Constructing and Deconstructing the Modern Hero in The Dark Knight Trilogy

Abstract

This article aims to reveal the various representations of modernity and postmodernity in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Across all three movies, it is asserted that Batman’s values correspond to modernity specifically in terms of his self-reflexive construction of the hero persona and his relationship with Gotham city. Furthermore, the way in which the villains confront Batman in a deconstructionist manner corresponds to the postmodern critique of modern values and constructs. What continues to make Batman a hero are precisely said to be his efforts and belief in modern values, both in his personal and social construction, despite facing endless accusations throughout the movies.

Introduction

Taking its roots from the 18th-century Enlightenment, modernity is a broad notion that defines an intellectual inclination towards a secular and rational way of being throughout social, political, and cultural history. It emphasizes human intelligence, rationality and a new order built on the belief that an “ideal” in every aspect of human life is possible. But above all, it is a process of construction.

Bauman (2013, p. 123) states that modernity came into existence with the promise and determination to conquer ambiguity, or at least to declare a war of attrition on it. According to Bauman (2013, pp. 123–124), the rule of reason had taken over with Enlightenment, and when modernity’s task was complete, mankind would no longer be dependent on fate—the prosperity and happiness of the people would be a product of the implementation of knowledge.

However, faith in the rational mind, the concept of an ideal and the constructive potential of mankind began shattering with the consequent collective traumas of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II during the first half of the 20th-century. Modernity drifted apart from its initial optimistic and virtuous promise of welfare and prosperity through progress and construction, and assumed a whole new appearance.

Those collective traumas came to be considered as the sins of modernity and the Enlightenment project, and a debate sprung in intellectual circles on whether or not modernity is, or should be, over—whether the world has stepped into a new, “post” modern age, or whether this cultural and intellectual shift is just another display of opposition and defiance which has always been a part of the modernist tradition, making it a “new” kind of modernity. For instance, Habermas (1997) defines modernity as an “unfinished project” (p. 38) and argues that modernity can only be free of the dilemma it is in once again through the modern thought itself. Similarly, Beck (2011) interprets this shift as a new (neo-) version of modernity from an economical point of view, while intellectuals such as Baudrillard (1998) who replace reality with simulacras, Derrida who is the founder of deconstructionism (Huckestein, 2015, p. 33) and Vattimo (2011) who declared the end of linear history seem to have a more radical stance when it comes to the epistemological shift the intellectual world is experiencing.

One common conclusion they arrive at regarding the existence or the meaning of postmodernity is that the world has undergone an undeniable process of change and transformation which can be much more clearly observed by the 1980s. In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard (1979) defines postmodernity as an “incredulity toward metanarratives” (p. xxiv). Since metanarratives are one of the key concepts of modernity, their rejection implies undermining every past and present socio-political discourse of mankind that had constituted the core of the intellectual world for the last three centuries. According to Calinescu (2013, p. 302), when the metanarratives of modernity disintegrate, they yield to a crowd of heterogenous and local “petites histoires” typically over-paradoxical and irrational in nature. For Kellner (1988, p. 414), in a postmodern society, all boundaries and distinctions between high and low culture, appearance and reality implode along with all other binary oppositions in traditional philosophy and social theory. At this point, Foster (1984, p. 67) remarks that poststructuralist postmodernism takes “the death of man” as the death of “the centered subject of representation and history.” According to Foster, postmodernism is fundamentally anti-humanist and “rather than a return to representation, it launches a critique in which representation is shown to be more constitutive of reality than transparent to it.” Similarly, Jeroncic (2013, p. 246) believes we are confronted with a “culture of disappearance.” Within this culture, “‘real’ as a referent becomes meaningless” and “life replicates the sense of disorientation (Jeroncic, 2013, p. 246).” Simulations and spectacles replace reality, the “truth,” along with all the metaphysical debates surrounding its existence, the biggest grand narrative in itself. The postmodern self becomes pathological and seems like “the familiar self of the psychoanalytic consulting room: a disjointed, decentered, and dislocated self seeking to ameliorate this very condition (Leary, 1994, pp. 454–455 quoted in Shawver 1996, p. 374).”

Superheroes came into existence during the aforementioned crisis of modernity in the 1930s and 1940s within a social and cultural atmosphere created by the collective traumas of the two world wars and the Great Depression. They are products of modernity—an attempt to give life, history and humanity its meaning back through shared narratives. Saunders (2011, p. 142) states that even though they take their roots from ancient mythology, superhero narratives are essentially “myths of modernity” and their relationships with modernity should be analyzed in detail. Saunders also states that the manner in which these fantastic hybrids take pre-modern metaphors and place them into a modern context can bring forth certain overlooked contradictions of modernity itself if the right questions are asked. And within the context of widely popular superhero movies today, the nature of the relationship between postmodernity and modernity can also be included in the equation. After all, such a great intellectual and sociological shift involving all aspects of life inevitably affects our strategies of making meaning from comic books to popular cinema. Where once heroic narratives functioned as a guide to locate and identify ourselves through an understanding of what is “most basically and universally human (Leeming, 1998, p. 6),” now a relocation and a reidentification is necessitated by the postmodern zeitgeist. And traces of postmodernity’s endless negotiation with modernity are not only apparent in the cinematic adaptations of these modern heroic tales, but also in their sources: the comic book universe.

