The Joker's Dichotomy In The Dark Knight

In the film The Dark Knight, many of Friedrich Nietzsche concepts are shown throughout the film. He reconceptualized ethics by questioning the foundations of good and evil dichotomy, which is shown by The Joker and Harvey Dent. Also, Harvey Dent plays the role of having bad conscience. Throughout the film ressentiment plays throughout the film and characters, from the heart of Gotham City, Harvey Dent, and finally Batman. Cruelty is played throughout with the character of The Joker.

In The Dark Knight the Joker describes himself as a man of action: “I do not have a plan…I just do things,” (The Dark Knight, Health Ledger). The things he does include robbing a bank, kidnapping a fake Batman and killing him, attempting to kill the mayor, chasing

a SWAT van with Harvey Dent in it around Gotham City, having Dent and Rachel Dawes kidnapped and tied to explosives, rigging two ferries with explosives, and lying. He is the man of active destruction. The Joker is the agent of chaos like he states, “it is just like gravity… all you have to do is push,” he is able to manipulate people with “logical” thinking and makes them fall from where they were and basically makes them create chaos. One wonders how these things can be accomplished without plans, however, the Joker explains: “I just did what I do best—I took your plan, and I turned it on itself,” (The Dark Knight). The Joker’s actions are reactions to the plans made by Dent, Batman, and Jim Gordon, but in these reactive actions the Joker puts the forces of law and order in a position where they are forced to be reactive, his reactive force stops them from being active by making them reactive as well, a will to nothingness. The fulfillment of nihilism is the nihilism that destroys nihilism or the will to nothingness entails the negation of nihilism itself so that the man of active destruction wants to be overcome.
The Joker tells Batman: “You.

Complete. Me.” If there were no Batman there would be no one Joker would fight against since he knows that the police department will not be able to stop him without the help of the Batman. Batman and Joker are two sides of the same coin, the coin that Harvey Dent uses, at first, to “make his own luck,” and then later in his acceptance of chance as destiny. The reason why I say that Batman and Joker are two sides of the same coin is because he becomes, to society, an uncontainable force in very much the same way of Joker was, even though he is doing good. But the fact that he let 5 or so people die because he “did not” want to turn himself in the same level as Joker. The people believed that Batman couldn’t be controlled, that he has lost all respect for societal norms and the rule of law. But Batman never succumbs to his own dark, like Joker did. In the movie, Bruce Wayne says the line, “I’ve seen what I have become to fight men like him,” and he basically rejects the path he has to take to stop Joker, a man who has no rules whatsoever. For example, in the scene where Batman and Joker had a showdown and Batman was going towards Joker in his vehicle, Joker maniacally screams, “Hit me!” but as much as Batman wanted to annihilate the Joker, he knows he cannot violate his own moral code and almost sacrifices himself to prevent this from happening. Batman does not want to kill the evildoers, but to bring

justice.
Two-Face is born from the affirmation of destiny the acceptance of the Joker’s role as an “agent of chaos,” because “you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It’s Fair.” Not only does Two-face plays the role as an “agent of chaos,” he also falls into bad conscience because he falls into his instincts of taking matters into his own hands and providing luck with a flip of a coin. Harvey Dent was the one that put all the bad guys away to clean the streets of Gotham City and keep everyone safe but, in the end, he becomes the “bad guy” and starts killing people for revenge. However, Harvey Dent and the Joker portray the image of “good” versus “evil” dichotomy. Batman and the joker portray an image of chaos versus order. “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” These words, spoken by Harvey Dent in the film, portend the inevitable corruptibility of heroes in the Batman universe. In the start of the film, as stated above, he represents absolute good, a goodness that is so pure, that has os much potential to change Gotham, that even Batman is thinking of hanging up his spurs and tells Rachel Dawes that the city needs someone like Dent. Dent is the one that can keep the city safe. Dent is referred to Gotham’s “White Knight,” a term used throughout the course of the film. Dent was able to put 500 or more criminals behind the bars and “cleaned” the streets of Gotham for a couple of months. In the film, people see the transition from light to darkness. Joker had the ability to destroy that, which Dent loves and turn him to the evil that he becomes. The joker does this to Dent and it hits close to home, it makes us realize that we as humans are limited and that our capacity to be good is subject to the vagaries of fate and whatever decides to destroy what we love. He reminds us that duality that lies within each of us.
In regards to ressentiment, it is seen everywhere in the film, from The Joker recognizing it at the heart of Gotham, Harvey Dent, and Batman himself. The Joker recognizes the ressentiment at the heart of the slave morality in Gotham City, “Their morals, and their code…it is a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They are only as good as the world allows them to be. You will see – I will show you … when the chips are down, these civilized people… they will eat each other. See I am not a monster… I am just ahead of the curve.” The rules of society, the rules of Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon, are façade, according to the Joker, a reaction to the chaos that is the essential force of reality. So is the Joke the “man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism” (96)? It is the Joker who ultimately defeats the mob, but is not the Joker’s morality based on the syllogism “I am evil therefore you are evil.” The Joker sees in the Harvey Dent the embodiment of society’s ideals and sees that through a corruption of Dent he can bring Gotham down as well. He succeeds, because Harvey Dent becomes Two- Face, as a result of his failure to mourn Rachel Dawes. He embraces the Jokers chaos, “You thought we could be decent men in an indecent world. You thought we could lead by example. You thought the rules could be bent but not break… you were wrong. The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance.” Ressentiment shows in Batman because he gave into his weakness once his parents were killed in front of him, but he did not live a horrible life. He inherited a huge corporation from his parents and became the richest and strongest man in the world. He believed that he has an obligation to stop any and all criminals from making Gotham City an unsafe place and helps the local police department from defeating these criminals and helping Gotham City stay safe and protects the city from all danger to its citizens.
I did not realize that The Dark Knight had anything to do with political theory but I stand corrected.

Many things that we see throughout the day can potentially be connected with many of the concepts that political theorist explain in their books. Comparing Nietzsche concepts of the function of the ascetic ideal, ressentiment, bad conscience, the “good” versus “ evil” dichotomy and cruelty can reality to a film that I truly enjoy watching and have watched many times. Knowing that in the film people can be portrayed as good but society will still see them as chaos and seeing that good people can change to bad people because of a traumatic incident is astonishing. Also, seeing that bad conscience is in play in our daily lives and just with a push we can fall into

it.