"Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?"

I refuse to begin this blog with a cliche' like "The
Dark Knight" "rocks" or is "awesome" or something
like that. At age forty-nine, I am legally too old to
use such expressions! But I will say that "The Dark
Knight" is a movie for both fanboys and non-fanboys
alike . Indeed, I think one could reasonably call it not
just a movie, but a film. Oh, it has all the requisite action
and special effects that one could expect from a summer
blockbuster (and proves, in the process, that Marvel has
not necessarily cornered the market on terrific superhero
movies), but this latest entry in the "Batman" sage
addresses some important issues and really makes you
think and even perhaps do some soul-searching.


This is not a movie review, per se, so I am spared from
spoiler alerts. I just want to look at one important issue
that the movie raises: the possibility that the most moral
among us may be corrupted by evil under the right
circumstances. To get right down to it, the central
characters in "The Dark Knight" are, of course, Batman/
Bruce Wayne, district attorney Harvey Dent, and the
unpredictable, sociopathic anarchist The Joker (we
never learn his real name, which is probably just as
well. Trickster gods are best left a little mysterious).



Dent, the Batman, and good cop Jim Gordon have
done a fine job of cleaning up crime in Gotham since
the conclusion of "Batman Begins." The mobs are
pretty much laying low, seemingly outfoxed at
every turn by the "dynamic trio." But all that
changes when the Joker arrives on the scene.
The Joker messes with everybody, thugs and cops
alike. He isn't trying to "win" or get wealthy; he
just wants to create chaos. Maybe it would have
been just as easy to call him Loki, but that is
another comic book enterprise altogether!



Oh, the Joker commits crimes, sure, lots of them
and in a very violent, sensational and, yes, gleeful
manner. But the turning point of the film is when he
orchestrates the kidnapping of Dent and his girlfriend,
Rachel Dawes, a fellow prosecutor and former old flame
of Bruce Wayne, and ties them up in separate ware-
houses in different parts of Gotham, warehouses chock
full of barrels contaning volatile liquids rigged to explode.

Batman faces a real conundrum: he cannot save them
both, so he has to make a choice. So Batman rushes to
save the girl, only too find out that the Joker, no surprise
here, sent him to the wrong warehouse. Dawes is blown
away but the intrepid D.A. survives..

However, Dent does not escape unscathed, either in
body or in soul. The barrel to which he is tied
develops a leak and the corrosive chemicals pour
down the left side of his face, leaving him disfigured.
And that's when everything gets really interesting.

See, Dent discovers that some members of Jim
Gordon's squad were actually traitors. They had
been helping the Joker and the mobs and some of
them were involved in the kidnapping. Dent is furious
and, with a little push from the twisted Joker, becomes
a vigilante himself, but without the Batman's scruples.
Taking on the moniker "Two Face" in homage to
his deformed, ghoulish face, Dent begins his own torture
and murder spree in order to avenge the death of his
beloved. In doing so, of course, he becomes the very
kind of person he has been trying to bring to justice
and get off the streets: a thug, a criminal. And that was
the Joker's game all along. He wanted to destroy
Dent's reputation, not just to make things easier
in Gotham for the criminal element, but primarily,
it seems, to prove that it could be done.



Now many, if not most, of us pride ourselves in
being good people. We think we could never
become criminals or do horrible things. We do
not think it conceivable that we could ever shed
our goodness and put on a cloak of evil as easily
as we change our clothes. But Harvey Dent did it
without missing a beat. So why should we consider
ourselves to be invulnerable to corruption?



So let us not ask, "Could I be corrupted by evil?"
A better question would be, "What would it take
to push me over the edge?" If we can answer
that question, then we might be able to formulate
a strategy to help us avoid the fate of Harvey "Two
Face" Dent.