Is this some kind of joke?Everyone involved in the upcoming "Joker" prequel seems sure they've stumbled onto a brilliant idea--but the rest of us are quite stumped. When Martin Scorsese decides he wants to make a Batman picture you try not to look the gift horse in the mouth, but just what the hell is this?
What creative spark got Scorsese's eye? What inspiration drove director Todd Philips and writer Scott Silver? What drew the famously picky Joaquin Phoenix, who has joked with us before and will no doubt joke with us again?
The problem isn't, as many comics fans claim, that a backstory to the Joker goes against canon. This is a misconception. Sure, the original Joker didn't have an explanation--but neither did Polka Dot Man or the Riddler. What more did you need to know? In 1951, Batman readers learned he used to be the a slightly less schticky criminal called the Red Hood, whose skin was bleached white by acid--and as far as I know this unique background for his brand of villain. It's actually one of the more well-known and timeless origin stories in the DC universe, working its way into the beloved 1989 "Batman" and the current comics canon.
When "The Dark Knight" cut all origin or backstory from their Joker character, it wasn't out of respect to canon. It was because the screenwriters correctly realized that it just isn't interesting. If it was interesting, Alan Moore wouldn't have had to add more so much more to make "The Killing Joke" sell. No matter which era you turn to, which conception of the Clown Prince of Crime you let seep into your nightmares, you're not dealing with a man. You're dealing with elements personified--chaos, existential terror, the tragic joke of the universe. Batman gets stronger when he's humanized--connected to normal human impulses like revenge, survivor's guilt, loneliness. Joker gets defanged.
In 2009, Roger Ebert wrote that Heath Ledger's Joker was strangely "elevating" to him--that there was something stirring, even touching, about seeing someone "stripped of all emotion except for ruthless self-pity." Who wants to see what was there before the stripping?
But we'll just have to see what they have in store. Hopefully it will satisfy my bewilderment of why they picked this, when there are just so many whacked-out Joker stories out there.
The Joker is a license for writers to just go nuts, and it's a license they've used and abused over the years, to some fantastic and fantastically bizarre ends. Here are just a few of the Joker stories Scorsese & Co. might have chosen besides the backstory.
Joker was...Batman. And Trump.
I'm talking about the time in 1969 when Joker donned a disguise-within-a-disguise to simultaneously tear the Justice League apart from inside while also turning the world against superheroes. While championing himself as "Mr. Average," the most normal man in America. And using a front company called "Trump."
Long story short, Joker disguises himself as John Dough, a.k.a. "Mr. Average," to sow distrust of superheroes and all with differences while *also* disguising himself as a mirror-image Batman to create artificial division and then, with a touch of mind control, turns all the rest of the Justice League berserk. (The rest of his plan? Who knows.)
The Trump business comes in as the name of the satellite he imprisons the real Batman in, which of course is the clue Batman needs to uncover the villain's identity. (Remember when "trump" mainly made you think of cards?")
This being the late 60s, and with the famed Denny O'Neil writing, it's meant to be a commentary on the turbulence of the times.
"These are unusual times. People read about wars..riots..they can't understand what's happening--" Superman says.
"Neither can I! And I don't blame them for mistrusting anything that's strange--including superheroes!" Atom continues.
It's Green Arrow who takes the bold #NeverTrump stance.
"Dough's glorification of the average is sheer nonsense!" he yells "The 'world's work' gets one because of what's different in individuals."
Get this man a Twitter account.
Joker Was....the Ambassador of Iran
If anyone could replace the Joker as the figure of ultimate evil, in the 1980s it might have been Ayatollah Khomeini. Following the fall of the Shah or Iran, the hostage crisis, and the chants of "Great Satan," the Supreme Leader came to epitomize religious fanaticism, terrorism and defiance of the United States.But did you know the two teamed up?
The union came at the tale of "Death in the Family," when DC took a page from Joker's book and left Robin's life hanging in a dastardly device--in this case, a 1-900 call-in vote. DC readers infamously chose death for the young sidekick, and Joker beat Jason Todd to a pulp in the Ethiopian desert. Less-remembered is the bizarre afterstory, in which the Ayatollah--apparently employing the Liberty University-Donald Trump logic of strange bedfellows--hires Joker to be Iran's ambassador to use the country's diplomatic immunity to smuggle deadly gas into the U.N. headquarters.
"That country's current leaders and I have a lot in common. Insanity and a great love of fish," Joker tells the General Assembly. "We've both suffered abuse and belittlement! Well, we aren't going to take it anymore!"
Well, the legal logic of this plot is a little ridiculous. Actually, everything about this story is ridiculous. Joker has long been a vehicle for conscious or unconscious national fears, but this is awfully specific.
But what seems even weirder to me than the dated Islamophobia is remembering a time when Joker used his bare hands to kill people, and was driven by the mundane motives of a crime lord as much by psychotic vindictiveness. Sometimes, the Joker is just like any other villain--only more so.