The first Batman story appears in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939 with the name The Case of the Chemical Syndicate, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane (Robb, 2014, p. 77). Batman is a wealthy man, a philanthropist and an industrialist in a post-Depression world entering World War II, and his stories carry the dark and gloomy atmosphere of their time in a film-noir sort of esthetic. But it is comic-book writer Frank Miller who reinterprets Batman into the postmodern world as the “Dark Knight” we have come to know during the 1980s, while the shift towards a post (or neo) modern world was being discussed in intellectual circles, with graphic novels such as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986). In these darker versions of the Batman story set in a dystopian Gotham city, Miller had already begun investigating his superhero’s stance within a postmodern world, which director Christopher Nolan continued with The Dark Knight Trilogy. Croci (2016, p. 164) argues that during Miller’s self-imposed interrogation, “the superhero. . . is historicized and framed into a verisimilar postmodern scenario,” through which “complex ethical and political interrogatives are raised.” Therefore, “Miller’s works stage the tension between the intrinsic modernity of a character conceived in the late thirties and the postmodern crisis of the metanarratives (Croci, 2016, p. 166).” After all, considering the way heroic narratives function as a guide to define humanity in its most fundamental form, could it not be argued that tales of heroism are themselves metanarratives? Whether in comic books or cinema, could it not be the concept of heroism itself that is questioned within postmodern superhero tales?

Alsford (2006) states that real heroism erupts from this crisis of modernity versus postmodernity, saying While it could be argued that Postmodernism’s rejection of absolute value only serves to undermine the notion of the hero—how can one fight for truth and justice when these are regarded as empty terms? Its recognition of the limits of human reason and its identification of the world as infinitely complex. . . . provides us with an insight into the context of the truly heroic (p. 22).

This is precisely what we observe in Batman’s constant endeavor to construct his persona as a hero through a self-reflexive process, always hinging on the edge of being a vigilante, or even a terrorist (Croci, 2016). Throughout Nolan’s Trilogy set in an increasingly chaotic and irrational Gotham, Batman is challenged alongside each and every citizen to let go of any constitutive ethical value, to forget any point of reference as to what it means to be a complete and centered “self,” and to happily dissolve into the city’s insanity and corruption. The “modern” search for the meaning of heroism in a fundamentally postmodern environment comes into plain sight from the very first film of the trilogy, Batman Begins (2005).

Since the trilogy harbors many facets of a constant negotiation between modernity and postmodernity regarding the complex relationship between its numerous protagonists and antagonists, this study aims to examine the representation of certain aspects of modernity versus postmodernity in Christoper Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy through the constant construction and deconstruction of metanarratives and identities across all three movies.

Batman Begins: The Self-Reflexive Construction of the Modern Hero

J. Campbell (2004, p. 18) defines the hero as “the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one’s visions, ideas, inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought.” Nolan’s Batman, on the other hand, is always on the verge of being an anti-hero. His vigilantism versus heroism is constantly questioned through narrative, following in the footsteps of Miller himself. However, Berger (2019, p. 70) states that “rather than construct Batman along the hero/anti-hero axis, Nolan levels a broadside at the foundational legitimacy of Batman’s mythos.”

In Batman Begins (2005), Batman emerges as a modern hero and becomes a symbol as repeatedly stated in the trilogy, or better yet a “myth,” by constructing his heroic persona in a very rational, modern, and reflexive manner. Batman’s relationship with Gotham and its criminals are catalysts of his inner journey and thus, his construction of self. This is where the legitimacy of his heroism is manifested.

Modernity’s secularization makes rational self-determination create an instrumentally rational type of man who can reach the metaphysical goals of modernity through pure logos (Archer, 2004, pp. 22–23). However, instead of total emancipation, this rationality positions mankind at a place where responsibility over self-control is of central importance, bringing us to the modern concept of “self-reflexivity.”

Giddens (2014, p. 51) argues that the reflexivity of modernity reaches out to the essence of the self, and the self becomes a reflexive design. In modern societies, the self is something for which the individual is responsible. Its reflexivity is continuous and everlasting, thus revealing a coherent narrative in its totality with its moral dimensions based on being true to oneself (Giddens, 2014, pp. 103–109). Therefore, the project of modernity becomes the project of the self.

During the first quarter of Batman Begins, Bruce’s construction of Batman is greatly influenced by Ra’s al Ghul/Ducard’s training, which forces Bruce to embrace his fear and transform it into his greatest asset in confronting his opponents. To achieve this, he needs to find his “path,” as Ducard puts it when he approaches Bruce for the first time. When Bruce accuses The League of Shadows of being vigilantes, an ironical point of conflict regarding Batman’s own stance against crime, Ducard says to Bruce, “A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. [. . .] But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal and if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely. . . a legend (00:04:58).” Therefore, to become something more than “just a man”—a hero within the context of Batman’s story arc—he first has to go through a certain type of personal self-construction following a chosen path. This construction, which is an indispensable part of the hero’s inner journey, is also directly related to the world’s perception and acknowledgment of him as a hero. Despite being at odds with Ducard regarding what it takes to employ justice—his decision not to kill separating him from his vigilante counterparts—Bruce still embraces Ducard’s vision on becoming something more than just a man and Batman’s persona is constructed accordingly. On his way back home to Gotham, he tells Alfred of wanting to show the people of Gotham that their city does not belong to the criminals or the corrupt by becoming a symbol, incorruptible and everlasting. Bruce’s response to Alfred when asked what kind of a symbol he intends to be is, “something elemental. . . something terrifying (00:42:25).”

Regarding this dialogue between Bruce and Alfred, Killian (2007, p. 79) comments that Bruce has realized that Ducard had a point; Bruce must become fear to fight criminals, even if that means becoming a violent vigilante. He must “out-terrorize the terrorists” to make a difference by doing what is necessary. However, in the meantime, he “endeavors to stay on the Good side of a razor’s edge demarcating the border between justice, and fear and revenge” (Killian, 2007, p. 79).

