After a few hours of being bored and scouring the internet on
one of my weekends in order to find something to do, I finally decided to
re-watch a favorite movie of mine which just so happened to be the infamous Batman Begins directed by Christopher
Nolan. Since its release in 2005, the prestigious film has become one of the
more well-known classics from the Dark
Knight trilogy. The movie itself consists of the main protagonist Batman,
played by Christian Bale, and how he came to be the crime-fighting hero we know
and love. In addition, it chronicles his
endeavors to combat one of his notorious arch-villains.
Who is this villain, you may ask? It is none other than the
corrupt sadistic psychiatrist named Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a “Scarecrow”, who
works at Gotham’s famous prison known as Arkham Asylum. This sociopathic villain,
played by Cillian Murphy in the movie, is secretly allied with other malicious
characters and plans to destroy the city of Gotham with the power of his ever
so potent fear toxin. Scarecrow, for all those who don’t know, utilizes a
powerful psychotropic hallucinogenic drug to use against the patients he is
assigned to analyze throughout the prison. Although, being evil and all, Dr.
Crane decides to do cruel and morbid experiments to those inmates that he has “proven”
are insane to the rest of society. He saw his actions as acceptable because he
believed them to be in the interest of psychological research and furthering
the understanding of the human mind.
These acts I’m sure seem unfathomable and disturbing to the
majority of you, and yet they essentially echo the monarchs that we’ve studied.
Many tyrants of earlier centuries used the property of Divine Right to justify
their oppressive rule over the masses. Divine right is the doctrine that states
that monarchs have no earthly authority over them and that their actions are
only governed by God. Using this principle, monarchs were able to assert their power
in a way that forced cruel subordination of all of their subjects. Like
Scarecrow, these monarchs found a way to rationalize extensive mistreating of
others. Just as the monarchs used Divine Right as an excuse to act as ruthless
tyrants, Scarecrow used scientific curiosity as a reason to harm his patients
during experimentation against their will. By abusing their powers and
justifying it with petty excuses, absolute monarchs show themselves to be no
better than the villains we hear about in movies.
Bibliography:
Merriam-Webster. “” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. March 11, 2014. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divine%20right.
Britannica. “Encyclopedia Britannica.” Divine Right of Kings. March 11, 2014. Accessed March 11, 2014.http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/166626/divine-right-of-kings.
Pictography:
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090718172116/joker/images/c/c3/Scarecrow_(Cilian_Murphy).jpg
http://traveljapanblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DSC_4934king-and-queen-crowns.jpg
Great post. I found it interesting how you took something from modern media and connected it with something in history. It is odd how closely these two scenarios can relate. The concept of a divine right alone is rather ridiculous, so it is funny to see it appear in two different cases. Nice job.
ReplyDelete