The Dark Knight and Themes in Mythology
I just got back from seeing The Dark Knight...er...technically last night I guess. Rather then talk about how amazing of a movie it is (and it's crazy good by all movie standards, not just as a comic book movie), I just want to leave you with a thought I had that this movie (or rather it's iconic villain), and comic book movies in general, emphasise.
Why is it that we (as in all of humanity, it dates back centuries) have such a fascination, to the point of idolatry, with the villains in our stories? Is it just because in the story structure, the hero is always the same, and the villains are the only thing that changes? If so, why is that so often the case? Throughout mythology (and comic books are, for worse or for better, our mythology) we have epic, reoccurring tales about heros and their slaying exploits. We never have it the other way around, a villain so powerful that the forces of good struggle with it again and again through many faces but to no avail. Or is that theme sublimated into the nuances of the hero's character? The Dark Knight exemplifies this as well.
Note that in more modern mythology we move away from the hero perminantly defeating thier foes, bringing about the idea of an eternal enemy. Could this be the beginning of a seiesmic shift in human mythology? Though less modern examples exist, for example the devil archetype and the mythology of Ra and Apep found in Egyptian mythology, so that argument may be weak. Further examples of an eternal fight with an enemy exist, especially in Eastern and South American mythology, but like the Ra and Apep story, they are often tied to repeating astrological patterns and were thus structured not out of theme, but out of natural phenomenom.
Why is it that we (as in all of humanity, it dates back centuries) have such a fascination, to the point of idolatry, with the villains in our stories? Is it just because in the story structure, the hero is always the same, and the villains are the only thing that changes? If so, why is that so often the case? Throughout mythology (and comic books are, for worse or for better, our mythology) we have epic, reoccurring tales about heros and their slaying exploits. We never have it the other way around, a villain so powerful that the forces of good struggle with it again and again through many faces but to no avail. Or is that theme sublimated into the nuances of the hero's character? The Dark Knight exemplifies this as well.
Note that in more modern mythology we move away from the hero perminantly defeating thier foes, bringing about the idea of an eternal enemy. Could this be the beginning of a seiesmic shift in human mythology? Though less modern examples exist, for example the devil archetype and the mythology of Ra and Apep found in Egyptian mythology, so that argument may be weak. Further examples of an eternal fight with an enemy exist, especially in Eastern and South American mythology, but like the Ra and Apep story, they are often tied to repeating astrological patterns and were thus structured not out of theme, but out of natural phenomenom.
