Please enjoy this guest post by Jared Bauer, looking at the literary and metaphysical origins of The Dark Knight. Like it? Then tell us in the comments!

Let’s assume for a second that everything the Joker says is nonsense. After all, he is the Joker. And what does the Joker do? Well, joke, of course. But why does he joke? Part of the reason that The Dark Knight has raised the bar for its genre is because, unlike its contemporaries, it dares to answer this question. Why did Jack Nicholson joke? Because the acid accident made him crazy. Why did Doc Ock go on a rampage to destroy New York? Because the mechanical tentacles made him crazy. Up until The Dark Knight, it generally just stopped there.

Or: Holy plaisire du texte, Barthes-Man!

The plot of The Dark Knight, like that of Batman Begins, is honestly kind of shapeless and waffle-y. And yet, as Memento proves, Nolan is capable of writing narratives that are drum-taught and mongoose-agile. Why is he churning out these behemoths? Why, despite the wafflage, are they so dang good?

To answer this, I’d like to take a minute to consider Batman as a piece of storytelling, to consider the properties of the tale as it’s told. You’re probably taking it as given that there are spoilers for The Dark Knight ahead. But I should warn you that there are also spoilers for Batman Begins, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, the Superman comic books, and The Hunt For Red October. Be warned.

In his famous – for a certain value of “fame” – book S/Z, Roland Barthes strip-mines Balzac’s Sarrasine, wringing every scrap of meaning out of the text and classifying his findings into five narrative codes: Hermeneutic, Semic, Proairetic, Symbolic, and Cultural. The wikipedia definitions of these codes are pretty solid as of this writing (I mean, they could be “Taco! Taco! Taco!” by tomorrow), but they’re easier to understand when you see them in action. Like after the jump! Convenience!