionary foreign revolutionary, which is more akin to Batman). In order to bring about chaos from order, a means by which to attack order must first be established. In order to counteract each other, chaos and order must act under the mindset of the other. Order needs to be reactionary in the realm of the chaotic, and chaos needs to be able to plot, at least insofar as being aware of structure, so as to access order in the first place.
This duality of chaos and order is essential to the structure of The Dark Knight and the Batman and Joker mythos at large. In the 2008 graphic novel, Joker, The Joker’s previously naïve right hand man Jonny Frost says in its final pages, “There will always be a Joker. Because there’s no cure for him. No cure at all. Just a Batman” (Azzarello 124). This indicates that The Joker and Batman are merely capable of neutralizing one another. In the film, as Batman speeds at The Joker down a street consumed in destruction on a street bike referred to as the Batpod, Joker begs for Batman to break his only rule and to hit him. The Joker’s primary goal with all he encounters, including Batman, is to destroy the system within which it exists, and Batman’s duty is to restore his order to this resultant chaos. It is important to understand, then, where each character and concept comes from. Batman’s order was begotten by a world of chaos, and The Joker strives to create chaos from ordered systems. The difference between chaos and order is not positive one way or the other. Ferdinand de Saussure wrote that in language, there are only differences between terms (Saussure 40), and the opposition of chaos and order represented by Batman and The Joker is indicative of this. Chaos begets order and order presents the opportunity for chaos. One way of interpreting this is by examining different definitions of the terms of freedom. Batman’s order is derived from the free will allowed by an anarchical state of chaos. This is similar to the ideas posed by some in the field of political science that institutions such as the United Nations or NAFTA are an extension of the power of the states that became most powerful in an anarchic international system (Bull 127). Batman took on a chaotic city and created order within. The Joker, meanwhile, is searching for a freedom from systems as opposed to the “freedom to” associated with Batman’s development of order. The Joker is seeking liberation, and a constant state of it. While Batman attempts to turn chaos into order, The Joker looks to create chaos with no intention of creating a new order. As he says in The Dark Knight, “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules!” Philosopher Mark D. White quotes Batman’s sidekick Robin, in one comic book as saying, “The Joker exists because of [Batman]. How [he] represents order that is necessary to live in Gotham City and The Joker is the chaos that disrupts that order” (White 274).
Perhaps this duality is best displayed in The Dark Knight in the character of Gotham’s Defense Attorney, Harvey Dent. Dent initially can be easily placed on the same end of this binary as Batman and order. He opens the film in a role very similar to Batman’s as an enforcer of order who has played a large role in the lowering crime rate in Gotham City. However, he is immediately contrasted with Batman, even as the two work together, as a legitimate source of power due to his role as a public servant, and is referred to frequently as the city’s White Knight, obviously contrasting with the film’s title character. It is interesting that Batman considers Dent his logical successor due to his legitimacy, and refers to him as Gotham’s “hero with a face” (The Dark Knight), indicating that even in differing, Batman considers Dent as an ally. It is also interesting that Dent and Batman share a passion for incarcerating the same criminals while also sharing romantic feelings for the same character, Rachel Dawes, as it implies a similar sense of character judgment. Judgment is a key word, as Dent’s role on either end of the binary is not distinctly chaos or order. Rather, he represents ideas that relate to judgment and compliment the two ends of the larger order-chaos binary, justice and chance. Dent’s interpretation of justice while acting as Gotham’s District Attorney is one that relies on the justice system, built upon an order: that those who commit crimes are punished as the law, through the people, calls for and defines. To display Dent’s reliance on an order developed by and administered by humans, The Dark Knight routinely depicts him flipping a two-headed coin stating that he will perform a given action should it land heads. This shows him on the same end of the binary as order through its reliance on free will, as Dent makes a decision himself, rendering the coin-flip arbitrary. When Dawes is killed and half of Dent’s face is burnt off as a result of one of The Joker’s schemes, Dent’s attitude towards justice changes. One head on his coin is also disfigured by the explosion, and with some encouragement by The Joker’s argument for chaos, Dent begins to administer a new form of judgment by use of the coin in the form of chance; those that he seeks to punish, he allows no case but instead leaves the judgment of their life or death on the result of a flip of the coin. In his new two-faced form, Dent abandons his belief in the order of justice system and establishes a dependence on chance to administer judgment. Dent differs from the Joker in his reliance on a rule, so there is some disunity in his character’s connection to chaos. However, Dent is seeking liberation from the responsibility of making judgments, choosing instead to pass the duty to chance. In doing away with the previous system of many rules and leaving one rule up to chance rather than himself, he is participating in the same revolt as The Joker, denying the acknowledged order. Because Dent experiences both sides of the binary through a separate supporting binary of justice and chance, he supports both ends and therefore its inherent duality.
