Justifying the Joker

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

-Kurt Vonnegut

I live every day of my life teetering on the edge, as I have previously said. And I've explained how and why I identify with the Joker as a character, laugh at his jokes, and defend him to the bitter end. Let me throw one more Vonnegut quote on the subject into the mix and then I'll get down to it.

"...laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little."

I can't help but quote from one of my idols. It may seem a bit heartless to say so, but I miss him more than family members who have passed on.

In "Arkham Asylum: A serious house on serious Earth," the Joker's actual diagnosis is unclear. However the expert clinical therapist on call says that he isn't even really crazy. He suffers from a sort of super-sanity and is only able to function in the world and interpret what he sees around him by creating himself anew each day.


Here i'm providing you with the relevant pages.


There are two different paths a person can walk down when they look around them and finally recognize what was merely a void, or empty space, as actual emptiness. Real, metaphysical, all that jazz. We are tiny little blips on the radar. As kids it doesn't bother us so much because we have some sort of faith. Mine may have been in my parents. But for those of us who have nothing to turn to the emptiness stares back. Anne Frank is recorded as writing that

It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death...and yet...I think...this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

But has it? Couldn't these same words have been written in any language, by any man woman or child at nearly any point in history? The statistics of those believed to be mentally sound but participating in positive self-delusion are staggering. The perceived order of the world is only a few steps away, or one bad day, or a slip of a finger onto a button, a lone gunman, a first shot, away from falling in upon itself. The implosion of starship earth. In such an insane world the only sane thing to do is struggle onwards towards whatever you believe is best to do.

For the Joker this is to be an agent of chaos and destruction. The human embodiment of all the random tragedy that is existence. Sometimes this means he steals report cards from school children or ties up a family and eats their food and plays with their stuff on Christmas Eve. Or it could mean shooting a girl through the spine, beating a teenager to death, or even shooting a baby. On occasion the Joker is truly hilarious, making the reader or watcher belly laugh with his antics. But this same character could make this observer vomit with some of the sick, twisted, and depraved things he's done. His obsession with Batman borders on the religious. Batman is order. Joker is chaos. Batman has one rule and represents order and lawful good. Joker has no rules, no order, no modus operandi even. Two examples to perfectly offset each other.



To be continued hopefully soon, coupled with the latest photos of my Joker costume I'll be donning for the midnight release of The Dark Knight.