Dark Knights for Different Eras

Our hero, a masked vigilante, concocts a disguise which will instill a sense of primal fear in the perceived enemies of his community. Opposed by a garishly made-up villain, fueled by anger at the death of a beloved woman, the hero strikes blows in the name of order. But the hero's crusade for extralegal justice is instigated by outside forces, as they introduce an element of chaos and anarchy into the community, and the hero must break the law in order to uphold it. "Welcome to a world without rules," indeed.

I of course don't mean to suggest that The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith's epic 1915 ode to the Ku Klux Klan, and The Dark Knight, this summer's critically-acclaimed, crowd-pleasing blockbuster hit, are somehow identical. There are numerous differences, large and small (most importantly, the Batman movie isn't virulently, or even nominally, racist). Yet the other night I wrote about the Batman film's mythological overtones, and re-watching The Birth of a Nation for my D.W. Griffith series, I was taken aback by how Griffith's film also works on the level of myth, and in much the same fashion (both generally and specifically) as The Dark Knight.


True, The Dark Knight - as it bears repeating - does not hold an entire race or ethnic group responsible for myriad social ills. It's not a bigoted work. But it is, I think, deeply conservative, and not in the usual libertarian or even neoconservative sense. This is old-fashioned, uphold-the-social-order-by-any-means-necessary conservatism. Both Birth of a Nation and The Dark Knight paint a gloomy picture of a lost community, descending into the pit of disorder and decay. Birth shows us the paradise lost, while Knight begins after the fall (appropriate enough for a less sentimental era). In both communities, a malevolent force steps in from outside as a manifestation of all the repressed fears and buried animal instincts of the townspeople: in the silent work, it is Silas Lynch - mulatto politician who enfranchises the freemen of the South; in the modern work, it is Joker whose diabolical pranks empower and compel people to make life-or-death decisions.

And in both works, the communities are inhabited by people who are not necessarily evil, but weak, incapable of defending themselves from the manipulations of bad individuals. Frequent title cards in Griffith's film exhort us to misguided sympathy for the "ignorant" ex-slaves, who aren't ready for the liberty they're handed and drag the South down into the abyss with them. The mission of the newly-minted Klan is as much to put the rabble in their place as it is to punish the flagrant evildoers. Meanwhile, in Gotham, Batman works outside the law and takes on the responsibility of defending the community himself (he doesn't even want help from fellow vigilantes) because the citizens aren't capable of doing so; and in the end, he concocts a lie to keep them believing in the public order.

The most interesting aspect in which the two films part ways is in The Dark Knight's ambivalence and ambiguity. Birth of a Nation is decidedly un-ambivalent about the righteousness of its hero's cause and when he triumphs, the slate is wiped clean (which in this case, disturbingly, means black voters disarmed and disenfranchised, followed by the perplexing title card "Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever!" - don't they really mean "order and union"?). Still, in the context of the film the (white) citizens of the town are empowered by the Klan's actions, and at film's end the Klan has restored the ideal community. In The Dark Knight, Batman tries to articulate a faith in the Gotham citizens' innate goodness but his very actions speak louder than words, and it's clear he doesn't trust the people of the city to protect themselves, even as he hopes to lead them in this direction. He has not done so yet by film's end because it's a hard slog. Batman's work is presented as lonely, exhausting, and thankless. His heroism is stoic, whereas the night-riders of Birth are covered in glory at film's end.

Curiously, The Birth of a Nation is both more populist and more authoritarian than The Dark Knight. More populist because it sees the KKK as intimately connected to the community, as a means for people to earn back their sovereignty, whereas Batman acts in solo capacity, circumventing the citizens and lawmakers of the community when necessary, taking care of Gotham in an elite capacity. But his solitude also makes him an outsider and a freak, taking the edge off his elitism and giving him some of the pathos of an underdog. This is where Birth of a Nation is more authoritarian because, by empowering a whole segment of the community, it further marginalizes those who remain outside, who are either "inferior" (the freed blacks) or outright "dangerous" (the mixed-race). Unlike Batman, the "Little Colonel" who founds the KKK has not only personal power and conviction, but the power of numbers on his side. Hence, even aside from the film's racism, the ascension of these particular masked vigilantes leaves a bad taste in the viewers' mouth.

So then what do the similarities between The Dark Knight and The Birth of a Nation tell us? They key us in to a fundamental part of the human psyche, one which fears (but is also titillated) by the unknown, and wary of exhortations to understanding and moderation. I said before that The Dark Knight reaches for the level of myth, and myth works on an almost primordial level in the mind, where our deepest fears and desires lurk. The Birth of a Nation, the first blockbuster, the first great American feature, is an active and dynamic piece of pop mythology which shows us a paradise lost, shattered by violence, littered with anarchy and lurking menace (presented largely in sexual terms), restored to something approaching its former glory by upstanding members of the community. The Dark Knight's mythmaking takes on a slightly different tenor: its knight wears black not white, and stands as much outside the community he protects as he does within it. This alienation and conflicted relationship to society is a modern variation which makes the latter-day film both more palatable and more tragic. We may still fear the outside world and the temptations of the unrestrained id, but we are just as untrustworthy of rigid order, tight-knit but exclusive communities, and exhortations for an idealized past.

This is how I see it; but what do you think? I believe this is an interesting can of worms I've opened, but the lid's only just been popped off. Is The Dark Knight conservative? If so, how conservative? Do its divergences from Birth of a Nation outweigh their commonalities, or are these divergences only interesting because they occur within the same framework? You tell me; unlike Batman and the Little Colonel I'm fully willing to turn this conversation over to the rabble (that's you)...