The binary is extremely inclusive and The Dark Knight calls for its critic to consider its lofty implications. Chaos and order define several areas of conflict. The atheist and the revolutionary, for instance, are each invested in disrupting the order created by God and the state, respectively. Psychoanalytically, we see a similar conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, in both the Freudian and Lacanian sense. Chaos is the unconscious that has not been placed in an orderly structure as has the conscious. The Joker, as an agent of chaos then, is the critic, seeking to expose chaos from this order. He examines things as a text and acts to reveal its subconscious. Peter Barry says that this is one way of describing the process of “deconstruction” (Barry 115).
Hence, we arrive at perhaps the most apt theoretical classification for the two ends of the binary represented by Batman and his arch enemy: the structuralist and the post-structuralist. The concept of order does act as the structuralist acts when it “appl[ies] the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the whole field of Western culture, and across cultures” (Barry 49). The structuralist is looking to examine things from within an assigned system as are the institutions associated with order. On the other end of the spectrum is deconstruction. The Joker is a post-structuralist, seeking to expose disunity and a lack of meaning within systems (Barry 73). The strenuous workload of the post-structuralist critic’s intense reading in order to reveal its meaninglessness is the same apparent contradiction evident in The Joker’s plot and scheme to bring about chaos. Perhaps post-structuralism’s relation to The Joker is best noted where Jacques Derrida introduces aspects of the theory stating that, “By organizing and orienting the coherence of the system, the centre of a structure permits the play of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself” (Derrida 196). The Joker does not support the concept of a system or total form, preferring to actively de-center structure and exist in a world without rules.
Historically, the terms good and evil have been applied to the sides of Batman and The Joker respectively. Batman’s order has been painted as what is morally correct or good, while The Joker, an outlaw, and his affinity for anarchy and chaos are seen as evil. With half a century of legacy behind The Dark Knight’s main characters, it may be difficult to break away from this structure. However, the film allows The Joker to make the case for chaos. As a result, the film calls for an examination of to which side of the order-chaos binary fall right and wrong.
Batman’s claim to morality in The Dark Knight is a strong one. It is backed by the common perceptions of right and wrong ascribed to the characters’ legacies. The binary at large also seems to contend that what is ordered is moral, especially considering the presence of God, commonly seen as the pinnacle of morality, on its side. However, we can also look to the text to see where this claim of morality may come from. Certainly, the idea of a moral Batman is related to his designation as a crime fighter. In fighting crime and corruption in Gotham City, Batman is creating a sense of security for Gotham’s citizens. Providing order for the masses is widely seen as moral. The issue of Batman’s role as a lawless vigilante, though, seems to create a paradox surrounding this idea. Thus, there must be more to Batman that deems him good beyond tackling crime. Perhaps, then, it is that Batman possesses a sense of legitimacy-by-extension due to his work with Dent and Gotham Police Department Commissioner James Gordon. Spanakos offers that it is Batman’s working relationship with governing entities, symbolic of the relationship between state and society in developing order and a social contract, that legitimizes him and thus paints the caped crusade as morally good (Spanakos 68). One other reason that Batman is likely considered good within the binary is the fact that he won’t kill. Not only does this rule reaffirm to the reader the ancient (and, today, particularly connected to the concept of God) idea that human life is to be respected and to end it is inherently evil, but it also creates a sense of order for the reader to rely on. Because Batman’s rule does two things to classify him as traditionally good, it also indicates two things about morality through the lens of order: that acts commonly designated as moral are perceived by the people within this order as such, and that the idea of order, by its very nature, is to be perceived as good. Therefore, order assigns right or wrong to various entities, resultantly fostering and perpetuating moral distinctions because they are distinguished as such within a structure. Order, then, is authoritative in distinguishing right from wrong, as it is both the source and judge of morality.
Chaos’s case regarding morality is made simply and fittingly by giving a closer reading to order and contrasting it with itself. One way that order’s morality is potentially paradoxical is in Batman’s lies. He is a liar by definition, complete with a mask and an alter ego. Even when acting as Bruce Wayne, Batman lies by pretending to be something he is not: a playboy billionaire who has no passion for the protection of Gotham but instead seeks a good time. After Dent falls to his death in the movie’s final scene, Batman assumes blame for the lives Dent previously took, stating, “Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded” (The Dark Knight). In doing so, Batman is acting to keep open a case against Gotham’s mob started by Dent and hide from the public that The Joker was able to create chaos from the order Dent represented, seemingly acting in the best interest of the masses by exerting his power to re-establish order. However, the very fact that he and Gordon opt to lie is in strong conflict to the presumption of actions as inherently good or bad explored above, if honesty and transparency are to be considered morally good. The Joker also claims in The Dark Knight that people generally do not consider morality while acting under a system when he states, “Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. 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. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!” The only thing The Joker says in positive terms regarding chaos as compared to order is that it is more fair and objective than order, an argument that sways Dent, who has experienced the potential horrific consequences of life under a system should the agent of chaos deconstruct it.
