dark knight: rachel dawes in a refridgerator
“A little fight in you. I like that…”
***SPOILERS!***
At the risk of harping on about The Dark Knight, I was reading the excellent Girl-Wonder.org, and it got me thinking about the gender politics of Christopher Nolan’s Bat-opus. I’m a sucker for masculine bonding and professional, or men-on-a-mission, stories. But why did Rachel Dawes have to die?
Skipping the snarky jokes about killing the Katie Holmes version being OK, it’s obvious in narrative terms why Dawes dies. She’s the one thing that all the characters care about. Harvey Dent loves her; Bruce Wayne sees her as symbolic of his someday/maybe release from the mantle of the Bat; and Jim Gordon trusts her, a pretty exclusive honour in this troubled town. And someone we care about has to die, otherwise the Joker’s sense of menace isn’t validated — killing faceless extras doesn’t carry the same weight.
Everybody loves Dawes, so her death has far-reaching implications. And she’s the only character not entrenched in the Batman mythos. Dent, Gordon, or Alfred can’t die because they can’t be replaced. Lucius Fox maybe, but as the most benign presence in the film that would just be cruel. So we kill the girl.
Because that’s what she is. She’s the girl. She’s the moral centre for the men taking care of business, but she has no role in moving the story forward except to provide motivation for the men. Holmes’ limp incarnation didn’t convince for a second that she was a crusading lawyer, so credit to Gyllenhall’s more authoritative take. Yet the one point when the script calls for her to do some lawyering, when she interviews Lau in the MCU holding cell, could have been given to Dent and the story wouldn’t have skipped a beat. As such, she’s replaceable.
Just as Vicki Vale, Chase Meridien, Julie Madison, Vesper Fairchild, Silver St. Cloud and the rest are disposable and replacable, Dawes is the only who can go. Then there’s Judge Freel, who gets blown up, and Ramirez, who is a corrupt cop. But not even a cool, badass corrupt cop, just one who loves her dear old mum, gawd bless’er.
It’s galling that a female character — the female lead, no less, can’t be more than the voice of reason who provides motivation for the men, by looking pretty and then dying. It’s called Girlfriend in a Refridgerator Syndrome.
What makes it worse in this context, is Gordon’s death. When Gordon dies, I felt that the gloves were off. Holy shit, they’ve killed one of the main characters from the comic! Anything can happen! Except, of course, he isn’t dead. The guys don’t die.
Incidentally, see if you can guess if Dawes shows up in IMDb’s memorable quotes from The Dark Knight, which is stuffed full of great lines. When a character called Tattooed Prisoner gets better dialogue than the female lead, there’s something wrong.
How to right this? Talia al Ghul kicking the shit out of everybody.