The Land of Unlikeness

In the latest installment of the Batman series, the Joker has been wonderfully distilled to the essence of the Satanic. He is radically evil for this reason only: He does not care about money (like mere criminals), but he only cares to corrupt those around him, to show that they are just as vile as he is, and that goodness is always a ruse. Kant said that only a good will is truly good. The Joker aims to prove that this good will exists nowhere. The movie in large part proves that he is right, but for those of us who are still trying to be good, this is strangely inconsequential. As dark as the movie is, and Heath Ledger’s perfomance as the Joker is riveting, his character more often elicits laughs than gasps (of which there are a few, but not all supplied by the bad guys). The Joker is a great character because he reminds us of Satan’s basic predicament. He has refused to bend his knee to a “good” God, and has dedicated his life to distorting those who are stupid and weak enough to spend half their lives kneeling and praising. Basically, then, he is lonely and wants company. The modern genesis of this, of course, has to be traced back to Milton’s Satan, who is sexy, funny, courageous, and bold, and who, by comparison, makes the the characters of Jesus and God painfully boring (this point was driven home again during a 10 hour marathon group reading of Paradise Lost). Of course Satan does this through lying, but he doesn’t just tell us things that aren’t true (at that level, he more often tells the truth, all the better to lie to you with, cf. Genesis 3)—He reveals to us the ways in which we’ve been lying to ourselves all the while, leaving us to shrug our shoulders and say, “might as well give in, since I’ve already compromised myself (in Paradise Lost this effect is gained by having Eve dream of her sin before she actually commits it). In the latest movie, The Dark Knight, the Joker gives Batman, who is supposed to be interrogating him, a drawn out ethics lesson which powerfully distinguishes people like him, who have rejected the notion of rules, from the petty mobsters, cops, and politicians, who simply follow rules that they have made up to most benefit themselves. The theater roared in support for this maniac, yet we also cheered when two normal people refused to save their own skins by killing innocent people. What really comes across in these modern day Satanic Fausts is how much we need them, and how much we identify with their struggle. During his ethical speech to Batman the Joker chides Batman for holding one to one final rule (presumably his refusal to kill, his insistence on abiding by the lawcourts and rules of justice, despite Gotham’s intractable corruption), telling him he’ll never be free till he breaks it. Something in us knows he is right, and the movie more or less agrees with him. And yet there is something satisfying about seeing the weakness of the superhero engendered by his own “good will,” combined with the jouissance of the transgressor who hogs all the enjoyment by zeroing in, like a zen master, on this one weakness, and even seeing ourselves split to the core by this struggle that, as the Joker himself says, quite seems to be eternal. A movie like this doesn’t make one want to be like the Joker, and it also doesn’t make one want to be like Batman. It simply makes one thrill to be right up against the impossibility of someone winning all your battles for you, which, ostensibly, is the draw of a superhero flick. But in conflating the Christian universe with that of Marvel comics, one always has to remember that the latter is Manichean, and that the God of the former has to be accorded both the good will of the hero and the enjoyment of his bedeviler.