Come on, who else could it possibly be?
(Click the links to check out Hero/Villain Pairing #2, #3, #4, and #5. You might also enjoy my Favorite Fictional Couples list entry on The Joker and Harley Quinn, if you can forgive the lack of pictures in my earliest blogging efforts).
Individually, Batman and The Joker are one of my favorite heroes and quite possibly my favorite villain respectively. Put together, they’re magic. The two of them and their relationship are so complex that it’s hard to know where to begin analyzing them for the purpose of a bite-sized blog entry, and I have to fight the urge to stand back, point at them, and scream, “Wow, look at that!”
(Click the links to check out Hero/Villain Pairing #2, #3, #4, and #5. You might also enjoy my Favorite Fictional Couples list entry on The Joker and Harley Quinn, if you can forgive the lack of pictures in my earliest blogging efforts).
Individually, Batman and The Joker are one of my favorite heroes and quite possibly my favorite villain respectively. Put together, they’re magic. The two of them and their relationship are so complex that it’s hard to know where to begin analyzing them for the purpose of a bite-sized blog entry, and I have to fight the urge to stand back, point at them, and scream, “Wow, look at that!”
Can you feel the epic?
I’ll try to be more coherent. If you’re not familiar with even the absolute fundamentals of Batman… who are you and what the hell are you doing on my blog? Seriously. I mean, I understand having to give out some cliff notes on Shakespeare, but this?
*Deep breaths.*
Okay, okay, here’s how it goes:
*Deep breaths.*
Okay, okay, here’s how it goes:
Batman is the superhero alter ego of Bruce Wayne, whose billionaire parents were murdered in front of him by a petty criminal when he was eight years old. He’s spent his life obsessively studying all physical and mental skills that could possibly be of use in fighting back against crime and, as an adult, applying those skills through his Batman persona to protect his super-crime- and ordinary-crime-riddled city of Gotham.
The Joker has no secret identity and no agree-upon backstory. He’s had plenty of aliases, but whoever he used to be was lost when he detached from reality and became The Joker after a particularly bad day that even he doesn’t remember all the details of. In most interpretations, part of it involved being disfigured by contact with unknown chemicals. In some, this was indirectly caused by Batman interfering in a robbery he was taking part in.
Now, he’s a psychotic killer clown. It’s not as simple as that, of course. He’s an embodiment of chaos and malice, detached from reality and logic, utterly unpredictable. Sometimes he feels like proving that everyone is one bad day away from being like him, sometimes he feels like blowing up the city, sometimes he wants to be recognized as a legitimate comedian, and sometimes he just wants to steal stuff.
Already you’ve got a clash on plenty of levels. Good versus evil, justice versus anarchy.
Batman responds to his life-changing bad day with seriousness, order and nobility. Joker responds to his by completely rejecting those things.
What they’ve got in common doesn’t help matters any either, like mental illness. Yes, Batman too. He’s rational and moral, but he’s got a major god complex and an obsessive-compulsive behavioral pattern bad enough to preclude the possibility of any healthy interpersonal relationships. No psychiatrist would give him a clean bill.
Now, he’s a psychotic killer clown. It’s not as simple as that, of course. He’s an embodiment of chaos and malice, detached from reality and logic, utterly unpredictable. Sometimes he feels like proving that everyone is one bad day away from being like him, sometimes he feels like blowing up the city, sometimes he wants to be recognized as a legitimate comedian, and sometimes he just wants to steal stuff.
Already you’ve got a clash on plenty of levels. Good versus evil, justice versus anarchy.
Batman responds to his life-changing bad day with seriousness, order and nobility. Joker responds to his by completely rejecting those things.
What they’ve got in common doesn’t help matters any either, like mental illness. Yes, Batman too. He’s rational and moral, but he’s got a major god complex and an obsessive-compulsive behavioral pattern bad enough to preclude the possibility of any healthy interpersonal relationships. No psychiatrist would give him a clean bill.
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Not even these guys
Of course, similarities and contrasts aren’t enough to create a great hero/villain dichotomy, just enhance one. The fact that the two of them both act out their opposing philosophies very publicly in the same city, a city that both of them, Batman especially, feel very possessive of, is enough to put them at odds but not enough to add that personal touch that makes them special.
Like Dr. Frankenstein and Seymour Krelborn, Batman’s got the guilt of having created his monster antagonist, at least in his head. Even in the interpretations where Batman had nothing to do with Joker’s accident, he does make the conscious, repeated decision to preserve Joker’s life, knowing how dangerous and incurable he is, and how very far from escape-proof Arkham Asylum is.
Why does he keep on doing it? That’s the crux of their eternal impasse, what locks their two obsessive personalities together. Batman’s on the dark side as heroes go.
Like Dr. Frankenstein and Seymour Krelborn, Batman’s got the guilt of having created his monster antagonist, at least in his head. Even in the interpretations where Batman had nothing to do with Joker’s accident, he does make the conscious, repeated decision to preserve Joker’s life, knowing how dangerous and incurable he is, and how very far from escape-proof Arkham Asylum is.
Why does he keep on doing it? That’s the crux of their eternal impasse, what locks their two obsessive personalities together. Batman’s on the dark side as heroes go.
In case you couldn't tell.
But he draws a non-negotiable line at killing. He won’t do what was done to his parents, not to anyone. And it’s that determination, combined with his seriousness, that compels Joker. For all Joker’s wild mood swings, Batman is the one obsession he never forgets for a moment. Batman is the ultimate challenge of incorruptibility. If he can lose control, anyone can.
Likewise, Joker is the one villain out of Batman’s extensive rogues gallery who obsesses him nearly as much as the task of being Batman itself, the one who can get in his head and shake his formidable confidence, just a little, thanks partly to his absolute lack of human decency, mostly to his ever-growing history of going to any lengths necessary to do exactly that.
Likewise, Joker is the one villain out of Batman’s extensive rogues gallery who obsesses him nearly as much as the task of being Batman itself, the one who can get in his head and shake his formidable confidence, just a little, thanks partly to his absolute lack of human decency, mostly to his ever-growing history of going to any lengths necessary to do exactly that.
Joker can’t actually kill Batman, even if he sometimes thinks he wants to, because he’s built too much of his own identity around their relationship, and Batman can’t kill Joker, because then Joker would win. And so they stay, because that’s the magic of comic books. No matter what happens to either one of them, they’re eternal characters in a floating canon, always waiting for the next chapter, reboot, or reinterpretation.
As Heath Leger’s Joker succinctly puts it,
As Heath Leger’s Joker succinctly puts it,
"I think you and I are destined to do this forever."
