Oh, I disagree. The Joker is insane because "sanity" is a legal definition. "Sane" is equivalent with "normal", and they're both relative terms. If someone says "you're insane", what they really mean is that "You are significantly different than I in one or more ways, and That Isn't Ok because it's Bad."
The Joker is insane because to us, the "normal" people (and one's frames of reference for "normal" and "sane" are what society has agreed on), he makes no sense. He is different in a dark, frightening way--he does things that no "normal" human would contemplate, let alone actually DO--and the only way we can explain it (and human psychology is desperate for explanations) is that since he is different, and thus not "normal", then it follows logically that he must be "insane".
He isn't, of course--he is terribly, coldly, impossibly rational relative to his own self. But he has to be insane because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-07-28 07:26 pm (UTC)The Joker is insane because to us, the "normal" people (and one's frames of reference for "normal" and "sane" are what society has agreed on), he makes no sense. He is different in a dark, frightening way--he does things that no "normal" human would contemplate, let alone actually DO--and the only way we can explain it (and human psychology is desperate for explanations) is that since he is different, and thus not "normal", then it follows logically that he must be "insane".
He isn't, of course--he is terribly, coldly, impossibly rational relative to his own self. But he has to be insane because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.