Title: The Joker Is Satan, and So Are We: Girard and The Dark Knight
Abstract: This essay comments on The Dark Knight from point of view of Rene Girard's theory of violence. The notable Girardian resonances of film are mentioned in connection with such themes as socially mediated for money, romantic rivalry, and scapegoating. The Joker is interpreted as a particularly powerful Satan figure, who illuminates Girard's conception of satanic basis of human culture. This article is available in Journal of Religion & Film: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol13/iss1/5 The Dark Knight is a movie that is breaking box office records. Why? Because it is a powerful expression of theological ideas. I need to elaborate a bit on this apparently odd statement. Let's list, in no particular order, some of main themes of movie: The Joker's main goal is not acquiring money, but sowing chaos and destruction; Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent are rivals for affection of Rachel Dawes; police force is filled with corruption; Batman's exploits have produced copycats, imitators; law-abiding citizens and are distinct groups of people . . . aren't they? . . . or are they all in same boat?; a symbol of justice, such as Harvey Dent, can be seduced to join the dark side; criminals often kill each other, taking greed to an irrational extreme. These themes can be elucidated very effectively with reference to writings of Rene Girard. If you are not familiar with Girard, I will provide a brief outline of his theory of culture. The theory begins with concept of desire. Human beings have basic natural desires. If my stomach sends hunger signals to my brain, then I have a for food. But because human beings are highly social creatures, our basic natural desires very quickly become overlaid with complex patterns of social mediation. I may feel hungry, which is an internal, natural desire, but if I see a commercial for Burger King and decide to satisfy my hunger by eating a Whopper, then my has become socially mediated. 1 Bellinger: The Joker Is Satan, and So Are We Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2016 Girard uses phrase desire to describe this bedrock phenomenon of human psychology. We may think that our desires are internally generated, but most of time we do not know what we should until we look around at others and see what they are desiring. We mime, mimic, imitate desires of others, particularly those others who appear to us as models of successful living. The models strike us as having a greater fullness of being than we have; in order to be like them we must to possess things that they possess. There are many examples of mimetic desire. If two small children are in a room that has many toys in it, what will happen? One child will start playing with a particular toy and other child will then want that toy also, and a tug-of-war will ensue. This will happen even if there is an identical or equivalent toy in room. This is a perfect example of phenomenon of mimetic desire, which is not predicated on scarcity; scarcity of objects is not relevant because an artificial scarcity is created by process of mimicking another person. When children grow into adults, mimetic does not fade away; it simply takes more sophisticated forms. I have already referred to advertizing as a key shaper of socially mediated desires. In general, strategy of advertisers is to present happy, beautiful, successful people who own or use a certain product. You should own product also if you want to mimic their success in life. In many ways stock market is a mimetic phenomenon, as is fashion. The concept of fashion is not limited only to clothing; it also includes lifestyle items such as iPods, cars, computers, and avid devotion to 2 Journal of Religion & Film, Vol. 13 [2016], Iss. 1, Art. 5 http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol13/iss1/5 sports teams or NASCAR drivers. The phenomenon of romantic triangle, two men fighting over a woman, is a common theme in literature, television, and movies. In his works of literary criticism, Girard traces roots of romantic rivalry as it is unveiled in works of key authors such as Shakespeare, Cervantes, Flaubert, and Dostoevsky. This concept of rivalry is second major element of Girard's theory of culture. If human beings are copying desires of other human beings, stage is set for envy, rivalry, conflict, and violence. If I am imitating someone else's for an object, then by definition I am setting myself up as a rival and potential enemy of other person. If mimetic is bedrock of human social psychology, then human society is always a conflictual field of mutual antagonisms which can lead to generalized chaos. If I imitate others then those others are always stumbling blocks for me, impeding my ability to get what I (and they) want. The phenomenon of stumbling block is designated by a very precise term in Greek language of ancient world: skandalon. Mimetic and rivalry to which it leads are inexhaustible sources of scandal, which Girard interprets as our inability to break free from entangling webs of imitation and violence to
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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