The Dark Inquisitor

Please enjoy this guest post by Jared Bauer, looking at the literary and metaphysical origins of The Dark Knight. Like it? Then tell us in the comments!

Let’s assume for a second that everything the Joker says is nonsense. After all, he is the Joker. And what does the Joker do? Well, joke, of course. But why does he joke? Part of the reason that The Dark Knight has raised the bar for its genre is because, unlike its contemporaries, it dares to answer this question. Why did Jack Nicholson joke? Because the acid accident made him crazy. Why did Doc Ock go on a rampage to destroy New York? Because the mechanical tentacles made him crazy. Up until The Dark Knight, it generally just stopped there.

Simultaneously the most harrowing and the most absorbing aspect of Heath Ledger’s Joker is that the Nolan Brothers did not equip him with madness. They armed him with a philosophy. He jokes because everything is trivial. He is pure nihilism. As if Nolan was writing a thesis for his character, the Joker makes his grand entry:

Bank Manager: Criminals in this town used to believe in things: Honor. Respect. What do you believe in, huh? What do you believe in?!

Joker: I believe that whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you….. stranger.

What does it mean? Nothing. What does the Joker believe in? Nothing. Mere Anarchy.

It is precisely this philosophy that served as a perpetual source of inner torment for one of the world’s greatest novelists, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Quite possibly the most famous autonomous chapter in western literary history , and a milestone of modern thought, is “The Grand Inquisitor,” part of Dostoevsky’s magnum opus, The Brothers Karamazov. It’s about a 30 minute read, but if 19th century Russian Lit isn’t your thing, don’t sweat it, I’ll explain everything on the way.

The poem “The Grand Inquisitor” is delivered by Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, an over-educated, pedantic, atheistic scholar who would probably idolize Ayn Rand if he were alive today. It takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. People are being hung from ceilings, the torture racks are breaking joints, and the screams are echoing through the extravagantly expensive churches. All is good. That is, until Jesus Himself descends from Heaven and starts healing the sick and reviving dead children. When the Grand Inquisitor sees that Jesus has returned, he incarcerates him. The bulk of the short poem illustrates the Grand Inquisitor telling Jesus that mankind is too ignoble to adhere to his teachings. In order to maintain order and keep the masses dumb and happy, the Inquisitor must inhibit the “freedom, free reason, and science” of Christ’s teachings in order to save the human race from the “horrors of slavery and confusion.”

For those of you who haven’t read it, stay with me. For those of you who have read it, I hope I haven’t offended you too much. Don’t worry, I’ll dive in to the specifics soon.

“I’m an agent of Chaos. And you know the thing about Chaos? It’s fair.”

The cold, cosmic, fairness of reality that the Joker embodies correlates with the forces that the Inquisitor seeks to inhibit. But not only does the Joker embody chaos, he brings it out in his victims.

“But dost Thou know that for the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Thee and will strive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will follow him, crying, “Who can compare with this beast? He has given us fire from heaven!” Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? “Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!” (Dostoevsky 252-253).

Morality only exists when mankind has their fill of what Ivan calls ‘earthly bread’ (material possessions, physical desires, comforts, dolla billz). Mankind is entirely too fallible to live exclusively through Christ (what Ivan calls ‘The Bread of Heaven’ or ‘Heavenly Bread’). Christ “didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?”( Dostoevsky 253).

Starting to sound familiar? The Joker embodies this dismal truth and exploits the innate, base lawlessness in all humanity. Take, for example, the scene when the Joker burns the pyramid of money and Chechen’s authority with it.

Joker: “Tell your men they work for me now”

Chechen: “They won’t work for a freak like you”

Chechen asserts a moral standard that he and his gang follow. However deplorable it may be, their crime syndicate believes in something. They kill, rape, steal, etc. for money. Lofty, perhaps; but it is their Ideal.

Joker: “How about we cut you up and feed you to your pooches? Then we’ll show you how loyal a hungry dog really is!”

But the Joker is not really speaking about the dogs, of course, but of Chechen’s gang. Just as the Inquisitor knows that there can be no adherence to an ideal without earthly, material possessions, the Joker proves to Chechen that his men are no different than his dogs, who will literally swallow their beliefs and loyalties in order to maintain their “earthly bread.”

