Morality of the Dark Knight

[Jason]

The following thread contains spoilers for The Dark Knight, but since it broke all records over the weekend I'll assume that enough people have seen it to discuss it.


***BEGIN SPOILERS***


At one point in the movie, Batman has a perfect opportunity to kill the Joker. He's riding the Batpod, an armored motorcycle with guns on the front, straight at the Joker standing in the middle of the street. In fact the Joker is egging him on to doing just that - shooting random passerby and mumbling at him to "come on." Batman choses not to kill the Joker. He crashes the Batpod instead, missing the Joker at the last minute, and is nearly killed himself when the Joker takes advantage of his disorientation to attack him (its a good thing Batman has backup this time).

After that point in the movie many people are threatened or killed by the Joker or his men, a hospital is blown up, and Harvey Dent is horrifically scarred and driven mad.

The question then arises - should Batman have killed the Joker after all?

It wouldn't have prevented all of the deaths, as the Joker's men were already in action following his plans for Dent and Rachel, but he wouldn't have been around to push Harvey over the edge or threaten the two ferries.

[Jason]

Or maybe I'm the only person who thought this might be an interesting topic?

[stutefish]

It's an interesting topic, but possibly unanswerable.

I recently came across some apocrypha to the effect that Michael Moorcock is opposed to idealized heroes in fiction, because it gives us false expectations about heroes in real life. We end up idolizing flawed leaders, slavishly worshipping unscrupulous charlatans, and suffering disappointment and despair when we discover our role models have clay feet.

I disagree with this view, though. Fictional heroes are ideals, not factual depictions of flawed reality. They represent the standard to which we hold ourselves and others.

Their stories--and the stories of the villains that oppose them--are idealized explorations of specific questions about our nature and condition. Practicality isn't a major concern, so much as spirituality.

So. In the traditional super-hero setting, hard, idealized distinctions are drawn between the hero and the villain. Batman never kills. It's the line he will not cross. Of course this leads to moral and ethical impracticalities, which are often discussed in Batman stories.

Would I have killed the Joker, in that situation? I'm not sure.

I think, maybe I would. But I'm thinking in the context of soldiering, where it's taken for granted that deadly violence is a necessary evil in the service of a greater good. And even then it's bound up in a net of legal and moral restraints.

So I think, maybe I wouldn't. Batman operates in the context of a vigilante. He's already breaking the law, simply by doing what he does. And he's already on morally shaky ground. He owes no allegiance to any power higher than himself. He flaunts the laws of the land. He makes his own morals as he goes along. In a very real, and very important way, he breaks the civic bonds that implicitly hold the community together. He is, in fact, no different at all from the criminals he fights.

If he will not be a law-abiding citizen, and he will not be a well-regulated police officer, then how can he keep himself morally--and psychologically-distinct from his enemies? By drawing a hard line, and keeping to it. "This far will I go, and no farther."

Gotham suffers because the Joker goes where Batman won't. But it would suffer more, I think, if Batman went there as well.

[Jason]

I think that's the basic approach I would take too. A police officer in the same position almost definitely should have killed the Joker. His authority to use violence in protecting the public was given to him by the public, and he is answerable to them for how he uses it.
A private citizen witnessing the Joker shoot at cars would also be justified in killing him. Again, such a person is answerable to the public.
Batman doesn't have any authority to do what he does, and isn't answerable because his true identity is unknown. Since he's already operating in a gray area morally he should draw his own line and hope the law winks at his behavior.

[Ginnie]

I have to see the movie first, Jason.
And Ironman too.

[Jason]

C'mon - it's been out since last Friday.
Slacker.

[Ranb]

That's funny, I thought it all came done to charactor shields. Waste the Joker and the thrill is gone. The writers would have had to use Dent in the story line more.

Ranb

[Jason]

I found an interesting commentary today on how The Dark Knight is essentially a conservative film. The complete story can be found here.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

[PhantomWolf]

Can someone say "reading into things"? Heck, two of the movies named were based on books written in the early part of last century and the another two based on characters who were created and fleshed out nearly as long. I can't help but point out that it seems to be the eye of the beholder that is the issue there, and not Hollywood's conservatives or left-wingers.

[Jason]

I said it was interesting, not that he was right on the money.
I think he might have something about doing what you know is right but unpopular, though.