Across the trilogy, the opposition between justice and revenge is another central issue regarding the construction of Batman. Considering the circumstances under which a person might turn to vigilantism, Dumsday (2009, p. 58) points out that Gotham city has good laws prohibiting theft, murder, drug trafficking and appropriate penalties for such crimes. But since the police force is mostly corrupt, only a few laws are enforced (Dumsday, 2009, pp. 58–59). Besides, the police force is not the only corrupt organization in the city. Those who are powerless live in constant fear, whereas those who are powerful, see “the corrupt way” as the only way to get things done. Here, it is beneficial to remember Giddens’ point on the search for self-identity. According to A. Giddens (2010, pp. 122–123), excluding the majority of the people from the sphere where the most important policies are made inevitably results in the self focusing on itself as a natural response to feeling powerless. Therefore, according to Giddens, the search for self-identity can also become a destructive force linked to modern institutions, even if only partially. Bruce Wayne’s imperative wealth is not enough to position him in the said sphere because he resists corruption. As such, he can never truly be powerful enough to make a change in Gotham, as he would be destined to fail just like his parents.

At this juncture, his self-construct is also closely tied to free will as opposed to inaction in the face of fear –his fear to begin with. Ducard says to Bruce, “what you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. You fear your anger. The drive to do great or terrible things. Now you must journey inwards. You are ready (00:32:25).” To be able to construct himself as a hero, he must move past his instincts and make the right choices with his own free will. For Ducard, who tells Bruce that his parents’ death was due to his father’s failure to act, “Training is nothing. Will is everything. The will to act (00:19:17).” Being able to consciously make moral choices in “good faith” is what completes and strengthens Bruce’s construction of Batman as a hero, even if he makes those choices according to his own self-imposed rules. As it is depicted more clearly in The Dark Knight, Batman’s choices are sometimes for the good of the people of Gotham under said self-imposed rules, and at the expense of his self-preservation. Sometimes, deriving his legitimacy as a hero means serving Gotham by taking the role of the enemy (Berger, 2019, pp. 66–69) if that is what it takes, which is “a true kind of legitimacy” (Berger, 2019, p. 67).

Even though Batman lives in an environment where being a vigilante might be acceptable according to Dumsday’s classifications, he most definitely is not one. As Ducard puts it, a vigilante is a man who gets lost seeking gratification. Bruce, on the other hand, is on a quest to find himself—or at least the part or the version of himself that he can hold on to which is comprehensive and inclusive enough to cover up and hide the scared and angry reflection of his childhood trauma—in a self-reflexive manner. While constructing his hero persona as Batman during this quest, he transforms his need for personal vengeance on the person responsible for killing his family to something bigger, something larger, something that transcends individual wrongdoings and challenges the lawlessness, the corruption and the crime-ridden streets of Gotham city as a whole, striving to stay on the right side of the thin line between justice and vengeance despite operating outside the system. He embarks on a “total” cleanup rather than a personal one, which is very much modern in nature. Surely there is still a personal gratification for Bruce as he goes about this journey, but this gratification is now directed towards a more purified, more “noble” purpose. And this act of sublimation constitutes one of the core aspects of his persona as a hero, which also inevitably involves the dissolution, or the deconstruction of Bruce Wayne as a person.

Bruce becomes the weak, powerless, revenge seeking “human,” or shadow self of Batman, as Batman gradually takes over every aspect of Bruce’s life, making him unable to truly participate in the daily life to the extent of sacrificing his only love for something he deems bigger than himself. While Bruce’s face hides under the mask of Batman, Batman hides under Bruce’s face. Bruce gradually becomes a meaningless shell to protect his carefully constructed bat symbol and hero persona.

The dissolution of Bruce into Batman becomes apparent in a dialogue Rachel and Bruce have at the end of Batman Begins, standing on the ruins of the burned down Wayne Mansion where Rachel tells Bruce that when she heard he was back, she began to hope for their future, and finishes her words with “But then I found out about your mask.” When Bruce answers with “Batman is just a symbol Rachel,” she touches his face, saying, “No, this is your mask. Your real face is the one the criminals now fear. The man I loved. . . the man who vanished. . . he never came back at all.” Her next words foreshadow the future of both their relationship, and Bruce’s relationship with Batman: “But maybe he’s still out there somewhere. Maybe some day when Gotham no longer needs Batman, I’ll see him again (02:07:22).” The real question here, as Nolan will focus on in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, is not whether there will be a time when Gotham no longer needs Batman, but is whether there will be, or can be, a time when Bruce no longer needs Batman, and a time when Batman no longer needs Gotham city.

The Dark Knight: Deconstruction of the Self, Construction of the Other

In The Dark Knight (2008), Gotham becomes a perfectly postmodern city, with a perfectly postmodern villain—the Joker. While Batman, now as Bruce’s fully constructed hero-self, strives to embody reason and make the rational, and thus the “right” choice, the Joker can be defined as the manifestation of a state of insanity—and within this insanity, there seems to be no room for reason, order or design at first glance. He, as he puts it, is the agent of chaos. Nevertheless, the irony of the Joker’s insanity lies in the fact that his chaos seems to be one of a very calculated origin. He does not create a “random” chaos because he is insane, he almost rationally decides that chaos is what is fair within this rational world of “schemers,” and forces everyone he comes into contact with to willingly embody his “insanity” as their own and become allies on the way to an anarchic utopia. His acts of “madness” such as burning piles of money, blowing up the hospital, not only making Batman choose between saving the love of his life and the future of Gotham but making ordinary people in the ferries choose who gets to live and who gets to die are not decisions made on a whim. They all have a common goal, which is making the point that everyone has a breaking point. In a “rational” world which is designed for the benefit of the biggest schemers, where ordinary people suffer and having control is but an illusion, everyone can become the Joker—they would be “mad” not to.

