AS90851 Exemplar Essay
Describe at least ONE character or individual who played an important role in the
text.
Explain why the character(s) or individual(s) was important in the text as a whole. Discuss
visual /oral text features in your response
Visual /oral text features could include:
 layout
 structure
 dialogue
 colour
 special effects
 narration
 lighting
 music
 costumes /props
 sound effects
 use of voice /
body language
 editing
 ambient sound /silence
 imagery
 language
.
The Joker from the film, The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, is an
important character. He is important because it is through him that chaos is revealed
as one of the major themes of the film. Visual features of make-up and lighting and
oral features of dialogue, are used by the director to link the theme of chaos to the
character of The Joker.
The Joker wears a clown make-up mask throughout the film. He has whitened his
face, painted a huge, grotesque red clown smile across his lips and cheeks and
darkened his eyes with black eye makeup. The effect of this is chaotic on us as an
audience. The darkness of the black eyemakeup makes The Joker’s eyes seem to
sink into their sockets and so, most of the time, we cannot make out the emotion in his
eyes. The only way the viewer can read expression, is by looking at the rest of The
Joker’s face. But the director makes sure that the make up on the rest of the face also
present the theme of chaos and uncertainty.
When The Joker kills the final bank robber colleague at the start of the film, the
makeup makes it look as if he is smiling while he is killing someone. This is so
confusing at first, but later it becomes clear that confusion and chaos is what the Joker
represents. Although The Joker keeps his make up on throughout the film, we also
see it getting worn off and faded. This is most obvious in the interrogation scene. I
think the reason that the make up is cracked and thin is because the director wants to
suggest to us that some of The Joker has rubbed off on Batman. And, in this scene,
when we watch Batman interrogate The Joker to the point of torture, we feel that the
man who should be good has become bad, it’s almost as if the Joker’s makeup has
dripped and run off his face onto Batman, and in the process some of The Joker’s evil
has corrupted Batman’s good.
Lighting is used to highlight the bad in the antagonist (The Joker) and by contrast, the
good in the protagonist (Batman). At the end of the opening sequence, The Joker
removes his mask and for many of the scenes in the movie, The Joker is seen with half
his face in light, and other half of his face in shadow. Batman, or Bruce Wayne, has
his face lit evenly and brightly, most of the time, which confirms that he is a hero, giving
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the audience no reason to fear him and more reasons to side with him. In the
interrogation scene, the director has the room darkened, with only one lamp shining
upwards on the bottom of The Joker’s face. The director does this to show how
chaotic things get when The Joker is around, because we all know that light normally
comes from above, so to have it coming from below emphasises how upside down The
Joker makes Gotham City.
Later, when Batman is interrogating The Joker, the same flat, white light illuminates
both of them. During this scene, and after this scene, Batman struggles to know how
to behave in a way that is good and right, and I felt as if it was during this scene that
the lighting used shows that both characters can be bad people. I felt really worried
about this idea, because even though this is a fake, comic-book movie, I think that the
idea of everyone having a chaotic mix of good and evil inside them is a scary idea.
What if one day everyone allows the evil inside them to overwhelm the good – we will
live in a world of anarchy and chaos!
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In the scene when The Joker threatens Rachel with a knife at a party, he says, “Now
I’m always smiling” when he explains to her how he got his scars. His dialogue makes
the viewer feel uneasy – having one’s face cut to create big scars, cannot be a happy
memory, but The Joker makes out that it was a good thing, because it has left him with
a scar that looks like a smile. Thus, his dialogue makes the theme of chaos clear.
The tagline of the move is the question: “Why so serious?” and this is The Joker’s
attitude all the way through the film. He loves conflict and says, “I’m an agent of
chaos” – his words show us that it’s his goal to turn Gotham City upside down,
eliminate law and order and show that the people of Gotham City are selfish, evil and
savage. The most obvious way in which The Joker accomplishes his objective is via
Harvey Dent. Dent’s dialogue early in the film “You either die a hero, or you live long
enough to see yourself become the villain” foreshadows what becomes of him – he is
transformed from Gotham’s White Knight into an evil and angry man by The Joker.
Through dialogue, we realize The Joker lives for chaos and anarchy. Whenever he is
around, we feel nervous about the questions that he asks, or the statements that he
makes because nothing he says can be trusted.
In The Dark Knight, the director Christopher Nolan manages to use dialogue, lighting
and make-up to make us, the audience, hold a mirror up to our own faces and ask us
to examine ourselves as human beings. We should come to the conclusion that we do
not want to be unpredictable and irrational like The Joker, because engaging in that
sort of behavior leads to chaos and destruction – and who wants to live in a world like
that?
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