The meaning of Two-Face in The Dark Knight

In this video, I will analyze the Dark Knight, the 2008 film by Christopher Nolan based on the DC Comics' Batman co-created by Bob Kane and Milton Finger. Thanks for watching and I would appreciate if you would like the video and subscribe to my blog for more videos like this one.

Batman and Joker’s similarities

Fear

Bruce Wayne takes the form of his fear of bats and uses this fear against the mob in this film.

The Joker’s face paint, like Batman’s mask, inspires fear in those who see him. The Joker, Batman, and Dent—after half of his face is burned off—are feared because they operate outside of the rules. Batman is freed from moral and civil restrictions when his parents are murdered because of his fear of bats. Criminals fear him because he is not bound by any laws and will resort to any means to stop them even if this means violating the rights of those he protects (such as when he applies Fox’s sonar concept to every cell phone in Gotham). Harvey Dent admires Batman’s ruthlessness and supports him, even insinuating that Gotham do away with democracy—like the Romans did—and allow 1 man run the entire city. 

The Joker, like Batman, is feared and describes himself as chaos. But unlike Batman, the Joker sees nothing redeemable in humanity and wants to destroy everyone, good and bad. The mob doesn’t fear Dent because they know that they have rights and that he is restricted by the rule of law.

Scapegoat

The government in this film is characterized as hypocritical and appears good only because of the sacrifices of Batman, a vigilante and outlaw who chooses to be a scapegoat in order to protect the idea that the system is not only good but that it actually works. The only thing keeping society from going to Hell is the belief that we, whom Dent represents, are better than the people we call criminals and put in jail who, like Batman, are also scapegoats in the film. This hypocrisy expresses itself when Dent, as DA, interrogates one of Joker’s henchmen after the assassination attempt on the mayor. Dent takes the man to an undisclosed location, flips a coin, and threatens to shoot him. Luckily, Batman catches the coin and stops Dent from undermining all of the work he did on the right side of the law. Batman could shoot this man and get away with it because he is already an outlaw and has already given up on the system; but Dent can’t because he is Gotham’s White Knight and last anchor of virtue in a system that is almost totally corrupt as witnessed by all of the corrupt cops in the film entangled with Maroni.

Gordon also uses Batman as a scapegoat, particularly in the scene where Joker is being interrogated. Gordon, who represents law and order and who is sworn to uphold the Constitution, leaves the interrogation room to allow Batman to play “bad cop” and physically abuse the Joker in a scene which, in real life, is clear-cut brutality and illegal. Batman, the scapegoat, does the dirty work. Also, when Gordon fakes his death and the cops stop by his home to tell his wife, she even lays all the blame on Batman and not the cops who bring her the bad news. Batman is also present to make sure that he takes the blame and not the cops. But throughout the film, those who use Batman as a scapegoat take all the glory for the work he does. At the end of the film, he takes the blame for all the people Harvey Dent murders.

The Dark Knight

Harvey Dent is called Gotham’s White Knight but when he gets half of his face burnt off, he becomes the Dark Knight. Deep down, Dent knows that his hands, as Gotham’s DA, are tied in fighting the mob because there are too many dirty cops mixed up with them. This is why he admires Batman’s methods and uses the analogy of the Romans suspending Democracy and allowing 1 man to run the city. The irony in this is that Batman admires him. In Dent, Batman sees a hero who can fight crime following the rules. This works in the short term but not over the long haul which is why Dent says “You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain,” a statement foreshadowing his moral turnaround.

Chaos

The Joker tells Harvey Dent that people revert to the dark side when normalcy is thrown into chaos. Both he and Batman are who they are because of trauma. Batman operates outside the law which is why he wears a mask. The coin that Dent gives Rachel has identical sides which represents order and control. This is why Dent tells Rachel when giving her this coin that we make our own luck. And when she dies in the warehouse explosion, Batman finding this double sided coin at the site of Rachel’s death represents the end of the order and control holding Dent’s dark side in check. This is what the Joker means when he tells Dent in the hospital that he only wanted to show Dent, in killing Rachel, the futility of making plans. The coin with opposite sides represents conflict and how life, death, good and evil are determined by chance, random or unaccountable events disrupting the natural order. 

The Joker also says that people are only as good as society allows them to be. Harvey Dent’s White Knight image is intact as long as he, as Gotham’s DA, operates within the rule of law. Dent proves the Joker’s point by abandoning the law and resorting to unethical and illegal means to find out who set Rachel up to be killed. In real life, this is also true as our behaviors and attitudes change as the laws and norms change. We operate within the context of what is and what is not politically correct. Behaviors and attitudes that are or not acceptable in 1 time or place change in another time and place. For example, the 2nd half of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket shows how the soldier’s behaviors and attitudes are affected by the Vietnam war where soldiers openly say and do things that they can’t say and do in polite, politically correct society. Another example is the 1st episode of Mad Men. A young ad man named Pete Campbell openly harasses a woman in a striptease bar where this type of behavior is condoned and even encouraged. The stripper is a metaphor for Pete shedding the moral  and civil restrictions of polite society. 

Choice

Choice is a cyclical` theme throughout the movie. The more obvious examples involves the scene where the Joker gives Batman the choice to rescue Harvey Dent or Rachel; the other example is when the Joker gives the passengers on the ferries the choice to blow each other up. This theme of choice in this film is an analog of Harvey’s habit of basing his decisions on the flip of a coin. Chance is also analogous in this film with chaos and fear. When Rachel is killed and half of Dent’s face is burned off, he chooses to “flip” and be like Batman and the Joker for whom there are no rules. The hospital blowing up represents the death of Harvey Dent and the birth of two-face.