preview

Heterosexuality In The Dark Knight

Decent Essays

The Dark Knight, a fictional film, portrays the havoc that takes place on the citizens of Gotham City as Batman, also known as Bruce Wayne, tries to fight injustice while moral dilemmas are being thrown at him. The struggles that he face ties into hegemonic norms, which are the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group (Dr. Burke). This includes the Joker’s challenging the hegemony, the heroic face, Batman’s heterosexuality and male power identity, and Rachel Dawes’s assisting Bruce’s hegemony in anyway that she can. The Dark Knight is not just a tale of good and evil, but a complex puzzle where the citizens of Gotham are blaming Batman for the deaths of innocent people and policemen. While the Joker, …show more content…

Harvey Dent. Batman is the protagonist in this film, but it weakens the idea of the hero who can appear heroic. In order to save Gotham, he believes that Dent can do the job because he sees him as the perfect form of heroism. However, Dent saw this act with the mask of evil. As a result, good couldn’t emerge since the film portrayed the mask as no hero without a mask. Dent earned his heroic figure when he punches the mobster in the face during open court. Ironically, Batman shows himself as vulnerable when the dog bites him with his protective armor. This distinction between Dent and Batman’s vulnerability demonstrates that no one can be a true hero. In contrast with Batman, Dent’s heroism doesn’t involve the experience of loss, but heroic through the identification of goodness. However, his flipping coin that his father gave him introduces the possibly loss into his activities by producing his own luck. This demonstrates his invulnerability by becoming a killer in order to inflict his own experiences of loss on others. When Dent dies, Batman comes in the picture as being heroic because he agrees to be evil when he took responsibility for Dent’s act. This achievement is an act of courage because it leaves him without any recognition of his heroism as he accepts evil as his form of appearance rather than Dent who wanted to be heroic (ejumpcut.org). Overall, this hegemony was based upon who can …show more content…

With every challenge he faces, he demonstratively consolidates his superiority while wearing his costume, denoting his personal sharpness and aggressiveness. Batman’s identity is so tied with male and heterosexual hegemony that any threat to it feels like an attack. This relationship is identified when Batman lost his own parents from a homicidal maniac who was a threat to social order. This explains why Batman reasserts his authority by beating the Joker, a character who seemingly has a “feminine” mind and a “male” body that could be interpreted as a reminder to Batman of the action performed by his father. Batman’s continual beating of the Joker demonstrates strength, which illustrates the dominance of the male and heterosexual hegemony in the society according to the patriarchal guidelines. Batman wants to undertake the Joker in order to prove his physical strength to get the Joker into submission. Batman tries to make his male and heterosexuality gender norms into reality, thus justifying his existence (Peaslee, 140). This assists him in making his normative male and heterosexuality into a powerful patriarchal hegemony that allows him to exceed his

Get Access