And, yet, as hard as it tries, Nolan's Batman cannot rise above the ridiculousness of its subject. On the one hand, it is an attempt to tap the film noir roots of the Batman story (Ebert) -- the conflict between good and evil, law and disorder
The study of the superhero has been, in a way, already performed by Joseph Campbell, whose Hero with a Thousand Faces attempts to be the definitive source of the hero myth. Yet, cultural studies theory and psychoanalysis both allow the researcher to view the superhero in a different way: The latter represents an assessment of the "inner workings of [the superhero's] mind…[while] researchers like James Iaccino and William Indick look at structural mythology not from a physical standpoint but as a reflection of society's psychological tendencies" (Lucas 19)
Nolan uses noir as a springboard for analysis. The crime/noir film genre has been used to represent a dual mentality in the American social fabric: "The first gangster cycle condemned and glorified the brutality of the underworld" (Mast 270)
Yet, the postmodern story teller, whether Robert Coover, or John Barth, or Donald Barthelme, or any of the magical realists who write in the same vein as the fabulators, is not quite content to simply underline a lack of objectivity in the modernist. What he does, rather, is impose a haunting vision of something more that seems to skulk on the edge of the postmodern consciousness -- much like the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree" (O'Connor 2) in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood
That's what we're doing with the Joker. He's essentially an anarchist" (Treat 103)
Magical realism accepts without dissection. Nolan dissects before accepting -- but as the poet states, "We murder to dissect" (Wordsworth)