TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Sven Wilson on The Dark Knight:

I doubt I will see the new Dark Knight. The last one was disgusting enough. I do not have a problem when filmmakers undertake a study of dark subject matter, including examining characters with violent mental illness. The world has a lot of darkness and film, as well as other arts, can cast light into that darkness, or at least help us see it and know it. Many stories, from the serious to the whimsical, center on a battle between good and evil. Nothing new here. But what Dark Knight did was revel in darkness. It celebrated it. That Batman is a hero set out to fight against evil is of little consequence against this backdrop.

Um, what?

No, it did not. The Dark Knight is a look into the terrorism that we’ve dealt with since September 11th, the urge to break our own moral code in order to defeat a greater evil, and ultimately, whether that morality is something we will ditch at the first moment something challenges it. That’s what the Joker believed and represents. If the Joker is right, humanity must be controlled. The Joker’s theory was ultimately proved wrong when the two ferries—one with “regular” people, the other with criminals—both refused to detonate explosives in the other ferry to save their own lives.

(Side note: interestingly, this debate is very close to the debate between two Confucian scholars, Mengzi and Xunzi. Xunzi argued that human nature is inherently bad and must be cultivated into something good, whereas Mengzi believed that our natural inclination is toward goodness.)

There are plenty of movies that revel in violence or evil, but The Dark Knight certainly isn’t one of them. The Joker’s actions are repulsive and depraved and that’s how they are portrayed. The film doesn’t include the Joker’s crimes to amuse people—it was to explore these themes. It’s ridiculous for Wilson to argue that it “revels” in it, let alone that it may cause violent tendencies in people.