Therefore, as Porterfield (2009, p. 273) points out, the Joker’s horrible image comes to represent our own fear that something has gone terribly wrong in the world. His moments of insanity become cathartic—because who would not want to be so “free” of this world that crushes each and every individual’s soul day after day with rules, bureaucracy, and the constant, never-ending need for money that burning a pile of money which would possibly be enough for your grandchildren to have a “good” life would be a sight for sore eyes? It is this affinity with the Joker’s madness and his notion of fairness that makes the audience both fear and love Joker at the same time. But, this affinity with Joker’s state is not a “rational” one—not in the world of Gotham, and not for the audience. It is merely a vague sense of how close we are to becoming mad ourselves, and that is a feeling every “normal” person that “fits in” should push down into the depths of their subconscious, making the Joker an uncanny figure—something to get away from as soon as possible, something to fear, something that has the power turn our whole world upside down in a heartbeat. In a world that makes sense, Batman can, and should, defeat the Joker. However, the world is not a rational place anymore.

“What’s he hiding under that makeup?” Commissioner Gordon wonders. Under that makeup, just like postmodernity, is an unidentifiable, fluid and contagious madness. And Batman, as T. Giddens (2015, p. 771) states, is only “human” and has no special powers other than his physical and mental abilities and enormous wealth. He is a “modern” protector in every sense, and what will enable him to obtain real justice is not some divine judgment or supernatural power, but his ability for logical reasoning. According to T. Giddens (2015, p. 771), “Batman needs to be right, and he seeks his answers through an unfailing deployment of rational logic, otherwise, his symbolic functions and the ideals he strives to uphold will fail,” making it impossible for Batman to understand the anarchy the Joker wants to unleash.

The Joker first appears in Batman #1 without an origin story in 1940, and his origins are not revealed until 1951 when ‘The Man Behind the Red Hood!’ story appers in Detective Comics #168. Here, we see him already committing crimes under the name the Red Hood, but one night, as he is trying to escape Batman while robbing a factory, dives right into a pool of chemical water and emerges as the Joker. Overall, falling into chemical waste recurs in many other versions of the comics, cartoons and movies as the moment the Joker is “baptised into chaos” by Kolenic’s (2009, p. 1027) words, one of the most famous comic book versions in which this baptism takes place being The Killing Joke (1988) by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. In this version, the Joker is an engineer who quits his job to pursue becoming a stand-up comedian, but fails terribly. He decides to help some criminals break into a chemical plant to make money for his pregnant wife, who later on dies. During the heist, Batman scares him and he again falls into chemical waste, turning into the Joker. Of course, there are other components regarding his “madness,” and falling into chemical waste in all these story arcs is merely a symbolic moment that physically marks the point where the Joker is born and “baptized.” But there is something fundamentally different about Christopher Nolan’s Joker in The Dark Knight. Here, the Joker tells a different story every time about how he got his scars, and it is not possible to locate and define someone or something without knowing the cause and effect relations determining their present state. Furthermore, this simple detail regarding the Joker’s identity is, in effect, one of the most important details that makes Nolan’s Joker unique and establishes a real connection between the Joker and our postmodern world. As pointed out by Kolenic (2009, p. 1027), for the first time in the character’s history, Nolan denies the viewer of the Joker’s background story, including the abovementioned “transitional moment where he is baptized into chaos,” which would make it easier for the audience to understand the character. Kolenic (2009) points out that by anonymizing the Joker and not allowing him to be neutralized, Nolan’s film brings out the conflict between order and chaos (p. 1025). Unless we know how to define the Joker, we cannot understand, control or cast aside his madness. The Joker’s ambiguous identity causes the audience, like Batman, to have no sense of control over him (Kolenic, 2009, p. 1028). It is worth mentioning here that after Nolan’s The Dark Knight series, there have been other attempts to further the back story of Joker such as the comic book Batman: Three Jokers (2020) by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok, and Todd Phillips’ 2019 movie Joker. But within the context of this article, and Nolan’s portrayal of the Joker, Kolenic’s claim can be taken a step further regarding our own affinity and alarming proximity to madness as the audience as was discussed above. Because we are in a constant need to have a sense of control over the never-ending struggle between our own convenient normalcy and the danger of insanity that is always waiting in the shadows of our subconscious, we find ourselves wanting and needing to have a sense of control over Joker’s madness as well as ours, whether by understanding, categorizing and “rationalizing” it by creating narratives of the self, or casting it aside entirely.

Here, it is worth mentioning the manner in which postmodern self positions itself regarding the metanarratives through the Joker’s way of generating—by not generating—his own “narrative.” Lee (2004, p. 222) analyzes how postmodernity’s position on metanarratives is approached by narrative therapists regarding the individual. Pointing to Jill Freedman and Gene Combs’ method of behavioral therapy that is founded in Lyotard’s writings, Lee identifies four key ideas; “(1) Realities are socially constructed, (2) Realities are constructed through language, (3) Realities are organized and maintained through narrative,” and “(4) There are no essential truths” (Lee, 2004, p. 222). In relation, Zompetti and Moffitt (2008, p. 280) remind us of postmodernity’s inclination towards viewing the individual as decentered. The individual as a decentered subject lives multiple discourses simultaneously rather than having a single, constant identity. These discourses or “zones of meaning” may vary depending on the “public positions” in or against which the individuals find themselves (Heath quoted in Zompetti and Moffitt, 2008, p. 280).

