Environmental Crisis and Gotham City: An Eco-Marxist Reading of The Dark Knight Rises

According to Karl Marx, "Labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother" Das Capital (1976); to Bruce Wayne, the protagonist of the film, Gotham city is his father, mother as well as his beloved. On the other hand, will of the League of Shadow is to destroy the city of Gotham for its corrupted model. This paper is engaged to discuss environmental crisis in the film The Dark Knight Rises (2012) at the clash between capitalists’ face Bruce Wayne (Batman in disguise) and pseudo-socialists faces Bane and Talia who are successors of the League of Shadow. It also engages in the discourse of anthropogenic activities of the capitalist force and in turn, pseudo-socialists, who instead of fighting against it, are aggravating that process in order to complete annihilation of the city. Each ideological side is at the will to fulfil their subjective agenda. Here, we have witnessed the extensive utilising of technology on behalf of the capitalists’ force to win over the pseudo-socialists. Very surprisingly, instead of opposing the anthropogenic activities, Bane and his team themselves are utilising technological machineries to ensure complete annihilation of Gotham city. So, this paper is not only engaging to show the degradation of the environment or the Green by the capitalists but also, how it has been aggravated by the activities of the pseudo-socialists, through the lens of Eco-marxism.