The Dark Knight Allegory Analysis

In class paper

In “The Dark Knight: An Allegory of America in the Age of Bush”, Ron Briley comparing the terrorist acts of 9/11 to one of America’s top movies, The Dark Knight Rises from the Batman series. Briley gives many different ideas of similarities and a lot of good points, but is not as clear as you would hope someone would be when trying to persuade and convince you to believe such an allegory. Briley is comparing many of the main cast in The Dark Knight to many real people who are not as great as these characters are seemed to be.

The first comparison of 9/11 to the film is one the main character, the Joker whose main concern is to cause constant chaos is compared to the disturbed terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. Saying, “The both have no morals”, “no motive, just wanting to cause chaos.” Both not caring about money or fame, just caring about causing pain to others. Though, as much as this might have been a good theory, Briley does not put too much into it and explain as much as you’d hope he would.

A second

allegory Briley makes is more of a political allegory, saying after 9/11 in order to bring or to make peace, they will allow torture in interrogations, if needed. As seen in the movie, when they bring The Joker to the jail station and they have him in the interrogation room, Batman is already there waiting for him, and soon after begins to start beating him. All this happening while Lt James Gordon is giving a blind eye. That gives the real life example of prison torture in Guantanamo Bay or even here in the states when capturing any type of suspect. A lot of times they would let it slip by not minding too much about the fact it is illegal.
The last and important point is when The Dark Knight created a device to help him locate the Joker by using wireless connection that was connected to everyone’s to see onto others setups and locations. This seems to be compared to when the Bush administration started to listen in to Americans everyday phone conversations, to make sure that there is no terrorists making any plots to attack us. Though just like it in the movie when Batman showed Lucius Fox the invention he said, “This is too much power for one person” and Batman replied with, “That’s why I am giving it to you.” Briley is saying that this meant when they were invading our privacy and listening in on our everyday conversations, it is okay because, they only allowed “trustworthy” to listen in.
In the three points I pointed out of this paper, I believe that they are good points, but are not based off too much evidence.

Example, in the first claim saying Joker is to represent the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, though that maybe true, they can share those similarities, but that was always the role of The Joker. Even before 9/11 happened that was how the created the Joker to be. Insane and always having a constant urge to cause chaos. Whether they would apart of Marvel comics or simple T.V. shows, this was a look we always give our villain’s. The second claim is when the allowance of torture became acceptable, that maybe true and may have resemblance to real life acts which all type of torture was already in the comics long before 9/11 happened. The last claim and point is having the government spy on our everyday phone conversations, though I believe that is a very strong point Briley says, but I do not believe that was meant to imitate

anything.
These all maybe some good points, I believe this is just another comic-only-based film. Nothing to do with politics, government or anything of that sort. If you look hard enough at anything you’ll eventually see whatever you want to and I believe that is what happened here with Briley. This was always the role of the Batman and Joker, there is no need to overthink it.