Manipulation through Fear

The Joker maniacally laughing 

Manipulation, or control, through fear is one of the movie’s main themes reoccurring throughout the film. There are some specific scenes where this theme is displayed such as when the Joker threatens Batman to reveal his identity or people will start dying. This scene of manipulating someone through the fear of more casualties correlates back to the Reconstruction Era. During that time, the Southerners used a same type of tactics such as raping innocent African American women to suppress their newly attained freedoms and applied a policy created by southern democrats in 1875 called the Mississippi Plan. This policy allowed southern democrats to use as much violence as necessary to regain political control of the South. This planned unfortunately succeeded in keeping republicans out of the vote and political power because they were afraid.

Senator Joseph McCarthy...laughing

            Another example in history that relates to the movie is Joseph McCarthy’s communist threat in America. In the same scene, in Joker’s video with the guy dressed up as Batman, he addresses the public, “you see this is how crazy Batman has made Gotham,” in other words this is the result of Batman’s influence on the people of Gotham. The Joker concludes that if people want order in Gotham, Batman must unmask. Joseph McCarthy is similar to Joker, besides being crazy, that the influence of communism has spread throughout the people of America and can destroy basic American beliefs and the only way to provide order is if they unmask the communists in America. This is evident in McCarthy’s document “Senator Joseph McCarthy Describes the Internal Communist Menace” in 1950.