If you live in America and have access to the Internet, chances are you’ve at least heard of this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s grim revival of the Batman franchise. If you’ve heard about the movie, you’ve heard about the late Heath Ledger. And by extension, you’ve heard of the movie’s star villain — the Joker.
The Joker, created in 1940 at DC Comics, is Batman’s archnemesis. Different writers have sculpted him in different ways over the years, varying from an offbeat gangster with a penchant for jokes, to a complete (and thereby shallow) madman. But most vivid and most realistic among all of these approaches was Ledger’s thundering portrayal in The Dark Knight.
The stunning realism of Ledger’s performance is what struck me while watching the film. Somehow, the movie makes us believe that such a psychotic man can exist, and that belief gives the movie its chill. That’s why, when the movie heightens to its rhetorical climax, and the Joker delivers a monologue about scheming and chaos, the words bite.
“Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don’t have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. You know what I am, Harvey? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one. I just do things. I’m a wrench in the gears. I hate plans. Yours, theirs, everyone’s. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”
The Joker, no doubt, is a repulsive madman. Somehow, though, here I found a glimpse of ascetic truth, about how much “scheming” I do in my daily life. Thinking about the future, thinking about the past — not thinking about the present, instead thinking about what I can get, where I can go, what I can do. The Joker calls himself a “dog,” doing without scheming — acting without hope for profit. He simply acts without a plan and has no attachment to the future, the past, or to anyone or anything in his present. He is, in that sense, a karma yogi.
This film — this scene in particular — was an artistic call to remember how much more effective we can be when we don’t have a plan, like the Taoist aphorism that the unaimed arrow never misses. With every scene where we see the fruits of karma yoga in the Joker’s twisted brilliance, we are reminded about the power of this yogic force of being detached. As Krishna says in the Gita [BG 2:48], “perform your activities giving up attachment.” Certainly, the Joker has his various plots and connivances in the movie, trying to destroy various things and people, but — and this is where Ledger was brilliant — he never comes across as attached to what’s going to happen. Even when Batman’s beating him up, or his truck is knocked over, or something fails to explode, he keeps on doing, without attachment.
That is where the Joker’s mesmerizing power comes from — everyone else in the film is constantly worrying about what’s going to happen, attached to their loved ones and to notions of justice, doing things and praying to God that they work. But Joker trudges on with a few bullets and oil drums, and wreaks havoc on the schemers. He never fails, because he never cares. Of everyone in Gotham City, Joker is the most ascetic. That is why we are drawn to him.
When I started writing this post, putting this popular quotation here, writing a little bit about how it relates to other things, I thought it trite, connecting popular art with intellectual thought, like lonely books I’ve seen at the bookstore titled X and Philosophy. Then I realized that this is when art is at its most valuable. Certainly, art entertains, makes us feel. But when art causes us to question what we think, and spurs thought unto fundamental truths…it gains incomparable meaning. It is hard to find such works — harder still that one’s epiphany might be another’s soap opera. Yet it is heartening, that in consuming art in all its various forms, we have the opportunity to think about these things, and perhaps even find a masterpiece that teaches us, which we can then cherish warmly for the rest of our thinking lives.
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In a recent session, my Hinduism teacher explained to my sister, my mom, and me that when one has attainted enlightenment, he/she sees no distinction between “good” and “evil”; to him/her, everyone is an embodiment of God.
Though the concept – that there is truly no distinction between good and evil – remains bizarre to me, Saketh’s most sheds some light. Even the most “evil” (as we unenlightened perceive it) person has qualities to look up to.
But this question befuddles me: Since the Joker practices complete detachment, does it mean that he has attained enlightenment?
One brief comment: if the Joker is detached, it is only in the sense that Mr. Kurtz had “kicked himself loose of the earth”. Detachment requires a solid moral foundation, or at least some framework for reasoning about morality.
I actually stopped watching The Dark Knight only 30 minutes in because it was so disturbing.
Vikram, you are saying that a solid moral foundation is a requirement for detachment. Here is support for your argument:
Let’s have a debate! I’m going to post something tomorrow morning on whether or not “complete detachment [can] exist when there is no moral framework”. My short answer is yes, but detachment without a framework is at best meaningless and at worst dangerous. I think the second point you make – “detachment implies that one is willfully renouncing objects of desire” – is the key.
Vikram, I look forward to reading what you have to say in the morning.
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