The Joker: Death Be Not Proud

     One of the problems with pushing the envelope is that eventually you reach a point where you go so far, your audience becomes indifferent.  Think about all the celebrities who have made their reputations not so much on content, but on controversy.  Sooner or later, it wears thin, and even if there is some genuine quality to speak of, there is always a tipping point where character becomes caricature.

       This applies to fictional beings as well as flesh-and-blood.  When a character has been around for a long time, the creative powers-that-be can find themselves in a position of frustration, attempting to find new directions in which to go without becoming repetitive and stale.  Sometimes the character simply gets written off, but that's not always an option, and so the boundaries get pushed further and further in order to give that character somewhere to go.  When this happens, quite frequently, the character gets taken so far that they become ludicrous, or simply boring.

     Which is how I've come to view The Joker of late.

Classic Joker

   The Joker is one of those characters that everyone knows.  He's Batman's arch-enemy and has been a regular staple in the comics since 1940.  He's been portrayed in live action and animation regularly since the '60s, and has been immortalized in countless action figures, video games, books, etc.  He's DC's single most recognizable villain, and is arguably the most famous comic book villain of all time.  He's been revamped, rethought, and reinterpreted more times than I can count, from goofy prankster to remorseless killer to avatar of chaos and everywhere in between.  He's visually distinct and remarkably memorable, possibly due to tapping in to the seemingly ubiquitous (and often questionable) fear of clowns in popular culture, and like many clowns, he can be funny, scary, or both.  Most importantly, he is the opposite side of Batman's coin - chaos to order, anarchy to law, dispassion to compassion, levity to severity.  Officially, he has no real name ("Jack Napier" is not recognized as official by DC), and his origins are murky...his past is 'multiple choice', in his own words, which makes him work very well as a dark and dangerous force of nature.

   He's undeniably important in the Batman universe, and he's one of those characters whose absences become significant and portentous in and of themselves.  All that said, The Joker's never been one of my favorite characters.  That's not to say I don't like him - far from it.  I just find that a little bit goes a long way where Joker is concerned, and there are other villains who I find more interesting, enjoyable, or compelling.  Where quality villains are concerned, Gotham City is an embarrassment of riches, after all.  I find Joker's presence as primary antagonist works best in concise doses, and because his stories to tend be important and iconic, it comes down to a question of quality over quantity.  That's speaking historically, though; lately, that ratio has been reversed.

Joker: Inspiring coulrophobia since 1940.

    Once upon a time, Joker's crimes were usually more of a game, a darkly whimsical battle of wits with the Caped Crusader...a dance, almost.  (With the devil?  By the pale moon light?)  Indeed, there have been frequent allusions on the Joker's part to their relationship being a kind of love, which can be a little disturbing when you consider the personalities involved, but actually does make a kind of sense.  (At least in one direction; it's hardly mutual.)  In the milder era of the Silver Age, Joker rarely even killed, but his original and Bronze Age-forward paths have always been littered with bodies.  He's always been depicted as completely insane, with no regard for life, and as someone who finds death, pain, and humiliation funny.  He's narcissistic, hedonistic and cruel.   I'm not going to attempt to psychoanalytically dissect him here...there have been any number of discussions of Joker's madness; I'm more concerned with how the character plays out.  Ultimately, what this translates into is a regularly recurring character who materializes to wreak havoc out of a sense of amusement, and laughs in the faces of those he's hurt, or who would stop him.

    Over the years, Joker has been responsible for some of the most violent and jarring events in Batman continuity.  He crippled and molested (to what degree remains questionable) Batgirl, tortured her father, brutally murdered the second Robin, killed Commissioner Gordon's wife, and has slaughtered countless other victims over the years.  (He'd actually killed Mister Freeze at one point, but that death didn't last.)   Once, when he thought he was dying, he 'Jokerized' the rest of DC's villains; admittedly, this crossover, "The Last Laugh" is possibly the worst DC's ever done.   Indeed, the level of his crimes have led directly to Batman's obsession with containing him, which feeds into Joker's ego and sense of their relationship.  It seems as though each time he appears, he (and his writers) feel a need to outperform the last engagement, usually to the tune of a higher body count.

     And that's where I feel the problem lies.  Possibly because of a flair for the dramatic, possibly because of a need to push the envelope, possibly because of the complete desensitization of the creators and audience alike, maybe some combination therein, Joker has of late become completely over the top....even for him.  He no longer even seems human...often, his dialogue bubbles are written in a scratchy font more appropriate to a demon than a mortal.  Another character cut off Joker's face...with Joker's willing agreement, mind you, which he then later strapped back on, visible muscle grinning beneath his own decaying flesh.  When that particular bit of grotesquerie was finally undone, in his most recent comics outing, we get yet another Joker-toxin attack, this time as a sort of plague to turn all of Gotham into giggling zombies.  We've seen countless variations on this idea before, but this most recent turn just screams 'bigger, louder, more bodies', hordes spread across the entire city, piles of corpses, all for the goal of the largest possible body count.    I feel it's impossible for any sane, balanced person to like this kind of a character; how can a rational person empathize with or relate to a character that exists for no other purpose but to express glee over pain and suffering?  Batman's villains are famously compelling, and Joker has been in his time as well, darkly so.  But lately...not so much.

