| by Eric Muller of Hand in Hand Artworks. |
-->
Over and over again Joker tells Batman how they are two of
the same. In the middle of every battle, at the end of them, Joker is
constantly trying to show Batman that he is as bad and insane as he is. Both
Joker and Batman are smart, cunning people and if it weren’t for Batman’s
physical strength he probably wouldn’t beat the Joker. On top of that, Batman
has is own moral code against killing, so he would never actually kill the
Joker to stop him. This is probably something many audience members, including myself,
struggle with because Joker is always killing innocents, causing mayhem, and
just when you think he is caught and in jail, he escapes. So why not kill him
and end it all? Maybe it is because Batman, deep down, enjoys the on going game
just as much as The Joker. After all, that’s why The Joker doesn’t kill Batman.
He likes to hunt down Batman and test his limits. He likes to see just how far
Batman will go in order to not kill anyone.
I feel like Batman knows he is on the border of becoming The
Joker. Though we don’t fully know Joker’s back-story, we can assume, based off
of his many tales, that he didn’t come from a very loving family and didn’t
have the nicest of childhoods. Batman didn’t have a nice childhood either. He
watched his parents get murdered right in front of him, grew up as an orphan,
and, as seen in the show Gotham, was
bullied in school. Batman could have grown up to become The Joker. They both
wear masks to conceal their identity, are extremely smart and cunning
individuals, both cause destruction in and around Gotham, and both show little
restraint when it comes to injuring people to get what they want. Their only
differences is that Batman fights for the overall safety of the people of
Gotham and refuses to kill, while Joker fights to torment Batman and Gotham and
doesn’t mind killing one or twenty people.
Batman has grown up fighting his fears, but the one fear he
struggles to overcome is the idea that he one day might become The Joker. In
the video game, Batman: Arkham Knight Scarecrow
drugs Batman so that he sees his worst fear. In that moment, Batman envisions
himself as Joker. The game play even switches to The Joker character for a good
ten minutes of aimless shooting and walking down long dark hallways. Mind you,
The Joker has been dead since the last game and should no longer be an
influence over The Bat.
This theme of “who is more insane, Joker or Batman” has been
seen in comics, video games, movies, and shows since the beginning. One of the
more intense comics that every Batman fan should read at least once is The Killing Game. In this comic, the
writer shows that extreme situations have the potential to push every one of
us, including The Bat, over the edge. In the story, Joker kidnaps Barbara
Gordon, shoots her in the spine, and paralyzes her. Then he proceeds to kidnap
her father, Commissioner Gordon, and sends him through a funhouse drugged, and
shows him images of his daughter’s bloody body. Not gruesome at all. Well
naturally Batman saves the day, Commissioner Gordon is okay and his daughter is
alive. The most iconic part of this comic is the ending though. There is a
moment where Batman is standing on the roof with Joker waiting for the cops to
arrive. Joker tells Batman a joke to which Batman starts maniacally laughing.
It’s weird to think that Batman would laugh at anything The Joker would say
after crippling one of his friends. It is at this moment that the audience is
to believe that The Joker has broken Batman. Batman is gone and The Joker has
won. Many Batman lovers argue that, although The Bat is laughing, he is also
choking Joker. Others argue that his hand is simply on Joker’s shoulder, but
overall it is hard to tell because the image is a black silhouette.
Has anyone ever heard of the symbolic interactionism? Well
if not, it is, according to Flat World Knowledge, the theory that states: “the
self is derived from and develops through human interaction.” So now let’s
consider. Is Batman becoming The Joker, or are we fooling ourselves into
thinking that he’s not already The Joker. In the movie, The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger
as The Joker, Batman is interrogating Joker in a cell. In this famous scene,
Joker tells Batman that they are exactly the same. In the movie series, this is
Batman’s first encounter with The Joker. But to the many Batman fans out there,
this is just another day. That being said, has Batman been influenced by the
acts of The Joker throughout the course of time? Have writers developed Batman
to be identical to The Joker character? Has Batman and his writers fallen in
love with the constant game Joker and Batman play? Does Batman hate Joker or
idolize him for doing the things that Batman can’t... like killing? Flat World
Knowledge also states, “To effectively communicate, people use symbols with
shared cultural meanings.” Do Batman and Joker share their use of masks as a
symbol to communicate how they are keen on keeping who they truly are a secret?
Or is the masked costume character the person they truly are and not the person
behind it?
No comments:
Post a Comment