That The Joker makes only one argument for chaos, and even in this analysis he fails to mention the concept of morality, is telling. In fact, in The Dark Knight, it is only the side of order that speaks of right and wrong. Upon curbing The Joker’s plan, Batman denotes The Joker’s actions as “ugly” and the people of Gotham as “ready to believe in good” (The Dark Knight). Later, Batman states that between Dent, Gordon, and himself, Dent was the moral exemplar. It is this binary of good and bad that allows Batman to develop order. However, The Joker renounces all forms of order. He states in an early confrontation with Batman, “Their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're 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” (The Dark Knight). It is exactly this rejection of codes, systems, structures, and order that does not allow for the designation of right and wrong under the deconstructive mindset. One simply cannot tell The Joker or his end of the binary that they are good or evil because it means nothing to them. The Joker’s philosophy is one of interested nihilism that denies structure and meaning, and therefore denies the very concept of morality. Perhaps Batman does have a claim to morality as he defines it under the order he creates, but it is not a triumph. The Joker forfeits any claim to morality; he does not compete for it. The question of good and evil with regards to the conflict of The Dark Knight is unanswerable. Instead, Batman can only be ascribed the entire concept of morality, while The Joker’s end of the binary opposes with amorality, a denial of the entire structure of right and wrong and therefore capable of being classified as neither, as made clear by its denial of structure at large.
Works Cited
Azzarello, Brian. Joker. New York: DC Comics, 2008.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Bull, Hedley. “Does Order Exist In World Politics?” Essential Readings in World Politics. Eds. Karen A. Mingst and Jack L. Snyder. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.
Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Modern Literary Theory. Eds. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics.” Modern Literary Theory. Eds. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Harding, Harry. “Political Trends in China Since the Cultural Revolution.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 402 (1972): 67-82.
Spanakos, Tony. “Governing Gotham.” Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of The Soul. Eds. Mark D. White and Robert Arp. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.
The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Brothers, 2008.
White, Mark D. “The Tao of the Bat.” Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of The Soul. Eds. Mark D. White and Robert Arp. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.
For decades, Batman and his arch nemesis The Joker have battled in Gotham City, neither within the law and each with their own motivations. The 2008 summer blockbuster The Dark Knight explores this relationship in great depth. In fact, the movie structurally relies upon it, developing a strong binary pitting Batman against the Joker, along with the respective ideas and concepts that they characterize. Roland Barthes’s connotative and symbolic codes developed in his work The Pleasure of the Text speak to the creation of characters as a theme organized around a proper name and contrasting these themes so as to develop an understanding of reality, respectively (Barry 11). Batman and The Joker exemplify this idea as characters, contrasting through their characterizations of the concepts of order and chaos. By exploring The Dark Knight as well as the characters’ legacies as developed over the last half-century (which is essential for placing the film's renditions of the characters in a theoretical context due to a previously established understanding of their violent interaction), we can attempt to understand how chaos and order interact and whether either end of this binary can be classified as what is commonly perceived as good or evil.
Batman, historically and with emphasis in the current movie franchise that began with the 2005 reboot Batman Begins, represents order. Gotham City is a city riddled with crime and corruption to the point that law itself is considered nearly meaningless. It is also a city inherited by Batman under his alias, Bruce Wayne, who witnessed his parents, billionaires who seemed to have cared about the city’s well-being, murder in his early youth. The lack of social order in the city in tandem with Wayne’s developed hatred for crime drove him to become Batman. As a male, white capitalist, Wayne was placed in an ideal position to become the city’s source of order. And as a masked symbol of fear, he bestowed upon himself, as Batman, the duty to do so, as the government and institutions of Gotham City had failed to do so before him (Spanakos 57).
