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: 13 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 Satanreferences to femininityreferences to disabilityand 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.