BATMAN:You’ll hunt me. You’ll condemn me, set the dogs on me… …because it’s what needs to happen.Because sometimes the truth isn’t good enough……sometimes, people deserve more….JAMES :Why’s he running, Dad?!GORDON :Because we have to chase him…The dynamic of scapegoating has continued to be a fascinating dynamic for me because I continue to see it more and more and usually most people fail to even recognize when it is happening. At the end of The Dark Knight, Batman accepts the reality that he must take on the role of scapegoat for the sake of Gotham’s (emotional) stability. It reminded me from a quote from a previous post I did on this topic generally at http://brianvirtue.org/2008/12/scapegoating-1862-style/ while I was reading Doris Goodwin’s Team of Rivals last year.
“The first necessity of every community after a disaster, is a scapegoat. It is an immense relief to find some one upon whom can be fastened all the sins of a whole people, and who can then be sent into the wilderness, to be heard of no more.”
– New York Times, July 7, 1862 (on pg. 447 in Team of Rivals)
Of course one of the best examples and most revealing about how these dynamics reflect what is going on in people’s hearts in that of how Jesus is scapegoated so that stability and the power structures of the first century Jewish community could be maintained.As an observation, scapegoating is not a choice. Groups naturally gravitate towards this in highly anxious situations. It requires intentionality to fight this compulsion to scapegoat because it is powerful and subconscious. It can be especially dangerous when it takes on spiritual overtones or rationalizations. Batman understands in this final moment that given the level of anxiety and angst in Gotham, he must allow himself to be scapegoating and that he “must be chased.”