Harvey Dentor's Scapegoat In The Dark Knight

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Recommended: Scapegoat theory sociology

Societies prevent themselves from suffering a meltdown into generalized chaos and or into a war of all against all by scapegoating. According to Renee Girard, scapegoating occurs in society when anger and violence must be released.To release this tension of violence, they must together as a society choose a surrogate victim, the scapegoat, to take on all of the blame for causing this anger, and the victim is then sacrificed - or turned against by society. In The Dark Knight, Batman serves as Gotham’s scapegoat. However, throughout the film both Harvey Dent - the white knight - and Batman - the dark knight - take turns serving as the scapegoat. Both make it very clear that they are willing to be whatever Gotham needs them to be in order to

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