The Dark Knight as a Post 9/11 Allegory of Morals and Humanity
The Dark Knight directed by Christopher Nolan and released in 2008 is a film that has made a significant commentary on the state of American and world politics after the events of 9/11 and through its narrative, illustrated the impact that these events had on the world and society. As a post 9/11 Hollywood production, The Dark Knight serves as an allegory to illustrate how society and individuals radically change morally in the face of terrorism and fear, and reveals how the steps taken to battle and avoid terrorism have moral implications and changes the nature of humanity. Through the analysis of the films cinematography, characters, narrative plot, as well as applying psychologist Albert Bandura’s theories of morals, the significance that The Dark Knight encompasses as an allegory for the post 9/11 moral mentality will be explored.
Mainstream media and film doesn’t simply just recreate and portray social issues and events in productions, but they also influence and impact our interpretation of these events and can reframe our understanding of them. “Popular culture is pervasive and accessible. This gives it the power to shape people’s views about the law and legal issues, including views about the war on terrorism and the legal issues that arise out of it.” (Ip 210) The Dark Knight is a film that is more than just an exciting big budget Hollywood production with a cast of A-list celebrities and explosions, and it serves to be more than just a film reminiscent of the events of 9/11. The Dark Knight is a movie that urges the audience to contemplate their own concepts of ethics and morals in the face of fear and terrorism, while identifying the similarities and differences between reality and what is portrayed in the film. Additionally, the film reflects upon the narratives that we tell ourselves about these events and how they shape our own understandings and opinions of morals, good versus evil, and our concepts of heroes and villains.
Bandura’s studies on the multifaceted aspects of morality can be applied to the examination of The Dark Knight and the message it has about our own society and the changing nature of morals and ethical decisions in the face of terrorism. “Moral reasoning involves interpreting available information in moral predicaments against personal standards and situational circumstances for evaluating the rightness or wrongness of conduct” (Bandura 59) Bandura outlines the basic conception of how individuals make moral decisions and judgements, the factors that affect personal moral reasoning, as well as the constantly changing moral standards that depend on different factors and circumstances. Throughout the film, The Joker often points out that humans believe that they are steadfast in their morals and he aims to expose the fragility of these moral codes. The Jokers’ philosophy is that individuals will abandon their unwavering morals when it is in their own self-interest to do so, and thus society becomes reduced to savages just like The Joker himself. “[THE JOKER]: See, their morals, 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. See, I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.” (The Dark Knight) The Joker aims to expose how human morality can be changed when pushed into certain situations, and throughout the movie this character illustrates the concept of Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement which emphasizes how individuals convince themselves that conventionally held moral standards do not apply in particular situations. Through the process of moral disengagement, the individual separates moral conduct from inhumane or immoral actions and thus is enabling oneself to execute immoral acts. A moral disengagement process called reconstructing conduct is “a method of moral disengagement in which the actor depicts an otherwise morally reprehensible behaviour as having some sort of moral purpose. In this way, he convinces himself that the behaviour is now acceptable” (Bandura 195) This process of moral disengagement is clearly illustrated throughout the film specifically when The Joker threatens to blow up a hospital if Wayne Enterprises’ law accountant Coleman Reese, who knows of Batman’s true identity, is not killed within 60 minutes. This leads to multiple individuals attempting to kill Coleman Reese in order to save their loved ones who are in Gotham General from harm. This exemplifies how terrorism and fear can change an individual’s moral codes and push them to commit such immoral acts and decisions. The anticipation of these terrorist events echo in our real society, where the steps that are taken to combat terrorist threats often lead to morally questionable acts that go through the same process of moral disengagement, such as the highly controversial topic of many governments around the world who are turning away refugee Muslims who are desperate to flee their war-torn countries in fear of letting in terrorists.
The film The Dark Knight, is often said to mirror the events of 9/11 and through director Christopher Nolan’s cinematography as well as the narrative of the film, it can be argued that this is accurate. Gotham is depicted as a sprawling concrete jungle that is extremely comparable to New York City, and portrays a realistic post 9/11 atmosphere of tension and anticipation. Through Nolan’s stylization of the film along with the gritty and realistic filming techniques and editing, the setting of Gotham feels familiar and authentic, and the characters within the film don’t seem campy or outlandish. The Dark Knight isn’t just a mere depiction of a terrorist event reminiscent of 9/11 through its cinematography and narrative, but it is unique in the fact that there isn’t any main ideological message that shadows the whole film. Instead, the film urges the audience to reflect upon the morality of humanity and how terrorism and fear can corrupt and change individuals in society and dismantle these perceived strong moral codes. Through the narratives of the main characters within the film, they serve as metaphors to illustrate modern society and how it has changed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. These concepts of morality, terrorism, fear, and abuse to authoritative powers, are all incorporated into The Dark Knight as characters.
The main antagonist of the film, The Joker, is the embodiment of terrorism and malevolent chaos, and serves as a complex villain whose violent motivations remain unclear and unpredictable. Additionally, The Joker is a literal terrorist who directly murders innocent civilians and public figures, kidnaps individuals, blows up hospitals and creates situations which leads to the death of civilians. The Joker’s very appearance is shrouded in mystery, as a nameless man who wears crudely applied makeup with a haunting red grin and chilling scars by his mouth, who wears clothes that don’t even have labels in them to associate him with any part of modern society or consumerism; “[LT. JAMES GORDON]: Nothing. No matches on prints, DNA, dental. Clothing is custom, no labels. Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. No name, no other alias.” (The Dark Knight) The Joker is portrayed as terror and terrorism itself; pure chaos with incomprehensible motivations. The cinematography and editing surrounding The Joker’s various scenes in the film aid in alluding this character to the representation of terrorism, such as the homemade gritty and low quality videos that The Joker makes of his hostages being eerily similar to the tapes that Osama Bin Laden sent to American news stations. The dialogue throughout the film sheds light on some of the methods behind The Joker’s madness. Through creating chaos and anarchy, The Joker aims to expose the underlying darkness that humanity is all capable of and the susceptibility to this darkness that the believed unyielding human morality has to immoral acts and chaos in the face of fear, terror, death, and grief. “[ALFRED]: Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” (The Dark Knight).