Joker Was....Everyone In the Batman Family
In the 1999 direct-to-video "Return of the Joker," he somehow reappears in the future Gotham of "Batman Beyond," the cyberpunk sequel to "Batman: The Animated Series." In a flashback, Joker kidnaps Tim Drake, the second Robin, torturing him for weeks with unspeakable mind control until he's turned into Joker's Mini-Me-ish cackling zombie. Joker ultimately implants him with a microchip allowing his consciousness to take over Drake's body decades into the future.
If this seems a little disturbing for a spinoff of what was once an after-school cartoon--well, you wouldn't be alone. Post-Columbine, it was heavily edited into a PG version, with much of the Tim Drake business cut. The TAS writers always had to tone down the Hamill Joker for the format, which somehow made him starker and purer--he's not always brilliant and he can't ratchet up the bloodlust for thrill points. Hamill's Joker's not trying to prove a point and he's not particularly fond or admiring of his archnemesis. He really is just in it for the jokes. As a foil for Batman he's scary enough, but it's when his chaos-for-its-own-sake MO ensnares the innocent that Joker really gets unsettling.
But want to get closer? In "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader," a sort of fantasy shiva during Batman's supposed death in the Grant Morrison arc, Neil Gaiman plays a "what-if" game with the Batman legends, centering on Alfred. What if all the Batman villains were just actors being directed by Bruce's closest family member, hoping to guide him out of his despondent grief? What if he became so devoted to his task that he took on the most important role, the ultimate arch-nemesis, himself?"What he needed was a Moby Dick to his Ahab, a Moriarty to his Holmes. And so I, regretfully, did what needed to be done."
(Alfred's a former actor, remember.)
It's an absurd little thought experiment in Gaiman's strangely affecting love letter to the Batman mythology.
But what if the Joker became the most important person in Bruce's life, the person who motivates him every day?
Brian Azzarello used the Flashpoint cross-over event--some universe-mixing to precede the 2011 New 52 reboot--to suppose a dark Gotham universe in which Bruce Wayne, not his parents, died at the hands of a mugger, Thomas Wayne became a bloodthirsty and remorseless Batman, and his mother Martha Wayne, driven insane by her grief, became the Joker. The saga is ingenious for how it takes the basic Batman elements, shoves them into a blender, and lets them fly whichever way they will. It's a twist so clever, grotesque, absurd and heartbreaking that it's already become an iconic Batman moment, that they've even toyed with bringing to the Silver Screen.And there's a morbid symmetry to this--if grief over a random death could drive Bruce to become Batman, surely it could drive Martha to become Joker. The hidden implication behind their rivalry is that it's about different worldviews born from tragedy, and maybe the most disquieting conclusion of all is that the difference boils down to random, cosmic chance.
Joker Was....Literal God
And it's just as weird and disturbing as it sounds.
This isn't an alt-universe or Elseworlds take, either. This was really happening, as far as Batman, Superman, and the rest of the DC Universe were concerned. In the nine-issue 2000 series, Joker tricks the extra-dimensional trickster Mister Mxyzptlk into giving him 99% of his reality-altering powers, which he immediately uses to transform all of creation into a demonic, absurdist hellscape of his own dominion.
He changes everyone in it, too, adapting their minds to the new distorted environment--people barely recognize that anything is amiss, even as priests have been replaced with Elvis impersonators and continents are reshaped to the Joker's grin. The once all-powerful Darkseid is forced to act out the Budweiser "Wassup!" ads--(Remember the humor of the early aughts?)--and Joker appoints Bizarro the head of a reconstituted Justice League. The real Justice League members are turned into grotesque parodies--the Flash is a fat slob, Wonder Wonder Woman a fearful, baking housewife. Joker eats Chinese food made of all the people in China. At one point, he drains the universe of all color. (Not just black-and-white--he eliminates the concept of color.)
Initially disguising the story as some kind of Bizarro Universe tale, writers Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly have a lot of fun, if that's the right word, imagining the fullest expression of the Joker's malignant existentialism. And, of course, the ability to craft reality to his will makes the Joker no less dissatisfied with it, and he soon sets his sights on ending it altogether. The Joker's suicidal nature has been with him since the beginning, but he's never had the chance to take more down with him.
"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" adopted the story into a tongue-in-cheek, children-appropriate tale, complete with a Joker anthem. But the original text follows the logic to its disquieting end. Batman, for instance, is given the Promethean treatment, tortured every night only to be brought back each morning. (He spends most of it offscreen--the series is actually a Superman story.)
For such a high-concept series, reviews aren't quite as ecstatic as you'd think. Not all readers appreciated the bait-and-switch, or found the stream-of-consciousness absurdism to be satisfying. But it's a quintessential Joker story, and it creates the same kind of sublime dread as "It's a Good Life," or any examination of humanity's powerlessness against the gods--which is part of why it's not totally successful as a superhero story, none of the heroes ever get much momentum. How could they?
What's the difference if God is a benevolent overseer, an innocent child, or a sociopath? Doesn't life dish out random and senseless fortune and misfortune all the same? It's a question Joker has been asking for 80 years--and given the power to arrive at the answer he wants, it's not any clearer.
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