David Perley Rhetorical Analysis of The Dark Knight Directed by Christopher Nolan

In this movie, the infamous Batman tries to put away Gothams most ruthless criminal to date, the Joker, but in the process creates new enemies from different standpoints. The genre of this text is a Hollywood film. The intended audience of the film are people who like action films. The main two scenes of the movie that I am analyzing counter act with one another and the main quote that you will either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain (Dent). Scene one involves a double date with Harvey Dent and Batman. Dent is a District Attorney who has put away hundreds of criminals and created Gothams prison city district. His date Rachel, who had previously had relations with the other main character Bruce Wayne, is also an attorney within Gotham. Bruce Wayne is the CEO and sole owner of Wayne Industries and is secretly the citys infamous hero Batman. His date is Natasha who is the main dancer in the Moscow Ballet. Lets start off with who exactly is Harvey Dent? He worked with cops from all around the city and put an end to the corruption of that lawyer/criminal/judge relationship filled with bribes and mal-justice. There simply was no justice and before Harvey Dent no one would dare stand up to the many mobs, gangs, and criminal associations that filled the city and made it a not so very safe city to live in. When Harvey Dent came along he took a stand and said that this has to stop. So through the use of ethos and logos Harvey Dent is a true bred hero. During the date, we have Waynes date compliments him Dent of how he should be the true hero of all the posters, all the movies and all of the stories of the infamous Batman, that he is

the true hero. In that particular comment of the scene Christopher Nolan uses Logos to help persuade the viewers that Harvey Dent is good for the job because he is a paramount social figure to the city of Gotham and is even classified as the Hero of Gotham. Even though Harvey Dent is credited with all those arrests and pride what viewers of the movie know and the people of Gotham dont is that the Batman was the one who brought the criminals to the police, who ended the mobs reign and basically the sole reason on why Harvey Dent could even do what he accomplished. So who is the true Hero? We have Batman who was the mysterious citizen bystander who decided to take a stand and do it himself, or Harvey Dent, the district attorney who brought these criminals to court and put them away. To the people of Gotham, Harvey Dent is the true hero because they didnt know of the real happenings and occurrences of the Batman and they thought he was just a criminal himself who just took out his competition to notch his way up on the power pole. At the end of scene 1 Dent says you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain and when first watching this movie this quote really stuck out to me. If you think about society today and even way back in the past, could this really be true? All throughout history we have seen high political figures and heroes who had all of these accomplishments behind him and then they try to perfect them and go down with the ship, throwing out everything they had going for them out the window. Then again we have those heroes who died for their country and had played a huge impact either for their country or for whoever they did it for, and they die as a hero. Even though we might not have known them personally they died for a cause and because of their death problems were looked at differently and actions were taken against them. I remember thinking about this a lot and even got myself thinking about my very own life, am I going to die a hero or eventually become the villain trying to perfect my accomplishments. So I came to the conclusion that all people in this world have

accomplishments and die as their very own version of a hero, then again these heroes can take what they accomplish and get greedy, so greedy enough that they try to perfect their greed and eventually live long enough they can become their very own villain destroying all their accomplishments they had worked so hard for. A prime example of a villainous hero is displayed in scene 1 when the city of Rome was attacked that they created democracy so they can have one high end figure to make all the hard decisions that the general public would never be able to. Then Rachel explains that the last person to take that role in Rome was Julius Caesar who never gave up his power and was the fall of Rome. Nolan used this historical genre in what Rachel is saying to help support the famous quote that is said right after her. That got me thinking that this quote is really true because now thinking critically about Julius Caesar I realized that he was the rise and the fall of Rome. He brought Rome up from the depths and made it the most wellknown, most influential, and most prosperous empire of that time period and if he had just passed down his power when his term was up then he really would have died a hero. Instead of doing that he had no trust in anyone else but him could handle being the leader of this majestic empire so he kept it for himself and strived for new territory and conquered innocent nations stockpiling enemies and then finally one day those enemies caught up with him in his own power circle and was murdered by his own people and after that the empire was taken down and conquered by the ottomans, destroying all that Julius Caesar had worked so hard on. Caesar become an enemy to his very own people and despite all the effort he had on the rise of Rome, was the reason for its fall. He lived long enough to see himself become the villain. The ethos Nolan used were the high political figures of Batman, Dent, and even Julius Caesar and made these figures contribute to the ethics and overall meaning of the quote Dent said of dying a hero. The second scene for analysis is the ending scene and the conclusion of the movie. In