One interesting aspect of Batman’s self-induced role as enforcer of order in Gotham is his single rule when dealing with criminals: Batman will not kill. For all the order that Batman represents in his attempts to clear the streets of crime and reestablish a sense of security in the city, this rule is the only rule that he follows under all circumstances. Because Batman’s acts are a response to acts that attempt to disturb order, this response generally is reactionary and, ironically, without plan. This indicates that the agent of order must be capable of operating in a world of chaos so as to reestablish order. (The agent of chaos, too, must be fairly orderly, as we will explore further.) Nonetheless, even when establishing order requires that Batman cause serious damage to Gotham, such as the destruction of much of the city’s infrastructure in one action scene in the film, he still operates under his one rule, and in doing so he becomes structured himself. In The Dark Knight, referring to this rule the Joker says, “Killing is making a choice. Some can, some can’t.” Because Batman chooses not to kill, he is incapable of doing so. This is a very strong testament to his self-control and capacity for structure. His one rule, along with his refusal to break it, means that he himself is centered, as is the concept of order that he hopes to place upon the city.
Opposite Batman and order stand The Joker and chaos. The idea of the two characters’ polar opposition is referenced frequently in the film. Says crime boss Sal Maroni to Batman: “Nobody’s going to talk to you. They know your act. You’ve got rules. The Joker, he’s got no rules” (The Dark Knight). Not only does this indicate how entirely opposite the two ends of this binary stand, it also introduces the role of the character. Chaos, as depicted in The Dark Knight, is the lack of order. The Joker will do anything that overturns a previously established structure or system. In the film, he says, “I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are” (The Dark Knight). Political Science contemporary Tony Spanakos wrote that the historical Joker’s motivation is simply to disrupt boring and restrictive order (Spanakos 64). One of the film’s memorable images presents The Joker speaking to a mob member about his own lack of care for money while standing in front of a massive pile of cash that he had set aflame. This signifies The Joker’s disdain for any kind of system, including that of organized crime and its capitalist ideals. It also recalls a tale that Wayne’s butler Alfred told previously in the film of an outlaw he had worked with years before in Burma who had no true motivation for his acts but to “watch the world burn” (The Dark Knight). It is telling that it is not only the systems recognized by Batman, Harvey Dent, and society, but also those of criminals, that The Joker resents. The Joker’s is, in this way, comparable to the philosophy behind Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, fighting a war against all forms of oppression (Harding 68), as oppression to him is any system or set of rules.
It is interesting that The Joker opposes the schemers, yet spends much of his time on-screen carrying out large, well-planned plots to disturb a system. This is the opposite of Batman’s need and ability to operate in a chaotic system. In order to disrupt a system, The Joker must be able to access the system, which requires a plan. While the term is loaded and strongly connotative, The Joker is referred to several times in the film as a terrorist. Contemporary terrorism operates on plans in its attempt to eliminate order (regardless of whether their purposes are similar to The Joker’s or more along the lines of a reactionary foreign revolutionary, which is more akin to Batman). In order to bring about chaos from order, a means by which to attack order must first be established. In order to counteract each other, chaos and order must act under the mindset of the other. Order needs to be reactionary in the realm of the chaotic, and chaos needs to be able to plot, at least insofar as being aware of structure, so as to access order in the first place.
This duality of chaos and order is essential to the structure of The Dark Knight and the Batman and Joker mythos at large. In the 2008 graphic novel, Joker, The Joker’s previously naïve right hand man Jonny Frost says in its final pages, “There will always be a Joker. Because there’s no cure for him. No cure at all. Just a Batman” (Azzarello 124). This indicates that The Joker and Batman are merely capable of neutralizing one another. In the film, as Batman speeds at The Joker down a street consumed in destruction on a street bike referred to as the Batpod, Joker begs for Batman to break his only rule and to hit him. The Joker’s primary goal with all he encounters, including Batman, is to destroy the system within which it exists, and Batman’s duty is to restore his order to this resultant chaos. It is important to understand, then, where each character and concept comes from. Batman’s order was begotten by a world of chaos, and The Joker strives to create chaos from ordered systems. The difference between chaos and order is not positive one way or the other. Ferdinand de Saussure wrote that in language, there are only differences between terms (Saussure 40), and the opposition of chaos and order represented by Batman and The Joker is indicative of this. Chaos begets order and order presents the opportunity for chaos. One way of interpreting this is by examining different definitions of the terms of freedom. Batman’s order is derived from the free will allowed by an anarchical state of chaos. This is similar to the ideas posed by some in the field of political science that institutions such as the United Nations or NAFTA are an extension of the power of the states that became most powerful in an anarchic international system (Bull 127). Batman took on a chaotic city and created order within. The Joker, meanwhile, is searching for a freedom from systems as opposed to the “freedom to” associated with Batman’s development of order. The Joker is seeking liberation, and a constant state of it. While Batman attempts to turn chaos into order, The Joker looks to create chaos with no intention of creating a new order. As he says in The Dark Knight, “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules!” Philosopher Mark D. White quotes Batman’s sidekick Robin, in one comic book as saying, “The Joker exists because of [Batman]. How [he] represents order that is necessary to live in Gotham City and The Joker is the chaos that disrupts that order” (White 274).
