Dark Knight at Fifteen: An Intersectional Retrospective

Abstract

Characters within The Dark Knight access intersectional, systemic privileges linked to the performance of masculinity, whiteness, neoliberal class consciousness, and heteronormativity. Using cultural studies as the framework and intersectionality as the point of departure, this paper interrogates how kyriarchy—a way to understand intersecting layers of privilege—buttresses neoliberal ideologies, especially in the first decade of the 21st century. Hegemonic masculinity is both reinforced and reinvented in a homosocial erotic triangle between Batman, Harvey Dent, and Bruce Wayne, which is subsequently shattered by the Joker, a queer failed masculine subject who fosters intimacy through excessive violence. Even this powerful disruption, however, emerges from the intersecting privileges of a cis white man and contrasts sharply with both the situations of Black characters in the film and lived encounters between Black Americans and the State. Batman’s appropriation of Blackness in his suit, juxtaposed with the undeniable whiteness read on his bared chin, signals a privilege that allows him to act outside the law, reinventing kyriarchal and neoliberal sovereign exceptionalism. Examining The Dark Knight through the lenses of cultural studies and intersectionality allows a better understanding of systemic inequality as conveyed through media, which is crucial to undoing conferred dominance and the exploitative hegemony of our world.