Each one of the Joker’s varying stories of his “past” relates to postmodernity in the narrative sense regarding the decentered subject. Indeed, the Joker constructs his “realities” through language, just like Lee points out, and refuses a single, true narrative. At the same time, being a decentered subject as defined by Zompetti and Moffitt, he changes his narrative of the self, his “zone of meaning” depending on the person to whom he is talking.

Yet, there is one common denominator among the Joker’s various narratives of self, though that commonness does not serve to “center” him in any way. On the contrary, it is a definition that furthers decenters him. Often describing himself using adjectives such as “freak” or “crazy,” the Joker emphasizes and praises madness. In fact, spreading madness is what amuses him the most. After all, as he says to Batman, “madness. . . is like gravity. All it takes is a little push (02:15:05).” Yet, he loses his nerve when others define him as crazy. On the other hand, both the Joker and others, such as Gordon’s wife who says to Batman “you brought this craziness on us,” believe that this madness is Batman’s fault, the result of everything he did for Gotham. Their accusations resemble the postmodern reaction, where modernity’s rational organization is ultimately referred to as an explanation to the fragmentation of postmodernity. Modernity’s perfectly rational bureaucracy as Bauman (1989) suggests, has brought upon all sorts of pain and suffering onto the world throughout history such as atomic bombs and gas chambers. Hence, Zompetti and Moffitt (2008, p. 278) remind us that one postmodern criticism of the failed modernist utopia was that many of modernity’s advantages had been the source of the most formidable events of history. Since the advantages of modernity are now under question, postmodern thinkers have begun questioning the existing arguments about how societies create their worldviews. Accordingly, when the Joker visits Harvey Dent at the hospital, after half of his face gets burned, the Joker tells Dent that they are surrounded by “schemers” who are making plans and trying to establish order and control. His intention to ruin their plans is expressed in his speech to Dent where he states he is like “a dog chasing cars,” “an agent of chaos” trying to “show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are (01:48:20).”

Kolenic (2009, p. 1031) states that the Joker’s definition of himself as a man who “just does things” like a dog makes him a character lacking a narrative not only in the past but at the present and future as well. Here, Zygmunt Bauman’s argument should not be forgotten, that our capacity for morality stems from our sense of past, present, and future, in other words, our temporal horizon (T. Campbell, 2013, p. 20). Furthermore, according to Kolenic (2009, p. 1031), with this dialogue, the Joker convinces Dent that a world without plans, order, a “scheme,” in other words narratives or identities, has a certain fairness to it. He opens Dent’s mind to an anarchic utopia by explaining the dangers of following administrations in a world where even the most horrible acts and events are tolerable as long as they are consistent with the given narrative. Thus, he equates the chaos he puts against institutionalism with some kind of justice, altruism, and purity (Kolenic, 2009, p. 1031).

The Joker’s great endeavor is to deconstruct the established order, the so-called dream of a “better world” shared by Gordon, Dent and Batman. While laws, rules, and schemes define those characters, the Joker is a force that can only be defined by the manner in which he opposes them. Kolenic (2009, p. 1024) argues that the most disturbing yet effective trait of Nolan’s Joker is that the “logic” behind the character corresponds to certain things that the audience cannot consider to be a psychosis and easily overlook. The institutions of which the Joker talks actually “temper, control, segment, and attempt to diffuse” the attraction to chaos represented by the Joker.

Johnson (2014, p. 958) states that, within the moral chaos of Gotham, the Joker aims to dismantle and destroy societal codes. According to Johnson (2014, p. 958), the Joker hopes to tear down the so-called morality of the city and free the people from all constructs, moral codes and belief systems instead of establishing and promoting a belief system of his own. Hence, another endeavor of the Joker throughout the movie is getting Batman to take off his mask. Batman is a structure bearing the values of modernity with his mask being the main object making him recognizable as a construct, to exist not as a man, but as a “symbol.” Alas, the Joker is a true deconstructionist, saying to Batman, “What would I do without you?. . . You complete me (01:28:03).” Just like the postmodern thought, the Joker defines himself not by his authentic categories but by the manner in which he confronts modernity and tears it to pieces. The Joker does not want to kill Batman, because his existence depends inextricably on Batman’s existence and values. This state of “defining oneself through the other” is not only true for postmodernity, but is also applicable to modernity. Bauman (1992, p. vii) states that postmodernity is, primarily, a “state of mind.” According to Bauman (1992, p. 102), who emphasizes the fact that he is defining modernity from the perspective and experience of postmodernity, the current debate is not “an articulation of the logic of ‘historical process,’” but rather a “re-evaluation of the past.” Similarly, Batman is redefined over and over again through the Joker’s deconstruction of his persona. The Joker says to Batman, just like a prophecy regarding the future of the relationship of opposition between modernity and postmodernity, “I think you and I are destined to do this forever (02:14:00).” Porterfield (2009, p. 273) states that the Joker admitting that Batman “completes” him is a striking expression of the union of opposites. And this union of opposites can be also be considered a characteristic of the relationship between modernity and postmodernity.

