Trickster

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Buck Moon
Birthday - Hunter Thompson (writer)
Birthday - Nelson Mandela (statesman - S. Africa)
Constitution Day (Uruguay)

 

I think the Joker is a god.

 

No, really. I think he occupies a part of our psyche reserved for archetypes. Just because the medium has changed—now we have pop culture instead of fancy classic culture, because we all know that fancy classic culture was never pop culture—doesn’t mean we all don’t still have all these stories that float around and change with the retelling.

 

Sure, Bats is in the pantheon, too—he’s popular because there’s something about him we need in our narratives—but I’ve been thinking of the Joker more lately because I'm a shameless Joker fangirl and because of a certain event that brought him to the foreground in this movie. He’s the trickster and the force of chaos, in the same sense that Loki or Eris or Coyote or Anansi are (although he’s definitely on the dark end of the spectrum). Only he, as the modern version, actually resonates with us. I say this because—well, because people are saying he killed Heath Ledger.

 

I’ve heard a few stories about this—Heath is a method actor, and he got too into the role and looked into the abyss and couldn’t take it and killed himself; or maybe it was an accident, but by god he wouldn’t have been taking those sleeping pills if he hadn’t been so shaken by his role as the Joker. Now I myself think that you’d have to have some other problems first to let that get to you—if the role did anything, it was to exacerbate something that was already there that made him need those pills.

 

But see, that doesn’t matter.

 

The fact that we are willing to say the Joker did it—that this fictional pop culture character, a character originally made up for a one-shot run who seemed to hit a nerve and stayed—means that we think he’s got some power. People are willing to believe he reached through the fourth wall and actually did something physical, and that he is dark enough to scare someone that much. And since his kind of power is over our minds, thinking he’s got the power gives him power. It’s like profanity, or economics, or any superstition or religion or other form of magic people really believe—it’s not real, but we behave as if it has some bearing on us. And our reaction to Heath’s unfortunate death, among other things, proves that crazy clown has definitely got that power.

 

He's in our heads, and our belief creates and sustains him, and even gives him some tangible strength. 

That, my friends, is how gods are born.

 

 

The movie’s pretty good, for the record. The attempt to make Bats sound like Kevin Conroy* In Stereo was sorta silly, but c'mon! It’s made entirely of climaxes, and some people may recognize that one character arc is all about the DC idea of One Bad Day.  What more could you ask for?

(Possibly my favorite moment is the Disappearing Pencil, because it was so perfectly a summation of the Joker: every member of the audience in my theater curled up into a horrified ball and burst out laughing when he made it disappear. I don't think I've ever seen that reaction to anything that strongly before.)

 
*The only true voice of Batman.

Comments

[alchemist.livejournal.com]

I agree on all points about the Joker.

I would like to add to that that the Batman is popular because he's (a) the anti-hero, and (b) in essence, he's NORMAL. He's not a Superman. He has no special powers. He is an everyman who just trained and tuned and THINKS instead of just pounds his way through the Bad Guys. he is the triumph of Humanity and Human Ingenuity against forces more powerful than himself.

He's the kind of Hero we can get behind, because we know with enough money and time and effort (Did you see the thing where the scientist said 10-12 years of the right training and anyone can do the physical?), a "normal" person can do that. No amount of time/money/effort can make a Superman, a Wonder Woman, a SpiderMan, or a Green Lantern.

And maybe that's why I liked Iron Man so much - aside from the redemption of Tony Stark plotline - under it all, he's man made, he's weak. He's one of us who had a Bad Day and didn't succumb. Like Batman, he had One Bad Day, but he took a different inspiration from it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Most everyone thinks Batman is cooler than any other superhero, and that's exactly why. He's the one who works at it, who clearly cares enough to try it without the powers. The ones with powers give you this sense that they're doing the heroing because they've got these powers and it's their job ("Here, Green Lantern, I now appoint you hero"); Batman acts like he really means it and is determined to fix the world. And there is definitely a feeling that "You, too, can be Batman if you feel strongly enough about something!"

My brother and I love that the new Justice League cartoons reflect this, too--Plan B in most cases is to go whining to Batman to fix it for them. The writers are totally aware of it.

I think the franchise is so strong because it really does have a hero and at least one villain who touch something really basic that we all can respond to. It's not just the "normal" guy thing, but also that dark edge, that he's determined to do it not for some mystical concept of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but that he feels so strongly because he's pissed off and it's personal. That's something we can relate to pretty well.

Tony is interesting too because he's trying to fix damage he himself has caused. That right there makes for a flawed hero and a great character.

[plastic-logic.livejournal.com]

What I started to think of just then is what might have happened with Peter Parker who didn't get powers. If we ignore that his powers were the catalyst to brushing off uncle Ben, the wrestling match and the robbery Peter was a REALLY intelligent student, with his Uncles message of great power and great respocibility there is a chance Peter may have gotten into super-hero-ing without powers but with gadgets and science only he'd have the setback of not being a millionaire and having to scrape and work off of grants and so on.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

(Hi, here via naamah_darling.) That's why I always liked the Huntress - again, just an ordinary woman (and what's more, a fairly plain-looking, slightly flat-chested one at that instead of a supermodel-in-Spandex) with no powers - just very well trained physically. She and Batman are the kind of heroes that ordinary people could aspire to be.