Rhetoric as the Opposite of Heroism

Batman talks a lot in The Dark Knight. He didn't always. Witness Tim Burton and Michael Keaton's quasi-silent take on the character in 1989. The best and most effective thing Keaton said in that movie was: "I'm Batman." In superhero movies, rhetoric — the art of persuasion through speech — is always the opposite of heroism, because right action in these films is always self-evident; when confronted with a choice between right actions, a superhero will figure out a way to choose both. (Think of Harvey Dent "making his own luck" with a double-headed coin.) If you have to persuade people that your cause is just, then you aren't actually a superhero. You're just pretending to be one.

The ordinariness of persuasion explains why it can be exploited by villains. Heath Ledger's Joker is scarier than Jack Nicholson's because, beneath a patina of crazy, he sounds reasonable. He persuades the bank robbers to kill one another so they can get a bigger cut, even though this means they all risk being done in by one another; he persuades the Mafiosi to employ him to eliminate Batman, even though this means they will all be in his pocket. He uses blackmail and violence, too, but these are complementary rhetorical strategies. He's not just a psychopath — he's a sophist. Witness the way he tips the unstable Dent — a man whose success as a lawyer depends on his ability to make convincing-sounding arguments — over the edge into mania. (Nolan's Memento is likewise a movie about the problem of being convinced by one's own rhetoric.)

The best moral choices in the film are made without rhetorical accompaniment, or contrary to it. On one ferry, the upstanding citizens vote to blow up the convicts, but when the loudest agitator is faced with the task of pressing the button, he silently returns to his seat, having failed to convince himself. On the other ferry, a criminal convinces the guards to give him the detonator, saying: "You don't know how to take a life." The implication is that he will blow up the other ferry. Instead, he silently throws the detonator out the window.

That there is a lot of speechifying in the film by the good guys, too — including Batman, and, somewhat laboriously, the Commissioner — should clue us in to something. Despite the gadgetry and the explosions, The Dark Knight is not actually a traditional superhero movie. When it comes to its heroes, in fact, it is profoundly anti-heroic. Instead, it elevates to heroic status the ordinary mass of Gothamites, who, in other films, would count as nameless victims. It depends, in the end, on the kindness of strangers.