A near-perfect visual representation of the union of opposites is a climactic scene towards the end of The Dark Knight where Batman hangs the Joker upside down from the top of a skyscraper. As a strategy that strengthens the bat symbol, Batman often turns his opponents upside down or hangs upside down to face them. This scene, however, gains a much more symbolic meaning when considered along the lines “you complete me” and “you and I are destined to do this forever.” Another visual strategy used in this scene is that the image of the upside-down Joker is turned around a second time to an “upright” position. Hence, both the Joker and the image of the Joker are upside down. Here, the Joker looks at Batman as well as the audience at an angle that creates an illusion of normality. He is a mirror image, though not from right to left but from top to bottom. Just like with a mirror image, the audience has to remind themselves that the Joker is actually “the wrong way round.”

Regarding this union of opposites, it is worth remembering Batman’s affinity to becoming the anti-hero, the vigilante, the terrorist who will “out-terrorize” the villains. Croci (2016, p. 179) points out that “the shift towards vigilantism produces an anti-hero that is virtually indistinguishable from the criminal he is supposed to fight.” Taking into account Miller’s Dark Knight macrotext that spans over twenty years, and primarily focusing on Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002), and Holy Terror (2011), Croci states that within Miller’s graphic novels, “this implies the deconstruction of the binary dichotomy between hero and villain” (Croci, 2016, p. 179). Therefore, according to Croci (2016, p. 179), “the ethical tension is resolved by the hero appropriating the same mind-set and attitudes of the terrorists he opposes. In other words, by the hero becoming a terrorist himself.” The Joker is aware that Batman is not only the reason for his existence, the bringer of madness through his rational construction from a deterministic point of view, but also that he is closer to Batman as a mind-set more than Batman realizes. After all, the first strategy Batman uses to understand criminals at the beginning of Batman Begins is working with criminals. In some ways, he even becomes a “criminal” himself. The Joker wants to give Batman the little push he believes is necessary to make anyone as “crazy” as he is. He wants Batman to take off his mask, his symbolic carrier of rational and self-reflexive identity, to become one with chaos. As Berger (2019, p. 60) points out, what the Joker finally realizes as his desire is for Batman to also realize that “insofar as Batman’s identity is constituted by an adherence to order [. . .], he doesn’t represent the people whom he casts as good.” According to Berger (2019, pp. 60–61), the Joker rightly points out that “Batman is not obviously on the same side as the law enforcement, let alone an officer of it. [. . .] Whereas Batman sees himself as an exampler of the citizenry, the Joker casts him as aberrant and outside.”

Despite the Joker’s efforts, Batman is true to his construction, regardless of his affinity to the actual law force, or the criminal mind-set for that matter. As the story progresses, Batman’s personal search for self-identity expands, becoming a construction that subsumes Gotham city entirely. As Batman’s existence deterministically becomes inextricable from the city and its villains, he becomes political, taking on “a role that creates political order from the ground up,” as Berger (2019, p. 63) puts it. “Batman serves here to construct the very constitution of Gotham,” because “Wayne understands that the true role of Batman is to serve as a symbol, and it is efficacy of the symbolic that effects political order” (Berger, 2019, p. 63). The result of Batman’s construction of Gotham becomes truly apparent in The Dark Knight Rises, where Bane, another mirror image of Batman, so to say, shows him the consequences of his failed structure.

The Dark Knight Rises: The Truth, The Lie and The Recknoning of Modernity

In The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the new villain Bane continues the Joker’s great quest. As his gradual deconstruction by Bane progresses, Batman comes into view as being responsible for everything wrong about the present state of Gotham, as a representative of all “evil” pointed out by postmodernity.

The Dark Knight concludes with Harvey Dent becoming a villain, losing faith in justice after half of his face is burned and the death of Rachel Dawes, loved by both him and Bruce. This leads Batman to kill Dent and take the blame for everything Dent does after becoming a villain. The Dark Knight Rises begins 8 years later. Gordon and Batman have enacted the Dent Act by lying about Harvey Dent’s true identity and have managed to put almost all mafia-related criminals behind bars. Batman, bearing the blame for Dent’s crimes, has been in hiding for years and Gordon has been trying to make Gotham a better place by making people believe in this Act using their belief in the honesty, purity and hope represented by the once-radiant District Attorney Harvey Dent. According to Mastracci (2014, p. 381), if people had known the kind of man Harvey Dent was in his last days, support for the Act would have decreased substantially. Therefore, one of the most problematic aspects of the Dent Act is about “truth,” which is a fundamental junction point between modernity and postmodernity.

Gordon is very uncomfortable with how he lied to the people of Gotham and how this lie not only cost Batman his reputation but also the values Batman used to represent. Plagued by guilt caused by the lie, he confronts John Blake, the police officer accusing him of abandoning his principles, by saying “there’s a point far out there when the structures fail you. . . The rules become shackles, letting the bad guy get ahead (01:38:50).” On the other hand, Alfred says to Bruce, “Maybe it’s time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day (00:58:30).” The guilt from lies told for a better world and this foundation of Batman’s modern construction based on lies constitutes the field in which postmodernity makes its most rigorous critiques of modernity. Here, the criticism is directed especially at metanarratives and linear historiography. Ironically, this construction of lies not only establishes modernity but also produces postmodernity itself in the way postmodernity opposes linear historiography as metanarratives essentially constructed of lies.

Seixas (2012, p. 867) summarizes the postmodern stance against history and the idea of progress as metanarratives as follows; History interprets texts from the past as a dialogical interplay within the contexts they were produced. Those “contexts” are forever expanding and ultimately become grand historical narratives that connect the historian, that is, the subject that constructs histories, to the object of his study. The larger context connecting the historian to his object of study is also constantly “under construction.” Ultimately, the historian himself is a historical being, and therefore cannot claim to have an objective stance. Consequently, the idea of progress cannot generate genuine historical progress.

