Batman's True Insanity In The Dark Knight

In most superhero or action movies, the good guys are always the ones who are in the right with everything that they do, and the bad guys are always in the wrong, but that is not always how it goes. In 2008, director Christopher Nolan released the second installment in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight. This blockbuster hit pits the “Caped Crusader” Batman, against his insane nemesis, the Joker as well as the once great Harvey Dent, in order to save the city of Gotham from complete chaos and destruction. However, when the movie comes to its conclusion, Gotham has not changed almost at all, and in fact some things are actually worse than they were before, and the Joker is not entirely responsible. The reason for this is that both Batman

and Harvey Dent are suffering from their own psychological problems that cause them to do things that are not entirely helpful for cleaning up the streets of Gotham. What's more is that the Joker is not actually as insane as everyone thinks. While many people believe the Joker and his insanity to be the cause of almost everything that happens in The Dark Knight, he is actually not that crazy and is only a part of the problem, as both Batman and Harvey Dent have their own fair share of mental issues that cause them to be the ones at fault for some of the things that happen as well.

In order to truly understand the things that Batman does, one must know how he came to be. Batman’s true identity is that of the multi-billionaire owner of Wayne Enterprises, Bruce Wayne. The first movie in the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins, tells the story of how Bruce came to don the cape and the mask of Batman, from the perspective of the director, Christopher Nolan. When Bruce was a boy, he was leaving a theatre with his parents Martha and Thomas. As they started walking down the alley to get home, his parents were shot and killed by a mugger. This traumatic event happens right in front of Bruce without him doing anything to stop it as he is stricken by fear and powerless. Years later, Bruce starts training with the League of Shadows, a group of assassins that live the mountains. Under the tutelage of their leader Ra’s al Ghul, Bruce it taught that to “conquer fear, you must become fear, you must bask in the fear of other men,

and men fear most what they cannot see.” Nolan uses this to show why Bruce chose a bat as the symbol for his alter ego Batman. Bruce has a psychological fear of bats, and he also holds them partly responsible for the death of his parents, so to get over those fears, he becomes a bat and uses the shadows and darkness of night to hide from his enemies and take them out. In the article “Legendary Caesar and the Architect Ariadne: Narrative, Myth and Psychology in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Inception,” Dr. Kresimir Vukovic, a professor of classical mythology at Oxford University, and Rajko Petkovic, Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Zadar, discuss the psychology of three of Christopher Nolan's films. When talking about how Bruce attempts to deal with his trauma, the two authors say that “By positioning his identity in relation to the trauma, Bruce always strives to symbolically reenact it, but in such a way that he is no longer the helpless child that he was when it happened, but a hero now able to protect the innocent and ensure justice” (Vukovik and Petkovic). By becoming something that he believes is a cause of what happened to him as a boy, Bruce feels that he is able to relive the event emblematically; however this time when he is there, he now has the power to change the outcome. The problem with this though, is that becoming something that you fear as well as constantly reliving a traumatic event, can damage a person’s psyche.
Bruce’s father was kind-hearted, so to honor him, when Bruce finally creates his alter ego of Batman, he only has one rule; to never kill anyone. In spite of this, Batman is still very brutal and remorseless in his takedowns. When Bruce puts on the mask and becomes Batman, he is putting up a barrier between himself and everyone else. The mask blocks fear, and gives him courage, but on the flip side, it also blocks emotions and brings anger. When Bruce Wayne puts on the mask and becomes Batman, he also becomes psychotic. This is not to say that Bruce Wayne is psychotic however. No, Bruce Wayne only suffers from an inflated ego, while the one who is truly psychopathic, is Batman. In order to classify someone as psychotic, they must fit an amount of criteria in a list. There are many lists, all developed by different psychologists over the years, but most of them have many traits in common. People who are psychotic usually: have no empathy for others, while not showing much emotion of their own; blame others for things that they did; tell lies in such a way that they benefit themselves; are overconfident in their abilities; develop tunnel vision when working on a task; are egocentric; fail to plan for the future; are very violent, but can be calm at times too; are charming; are manipulative and can gain someone’s trust with relative ease; and plan things out very meticulously (Hirstein). The barrier that Batman’s mask creates, keeps him from expressing emotions, while also blocking the emotions of others, as emotions bring vulnerability. Reliability isn’t usually a weak point for Batman as he usually does what he says, and while he lies a few times, they are generally told in order to preserve justice and are not twisted in a way where he gains from it. Batman is very overconfident in his abilities as he believes that he, a single man, can fix the highly corrupt city of Gotham. While Batman’s attention does not get narrow when engaged in an activity, nor is he selfish, and not plan for the future, he is very violent. Dr. Daniel Boscaljon, a professor of English at the University of Iowa, writes in his article “The Flip Side of Justice: The Two-Faced Spirit of The Dark Knight” about the different characters in The Dark Knight and how Harvey Dent is the core character. In it he says “Despite cooperation from the police force—especially James Gordon—Batman operates in ways that Law cannot sanction” (Boscaljon 48). As opposed to taking down the bad guys without resorting to violence and only using force when necessary, like the police would do, Batman goes straight into using excessive force, breaking bones, and knocking people unconscious. Even though Batman does not have all the traits of a psychopath, he does not need to, as he meets enough of them to be classified as psychotic.
The Joker is one of Batman’s oldest and greatest enemies.