  

Sadly, someone thought this was a good idea. 

    Batman's sworn oath of not killing always seems to become a little suspect where Joker is concerned.  It starts to strain credulity when a murderer this dangerous and hateful continues to be tossed back in a padded cell over and over, and no one seems willing to do anything about it.  (Well, it's been tried, but again...didn't last.)  Obviously, killing the Joker would be highly problematic for DC...as with most comic book villains, deaths don't tend to mean much, and even if they did try to keep him dead, then they'd not have him to work with.  But if you think about how it would translate to the real world, there's no way a personality like that would be allowed to endure.  Sooner or later, there'd be an 'accident' in prison, or something to that effect.  So when the writing keeps letting Joker become a bigger and bigger monster, it becomes harder and harder to rationalize how the other characters in this universe allow that to continue.

     Now, there is an argument to be made that Joker has become a living force of death and chaos simply out of narrative necessity.  The way Batman's been written over the last decade or so has made the Dark Knight into a seemingly all-knowing machine of a hero, unbeatable and unstoppable - so much so that in any "Batman vs. x" scenario, the answer is always Batman.  Indeed, I'm just waiting for the day when we see Batman take on a triple-tag-team of Galactus, Unicron and the Death Star, standing atop their shattered forms and brooding.  It's gotten to be a little much.  So it does make sense that his evil counterpart became as monumentally deranged as he did.  However, neither extreme makes for good writing or sustainable character interplay for any length of time.  It's really more predictable than anything - and what's worse, boring.

Possibly the most iconic image of evil in all of comics.

     Obviously, the days when Joker's diabolical plans consisted of hijacking a high school soda mission to distribute spare change to unsuspecting teenagers so he could lure them to a life of crime are over, except in pastiche format.  And that's fine - as comics have become darker and more sophisticated, the stakes for the characters have risen.  The issue that writers face is in how to make a compelling character work without simply going into literal overkill for its own sake.  It can be done - despite the high body counts in both series, the Arkham games and the Dark Knight Trilogy both presented logical, frightening and coherent adaptations of the Joker that managed to capture the essence of the character without careening off into mindless, pointless carnage.  My fear is that we may have reached the saturation point, and that all we may get from here out is just the same, only more numbing and repetitive.

   I hope not; Joker has been a tremendous villain in the past, and works better when his threats are more intimate and personal.  The recent Death Of The Family storyline was actually not bad conceptually, but got bogged down and buried by editorial excess and self-indulgent marketing.  It illustrates that there's still a great character in there, but it requires the patience and care to call it forth.  I am by no means saying that the Joker should not be evil, or deadly, or remorseless.  I'm simply trying to argue that there's a way to write the character so he retains some vestige of what made him such a popular character in the first place without relying on schlock.

Joker in live action over the years, chronologically.  I actually think this illustrates my point quite well.

   As a corollary to this, I'm also a little put off by how some members of the public respond to the character, or rather, to which version they do respond.  There are Joker figures targeted at small children...bright and playful, usually with purple cars with big mallets, that sort of thing.  I have to wonder how parents respond when their five-year-old asks to read a current Batman comic, if such things still happen.  On the flip side, I've heard a lot of adult fans talk about how 'awesome' the Joker is; even some who profess to dislike all comic characters, or all DC characters, except him, and I have to wonder what it is that's earning their admiration.  From my own experience, the people who voice this type of opinion are the kinds of people I generally try to avoid conversing with, the kinds of people who make you wish they had more stringent gun laws.  There seems to be a certain fascination with the character, not as a foil for Batman or for his own merits, but as a vehicle for reckless abandon and pure violence.  It makes me wonder what projected hostilities are being envisioned, if this modern Joker is their favorite, or the only character they like.   One further aside, I've encountered a handful of cosplayers who have appropriated the Joker...badly (i.e. usually in sloppy makeup and low-effort costumes) who use the costume, such as it is, as an excuse to behave obnoxiously...even rudely or aggressively...at conventions, screaming, shouting, shoving, etc.  Of course there are many excellent Joker cosplayers, in fact, it's usually pretty easy to tell the problematic ones apart from the good.  The lesser crowd tend to be the most egregious personalities combined with the least quality of work.  I find them rather symbolically appropriate of the kind of excesses Joker as a character himself has been given.

Because when he works, he works sooooooo well...

   Personally, I've always appreciated a Bronze Age take on the character, a true "Clown Prince of Crime", which was adapted wonderfully in Batman: the Animated Series.  Maybe I'm a little hidebound, but I vastly prefer Joker as a perennial sparring partner, a warped artist, a malevolent Moriarty, but still a human being, one can be beaten, albeit temporarily.  One who doesn't leave me with a vague feeling of either boredom or disgust.  Perhaps with DC's recent Convergence storyline, which supposedly will de-emphasize continuity in favor of quality stories, we may see a return to a more classic approach which will allow writers to be inventive without having to feel like they have to simply outdo their predecessors.

   Time will tell.  I'd really like to go back to enjoying Joker stories, and not having a general loathing of what the character has become.  I hope we see the character dialed back and returned to a more grounded, love-to-hate persona.  I look forward to seeing him again...  In fact, I can't wait to get a load of him.