scene 2, Gotham hero Harvey Dent dies, and Batman restates the quote you will either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.. In order to keep Gotham stable, Batman takes blame for everything Harvey Dent had done, in order to not to ruin and heartbreak Gothams heros true identity. This provides a sense of logos for the viewer because they know he didnt do those acts but Batman takes the blame for the public good. This is where Nolan makes a visual argument for the viewers sake just like in Zemlianskys article he says I am in a privileged position..I know that she (in this case Nolan) was trying to make a visual argument. This knowledge makes my reading of the photograph (in this case scene) easier. Other readers, who do not have such a behind the scenes knowledge (pertaining to the town folk of Gotham) should nevertheless think about the purpose of this visual text and thats quite simply because they dont know better (Zemliansy 215). Instead of dying a villain, Dent died as a hero. In fact they made a holiday for Dents death in the next movie The Dark Knight Rises. If the truth came out about Harvey Dent with how he blamed Batman whenever a villain escaped or killed someone- then the city would have no hope for any good in this world .Instead Batman sacrificed his own social values in order to keep that stabilization, making him the true hero. Dent tried to perfect what he had done and that lead led him to his death, and from the viewers viewpoint Ddent died as a villain not a hero and Bbatman is the knight in shining armor. This gives the sense that the audience knows something that the citizens of the movie have no idea. Nolan had logos out of this world in the movie with supportive evidence on what Harvey Dent had done and the effects on what would happen if the truth came out. He led the audience to believe that Batman is the true hero of Gotham despite the fact that Harvey Dent is portrayed as the hero in the movie. This can pertain to the propaganda of the movie with Dent blaming Batman for all the terrible things he had done. Sturken and Cartwright make a great point in their article in

Everything is a Text when speaking of propaganda in terms of propaganda- the crude process of using false representations to lure people into holding beliefs that may compromise their own interests. This understanding of ideology assumes that to act ideology assumes that to act ideologically is out of ignorance. (Sturken and Cartwright 245). With the ending scene in the movie (scene 2) Nolan adds a good amount of pathos with the viewers of the movie feeling the sympathy for batman when Gotham rebels against Batman and the viewers witnessing the whole thing knowing the real truth of whats going on; and also with the end scene connecting and revealing of the quote in scene 1. Nolan emphasizes the clip with the context of the scenes are the immediate situation and the quote is supported by historical summary background of Julius Caesar and that justifies the quote in the beginning. Nolan effectively causes the viewer to think and come up with their own conclusion as to who is the real hero and who is the real villain by briefly mentioning Julius Caesar as an example. Nolan fully supports his claim that you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain (Dent, scene 1) by how Batman and Harvey Dent are portrayed in the film, and the supportive historical evidence of Julius Caesar. The overall message received from the movie would be that every person does something that makes them to a hero from someones standpoint and that a hero either dies and their accomplishments live on or a hero dies with everything he had done also going down with him.

Bibliography

Bang, Molly. Everything's a Text: Excerpts from Picture This: How Pictures Work. New York: Pearson Longman, 2011. Print. The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Christian Bale and Heath Ledger. N.d. Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. Everything's a Text: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Pearson Longman, 2011. Print. Zemlianksy, Pavel. Everything's a Text: Excerpts from Picture This: How Pictures Work. New York: Pearson Longman, 2011. Print.