By Bruno Rukavina
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012)
This film is an example of the antithesis to the hypothesis of this paper. The Dark Knight trilogy is an example of how films can promote different, Christian values. The film begins theologically: in the first scene, where Bruce Wayne is imprisoned in North Korea, another prisoner approaches him and says that he is the devil, to which Bruce responds, “No, you’re not the devil, you’re practice.” They then engage in a physical fight, which symbolizes the eternal struggle/wrestling against evil.
The first part of the trilogy presents Bruce Wayne as a lost young man who blames himself for the death of his parents. The main depiction of the Sacred in this film is through the story, through narration. The film embodies the relationship between the Old and the New Testament, more precisely, the conflict between the League of Shadows—who see themselves as avengers and call themselves the righteous—and Bruce Wayne, who offers a new chance and symbolizes repentance, forgiveness, and new hope. The League of Shadows seeks to destroy his city, Gotham, just as they burned Rome and destroyed Constantinople, because those cities “fell into corruption and decadence, where criminals exploit society’s understanding, and crime must not be tolerated.” If you’re once a sinner, you’re always a sinner. For them, justice is about balance because “Bruce burned down their house, so they burned down his.” This reflects the Old Testament concept: “If there is further harm, then you shall pay: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” Bruce is different—he believes that falling is not the end, but that “we fall so we can learn to pick ourselves up,” as his father taught him. He believes that his sinful city can be fixed and saved if it is given a chance.
In the second film, the narrative revolves around anarchy and lawlessness brought by the Joker’s terror in the city. The Joker’s goal is a life without rules, similar to Lucifer rebelling against God’s commandments—he is an agent of chaos, presenting it as just and fair. In this chaos, the Joker sets up a prisoner’s dilemma involving two boats: one with civilians and the other with prisoners, and tells each to destroy the other. While the civilians debate whether the prisoners have already had their chance (suggesting they don’t deserve another), both groups ultimately show that they are willing to believe in good and that they are “not ugly on the inside like the Joker.” However, the Joker succeeds in corrupting Gotham’s White Knight, Harvey Dent—the district attorney who imprisoned many criminals—turning him into the Dark Knight. He begins killing out of revenge across Gotham while Batman pursues the Joker. In the end, Batman takes the blame for all those murders, effectively atoning for Dent’s sins to maintain peace and stability in the city—“to reward people’s faith.” Thus, Batman becomes a fugitive, “the silent guardian of the city, the hero they don’t deserve, and in that moment, don’t need.”
In the third installment, the story returns to its origins with the return of a rogue member of the League of Shadows, Bane, who, when mentioned, replies, “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.” When referred to as pure evil, he corrects it to “necessary evil.” Bane as a villain combines the evil of the first and second films—he seeks to destroy Gotham and brings about anarchy through revolution. Bruce Wayne experiences a downfall when he clashes with Bane, which sets him on a path of recovery and rising again. From what? From the pit at the end of the world which, according to Bane, is “the worst hell.” Bane doesn’t want to kill Bruce but to torture him—not his body, but his soul—because “true despair requires hope.” So he gives Gotham hope while planning to destroy it and only then kill Bruce. The film ends with Bruce Wayne’s death, as he sacrifices himself to save Gotham. However, the final scene depicts his rebirth or resurrection—a profane image of the resurrection or happy ending, reinforcing the faith of a religious person.
The Dark Knight Trilogy Original Trailers (2005-2012)
Conclusion
The Sacred is a very broad concept and can be defined, analyzed, and studied in many ways. I believe that the Sacred is best explained in its eternal inexplicability. When we realize that we know nothing before the Sacred, faith in its mystery begins. That’s why the Sacred might be better felt than known; it can be better recognized when it is before us and we simply, on the deepest ontological level, understand that it is Sacred.
Interestingly, the same Proto-Slavic etymological root is shared by the words: Sveto (Sacred), Svijet (World), and Svjetlost (Light). If we play with the word Sveto, it is everything around us because everything around us was created by God, who left his mark in all that surrounds us, and that is why it is all that, Sacred. It is eternal, just as a part of human beings is eternal, so the search and recognition of the eternal Sacred is in fact a search for ourselves and a desire to awaken within us the Sacred—our purest, eternal essence of existence.
This search and the mystery of the Sacred in this world have been written about by Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade, citing examples such as nature, jewelry, symbols, songs, music, space, the body, stories, and more. This opens the door to exploring depictions of the Sacred in popular culture.
The best moments of The Dark Knight Trilogy
What is culture?
If culture is cultivation or structuring, then who is it cultivating today? People. We, the people, are the fruits that culture cultivates. In various cultural aspects, the human being is shaped and programmed to think and see the world in a certain way. One of these increasingly influential aspects is filmography, through which people can be shaped to become either homo religiosus or homo antireligiosus. Modern humans are increasingly shaped by films and contemporary culture due to technological achievements and exposure to various instruments and tools that more easily mold them—such as phones, computers, media, televisions, and more.
These tools can be used to create both religious and anti-religious people. However, the latter still carries within them the root of “religious,” just as the word non-believer still contains the word belief, which dwells within them—as does the Sacred—regardless of whether they are cognitively aware of it or not. Whether they want to or not, the profane person still preserves traces of the behavior of a religious person, though stripped of religious meaning. No matter what they do, they are an heir. They cannot entirely erase their past, for they are themselves a product of it and shaped through a series of negations and rejections, yet realities they renounced still come to visit them.
In the end, it’s important to emphasize that films and series are a powerful medium in the 21st century through which ideas are implanted and minds and hearts are shaped. They can promote the relativization of the Sacred, profanization, and desacralization, but they can also serve for resacralization, revitalization, and the return of the Sacred—right where it always was: all around us and within us.
Spec. pol. Bruno Rukavina is a specialist in foreign policy and diplomacy and a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb.
The full article was originally published in print in the Rijeka Theological Journal (Riječki teološki časopis), 2022, Vol. 57 No. 1, pp. 5–27. The full article is available at: https://hrcak.srce.hr/clanak/426385
