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The fact that we are willing to say the Joker did it—that this fictional pop culture character, a character originally made up for a one-shot run who seemed to hit a nerve and stayed—means that we think he’s got some power.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

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*tips hat* Thanks for stopping by!

There are a lot of different versions of him, and all sorts of theories as to how (in)sane he actually is--some say he's SUPER sane, some show him as actually crazy, a few say he's just really good at faking it. So you're right--it's a lot like Hamlet.

I loved that line, too, because it's such a lie for at least what he was talking about right then.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

I think Joker is one of those types of characters that sort of knows he's a little cuckoo, knows he's not all-together, but yet, doesn't really care, because it's fun for him to be that way. So while I don't think he's 100% sane, I don't think he's as insane as some people think. You don't come up with elaborate plans and the correct way to execute them without having some sort of sanity.

I almost went as far as to say that Rachel was Polonius, but then I thought it was too much. XD (Uh, gee, can you tell I've written about 2 or 3 analytical papers for my theater classes on Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?) I do think Joker as Hamlet works, even if none of the other characters work out.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewshead.livejournal.com]

(Came over from d2leddy's link
Many things (I'd say most) think that the Joker stated in the movie were lies. He planned out almost everything. The boats, the cops, the bank job, the joker is a HYPER planner. Almost like Xanatos in Gargoyles. He has a plan and a backup plan for every situation.


And I'll disagree with many of the people here about Joker is playing to the 4th wall but it's a side effect of what he's trying to do. I really do think that almost everything he did was to show the "heroes" of Gotham exactly what kind of people they were defending, it was all a show just one for Harvey and Bruce not the not the movie audience.