The Dark Knight <> King Warrior Magician Lover

The Dark Knight: that comic book movie, yes, this is a post about capeshit
KWML: https://archive.org/details/kwml_20200814/mode/1up

What if the undeniable cultural power of Nolan's The Dark Knight is fueled by its exposition of Jungian archetypes? Namely as described in the book King Warrior Magician Lover by Moore & Gillette

Tl;dr this post is about a theory that
Commissioner Gordon = King
Batman = Warrior
Joker = Magician
Harvey Dent = Lover

But now let me explain why this is interesting. Each of the four main characters in TDK strongly embodies a malfunctioning shadow version of one of the four masculine archetypes. This makes these characters deeply memorable and realistic despite the fantastical comic book logic of the setting.

We humans are an imitative species and we tend to identify ourselves with characters we see on the screen, and even imagine ourselves as being them or doing the things they do. In most media this imitative instinct would apply to only one main character, typically the protagonist. But in TDK there are effectively four protagonists because of the way each character resonates with a foundational archetype within the viewer. This hints at what makes this film unusually powerful, but it doesn't stop there.

Next, we need to consider the plot. Gotham is a place of disorder, injustice, darkness and abandonment, essentially a living metaphor for the kind of world a weak and immature man allows to come into existence around him. The fallen state of Gotham stems ultimately from the absence of a true king - instead there is Commissioner Gordon who embodies a particular failed king archetype called the weakling. This is a king who lacks the kingly energy needed to bring those around him into line. In Gordon's case he literally cannot enforce the law.

For Batman, an immature warrior seeking validation, this absence is actually an opportunity for heroics, similar to the showiness of a headstrong youth heading out on his first hunt. Self-righteous, flashy, reckless, and ineffective or at least inefficient.

But these flashy heroics do have a consequence: the Joker takes notice and, embodying a failed form of the Magician called the trickster (almost literally the same word as joker), seeks to expose Batman's as a vain fraud. One function of the Magician is to criticize authority, and during the film the Joker implements a cunning and cruel scheme to prove that all authority is empty and that there is no distinction between right and wrong. The implication would then have to be that Batman is the real trickster, having tricked everyone into believing that he is good when there is no such thing. Without this crutch of self-righteousness and external validation, Joker expects Batman to fold completely, and Joker will return to the primordial chaos from which he emerged.

There is eventually a climactic confrontation between Batman and Joker in which it seems the Joker is proven wrong, as the people on the mutually stranded boats refuse to blow each other up, demonstrating an innate sense of justice. This is the moment the Joker plays his trump card, switching his line of attack from justice (represented by Batman) to love (represented by Harvey Dent).

Up to this point in the film Dent has been shown uniting people under one banner (king energy), openly targeting villains and corrupt cops (warrior energy), using creative and technical means to convict criminals (magician energy) and faithfully courting Rachel (lover energy). For most of the film he is, on the surface, the closest thing to a mature man we see. But Joker somehow perceives that this too is all for show - Dent does all this in order to act like the kind of man that he thinks Rachel wants to be with. In other words he is fundamentally motivated by an overactive lover energy - and therein lies his vulnerability.

Joker kills Rachel in order to take away the focus of Dent's love, and the whole facade collapses in on itself. Dent emerges as Twoface, his lover dead and its energy transmuted and fed into his other archetypes. Thus Twoface as king ordains a new order (chance rules all). Twoface as warrior applies this warped justice to those he holds responsible for Rachel's death. Twoface as magician perceives the vulnerabilities in others that can be exploited. He uses corrupt cops (symbolizing the weakness of the king/Gordon) to kidnap Gordon's son.

This kidnapping leads Batman to kill Dent/Twoface. Standing over his dead body, Batman and Gordon engage in the final confrontation of the film, in which Gordon despairs that true justice is forever lost and that all the fighting has been for nothing. Batman finally realizes that to save Gotham he must make a terrible and self-sacrificial choice, at last outgrowing the hero phase and embodying true warrior energy.

The interesting pattern of this plot is the predictable circular pattern of attack from one archetype to another causing a deepening spiral into chaos. The cycle only ends when it finally comes fully around the circle. Namely:

Batman attacks Joker - heroic confrontation
Joker attacks Dent - kills Rachel
Dent attacks Gordon - kidnaps his son
Gordon attacks (undermines) Batman - despairs that justice no longer exists
Batman stops the cycle

Archetypally this is: Warrior attacks Magician attacks Lover attacks King

This plot of the movie embodies this core loop, which gives it an inevitable quality, almost like dominoes falling rather than humans with free will acting accordingly. This evokes a powerful, mythological feeling in the viewer that cements the story we see deep in our brains.

There is a strong positive cycle around the archetypes in the exact opposite direction to this, which might also help to explain why the plot of the film resonates so strongly. In the opposite direction:

Warrior supports King by enforcing the order he imposes
King supports Lover by creating a safe place for beauty and joy to grow
Lover supports Magician by fostering his curiosity
Magician supports Warrior by providing him with techniques to gain advantage in conflict

If this virtuous cycle is the upward spiral, then the lot of TDK embodies the downward spiral, a vicious cycle of violence which can only be broken by a truly mature man. The film ends with the emergence of that true man in Batman, but the final ironic twist of the spiral is that Gotham will believe he is a villain. This adds a layer of timeless tragedy, because Batman's own hubris (his immature need to show off his heroics) ultimately caused his downfall (his final reputation as a villain rather than a hero). Though unlike a true tragedy, there is a hopeful note to the ending because we understand deeply (perhaps unconsciously) that this is a necessary step towards manhood for Batman.

To sum up, the movie has power to the extent that it utilizes these archetypes and each plot point reflects a key piece of an archetypal chaos cycle. The ultimate victory of Batman is achieved only when he chooses to stop this cycle, despite the huge cost. The movie then lives in your head rent free forever because it resonates and locks into the basic architecture of your mind.

By the way, if none of that made any sense to you, here's a quick primer on the archetypes:

King - blesses and protects a particular order over a domain to grow and nurture beings within it
Warrior - clearly distinguishes right from wrong and takes firm action to stop the wrong
Magician - wades into mysteries, develops insights and uses them to transmute lower elements into higher ones
Lover - seeks connection and merging in order to create joy and beauty

Let me know if this is interesting and I'll post more shit like this

>>3768
I'll be honest I tried reading that Moore & Gillette book and I couldn't get through it. The archetypes were poorly defined, vague, in such a way that you can (un)reasonably justify any kind of reading using them. Also wasn't clear to me that it described male psyche formation in any real way. Anyways I think Jungian derived psychology (as I understand this is) is of poor analytical value.