Or is that -- perhaps just our imagination...?
What has told us that the shadowy things that lurk behind the doors of our minds is slimy and to be paid no attention?
The Black Forest of our childhood fairy tales lurks in our minds -- but is it really filled with old witches waiting to eat us, or perhaps fairies waiting to gnaw at our bones? What if it was merely...a perspective we carried, to help us feel safe?
Day is good, safe.
Night is uneasy and unsafe.
But is it really?
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
But what if The Shadow was merely -- us? A side of ourselves we daren't explore for fear we may find something that rules and justice and what we each believe is right cannot withstand? What if -- just what if -- we did hold up that mirror and look to the other side? Our shadows do know, and we make ourselves happy by pretending it's not there, or perhaps accepting it...but still looking no further than the glimmer darkling on the surface.
The newest Batman movie,The Dark Knight, begins with a bang and shove as stern as a stick of dynamite that forces, non-stop, us to look at that dark side. What is good? What is wrong? What is noble? What is sinister? Powered by a stellar soundtrack, the whole movie is like a wild ride on a roller coaster barely kept in check by engineering and physics.
Batman himself was born of fears, of things that flap and lurk in the damp dark of our minds; he knows what evil lurks in his heart, as he's seen it, and he -- thinks -- he's confronted it and can thus become the salvation of humanity, ensconced in Gotham city.
Thinking he's delved as deeply as he can go into his own dark side, as we all would like to think we have, he discovers, through the unnervingly well-meaning Joker, is that he's only scratched the surface, gone only as deeply as made him comfortable. He only thinks he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men -- and himself.
Through this conflict -- between self and deeper self, through Batman and The Joker (superbly and sinisterly played by Heath Ledger who manages to simultaneously show a tortured soul for whom we can't help but have sympathy, even if uneasily given), we're forced to look dead-on into that shadow side.
A man, The Joker says, shows his true self in his last moments.
We'd all like to think we know our "true selves". We carry what we think they are around with us like a beloved wallet or purse -- but isn't that belief just a set of makeup no different than what The Joker wears? Isn't it just a mask, no different than Batman's? What would happen if we lifted and and were forced to confront what's shimmering beneath it?
In The Dark Knight, we're forced -- with the same bang and shove with which the movie opens -- to confront that. Who is the true antagonist? Who is the true outlaw? The true villain?
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, Harvey Dent, Gotham's District Attorney, says.
But who gives the label -- do we give it to ourselves, or do other people? What makes a hero? Someone who lurks in the dark, using violence to tear down the criminal network of a city? Or is it someone who lurks in the dark, using violence to help us find our own heroic selves we may have overlooked?
What exactly is the anarchy The Joker says he likes to introduce? What is the chaos of which he speaks? He says it's fear. And it's fear that makes us shy away from that shadow place, because in that shadow place lies anarchy, chaos -- and a world in which there may not be any rules...something The Joker has come to realize and live by; Batman says he only has one.
But to that -- what then is true freedom? Do the rules of "justice" and "good" perhaps create a rigid structure that disallows flexibility and truly living life to its fullest? Or is living without them, living in a state of...organized...chaos and anarchy true freedom the better way to live? But is it because it carries such deep and far-reaching power to choose to live that way the reason why we keep it under a tight lid?
But what we -- like Batman finds -- is that lid is not airtight. It's pocked and nicked, and thus unsealed. Easily flipped open. And The Joker, in his trixter way shows us that's the true joke: the control we believe we have can be unraveled at any moment simply by shaking us up and having that lurking anarchy and chaos in us foam up and over the rim of our container.
Batman is The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent is known as Gotham's White Knight; but anyone familiar with the comics (and even the fairly lousy film with Tommy Lee portraying the same part), becomes Two Face -- a man ravaged by rage and revenge. Dark becomes white, white becomes dark. Where does the overlap occur?
The Joker, gleefully sinister to us because he knows this secret -- that we all carry him inside of us, we all have both white and dark knights in us, we all have Jokers lurking between them, becoming the bridge. We've just tricked ourselves into believing we have it all ordered, under lock and key.
But do we?
The psychology behind this latest movie immerses you in these questions; we all carry the potential for having the explosion that occurs when an "unstoppable force meets and immovable object" -- as The Joker happily points is what occurs when we're forced to face our opposite side.
But are Batman and The Joker really opposites? What is light and what is dark? Is Batman really any different than The Joker -- or is it that he's just barely keeping that anarchy and chaos in check?
Or is he?
Who is Gotham's -- our -- true white knight? Don't we all carry a Joker, a Batman and a Two Face in us?
....Or are they all the same person?
Can we really count on ourselves, when pushed with a bang and a shove into a situation, to do the "right thing" -- ? We'd all like to think so. But the fear we also carry is that we may find that we cannot, and have someone else pop out of us, like a clown from a Jack-in-the-Box who takes over, and takes control.
...takes control away from us, even? Or is it perhaps that is our true "control", and we're having our true self be revealed to us?
Is the Joker really the villian? Or is he just...what we find unsettling in us? He shows us we fear true freedom, and he swoops in with laughter and frankness to force us to question our beliefs we've sewn neatly into our minds to keep us sane.
Or...is he perhaps the true sane person in the film? He views the world with a child's frankness and clarity bound up with a genius and an unspeakable sorrow. Life isn't just Disneyland. Yes, it's there -- but there is also soot, grime, excrement and violence. And like Dorothy trying to get to the Emerald City -- to get home -- what he forces us to see, is that in order to get to where we truly want, to get to our true freedom, we must also embrace our shadows and the dark. We all have two faces -- or even three or four.
The true sinister thing is not The Joker or his "insanity", but the realization that we are not who we'd like to think we are. He forces us, just as he forces Batman, to see that he is us, and we are him, just as we are Batman, Commissioner Gordon and Rachel Dawes. The entire film is peopled with facets of our own minds, parts and bits we do our best to avoid seeing, but perhaps still stumble over daily. We are the dark, the light, the innocent and fearless. We are the fearful, the strong and the confident.
But isn't it that potpourri of ropes that bind us up and make us who we are? Aren't, then, the shadowy murky parts of us equally good -- necessary?
The Joker pulls us into those overlooked depths with the power of innocence and the terrible power of the sun, and it's through that light we see the dark parts to which we have, until now, been blissfully blind.
No, you say. That's not me! I would never fall into that way of thinking! True freedom is not in anarchy and chaos!
But...what if -- you might? What if...just what if...it was -- ?
There is no such thing as control; it's smoke and mirrors we keep alive. All it takes, as The Joker tells Batman, is a little push. He forces us to ask ourselves, or at least confront the question of, does the control come from stopping just before we go over the edge -- or does it perhaps by stepping off of it?
That, my dear readers, is the real joke: we do not truly see what we think we see.
And that's what makes the whole movie so terrifyingly, deliciously unsettling.
The good?
The bad?
...or perhaps a shadow or reflection of the same?
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