Perhaps this duality is best displayed in The Dark Knight in the character of Gotham’s Defense Attorney, Harvey Dent. Dent initially can be easily placed on the same end of this binary as Batman and order. He opens the film in a role very similar to Batman’s as an enforcer of order who has played a large role in the lowering crime rate in Gotham City. However, he is immediately contrasted with Batman, even as the two work together, as a legitimate source of power due to his role as a public servant, and is referred to frequently as the city’s White Knight, obviously contrasting with the film’s title character. It is interesting that Batman considers Dent his logical successor due to his legitimacy, and refers to him as Gotham’s “hero with a face” (The Dark Knight), indicating that even in differing, Batman considers Dent as an ally. It is also interesting that Dent and Batman share a passion for incarcerating the same criminals while also sharing romantic feelings for the same character, Rachel Dawes, as it implies a similar sense of character judgment. Judgment is a key word, as Dent’s role on either end of the binary is not distinctly chaos or order. Rather, he represents ideas that relate to judgment and compliment the two ends of the larger order-chaos binary, justice and chance. Dent’s interpretation of justice while acting as Gotham’s District Attorney is one that relies on the justice system, built upon an order: that those who commit crimes are punished as the law, through the people, calls for and defines. To display Dent’s reliance on an order developed by and administered by humans, The Dark Knight routinely depicts him flipping a two-headed coin stating that he will perform a given action should it land heads. This shows him on the same end of the binary as order through its reliance on free will, as Dent makes a decision himself, rendering the coin-flip arbitrary. When Dawes is killed and half of Dent’s face is burnt off as a result of one of The Joker’s schemes, Dent’s attitude towards justice changes. One head on his coin is also disfigured by the explosion, and with some encouragement by The Joker’s argument for chaos, Dent begins to administer a new form of judgment by use of the coin in the form of chance; those that he seeks to punish, he allows no case but instead leaves the judgment of their life or death on the result of a flip of the coin. In his new two-faced form, Dent abandons his belief in the order of justice system and establishes a dependence on chance to administer judgment. Dent differs from the Joker in his reliance on a rule, so there is some disunity in his character’s connection to chaos. However, Dent is seeking liberation from the responsibility of making judgments, choosing instead to pass the duty to chance. In doing away with the previous system of many rules and leaving one rule up to chance rather than himself, he is participating in the same revolt as The Joker, denying the acknowledged order. Because Dent experiences both sides of the binary through a separate supporting binary of justice and chance, he supports both ends and therefore its inherent duality.
The binary is extremely inclusive and The Dark Knight calls for its critic to consider its lofty implications. Chaos and order define several areas of conflict. The atheist and the revolutionary, for instance, are each invested in disrupting the order created by God and the state, respectively. Psychoanalytically, we see a similar conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, in both the Freudian and Lacanian sense. Chaos is the unconscious that has not been placed in an orderly structure as has the conscious. The Joker, as an agent of chaos then, is the critic, seeking to expose chaos from this order. He examines things as a text and acts to reveal its subconscious. Peter Barry says that this is one way of describing the process of “deconstruction” (Barry 115).
Hence, we arrive at perhaps the most apt theoretical classification for the two ends of the binary represented by Batman and his arch enemy: the structuralist and the post-structuralist. The concept of order does act as the structuralist acts when it “appl[ies] the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the whole field of Western culture, and across cultures” (Barry 49). The structuralist is looking to examine things from within an assigned system as are the institutions associated with order. On the other end of the spectrum is deconstruction. The Joker is a post-structuralist, seeking to expose disunity and a lack of meaning within systems (Barry 73). The strenuous workload of the post-structuralist critic’s intense reading in order to reveal its meaninglessness is the same apparent contradiction evident in The Joker’s plot and scheme to bring about chaos. Perhaps post-structuralism’s relation to The Joker is best noted where Jacques Derrida introduces aspects of the theory stating that, “By organizing and orienting the coherence of the system, the centre of a structure permits the play of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself” (Derrida 196). The Joker does not support the concept of a system or total form, preferring to actively de-center structure and exist in a world without rules.
Historically, the terms good and evil have been applied to the sides of Batman and The Joker respectively. Batman’s order has been painted as what is morally correct or good, while The Joker, an outlaw, and his affinity for anarchy and chaos are seen as evil. With half a century of legacy behind The Dark Knight’s main characters, it may be difficult to break away from this structure. However, the film allows The Joker to make the case for chaos. As a result, the film calls for an examination of to which side of the order-chaos binary fall right and wrong.
