I know I’m posting kind of late about what has long ago been a cultural phenomenon, but I felt like I had made an interesting discovery and wanted to share it. There’s a theme in the film that I’m not sure was intended. There seems to be a strong Christian parallel of Batman, Joker, and Harvey Dent with Jesus, Satan, and Adam respectively.
The Joker is unique as a villain because he doesn’t have some sob story to rationalize why he does what he does. He simply loves to hurt people. However, killing people is not necessarily his main focus. In fact, he would gladly face death himself if he could bring Batman or Dent into sin, ruining whatever good is in them.
Harvey Dent, the squeaky clean district attorney of Gotham, shares an important characteristic with Adam– he starts off good, but is led away by the Joker, constantly being torn between his original good nature and the evil nature that has taken over. Finally, he completely demolishes all of the morals he once believed in. That’s where Batman (as a type of Christ) steps in.
Although I can’t say Batman shares a lot of characteristics with Jesus, he at least shares three– he is the last source of moral order in a world gone wrong, he doesn’t succumb to Joker’s temptations, and he takes Harvey Dent’s place by putting his sin upon himself. This seems to me to be a clear parallel of substitutionary atonement– Christ taking on our sins and allowing himself to be punished so we can be declared righteous (justified).
3 thoughts on “The Dark Knight and Christ’s Substitutionary Atonement”
Ha! Well said sir; I loathe that inaudible batman voice. Second, I think you found a good connection here between the movie and Christianity! That never occurred to me.
Lizface, (Brandi’s Boo)
Good interpretation. Have you seen Watchmen? Definitely a much stronger parallel with Christianity: Dr Manhattan being God, the entire story interpretable as allegory for the social structure which leads to an embrace of such ideas, et cetera.
Haven’t watched Watchmen yet. I heard it’s good if you like over-grown smurf porn though. ;-p
I thought the re-make of the Hitcher that was recently done had a very negative view of God. There are a lot of allusions to the problem of evil. They seemed to say that God was always close by but never did anything. I know this is a common objection to God and it has a very strong emotional impact, but it really simplifies a complex issue.