Spoiler Warning!One of the most clever things about The Dark Knight – and there are plenty – is the no-nonsense way it sets the scene. Things happen quickly in those first moments. Everything feels urgent. The viewer knows something is going to happen, because things are action-packed from the beginning
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But if you look very carefully at the Joker’s scenes, you will see he is setting up his own reputation – both in terms of what Gotham’s citizens think of him and in terms of what his viewers think – very carefully. In fact, he is even doing it in the right order.
According to many of the adherents to the seduction community, one of the most important things a man can do if he is planning to make a woman want him is to establish social proof. Women do it too, of course. If a woman walks into a bar and finds that she is competing with a Playboy model, for instance, she will instantly recognize she’s going to have a tough night getting attention, because a Playboy model has more social proof than your average Jo. Women establish social proof in similar, but not identical ways that men do. Being famous helps; performing helps; being outgoing helps – and all these help both genders. But on a more primal level, a woman seeks to be beautiful and a man seeks to be dominant.
He can do this either by demonstrating he has access to resources, i.e., being rich or by demonstrating physical or mental dominance. In the first three scenes of The Dark Knight, the Joker accomplishes all of this.
Let me say, just for the record, that, no matter how efficiently some of us have overcome the urge to be dazzled by Rolexes and brutality, it still works on a primal level. No matter how worthwhile as a human being the guy with the good heart is, that is not what our bodies respond to. Our bodies understand how important resources are. Our bodies still want a tough guy to protect us against dinosaurs and invading tribes. No matter how evolved we are socially, we’re all still cavemen and –women.
Which is why those first three Joker scenes are so breathtaking.
In the very first scene of the movie, we see the Joker at work. Even though this is a special project – not necessarily a money-maker, but one calculated to gain control of the mob – we see the man doing one of the things he does to make a living. He robs a bank in a scene that is reinforced later when we see him with a gigantic pile of money, which he, of course, burns.
The surface reason for this scene to exist is, simply, action. The Joker is the catalyst. He gets things going. And what adventure fan doesn’t like a good heist? However, in a sexual sense, even if we aren’t aware of it at the moment, our radars are working overtime. This is a man with means. He can practically pull money out of thin air.
The next two Joker scenes are all about establishing his dominance among other males. He crashes a meeting of mobsters. Incidentally, the mobsters in question are all alpha males themselves, leaders of their respective gang organizations or crime families, and the Joker waltzes right in and takes control. He grabs their attention and tells them how things are going to be, first by killing the first guy who tries to lay hands on him.
For our purposes, the Joker’s third scene is simply about unfinished business. Gambol, one of the toughest and most aggressive guys at the gangster’s ball, was not happy about the Joker’s move, and put out a hit on him right in front of the man’s face. So the Joker kills him in his next scene, and recruits one of his men by forcing them into a fight to the death.
The three scenes are a package deal, allowing the Joker to establish dominance and position himself as a guy you really don’t want to mess with, while demonstrating his immense mental faculties. The bank heist alone was sheer art, requiring the meticulous planning of a mastermind. It appears that, whomever he’s rooting for, the viewer is meant to be in awe of the Joker. When you throw sexuality into the mix – and sexuality is always in the mix, let me make that perfectly clear – the female viewer is faced with more complex and interesting issues than mere good versus evil.
Now it’s time for another aside. When discussing viewers who find themselves particularly attracted to The Dark Knight’s Joker, I find it better to refer to “she” for three reasons. One, which trumps all others, is that it is simply easier. Two, I have yet to look deeply into the sexual motivations of the gay male. I don’t know if he responds as readily to the same power dynamics that women do, but my intention is certainly not to leave him out. That said, if there are gay males who find themselves responding in similar ways to the Joker, please clue me in, along with your responses to my theories.
And three, I’m just not seeing a lot of male sexual love for the Joker. It seems to be primarily a phenomenon among women and girls. But again, I could be wrong.
Not only does the Joker do all the right things when it comes to setting himself up as a sex symbol, true to his nature, he does them in the right order. Access to resources, alpha male status and intelligence are the foundation which supports everything else he does in The Dark Knight. Because of the movie’s fast pace, they seem to work subliminally, but they do work. By the time the susceptible viewer makes it to Bruce Wayne’s party, she doesn’t stand a chance.
This is No. 4 in my article series Sex and the Joker: Batman's Nemesis as Underground Sex Symbol. Read the previous post. Read the next post.
