Letters to the Editor: An Apology for "The Dark Knight"

The following is a letter I sent in to the editor of the American Spectator, in regards to this piece about the movie The Dark Knight. To see my published letter, go here and scroll about half-way down:

Dear Mr. Editor,

In regards to the piece by James Bowman titled "The Dark Knight":

While I am very impressed and awed by Mr. Bowman's obviously scholarly mind and well-informed thinking, I am afraid that I must frankly disagree with his conclusions. I believe that he completely misread and misinterpreted the film, and has thus robbed himself of the true message that the film is offering. Without being too convoluted, I wish to offer a small rebuttal to his well written (yet incorrect) criticism of The Dark Knight.

I find Mr. Bowman's condemnation of "evil for evil's sake" to be quite odd. I especially find odd his assertion that this type of evil is somehow "post-modern." "Evil for evil's sake" is the furthest thing from post-modern views of evil (and morality in general). The post-modern view contains a severe blurring of good and evil until they are indistinguishable and finally lost: "Well, the bad guys have good motives (or understandable motives), so are they really bad? Well, the good guys have bad motives, so are they really good? Can we really know what good and evil is?" That is post-modern morality, i.e., the loss of morality. "Evil for evil's sake" is in direct conflict with post-modern morality, because post-modernism asserts that motivations complicate the moral; but if it is "evil for evil's sake," and thus (as Mr. Bowman points out) motivation is removed, then post-modern morality dies out. There is no complication--the thing is just evil; there is no way to explain it away.

Contrary to what Mr. Bowman says, characters like the Joker and the killer from No Country for Old Men do not reinforce post-modern morality. Direct and blatant demonstrations of evil are actually breaths of fresh air in the post-modern smog. Specifically in regards to the Joker, here we have a character whose evil has no motivation other than itself, and thus there is no way to sympathize with his evil, because we see it as strictly evil. Villains like the Joker are refreshing in a world that wants to sympathize with evil to the point where we have trouble recognizing evil at all.

In addition, Mr. Bowman's statement that "evil for evil's sake" makes evil some kind of "fashion statement," and thus makes it "glamorous," is completely erroneous. First of all, "evil for evil's sake" does not make evil fashionable; it makes it satanic. John Milton expressed as much in Paradise Lost when Satan proclaimed, "Evil be thou my Good." "Evil for evil's sake" is not a lesser kind of evil; it is the "purest" evil, the truest evil, the most complete absence of anything good. Second of all, there is nothing "glamorous" about "evil for evil's sake." There is nothing glamorous about Hannibal Lector or the Joker, aside from their momentary deceptive charm. In the end, however, they are always revealed as pure moral negations, disturbing demons wrapped in human flesh.

Mr. Bowman's analysis of the Joker is (unfortunately) horribly off. For starters, his claim that the Joker is out to "seduce the best of us" is just plain incorrect. To say that the Joker "seduces" anyone is a misnomer. The Joker was not out to "seduce" people to be as evil as himself; he was out to prove that people already where as evil as himself. "I'm not a monster," he says to Batman, "I'm just ahead of the curve." The Joker is not a seducer; he is an unholy prophet, an "agent of chaos" as he himself put it. He is not out to win an argument; he is out to demonstrate that he has already won the argument.

Furthermore, Mr. Bowman perfectly captured the Joker's gospel: "both heroism and villainy grow out of reason and law and civilization, and that, therefore, these things are mere shams and subterfuges masking a Hobbesian reality devoid even of honor, in which man is a wolf to man and there is nothing to believe in but the individual Nietzschean will, either to good or evil." I thunderously applaud Mr. Bowman's analysis here; he nailed the Joker's gospel on the head. Unfortunately, he strays far off course when he claims that that is the message of The Dark Knight. I was shocked at such a conclusion. Had Mr. Bowman (that illustrious scholar) not watched the film? Did he not realize that the Joker's gospel was the very thing that Batman was embattled against? Could he not recognize that Batman was the direct antithesis to the Joker? That Batman believes "these people [of Gotham] are ready to believe in good," good that is more fundamental than law, reason, or civilization? Could he not see that Batman's gospel is the direct opposite of the Joker's, and that it is his gospel that wins in the end?

