With all the talk and hype about The Dark Knight, I was dragged into the discussion about the movie before I even saw it. Seeing it left me with a lot to think about.

Along with Batman Begins, The Dark Knight forms the most realistic and un-campy version of the Batman legend. Although a lot of people have considered Batman to be goofy, like the Adam West television series, I never did. I always saw Batman as the natural extension of society's yearning for a hero. While characters like Spiderman and Superman require a supernatural force to bestow heroes upon us, Batman rises up from our own society. He is one of us. Batman is no superhero. Instead, he's an action hero, a vigilante detective who works in a ways the law won’t.

 

The movie plays on a key dichotomy: The Dark Knight is the flipside of The White Knight, the politician that the public is looking for to save them. In this movie, society needs both.

 

Christian Bale’s interpretation of Batman dispensing justice is so convincing that I would be surprised if we don’t see real-life imitators such as the ones the movie itself portrays: citizens fed up with their powerlessness becoming inspired to take action. We've already seen individuals taking on the role of The Joker.

The real message of this movie is conveyed by Alfred, in an uncharacteristically revealing story. When Alfred was in the military, he tried to buy the loyalty of local tribal leaders with rare jewels. Unfortunately, a mad man stole the jewels. As the military was hunting him down, they saw that the jewels had been scattered across the jungle. The man they were chasing had no desire for money. He just wanted, as Alfred said, "to watch the world burn."

In the crucial exchange of the movie, Bruce asks Alfred how they caught the man. Alfred's answer is "We had to burn the jungle".

The point is clear: if you want to destroy someone who wants to watch the world burn, you're going to have to burn the world yourself. The movie is an exercise in displaying this point. Batman has to do and become things he abhors in order to deal with the evil he wants to destroy.

 

In this kind of scenario, the concept of Jesus may appear disappointingly different and horribly anti-climactic. Caught up in the grit of good and evil fighting it out with increasing levels of violence, we have a hard time taking seriously the "mild-mannered reporter" who played with children and advised turning the other cheek. We want the cowboy, the lone stranger who will take care of evil, and then disappear into the sunset taking all the repercussions with him.

Jesus refuses to be a superhero or an action hero, perhaps to our disappointment. We shouldn't be surprised: he disappointed his own countrymen as well. But Jesus gives us a different kind of hero, one that has not yet been successfully depicted by Hollywood, one that does not play by the rules laid out for him by society’s expectations. In the wilderness, Jesus shows that regardless of the enemy or the prize to be gained he will not compromise who he is. He will not use the tools of the violence to win.

As the hero, Jesus stares into the face of death without flinching. And rather than becoming its victim or using its methods, he clutches death close like a soldier jumping on a grenade. In the face of evil, Jesus forsakes force and exercises true power—bringing himself and his will into submission. And in his voluntary surrender, he wins a war no one knew was being fought.

 

In response, evil stands back in amazement and bows its head.

 

Jesus is not Batman. He doesn’t use gadgets or technology. He doesn’t need to destroy the world to save it. Instead, he unites with us and thereby empowers us to face our greatest threats and fears.

 

 

URL: http://www.presence.tv/cms/soc_notsodarkknight.php

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