Terrorism As Portrayed In The Character Of The Joker In The Knight Of The Dark Night

Terrorism as portrayed in the character of The Joker in Christopher
Nolan`s film The Dark Knight
Rocío Sutera

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ynopsis: Batman struggles against criminal organizations with the help of JimGordon
(the honest head of the police department) and Harvey Dent (the district attorney).
The partnership proves to be effective but they soon find themselves prey to a reign

of chaos unleashedby a mysterious and sadistic criminal known to the terrified citizens of
Gotham as The Joker. This character will attempt to drag Gotham into anarchy.
This presentation aims to explore terroristfeatures as portrayed in the character of The
Joker. For this purpose, I will analyze the characteristics of terrorism which underlie The
Joker`s behaviour and philosophy, the role of morality thatprevails in Gotham under the
presents of The Joker and the psychological elements in the strategy of terrorism present in
his acts.
The character that I have chosen for this analysis falls into severalcategories: he seems to
be a revolutionary terrorist because he wants to upset the established order of Gotham
City, a domestic terrorist since he operates within and against his own country andfinally
political in that he uses extreme violence in order to coerce or intimidate the government
and the civilian population so as to achieve his political goal –the absence of any form ofpolitical authority, in other words, to cause total anarchy.
Besides the above mentioned categories, there are other important factors that shape this
terrorist: he operates in very small units and evenalone, he uses sophisticated weaponry
such as time or homemade bombs put in strategic places so as to make the victims
detonated them, playing a sinister and complex game; and he has no territorialbase, thus
being immersed among the general civilian population like ordinary terrorists.
Morality can be defined as a code of behaivour that prevails in a certain society at a certain
time. As...