Girard's Theory Of Scapegoating In The Dark Knight

In the movie, The Dark Knight Girard’s theory of scapegoating was demonstrated. Girard’s theory of scapegoating is that “if the members of a society can single out a victim, they can channel their violent emotions toward that victim and do away with him. This cathartic release of pent up violence serves to give the society a new sense of unanimity and purpose. Instead of hating each other, people can agree to hate a particular victim or perhaps a minority group or class within society.” Because the scapegoat exist, people won’t go against each other, they have specific people they go against, to prevent themselves from being involved or being part of the chaos.

In the movie, one of the scenes talked about the joker telling people that if Colman

He wants people to believe in Den Harvey, which is the myth of white light, a good guy who was never against the law and does great to protect people instead of letting people know he surrendered into Joker’s theory. Den did not believe in fairness but in arbitrariness, after his lovely lady died. Den took a few people who caught his fiancé and tried to kill his top boss and his family member, because they choose to save him instead to save his fiancé. The batman Bruce believed that the Joker is doing something wrong to destroy the city and he can’t kill him because if he kills the Joker, he will become like the Joker, an evil person. Batman believed that he is the only one that could take the blame, and doesn’t seem like a random victim although he didn’t do anything wrong. He decided to take the blame for Den, became a scapegoat. People expressed their dissatisfaction and madness towards him rather than having people causing self-destruction, hate on the police, hate towards Den Harvey, and chaos. Batman believed that the city needs to be non-violent and white light. Based on these information I believed that the movie demonstrated Girard’s theory of