Following the modern idea of progress, Gordon and Batman have also embarked on a kind of “historical construction” in anticipation of a better Gotham. However, both Gordon’s and Batman’s personal constructions are closely intertwined with the history they created. Thus, as Bane simultaneously deconstructs the values cherished and represented by Batman, he also irreversibly brings out the “truth” and ruins all possibilities of a better Gotham. On the other hand, Gordon’s words on structures becoming a letdown and turning into shackles evoke Max Weber’s definition of the “iron cage” regarding modern bureaucracy, which is one of the greatest constructs of modernity and rationality that eventually lead to the “disenchantment of the world” (Weber, 2005).

In the last movie of the Trilogy, both Bane and Ra’s al Ghul openly accuse Batman of his failure to make Gotham a decent place. When Bane throws Bruce into “the pit” so that he can watch his beloved Gotham’s annihilation from a TV in his cell, Bane tells Batman that he will destroy Gotham when he truly understands the depths of his failure, and only then will he permit Bruce to die.

Once again, we see postmodernity’s incredulity towards all modern constructions, especially politics and sociology as metanarratives. It is not merely Batman that fails, but the political system as a whole and a means of creating order. Since Batman is the creator of that order through different strategies of legitimacy, he is also accountable for the failure of its construction.

Winterhalter (2015, p. 1037) states that the whole point of Bane’s revolution is showing Bruce the consequences he and Gordon should have faced had they not lied at the end of The Dark Knight. According to Winterhalter (2015, p. 1038), Bane is actually telling Bruce that he never could truly fix the socio-economical conditions that had rendered crime attractive in the first place. Socio-economical inequality is still there and will “seep back through the cracks of society.” Winterhalter (2015) highlights that Bane is simply a result of these consequences [. . .] So Bane seizes this opportunity and uses it to his advantage, “because it serves his broader purpose of vindicating Ra’s al Ghul’s idea that the city cannot be saved” (p. 1038).

Superheroes generally do not fight for structural change. Yet, Gotham’s villains are so intrinsically tied to Gotham’s decadence that a fight against the criminals in the name of justice inevitably becomes a structural fight. Because the existence of Gotham, Batman and the villains depend on each other, any attempt to bring Gotham justice is met with a more ruthless attempt to preserve corruption, and vice versa. The city, the villains and Batman—as both the “creator” and protector of the city—change in reaction to each other, making the quest more hopeless. Ultimately, the only way to get to the bottom of Gotham’s decadence might really be its total annihilation along with everything it contains—including Batman. This might be what makes Batman sort of a romantic, tragic superhero to begin with. For his continual existence, Gotham continually needs to be decadent as well. It is a battle he is destined to lose, and if he were to win, his whole existence would be unnecessary. So when Bane tells Batman he is permitted to die when Gotham is finally in ashes, it can also be considered as the symbolic death of Batman’s construction of himself.

Through Bruce’s escape scene, Christopher Nolan connects the end of his Dark Knight saga to its beginning, both visually and thematically, in terms of the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of his own hero through the metaphor of “rising.” In Batman Begins, Bruce chooses the bat to be his “elemental, terrifying” symbol because he falls into a well that opens to a cave full of bats as a child, is attacked by them, and is saved by his father descending into the well with a rope. After this incident, Bruce starts seeing nightmares about bats and his father tells him that the bats had attacked him because they feared him. Later on, his parents are murdered when they go to the theater. Little Bruce is scared of the bat costumes in the play, so they go out to the alley behind the theater for him to calm down. This incident makes Bruce feel guilt and shame over his parents’ deaths, and his guilt coming together with the anger he feels towards the murderer become catalysts for his construction of the Batman persona as was discussed above. In The Dark Knight Rises, the only way for him to escape the pit is to take a leap of faith—which practically means a leap of death as he is supposed to climb very high on a well similar to the one he fell through as a child, and make a very long jump that seems humanly impossible. There are no guards or locks that await him at the opening as long as he is able to make the jump. Many people have fallen and died while trying, with the exception of a child born in the pit (who turns out to be Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter) that managed to escape during a riot. After another nightmare that he sees in the pit with the bats in the cave and his father descending to save him uttering the words “why do we fall?”, the wise old man in the pit says to him “How can you run faster than possible? Fight longer than possible without the most important input of the spirit—the fear of death?” Bruce replies with “I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns. There’s no one there to save it.” “Then make the jump,” says the old man. “How?” asks Bruce, and the old man replies, “As the child did. Without the rope. Then, fear will find you again (01:54:34).” As Bruce slowly makes his way up the well, inmates incessantly chanting “Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise!”, Christopher Nolan creates a striking visual connection with the first movie. With bats flying out of a hole in the well just before he makes the jump that symbolizes his “spiritual salvation,” Nolan ties his narrative’s two ends together, finalizing Bruce’s story with a catharsis both for the main character, and the audience. And through this jump, through overcoming death by embracing his fear of it, he is able to both save Gotham, and himself, by being able to become Bruce Wayne again which had become a meaningless shell for Batman as he suppressed all his fears and instincts under his strong persona. Ironically enough, J. Campbell (2020, p. 361) states that “the well is a metaphor for the subconscious,” making Bane throwing Bruce/Batman in the pit become the psychoanalytical equivalent of how Bane’s whole quest is about making Batman face the consequences of his own construction, by taking him to the very origin of it. And when he finally takes a real, good look at his own construction, when he finally sees himself and his hero persona as what they truly are, he is emancipated. Batman will continue to live as a symbol with all the values and ideals it represents, as is apparent in the last scene of the movie where we see the young and idealist police officer John Blake entering the bat cave, but Bruce Wayne as a person can finally be free—the person behind the mask no longer matters.