Batman’s claim to morality in The Dark Knight is a strong one. It is backed by the common perceptions of right and wrong ascribed to the characters’ legacies. The binary at large also seems to contend that what is ordered is moral, especially considering the presence of God, commonly seen as the pinnacle of morality, on its side. However, we can also look to the text to see where this claim of morality may come from. Certainly, the idea of a moral Batman is related to his designation as a crime fighter. In fighting crime and corruption in Gotham City, Batman is creating a sense of security for Gotham’s citizens. Providing order for the masses is widely seen as moral. The issue of Batman’s role as a lawless vigilante, though, seems to create a paradox surrounding this idea. Thus, there must be more to Batman that deems him good beyond tackling crime. Perhaps, then, it is that Batman possesses a sense of legitimacy-by-extension due to his work with Dent and Gotham Police Department Commissioner James Gordon. Spanakos offers that it is Batman’s working relationship with governing entities, symbolic of the relationship between state and society in developing order and a social contract, that legitimizes him and thus paints the caped crusade as morally good (Spanakos 68). One other reason that Batman is likely considered good within the binary is the fact that he won’t kill. Not only does this rule reaffirm to the reader the ancient (and, today, particularly connected to the concept of God) idea that human life is to be respected and to end it is inherently evil, but it also creates a sense of order for the reader to rely on. Because Batman’s rule does two things to classify him as traditionally good, it also indicates two things about morality through the lens of order: that acts commonly designated as moral are perceived by the people within this order as such, and that the idea of order, by its very nature, is to be perceived as good. Therefore, order assigns right or wrong to various entities, resultantly fostering and perpetuating moral distinctions because they are distinguished as such within a structure. Order, then, is authoritative in distinguishing right from wrong, as it is both the source and judge of morality.
Chaos’s case regarding morality is made simply and fittingly by giving a closer reading to order and contrasting it with itself. One way that order’s morality is potentially paradoxical is in Batman’s lies. He is a liar by definition, complete with a mask and an alter ego. Even when acting as Bruce Wayne, Batman lies by pretending to be something he is not: a playboy billionaire who has no passion for the protection of Gotham but instead seeks a good time. After Dent falls to his death in the movie’s final scene, Batman assumes blame for the lives Dent previously took, stating, “Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded” (The Dark Knight). In doing so, Batman is acting to keep open a case against Gotham’s mob started by Dent and hide from the public that The Joker was able to create chaos from the order Dent represented, seemingly acting in the best interest of the masses by exerting his power to re-establish order. However, the very fact that he and Gordon opt to lie is in strong conflict to the presumption of actions as inherently good or bad explored above, if honesty and transparency are to be considered morally good. The Joker also claims in The Dark Knight that people generally do not consider morality while acting under a system when he states, “Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. 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. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!” The only thing The Joker says in positive terms regarding chaos as compared to order is that it is more fair and objective than order, an argument that sways Dent, who has experienced the potential horrific consequences of life under a system should the agent of chaos deconstruct it.
That The Joker makes only one argument for chaos, and even in this analysis he fails to mention the concept of morality, is telling. In fact, in The Dark Knight, it is only the side of order that speaks of right and wrong. Upon curbing The Joker’s plan, Batman denotes The Joker’s actions as “ugly” and the people of Gotham as “ready to believe in good” (The Dark Knight). Later, Batman states that between Dent, Gordon, and himself, Dent was the moral exemplar. It is this binary of good and bad that allows Batman to develop order. However, The Joker renounces all forms of order. He states in an early confrontation with Batman, “Their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're 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” (The Dark Knight). It is exactly this rejection of codes, systems, structures, and order that does not allow for the designation of right and wrong under the deconstructive mindset. One simply cannot tell The Joker or his end of the binary that they are good or evil because it means nothing to them. The Joker’s philosophy is one of interested nihilism that denies structure and meaning, and therefore denies the very concept of morality. Perhaps Batman does have a claim to morality as he defines it under the order he creates, but it is not a triumph. The Joker forfeits any claim to morality; he does not compete for it. The question of good and evil with regards to the conflict of The Dark Knight is unanswerable. Instead, Batman can only be ascribed the entire concept of morality, while The Joker’s end of the binary opposes with amorality, a denial of the entire structure of right and wrong and therefore capable of being classified as neither, as made clear by its denial of structure at large.
Works Cited
Azzarello, Brian. Joker. New York: DC Comics, 2008.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
Bull, Hedley. “Does Order Exist In World Politics?” Essential Readings in World Politics. Eds. Karen A. Mingst and Jack L. Snyder. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.
Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Modern Literary Theory. Eds. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
de Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics.” Modern Literary Theory. Eds. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Harding, Harry. “Political Trends in China Since the Cultural Revolution.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 402 (1972): 67-82.
Spanakos, Tony. “Governing Gotham.” Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of The Soul. Eds. Mark D. White and Robert Arp. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.
The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Brothers, 2008.
White, Mark D. “The Tao of the Bat.” Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of The Soul. Eds. Mark D. White and Robert Arp. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.
Originally Published in the Cape Cod Sound, February 2009 Edition
Cape stoners, raise one hand in a fist of triumph and the other, armed with your now-just-civil offense, to your lips. As of January Second, victory is yours.
By result of November’s general election, you no longer face potential jail time and the accumulation of a criminal offense record for possession of small amounts of pot. Indeed, Massachusetts has become something of a paradise for all marijuana enthusiasts, ranging from the orange-fingered couch potato to the elegant cannabis connoisseur. Says one Falmouth area toker, “This is rocking.”
But what exactly does this mean for you and your endless fight against the man? Are the powers that be still out to get you?
In short, no. They never were. You were stoned and paranoid.
“It was pretty uncommon that someone was arrested for straight possession,” explains Nantucket detective Terry Adams. “A lot of the time there was an underlying charge anyway.”
The Nantucket Police force has, of press time, issued just one citation for marijuana use, which came in conjunction with an arrest for driving with a suspended license.
“If we come upon somebody that is in the act of smoking marijuana, they’ll be cited and sent on their way, at the discretion of the officer,” he adds.
Most authoritative attitudes regarding pot seem mostly the same. Speaking for the Yarmouth Police Department, Lieutenant Steven George Xiarhos calls the decriminalization of the drug “a step in the wrong direction,” even questioning whether voters how much an ounce of marijuana, the amount at and under which possession is no longer considered a crime, actually amounts to. “It’s a huge amount,” he says.
Xiarhos acknowledges the new laws as legitimate but states that his office will make no changes in the level of intensity at which it goes after all drug offenses. “It is still illegal, regardless of the amount,” he says.
The primary concern out of Yarmouth is an increase in impaired driving as a result of the implementation of the law. Under the new laws, burn rides are still considered quite criminal.
Students Against Destructive Decisions (the bizarre manifestation of an inherent paradox) also maintains its frown even in the age of decriminalization. The organization’s 2008-2009 National Student of the Year, Steven Winkler, is “disheartened” by the passed ballot question in Massachusetts. “It is illogical to me for marijuana to be decriminalized when statistics show that the previous message appeared to be working,” Winkler says, citing a SADD study that concluded that sixty-five percent of students that choose not to use drugs do so because of legal ramifications.
“Now that the law sends an unclear message,” he continues, “I am concerned about how those students will perceive the dangers of marijuana.”
Cape Cod voted overwhelmingly in favor of the marijuana reform laws suggested by Question 2 in the November general election. According to data from that big, bad, other Cape newspaper, the question passed on the peninsula and in the islands with sixty-five percent support. In some communities, such as Provincetown, Truro, and Nantucket, “Yes” beat “No” three to one.
State Representative Jeff Perry, a Republican out of Barnstable’s fifth district, did not support Question 2. Perry spent eight years as an officer for the Wareham Police and chooses to look at the issue from a law enforcement perspective. “Police forces lose the ability to investigate further issues under this law, and there is no longer mandatory treatment,” he says.
However, Perry is well aware of how his voters felt regarding the issue. “It passed pretty convincingly,” he states, “and now I will listen to the people of Massachusetts.” He adds, “My title is ‘Representative,’ so I’m supposed to represent the people of my district. When they pass their ballot and say they want something, I think it’s my ethical responsibility to follow what they want.”
The fact of the matter, though, is that not much has really changed. Don’t get me wrong; the passing of this law certainly warrants your celebration. However, three weeks ago, in order to get arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana, you needed to be stupid. You needed to be right out in the open, or you needed to be driving like enough of an idiot to get pulled over, or you needed to be calling the officer a fatass when he was going to just give you a slap on the wrist.
Today, to be fined, you still need to be stupid. And to be arrested, you need to be real stupid. You still need to be driving like enough of an idiot to get pulled over or you need to have more than an ounce on you.
Three weeks ago and today, the story is the same. To get caught with pot requires fundamental stupidity.
What this law protects you from is basic. If your stupidity gets the best of you, and you are not driving or do not have an industrial bag full of reefer, you’ll pay a $100 stupidity fine and not see the remainder of your life potentially destroyed by the consequences of arrest.