Actually, Batman's gospel is entirely absent from Mr. Bowman's analysis, the gospel that says that heroism and villainy grow out of our choices, choices that lead us towards real good or real evil. It is this gospel that triumph in the movie. In the climax with the Joker in the film, the Joker's final scheme is to get two groups of people to kill the other in order to save themselves. If they did so, the Joker would have proven that, indeed, all reality really does boil down to the individual nihilistic will that does what it wants. However, the people choose the good, choose not to kill each other, and the Joker is rebuffed. His gospel is defeated. True, abiding morality wins. The Joker fancied himself as the only sane man (notice in the film his anger at being called "crazy" or a "freak") and that all others are the fools ("Their moral codes," he tells Batman, "are a bad joke"). In the end, however, he has lost the battle for Gotham's soul, and Batman tells him, "You're alone." Mr. Bowman's assertion that the Joker is a glamorous, "villainous hero" whose gospel is the film's message is completely untrue. He went wrong when he assumed that the films core was "how the hero and the villain are really just two sides of the same coin." That issue is never once mentioned or addressed in the film. Instead, the film deals with choice: the choice to do real good or real evil, and whether or not good and evil exists and therefore whether or not such a choice exists. The Joker claims no morality, and thus no real choice; Batman claims morality, and reaffirms choice. In the end, Batman is proven right.

There are a few minor, yet still serious grievances in Mr. Bowman's piece that I must address. His assertion that The Dark Knight is "strictly a comic book movie" misses the scope of Director Christopher Nolan's vision. Mr. Nolan's intention (which I believe he succeed in) was to completely avoid the stereotype of "a comic book movie," to avoid a "childish fantasy...in which anything can happen." Perhaps I can understand why Mr. Bowman so grossly misjudged the film: he was looking at it through the wrong lenses. Mr. Nolan asked that everyone remove the lenses of the "comic book movie" and to actually take the film seriously because he was going to take it seriously. Perhaps if Mr. Bowman had done this, he could have better understood the film. For now, his claims upon the films "preposterousness" and outlandishness are the only gross exaggerations present.

Mr. Bowman's assertion that other characters besides the main ones merely serve to "contribute to the body count" is absurd. Equally absurd is his claim that their death's are "faceless, anonymous." I am afraid that the character of Rachel Dawes cries out against this claim. Her death most certainly was not faceless and anonymous, nor did it merely add to the body count, nor was her death "comic or spectacular." Mr. Bowman does a grave disservice to Mr. Nolan's ability to not waste characters. Every death (or seeming death) is a punch in the gut, a disturbing drama, a rude awakening to the question of, "What would I do if I was given the choice?"

As a literary student, I must call a personal foul over Mr. Bowman's assertion that "the measure of the seriousness of any dramatic work is whether it takes death seriously." I find this to be a gross simplification. Are there not other themes for a dramatic work to take seriously besides death? What about choice (the theme of The Dark Knight)? Or honor? Or love? Or justice? Or good and evil? Or even seriousness itself? There is much, much more to drama than merely death.

I also must (for the sake of literature) heartily disagree with Mr. Bowman that "the reality of the Homeric epic is conveyed by the fact that those who are its heroes do die." This is false. Achilles may have died in The Iliad, but Odysseus did not, nor did he die in The Odyssey. Virgil did not kill Aeneas in The Aeneads; and Nolan does not kill Batman. The hero lives on, surrounded by the consequences of his own choices, the choices of others, and the choices of the gods.

I would appreciate it greatly, Mr. Editor, if it was made clear that I mean Mr. Bowman no disrespect. I am quite sure that I will never reach his scholarly heights of intellect. However, I do sincerely believe that he was wrong on the previous counts, and that his errors have done himself a serious injustice, robbing him of the true potential of a film that asserts the reality of true evil, confirms the reality and power of choice, and digs deep into what it truly means to be "heroic."

Your humble servant,

Jonathan Vowell