The Dark Knight Rises and the Dynamics of Heroism in the Democratic Age

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 2012)

It was funny to have just finished the eminent Military Historian John Keegan's 'The Mask of Command' before I headed off to watch The Dark Knight Rises. Keegan's book is a study of Generals and Commanders through time, and on the phenomenon of heroic leadership and how it has changed under the changing contexts of society and culture through the ages, from Alexander the Great to Hitler.
To Keegan, heroism is an essential tool of being a Commander, but one which has had to be adapted to the growth of democracies and become deleterious in the nuclear age. With the growth of democracies, and the rise of mass citizen armies, elector-soldiers, such as in the United States in the Civil War, heroism has had to move on from solely being the concern of a warrior elite, such as Alexander and his Diadochi, to a more broader concern for each individual in modern times. It also goes on a lot about the mystique of leadership and how basically a good leader needs to bullshit and present a happy, glowing front, an idea which motivates the citizen army. Hence the Commander's speech rallying those to war etc. This is even more an imperative to the soldiers of an army than simple fear or love. And a citizen army still needs the mystique of the hero.
Now to relate this back to The Dark Knight rises. The movie begins about how Harvey Dent is the model for heroism, but as everyone who's seen The Dark Knight knows, Dent is a false idol. Gordon nearly spills the beans but moves back from doing so and Batman is of course the bad man, taking the warp for Dent's murders etc, 'I believed in Harvey Dent' etc.
Now Wayne is in retirement and Batman disappeared etc, but the film is at first about Batman needing to come back to save Gotham from the puritanical fanatical remnants of the League of Shadows etc. The idea is that the citizen army, in this case the Police of Gotham, can't cope alone against Bane etc.
Batman, so the film leads us to believe (despite Alfred's protestations), as the Nietzsche Superman etc. is the only one who can fight against the master criminals. But then the movie turns that on its head. Bane beats Batman and sends him packing to that hole of Calcutta like prison in the East. So the hero is beaten. Batman comes back, but only in conjunction with, and actually only supporting the remnants of the Police. Batman is the symbol that Keegan writes about in his book. The citizen army, despite being a mass, still needs the mystique of the hero, the example of Batman to rally under. There is a very telling scene where Matthew Modine's Police Chief cautiously leads the re-emerging troglodyte police force against Bane's hordes. He does this cautiously, squeaking about there being only one Police force, until Batman appears out of nowhere. Invigorated, the police charge Bane's hordes.
But then the movie kills the symbol, Batman; the idea, it seems, being that the age of the hero is dead. This is very interesting as Keegan states that in the nuclear age, and Batman dies carrying off an imminent nuclear bomb, the individual hero is not needed. So Batman dies and we almost have a post-heroic age. But not quite. The hero has become truly democratic, as Batman says to Gordon just before he flies off in his kamikaze-like way that anyone can be a hero, as Gordon indeed was in simply consoling the child Wayne after his parents were murdered, which ties in with the very democratic idea that anyone can be a hero. In this way, Joseph Gordon Levitt's nascent Robin, a street orphan and very normal cop (slight, boy-looks) represents this new everyman hero.