Alternatively, the character Batman is neither a hero or an anti-hero – he is portrayed as mask, as a vigilante that treads along the thin line of good versus evil. Batman is represented as the metaphorical response and fight against terrorism and can be argued to represent Western society and their governments. Throughout the film, Batman’s actions have unintentional negative consequences that end up escalading the violence and terror in Gotham as opposed to putting an end to it. In the effort to combat terrorism and violence in Gotham, Batman turns to unethical methods such as monitoring the cellphones of every citizen in Gotham without their consent to create sonar mapping to track down The Joker. The film resonates with real world issues and political issues of the government ironically affecting the very institutions of democracy and freedom that they are trying to protect. “[LUCIUS FOX]: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong. [BATMAN]: I’ve gotta find this man, Lucius. [LUCIUS FOX]: At what cost?” (The Dark Knight) This unethical moral action that Batman took to combat evil and how this action was justified as a necessary means to an end, can also be reflected in our own societal reality through the steps that the government takes to protect the population from acts of terrorism, and the thin line that is walked by the government between good and bad and the necessary evils that are committed in the name of safety.
The character Harvey Dent is the film’s embodiment of how terrorism, fear, grief, and hatred can morally transform an individual. At the beginning of The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent is portrayed as an upstanding citizen in Gotham who is the face of hope, legal justice, and safety. Harvey Dent is often referred to throughout the film as the hero that the city needs, who is a hero within legitimate legal boundaries; “[BRUCE WAYNE]: Harvey is that hero. He locked up half of the city’s criminals, and he did it without wearing a mask. Gotham needs a hero with a face.” (The Dark Knight) Yet through the death of his girlfriend Rachel Dawes and the psychological and physical torture he endured due to the acts of terrorism and violence that The Joker committed, Harvey Dent lost his moral ideals and turned to immoral actions such as kidnapping and murder – “[HARVEY DENT]: You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong. The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance.” (The Dark Knight) Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement argues; “The overall findings from research on the different mechanisms of moral disengagement corroborate the historical chronicle of human atrocities: it requires conducive social conditions rather than monstrous people to produce heinous deeds. Given appropriate social conditions, decent, ordinary people can be led to do extraordinarily cruel things.” (Bandura 14) The fall of Harvey Dent’s moral code exemplifies how acts of terrorism, fear, grief, and hatred can transform the morals of individuals. The metaphor that the character of Harvey Dent portrays can be reflected in our own society, although not to certain extremes in each case, but through the terrorist events that have occurred since 9/11, society’s morality and structure has been transformed. Whether through the recent prejudiced and violent acts against Muslims as well as “Islamophobia”, the War on Terror, the creation of an “Us” versus “Them” mentality leading to situations such as the refugee Muslim ban, as well as the divergences of a global interconnected community due to the anticipation and fear of terrorist attacks, it can be seen not only through The Dark Knight but also our own modern society, how terrorism and fear can attack our moral values and change our moral opinions and perspectives as individuals.
Alternatively, The Dark Knight brilliantly displays the positives and strengths of human morality and its resilience in the face of terrorism. In the climactic boat scene where the boat of prisoners and boat of civilians had to choose which boat to bomb and neither boat could willingly blow up the other boat, the scene illustrates the humanity and morality that still is at the core of society despite difficult ethical dilemmas. The Dark Knight chooses to not just show the darker aspects of human morals and how this darker side can be revealed in the face of terrorism and fear, such as individuals willingly attempting to murder an innocent man to saved loved ones in the Gotham General, but also how multidimensional human morality can be while authentically displaying the goodness of humanity in the face of ethical dilemmas such as the boat scene. This is what gives The Dark Knight such an authentic portrayal of humanity and morals in the wake of terrorism and fear, and acts as an effective parable on the complexities of human morals and how terrorism affects them.
The narratives that we create of conventional good versus evil are sometimes fabricated in order to regain a sense of security and hope in the wake of terrorism and fear. The Dark Knight works beyond just an allegory of a post 9/11 society and should be examined as more than that. The film takes real world events of terrorism, fear, American and world politics, and weaves together a narrative that illustrates how the morals of society radically changes in the face of terrorism and how the steps that we take in anticipation of terrorism has inadvertent effects. Much like the narratives within the film that are conveyed to the citizens of Gotham that preserve Harvey Dent’s formerly inspirational character in order to instill security and hope in the citizens, while villainizing Batman as a murderer and vigilante; real-world society, primarily through media, similarly fabricates narratives about events and tells stories of good versus evil, and heroes versus villains in order to explain and regain hope and security in the wake of disaster and terrorism. The film begs the question of whether in the constant wake of terrorist attacks, and mass shootings, will society ever be able to exist without the “white knights” and “dark knights” of these dichotomous narratives that do more to mask the truth rather than reveal it. The Dark Knight is an unanticipated film that illustrates through its narrative and assiduously realized characters the realities and parallels to real world modern society and human morality, and forces audiences to look beyond conventional good versus evil tropes and reflect upon their own moral codes and ethics. Through this conscientiously crafted film, The Dark Knight in and of itself creates its own narrative illuminating the complexities and vulnerabilities of human morals and how it has been changed and affected in a post 9/11 period.