An insane, criminal mastermind with a white face, red lips, green hair, and a permanent smile. The Jokers back story is usually along the lines of him falling into a vat of chemical waste, causing him to take on his iconic appearance; but, Christopher Nolan's version purposefully has no back story. Ashley Cocksworth, a tutor in systematic theology at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, discusses and attempts to explain and define the evil of the Joker in his article “The Dark Knight and the Evilness of Evil.” In his piece, he writes that “[Nolan] refused to satisfy the fanboy’s call for description because without an explanation, the Joker appears ever more irrational and menacing” (Cocksworth 452). Nolan's choice to not give the Joker a back story was to make him seem even crazier, as the audience has nothing with which to base his madness off of. Without any knowledge of his past or why he is who he is, the audience is kept guessing as to what he is going to do next. Just because it is nearly impossible to tell what the Joker is going to do next, does not mean that he is insane. In fact, the Joker himself even says that he is not, when he is accused of being crazy by one of the underlings in the mob meeting scene. Not being crazy does not necessarily mean that you are fine though, and this incarnation of the Joker, like all the others, is most certainly not fine. No, instead of being insane

or crazy, this incarnation of the Joker is psychopathic, just like Batman.
Legally, when someone pleads insanity at a criminal trial, they are saying that they were unaware of the difference between right and wrong at the time of committing the crime. The Joker in The Dark Knight, is very well aware of the fact that what he is doing is criminal, yet he does it anyway. Looking again at the list of characteristics of someone who is psychotic, it is clear that the Joker displays enough of them to be classified as one as well. The Joker shows no feelings for anybody, and when he does, it is only an act that he puts on so that they will do what he wants; meanwhile, he only expresses two emotions himself: serious, which is no emotions at all; and joy that is accompanied by evil laughter, which is also just a façade. He is very overconfident of himself and his abilities, as he believes that he is capable of taking down Batman, which he ultimately fails to do by the end of the film. Similar to Batman, the Joker is very violent, as is shown by his senseless destruction many times over the course of the film; yet even in those scenes of destruction, he remains calm, while most people would not be able to. Manipulation is another psychotic trait that the Joker has, as he is able to convince the crime bosses to hire him and give him half of the money, plus he converts the once great white knight, Harvey Dent, into the murderous dark knight, Two-Face. Additionally, the Joker plans things out far in advance and always has a backup or a way out; even when he gets caught and put in jail, the Joker has already made preparations for not only escaping, but he has also put into action the next steps of his overall goal. Taking out Batman is just the first step in the Joker’s plan, and how he plans on accomplishing this lofty first step is explained by Gary Tognetti, a freelance writer with a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Nevada University. In his article in Film International, Tognetti reviews the film, and discusses the necessary lies told in The Dark Knight as well as why director Christopher Nolan chose to do some of the major events that happen in the movie. When talking about how Batman has forced the criminals of Gotham City to become active during the day, and what the Joker is going to do about it, he says:
The Joker's plan is, in turn, to draw Batman out and expose him to the same light of day, where, vampire-like, his powers are annulled. He does this by inducing mass panic on an epic scale, spurred on by a philosophy that humans are just domesticated animals: strip away the comforts that civilized society placates them with and they will revert to their true nature. (Tognetti 82)