Otherwise, it’s business as usual. Find a safe place to smoke and light on up. You’ll find that this strategy, as well as it worked three weeks ago, still works today, and if you still manage to get caught, at least the law is more on your side than it has been in decades.
By result of November’s general election, you no longer face potential jail time and the accumulation of a criminal offense record for possession of small amounts of pot. Indeed, Massachusetts has become something of a paradise for all marijuana enthusiasts, ranging from the orange-fingered couch potato to the elegant cannabis connoisseur. Says one Falmouth area toker, “This is rocking.”
But what exactly does this mean for you and your endless fight against the man? Are the powers that be still out to get you?
In short, no. They never were. You were stoned and paranoid.
“It was pretty uncommon that someone was arrested for straight possession,” explains Nantucket detective Terry Adams. “A lot of the time there was an underlying charge anyway.”
The Nantucket Police force has, of press time, issued just one citation for marijuana use, which came in conjunction with an arrest for driving with a suspended license.
“If we come upon somebody that is in the act of smoking marijuana, they’ll be cited and sent on their way, at the discretion of the officer,” he adds.
Most authoritative attitudes regarding pot seem mostly the same. Speaking for the Yarmouth Police Department, Lieutenant Steven George Xiarhos calls the decriminalization of the drug “a step in the wrong direction,” even questioning whether voters how much an ounce of marijuana, the amount at and under which possession is no longer considered a crime, actually amounts to. “It’s a huge amount,” he says.
Xiarhos acknowledges the new laws as legitimate but states that his office will make no changes in the level of intensity at which it goes after all drug offenses. “It is still illegal, regardless of the amount,” he says.
The primary concern out of Yarmouth is an increase in impaired driving as a result of the implementation of the law. Under the new laws, burn rides are still considered quite criminal.
Students Against Destructive Decisions (the bizarre manifestation of an inherent paradox) also maintains its frown even in the age of decriminalization. The organization’s 2008-2009 National Student of the Year, Steven Winkler, is “disheartened” by the passed ballot question in Massachusetts. “It is illogical to me for marijuana to be decriminalized when statistics show that the previous message appeared to be working,” Winkler says, citing a SADD study that concluded that sixty-five percent of students that choose not to use drugs do so because of legal ramifications.
“Now that the law sends an unclear message,” he continues, “I am concerned about how those students will perceive the dangers of marijuana.”
Cape Cod voted overwhelmingly in favor of the marijuana reform laws suggested by Question 2 in the November general election. According to data from that big, bad, other Cape newspaper, the question passed on the peninsula and in the islands with sixty-five percent support. In some communities, such as Provincetown, Truro, and Nantucket, “Yes” beat “No” three to one.
State Representative Jeff Perry, a Republican out of Barnstable’s fifth district, did not support Question 2. Perry spent eight years as an officer for the Wareham Police and chooses to look at the issue from a law enforcement perspective. “Police forces lose the ability to investigate further issues under this law, and there is no longer mandatory treatment,” he says.
However, Perry is well aware of how his voters felt regarding the issue. “It passed pretty convincingly,” he states, “and now I will listen to the people of Massachusetts.” He adds, “My title is ‘Representative,’ so I’m supposed to represent the people of my district. When they pass their ballot and say they want something, I think it’s my ethical responsibility to follow what they want.”
The fact of the matter, though, is that not much has really changed. Don’t get me wrong; the passing of this law certainly warrants your celebration. However, three weeks ago, in order to get arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana, you needed to be stupid. You needed to be right out in the open, or you needed to be driving like enough of an idiot to get pulled over, or you needed to be calling the officer a fatass when he was going to just give you a slap on the wrist.
Today, to be fined, you still need to be stupid. And to be arrested, you need to be real stupid. You still need to be driving like enough of an idiot to get pulled over or you need to have more than an ounce on you.
Three weeks ago and today, the story is the same. To get caught with pot requires fundamental stupidity.
What this law protects you from is basic. If your stupidity gets the best of you, and you are not driving or do not have an industrial bag full of reefer, you’ll pay a $100 stupidity fine and not see the remainder of your life potentially destroyed by the consequences of arrest.
Otherwise, it’s business as usual. Find a safe place to smoke and light on up. You’ll find that this strategy, as well as it worked three weeks ago, still works today, and if you still manage to get caught, at least the law is more on your side than it has been in decades.
Greetings
I'm going to be using this blog to publish some of my short stories for the public. Sort of self-indulgent but hey. I also have a novel I'm working on - I am reluctant to use that term, but at 40 pages I think it's a legitimate one, I hope... - and will try and get some excerpts up here as it comes along. Should start getting stuff up soon. I think I'll also use it to publish some journalistic efforts as well, if they get published. I like blogging.
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