New Evil - The Joker in ‘The Dark Knight‘ as a Prototype of the Post-September 11-Villain

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject Film Science, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: My thesis ‘New Evil. The Joker in The Dark Knight as a Post-September 11-Villain‘ establishes a picture of Gotham City that is more ‘realistic‘ than in previous Batman films. The population of this city is realised in three parts: the mob consists of African Americans and other ‘Ethnic‘-Americans, the JetSet is almost completely light-skinned. In between one finds Gothams police, mixed Ethnic/black and white, but also known to be corrupt. Indeed, the film follows subtle anti-state-sentiments in making the three highest officers in Gotham ‘Ethnic‘-Americans: Garcia, Loeb and Surrillo. Only a disfunctional state makes the nightly operations of a vigilante like Batman - a person, who decides for himself what is good and what is bad - necessary. The predecessors of the Joker are the great villains of film- and culture history, starting with Shakespeares Iago up to slashers like Freddy Krueger. The Joker clearly does not fit into the three-part pattern in the first part of my paper. His malice is sourced by four different strands: references to Satan references to femininity references to disability and references to a terrorism clearly related to the one of Al-Qaeda and its supporter groups. In establishing a villain along these lines, the producers of the film address a mainstream which is in their view reactionary, latently racist and anti-emancipatory. Though the film makes exceptional statements (eg. Morgan Freeman), evil in their eyes is either black, disabled or feminin. In its displayed reaction to the new threat of the Joker - Batman sets up a surveillance systems that monitors all citizens of Gotham - the film can be interpreted as a defense of the Bush policies after 9/11.