Binary Opposites - 'The Dark Knight'

When planning my opening sequence I decided to research a few clips from thriller movies as I am planning on doing a horror/thriller opening sequence. I can across a clip from 'The Dark Knight' and saw that binary opposites was very strong throughout the clip.

In a particular scene in ‘Batman – The Dark Knight’, binary opposites is shown when batman is interrogating The Joker. When thinking about binary opposites between these characters you would expect Batman to be ‘good’ and The Joker to be ‘bad’ but in my opinion it’s the complete opposite…

The scene starts off with The Joker in dark lighting and you can only see his face. This dark lighting add tension to the scene and reflects The Jokers evil side but showing his face shows that he’s not ashamed of who he is and he doesn't need to hide who he is.

 The light comes on and Batman is revealed. Instead of the ‘bad guy’ lashing out first, its Batman who attacks The Joker and this shows that he’s got an evil side as he didn't try and talk normally to him. Also The Joker talks slowly and calmly which shows he can control himself unlike Batman who is angry and argumentative throughout the scene.

The Jokers voice is quite high which is associated with being a jolly person whereas Batman’s voice is very low and menacing which is associated with being quite aggressive and scary.

 Most other superheroes wear colourful costumes and the bad guy wears dark clothing so you could say that The Joker was the superhero and Batman’s the bad guy.

The Joker doesn't wear a mask, he doesn't care who sees him because he doesn't have anything to hide. However Batman wears a black mask to hide his identity from the world.