The Joker plans to cause so much chaos and hysteria in the general population, that it forces Batman to come out of the shadows that protect him and give him strength. The Joker believes that people have become so dependent on the securities and amenities that a cultured society provides them with, that when those things are taken from them, people start to show who they truly are inside. Yet that is not only how he plans to take down Batman, but his overall goal as well. The Joker wants to create anarchy in order to break apart the social order of the world, because unlike the way the current system is, chaos gives everyone a fair chance. Before he begins the chaos, however, the Joker first needs to prove his point about people showing who they truly are when society forsakes them. He does this through the use of the last of the psychopathic traits that he has, which is the fact that he tells a lot of lies that benefit him or the goal that he wants to accomplish. One of these lies is the one he tells Batman when he is being interrogated. In the scene, the Joker tells Batman the locations of both Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes, the woman who both Batman and Harvey are in love with; however, Rachel and Harvey’s locations are actually the opposite of what Batman is told, i.e. Rachel is where he was told Harvey is, and vice versa. The Joker does this because he knows that Batman will want to save Rachel, but he wants to make an example out of Harvey.
Harvey Dent was the District Attorney for Gotham City, and put many of the criminals that Batman caught, behind bars. His moral code, as well as his audacity and tenacity towards keeping Gotham safe from the criminals, caused Bruce Wayne to think about finally putting Batman to rest. Bruce felt confident that Harvey could keep the city in check even if Batman was no longer around. This was all, however, before Dent’s fall from grace; before the love of his life was indirectly murdered by the Joker. Following this event, the Joker tells Harvey that he isn’t responsible for Rachel’s death because he was in jail while she and Harvey were being kidnapped, and subsequently blown up. He also lies to Harvey by telling him that he does not have a plan and that there was nothing personal about what he did to him and Rachel, when in fact, they actually played a big part in his plan. The Joker convinces Harvey to go after the people who were really responsible for Rachel’s murder, and in doing so, the Joker brings down one of the pillars that was holding up Gotham. Harvey takes on the nickname that he was given when he still worked for internal affairs at the Gotham Police Department, Two-Face, and sets out to right the wrongs that were done to him. Two-Face is a man who will kill a person based solely on the flip of a coin. No longer is he the man who joked around and showed compassion towards others, nor is he any longer the pillar of light and hope that shines on Gotham’s darkness. Now he is a man who is opposite what he once was. Just as the Joker wanted, Harvey shows who he truly is as Two-Face, a man angry that he didn’t get everything that he wanted, and now seeks to take away what others have.
In conclusion, the 2008 film The Dark Knight, is about the nighttime vigilante Batman, trying to stop the deranged Joker and the heart-broken Two-Face from turning Gotham City into an anarchist’s playground. However, they are all suffering from some form of mental distress which keeps things from ultimately changing in Gotham. Batman does more harm than good when trying to stop the Joker and Two-Face, because he is a psychopath, which causes him to do things that are not just. This version of the Joker is also only psychopathic rather than insane, as everyone believes him to be. While Harvey Dent suffers from a broken heart and in his weekend state of mind, is persuaded by the Joker to become Two-Face and to go after the ones who killed the person he loved. In the movie, The Dark Knight, not only is the Joker not insane like everyone believes him to be, but he is also not the only reason as to why Gotham is the way it is, as both Batman and Two-Face, and their mental issues, are a part of the problem as well.