The Joker
The Clown Prince of Crime
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- Dec 15, 2003
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Okay, you know how they say that a lie is more convincing if you mix it with the truth? You notice how it's not that a lie is more convincing if you mix it with truths that you don't spell out but someone could guess at? Or that it's more convincing if you tell one story, then tell an entirely different story, but there's a common element to the stories that might be true and would make sense if it was? It's not the same thing.
Superheroes fighting supervillains is naturally less believable than serial killers, so it requires a greater level of diligence in grounding things in reality to make it seem real. It needs the "lie" mixed with the "truth", not to be technically more realistic, but to have greater verisimilitude. Batman Begins delivered on that for me, which is how it won me over on the grounded take when that wouldn't have been my first choice, and then I felt The Dark Knight was approaching it in a more standard way, while styling itself as if it were even more grounded, like it was Law and Order: Super Villains Unit. That just wasn't doing it for me. I'd prefer it to be either more convincing or more fantastical.
The Joker is not a supervillain. He has no superior fighting skills, he has no powers, he has no special physical condition of any kind that elevates him above other people or makes him unique. He is an ordinary human man in clown make up with a facial disfigurement. That doesn't need any in depth explanation to be grounded or plausible. It is perfectly plausible. His clown persona does not need any in depth explanation for him to be grounded. The movie makes it very clear he is a clever psychopath, what his beliefs and agenda is, and they give very strong hints as to why he has adopted the clown persona. He is not Ra's Al Ghul where he is the leader of an ancient ninja organization that has been balancing the injustices of the world for centuries. That needs some explaining. He is not a reputable psychiatrist who gets some kind of sick delight out of wearing a Scarecrow mask and gassing people with fear toxin. That needs some explanation.
The Joker's character doesn't need that. If you personally need that for a character to work for you, that's unfortunate. I'd hate to have that hinder my enjoyment of a movie. But what ever floats your boat.
I'm not judging his overall merits, and him thematically counterbalancing Batman doesn't have anything to do with the the narrative plausibility or groundedness. And the guy who says he does it to scare people had never even seen him in the makeup. Even if The Joker said it himself, he was shown to be an inherently unreliable narrator when he changed his story on how he got his scars. You can say he does it to scare people because he gets in their faces, but Pfeiffer's Catwoman got in someone's face in a creepy way, and she dressed up like a cat because she was pushed out of a window, got licked by a bunch of cats, and lost her mind. Maybe The Joker uses the clown makeup as a means to an end, or maybe he's making a statement, or maybe something in his past compelled him to do it. We don't know the context. Batman Begins breaks Bruce's path down piece by piece. It spells out how and why Jonathan Crane first put on the mask and how it progressed from there. For me, there's a difference between doing that to make an unlikely character type convincing and just asking me to guess why. And it's more rewarding to me from a grounded reimagining perspective.
His counterbalance of Batman has everything to do with narrative plausibility. If a character comes off as implausible, then their themes and purpose fall flat. You have to buy the character in order for their story to work. That's why the Joker works because he is a perfectly plausible character. The audience buys this psychopath and his intentions, so everything that flows from his thematically works because he as a character works and we believe in this deranged psycho clown. They're not hung up on the details of why he's chosen a clown motif. He's got a smile cut into his face. Its not difficult to make the connection.
I don't understand your Pfeiffer Catwoman analogy. She got up in someone's face one time for all of five seconds in the movie just to chastise them about being weak (which was how she used to be). How do you equate that as a similarity to the Joker's drawn out scenarios of getting in people's faces on two separate occasions to tell them a disturbing tale about his creepy appearance? The movie gives the audience plenty of food for thought on why the Joker is the way he is.
I mean, criticizing the mysterious backstory in general wasn't really my point, but I prefer the Nicholson approach to his background. Or the Phoenix approach, although that's a lot of background detail.
Apologies. I thought that was your point since you accused them of not caring because they deliberately didn't explain the clown motif.
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