Christopher Nolan comments on the film’s ending in an interview by Scott Foundas for Film Comment magazine in 2013, saying, “the open-ended nature of the film is simply a very important thematic idea [. . .] that Batman is a symbol. [. . .] Batman was not important as a man, he’s more than that. He’s a symbol, and the symbol lives on (Foundas, 2013, p. 11).”

Another more subtle visual strategy Christopher Nolan uses regarding the theme of “rising” is the way he uses low-angle shots. Unlike the first two films of the trilogy, Nolan visually positions Bane higher than Batman throughout The Dark Knight Rises, using a significantly lower angle than he used for any other villain in the trilogy. But after Bruce “rises” and escapes the pit, he is finally positioned higher than Bane when they face each other again. Therefore, Batman/Bruce slowly rises above eye-level in the course of the movie following the narrative.

Returning to Batman’s relationship to Gotham and its villains as the embodiment of the ongoing struggle and negotiation between modernity and postmodernity, it can be said that overall, Batman’s heroism becomes apparent exactly at a point of total despair. According to Johnson (2014, p. 965), despite all of his flaws, he represents one characteristic that makes him a true hero: “he is able to confront the worst face of Gotham without abandoning the city to poverty, crime, and despair.” Johnson believes that what distinguishes Batman from his enemies is never losing faith in Gotham’s potential. It is “this continued hope in the people of his city which sets Nolan’s Batman apart as an appropriate, if flawed, hero for a postmodern city like Gotham” (Johnson, 2014, p. 965). This faith in human potential is most definitely not a postmodern characteristic, but a modern one. Thereby, what eventually saves this “postmodern world” from perishing within its fragmented existence materializes in Nolan’s Batman through modern reactions.

Habermas (1997) had famously said that modernity was an “unfinished project (p. 38).” And this “unfinishedness” is bound to keep disturbing us as Koçak (1992, p. 10) states, showing us signs that remind us of our incomplete and fragmented state. The tense and unsettling narrative of the relationship between the hero, the villain and their surroundings in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy once again shows what the unfinished project of modernity means to us today, decades after the relationship between modernity and postmodernity became a subject of a heated discussion within the intellectual world. Batman’s struggle helps us understand the ground we stand on in this postmodern world, making us acutely aware of the contradictions, chaos and “madness” of our own lives, and the sense of being incomplete ourselves. Identifying with Joker and Bane, we can finally direct our own discontent and anger towards the unfinished project of modernity that has forsaken us, leaving us fragmented and confused in a chaotic world. And identifying with Batman, we attempt to collect and bring together the pieces of ourselves and the world, wanting to believe there still might be a narrative, an ideal, and a reality bigger than us, desperately searching for meaning. Postmodernity’s reckoning with modernity is still far from being over, just as modernity’s reckoning with itself is far from being complete, and they are bound to each other now more than ever.

In conclusion, Batman truly is a modern hero, from the moment he was born into the universe of comics to this day, and still bears and keeps on fighting for those modern values in a postmodern world. And he is not alone. Since the beginning of the century, other superheroes have migrated to the big screen, each embodying and fighting for both similar and different modern values such as Captain America and Superman, who demonstrate what it means to be “human” through their super-human adventures, who convince us that science, humanism, order, freedom, and above all, hope is what it takes to prevail. And just like Nolan’s Batman, they are acutely aware of their own conditions in “the new world,” and the new world’s discontent towards them. They are all judged for the values they represent by society, pondering on their own mistakes, their own historical role in the current state of things, on their own worth and value, but never losing faith in the core values they represent even when they lose faith in themselves as the carriers of those values. And they all believe in the potential of humanity in general to achieve great things.

In this context, Nolan’s trilogy is fundamentally a socio-political, socio-economical, socio-psychological and ontological commentary on the postmodern world, and the position of the self within that world. The movies simultaneously show us how we tragically failed in the last century through the dark and gloomy atmosphere of Gotham, and remind us of the possibility of finding and creating meaning yet again—of the hidden potential and the power we all carry within us as rational, ethical, and idealistic “heroes” of our own personal journeys as social and political beings. After all, this is what the ending of the trilogy tells us—that the person behind the mask no longer matters, that we can all be Batman if we have enough faith to shake off the cynicism towards rationality, idealism, history, metanarratives and humanity in general that postmodernity brought on standing on the ruins of a seemingly failed modernity, and make the leap. We have failed terribly, but we can still pick up the fragments of ourselves and the world that we created, and rise. And we can do that, not through wishing away all of our mistakes as the sins of modernity, but by going back to the origins and courageously taking a good look at the disfigured monster we created, by owning up to our mistakes, and taking what we have learned from those mistakes with us as we continue with our journey. Through Batman’s relationship with Gotham, we sense, if not learn, that there is still hope for a better world, and we all have a part to carry out. And this requires a very “modern” mind-set where we position ourselves as active participants in the construction of meaning and history alike. Thus, when the widespread, even worldwide, acceptance and popularity of this new cinematic Batman is considered, with all those “old” values that he represents, it can be assumed that the modern values have not come to an end with the emergence of postmodernity. The answer to Lyotard’s (1979) question, “where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?” (pp. xxiv–xxv) is not, in fact, a new platform of legitimacy, but modernity and modern values with an ironic, structural inevitability.