Humanity’s ability to uphold the divine doctrine of Good and Evil, of Right and Wrong is servile at best, for their dedication to any moral structure is conditional upon the fulfillment of physical needs. When there is no material, there is no morality.

“They’re only as good as the world lets them be.”

So how does the Inquisitor attempt to remedy this problem? He provides them with “All that man seeks on earth, that is: someone to bow down to, someone to take over his conscience and a means for uniting everyone at last into a common, concordant, and incontestable anthill” (Dostoevsky 257).

Humans, in their infinite imperfection, require a patriarch to lift the burden of choice from their aching shoulders. In Ivan Karamazov’s poem, the Inquisitor fills this role- removing the choice of what to believe in, and indoctrinating them with a sense of objective morality. In the Dark Knight, the Joker strips them of any such reassuring authority. He leaves a deep footprint on this incontestable anthill and spreads panic and disorder among the ‘ants’ that inhabit Gotham City. The Joker reduces humans to their, bare, primal, and lawless state of existential freedom.

“Freedom, free reason, and science will lead [the masses] into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves; others, unruly but feeble, will destroy each other.” (Dostoevsky 258)

What does this sound like?

Joker: “Their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. You’ll see- I’ll show you…when the chips are down, these civilized people… they’ll eat each other.”

And thus, the Joker exploits the falseness of any moral structure through his terrorist acts. When the Joker threatens to blow up a hospital, men who could once be labeled as ‘decent’ drop all moral standards and fall in to a state of anthropophagy (that is, until the ferry incident at the end, which I will address later).

“I Believe in Harvey Dent.”

I’m just as sick of Christ imagery in cinema as the next guy. Believe me.

Luckily, The Dark Knight manages to offer a fresh, relevant, and compelling take on the Christ image. Harvey Dent resembles the attempt to live a life embracing the existence of a God, and requiring only the spiritual bread of Christ to endure reality. His strict devotion to the code of justice embodies hope based on an unshakable spiritual Ideal, not unlike the Word of Christ.

However, the Grand Inquisitor upholds that “in the name of heavenly bread tens of thousands will follow [the Ideal, but] what will become of the millions and tens of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of heavenly” (Dostoevsky 253)? Nolan dares to answer that question, and it’s not pretty, because such is the case that leads Harvey to his bleak fate. Just as many men will act morally only when presented with earthly bread, the cops in Gordon’s unit submit to the material seductions of the mob and surrender the Ideal in order to gratify their earthly, material needs.

And thus, the Inquisitor is proven correct: Human beings cannot live solely based on spiritual bread. As the Inquisitor predicted, The Spirit of the Earth has risen up against Harvey Dent just as the mayor foretold:

Mayor: But that means it’s on you. They’re all coming after you now. Not just the mob… politicians, journalists, cops- anyone whose wallet’s about to get lighter.

Before the incident that subsequently turns Harvey Dent in to Two-Face, Harvey’s double sided coin resembled his strong beliefs in an Idealistic order. He left nothing to chance, instead, he “made his own luck”. The scarring of Dent’s coin indicates a departure from a staunch belief in order, to an obsession with the cold, unfeeling anarchy of reality. The Grand Inquisitor suggests that “peace and even death are dearer to man than the free choice in the knowledge of good and evil” (Dostoevsky 254). As the Inquisitor seeks to define Good and Evil for mankind as to take away the torment of the freedom of conscience, The Joker dispels any notions of what constitutes good and evil when he infects Harvey with his philosophy of the cosmic fairness of chaos. The Ideal no longer holds strong convictions of right and wrong, only that “the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.” The ideal submits to “the lawlessness of free reason” and becomes a walking symbol for the unfeeling duality of existence (Dostoevsky 258). No good or evil. No order. No design. Only 50-50. Chaos.

This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

If the Joker’s philosophies coincide with the forces of reality that the Inquisitor seeks to arrest, then there is no doubt Batman represents the Inquisitor. To what lengths must they go to reestablish order?

Before we get in to this, a brief historical detour is in order (don’t worry, it will be brief). Dostoevsky was a notorious anti-Catholic Chauvinist. In fact, he often used his characters as mouth pieces to express his frustration with the Church (most obviously in The Idiot). Dostoevsky strongly believed that the Catholic Church succumbed to the third temptation of Christ by creating an empire and proclaiming themselves rulers of the earth.

