The Joker

The Joker
The Joker is incredibly unique in that he has no origin story in a medium that defines its characters by their origin stories. All that can be reliably established is that one random event in the Joker's past drove him insane and caused him to become the villain he is. However, this lack of a backstory defines the Joker as well if not better than any backstory could, especially when juxtaposed with Batman, a character defined completely by his past.

Automaticity
In the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, Grant Morrison puts forth a theory about the cause of the Joker's insanity. A psychiatrist in the novel says that Joker isn't insane, but super-sane. A normal human can take all of the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll that he or she is being inundated with and let it slip into the background, causing it to have a drastically reduced effect on him or her. The Joker's brain is incapable of this level of automaticity. He is a true child of the media that surrounds him. He is constantly altering his personality based on the new data that is flooding his brain. On a good day, this makes him a harmless clown. On a bad day, it makes him the most violent, unpredictable sociopath the world has never known.

Denying Narratives and The Media
Anthony Kolenic makes a worthwhile comparison of the Joker and Seung-Hi Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman. He points out that the mainstream news networks worked very hard at giving Cho a backstory that would explain his acts of violence. The day of the shooting, he became a villain in the eyes of society, and in order to feel safe, society needs to be able to look back and say "Okay, the warning signs were here, here, and here. This is why this man was a bad guy." In addition to the media, Cho himself seemed to recognize the importance of a well-crafted origin story. He made sure to ship a packet full of videos, photos, and writings espousing his beliefs to major news stations before going on his shooting spree. The Joker is a memorable character because he denies the creation of such a narrative around him to explain his crimes. In a world that defines itself through hindsight, the Clown Prince of Crime's closet is disturbingly free of skeletons. This fact makes it hard to connect him to every other boogeyman and file him away in the back of one's memory.

A Sympathetic Character
The Joker is responsible for murdering one Robin, crippling Batgirl, and slaughtering a whole host of public officials and average Joes.He is an unrepentant monster that doesn't value life or social convention in the least. Why then, is he so likeable? Batman movies and comics that feature the Joker sell the best. Fans might want to see Batman save the day, but they never want the Joker to die or even get caught. After all, nobody knows why he went on that bloody rampage. Maybe his reasoning was good. Maybe you and I would do the same thing if we knew what he knew. What if the Joker is just the next step in human evolution, a man that can take in all the data the chaotic world offers?

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