How Did Batman Influence The Joker

Power and Influence in Batman – the Dark Knight
Power is the capacity of a person, team or organization to influence others. In this superheroic story, the main characters– Batman (Bruce Wayne) and The Joker are very powerful in Gotham city. The relationship among characters can be pertinently depicted using theories under the power and influence topic.
Batman – a superhero in the city, he has sufficient wealth, superior physical strength and familiarity of the criminal underworld, making him capable to become to be the vigilante protector of the city. Thus, he has always been admired by citizens.
The Joker –a psychopathic perpetrator desires to create social disorder, enjoys seeing chaotic situation in the city. Despite his psychological impairment, the Joker is highly intelligent in perpetration and his actions are carefully planned. He was nobody among criminal world until he kills one of the mob leaders. Since then, the Joker is powerful in the criminal underworld and later in the whole city – everyone is under his influence.
Sources of Power
Batman has his power from two personal
sources, namely expert power and referent power. One has expert power if he or she possesses knowledge or skills. Batman is familiar with the operation in the criminal syndicate after he had travel around the world for several years, learning the various ways of the underworld. These enable him to become a vigilante expert. Referent power of Batman comes from his extraordinary charisma. In addition to excellent grappling skills, Wayne’s wealth provides Batman with advanced and unique costumes and accoutrements. Every time when there is a crime, Batman can successfully defeat criminals, creating an image of a superhero. Thus, Batman is admired and respected by numerous public. Some police officers like Harvey Dent and James Gordon, who do not corrupt, are also willing to cooperate with Batman. They form unofficial alliance with Batman to protect Gotham City from the criminal underworld.
The Joker also, to a certain extent, has his expert power. His determination to destroy order has complete and perfect almost every action plan he made. He is so professional in committing crimes that others, even Batman, seem to be always under his control, following his plan to ruin the city. Thus, he can be said to be a perpetration profession. Besides, coercive power also makes the Joker so influential in the city. The Joker forces others including Batman, mobs and citizens to obey him by applying punishments – intimidating and killing. For example, he forced Batman to disclose his identity by continuously killing citizens and the mobs to cooperate with him by killing one of the mob leaders Gambol.
Contingencies of Power
The power of Batman and the Joker are affected by the four contingencies of power –substitutability, centrality, discretion and visibility.
Both two low have substitutability of their power, which means that there are almost no other substitutes for them. Batman’s supernatural ability is not replaceable in safeguarding the city while it is also difficult for the mobs to find someone who is intelligent enough to kill Batman. Without Batman, citizens will be massacred by the Joker; without the Joker, the mobs will loss all their money under investigation of Batman and the police.
Therefore, their actions highly affect the respective stakeholders’ interests. These lead to another inference – Batman and the Joker have high centrality of their power, which is the high degree and nature of interdependence between Batman and citizen and that between the Joker and the mobs.
Conversely, Batman and the Joker have different discretion and visibility of their powers. The Joker has somehow higher discretion relative to Batman. That is the Joker has more freedom in making decisions without referring to specific rules or receiving permission from someone else. Batman fight against criminals in the city, he is a symbol of justice and peace. Thus, when it comes to the time when he confront the Joker or other criminals, he cannot kill them in case it is necessary to do so. However, the Joker is evil. He can achieve his goal unscrupulously, without worrying that if his behavior will set a bad model for others.
On the other hand, Batman has high visibility of his power relative to the Joker before the Joker kills one of the mob leaders.
Batman has been known and respected by citizens for his contribution in maintaining peace in the city. Another identity of Batman – Bruce Wayne also has a high visibility of his power. He is a billionaire with an extensive network among the rich. Thus, he can influence others to support Harvey Dent after realizing Harvey’s sincerity. On the contrary, the Joker had been ignored in the syndicate despite his intelligence. Therefore, when he first meets the mob leaders at the meeting, he is being despised as a simple psychopathic patient. The Joker become more powerful in the syndicate after he have kill the mob leader and in the city after he begins killing innocent citizens and challenge the law publicly, as all these increase his visibility to
others.
Influence Tactics used by the main characters
Different influence tactics are used by Batman and the Joker when facing different people.
For Batman, he influences police officers by silent authority. Although Batman does not have legitimate power, police officers who allied with him just cooperate with him by following his instructions in most scenarios without overt influence. This is due to Batman’s expert power and referent power in the city, so the police believe in Batman’s ability and sincerity for the city. Thus silent authority is applicable. When facing the Joker, Batman usually uses assertiveness – he tried to influence the Joker by threatening and confronting. For instance, when the joker has taken into custody, Batman tried to make him confess his plan by violence. When facing Two-face who is the dark side Harvey Dent, Batman tries to stop him from killing innocent people by encouraging him to forget animosity as Batman still believes Two-face is kindhearted inside. Here Batman has used a type of soft tactic influence, persuasion to influence Two-face as he used emotional appeal.
For the Joker, obviously he always uses hard influence tactics, especially assertiveness in compliance with his cruelty. For example, he demands support from the mobs by killing and threatening in the meeting of the mob leaders. He also controls other confederates who rob the bank with him using information control – to manipulate others’ access to information by withholding, filtering and re-arranging information.
The Joker does not disclose the whole plan of robbery to the confederates and his instructions to each confederate are different, so that he can manipulate the whole robbery by himself. He finally kills his partners one by one after he has finished his duty. Among the examples, there is one exception that the Joker uses soft influence tactic instead of hard one. When the Joker is being locked up and beaten by Batman in the custody, he keeps on tried to convince Batman that they are the same kind of people as they are being seen as weird creatures in citizens’ eyes. This is the rare time when the Joker uses persuasion to influence others.