Now consider the setting of Ivan Karamazov’s poem- the Inquisition. It would be the understatement of the century for me to label the Inquisition as morally heinous, but let’s leave it at that- no further elaboration necessary.

Like the Inquisitor, Batman must also commit an abhorrent act to ensure the re-establishment of order in Gotham.

Wayne: “I’ve seen now what I would have to become to stop a man like him”

Thus, Batman erects a machine that effectively monitors everyone in the city, stripping them of their privacy, and, potentially, their freedom. Just as the Inquisition places the beliefs of the masses at the judgment of the Inquisitor, the sonar machine has the capability to place the privacy of Gotham’s entire population at the mercy of one man. Even Morgan Freeman condemns the existence of the machine- and who doesn’t agree with Morgan Freeman? He’s always such a nice guy.

Fox: “This is wrong… no one should have that kind of power”

However, both Batman and the Inquisitor justify their actions on a grander scale. By becoming a “Caesar,” the Inquisitor can uphold an objective Ideal to save mankind from the deleterious force of free reason. Likewise, Batman must resort to seizing a tyrannical amount of power in order to stop the Joker’s reign of chaos.

Simply stopping the Joker is not enough to promote order. Order can only be attained through mass devotion to an unwavering idea. In the case of the Grand Inquisitor, he spreads happiness by “[enticing] them with a heavenly and eternal reward” (Dostoevsky 259). By upholding the image of an all-forgiving, all loving, divine father figure, the masses will gladly lay their free will at the feet of the Inquisitor. Likewise, Harvey Dent represents an unwavering, rigid adherence to justice and virtue. As Gotham’s White Knight, Harvey inspires the masses. He is a symbol that good can prevail, even in a city as bleak as Gotham.

But it is more than just an Ideal that binds these two stories. Both the Inquisitor and Batman are keepers of a dismal secret.

At the close of Ivan’s poem, his brother, Alyosha, quickly unearths the secret:

“They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets…. Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that’s all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that’s his secret!” (Dostoevsky 261)

And there it is- the great secret of existence according to Ivan. There is no God, but it is necessary to uphold a false ideal in order to subdue the bare anarchy of existence. I’m considering starting my own line of T-shirts with that message on it. It’s just so uplifting….

Thus, in the same vein that the Inquisitor must uphold a fabricated deity for the sake of order, Batman must preserve the false image of Gotham’s White Knight to re-establish a means of defining good and evil. Just as the freedom of existence forces the Inquisitor to artificially construct a means for inhibiting choice, the Joker’s image of a reality with no rules coerces Batman to deny the fallen image of Harvey Dent and preserve a fallacious Ideal. If the people of Gotham were to know that the Joker could tear down their Ideal, all would lose hope. Therefore Batman takes it upon himself to claim responsibility for Two-Face’s murders.

But the transcendent knowledge of reality comes at a cost, for knowledge of the truth excludes one from the existential reassurances that unwavering faith can offer. Bum Deal.

“For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.” (Dostoevsky 259)

Similarly, Batman will surrender his image and safety as he embraces the condemnation of the entire city in order to preserve hope. They will “hunt [him], set the dogs on [him], because it’s what needs to happen.”

Both the Inquisitor and the Dark Knight inhibit truth and embrace suffering in order to preserve order, hope, and ultimately, happiness.

Batman: “Sometimes, truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”

“There won’t be any fireworks!”

As much of a grumpy, coffee sipping, atheist as I am making Dostoevsky seem to be, there is, in fact, another side of the coin. Immediately following “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky counters his own argument in the subsequent chapter entitled: The Homilies of Father Zosima.

Whereas Ivan Karamazov’s poem leaves no residual of hope for the possibility of mankind holding an objective moral system without the oppressive structure of religion, The Dark Knight suggests otherwise. I mean, after all, it is a Hollywood movie. This is where the Ferry incident comes in to play. In the face of anarchy, humanity may not always default to anthropophagy. Rather, the film gives a glimmer of hope that coincides Dostoevsky’s counter argument that proposes that some may “have faith to the end, even if it should happen that all on earth are corrupted and [one] alone remains faithful” (Dostoevsky 321).

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