Wednesday's class on Batman: The Killing Joke (recap)

In Wednesday's class, we discussed Batman: The Killing Joke, and specifically talked about how the book presents the Joker's story: as a sympathetic account of a good-guy gone bad, or an unreliable narrator telling one of many versions of his 'alter ego.' Some of the interesting points that came out of our conversation included:

* That Joker's origin story may be invented, either consciously or subconsciously by Joker as a manifestation of his madness. Much of the art suggests that certain things simply aren't real: for example, everything in the past is a hazy gray color, including his wife, except the food--it's always bright red, as if it's the one thing that is taken from his past. Also, there's a photo of a family in his squalid apartment, but his wife hasn't given birth yet. So who is it? Are these borrowed memories?

* That Batman isn't Batman in this comic: he, too, is a manifestation of Joker's madness, and the entire story is his attempt to 'break' Batman by making him laugh. And in his version of events, he does...which is why Batman acts so uncharacteristic throughout the story, and especially at the end with the strange laughter at a pretty tame joke (note: Joker's wife also laughs maniacally at a joke that isn't even a joke--more a nasty comment). 

* That Joker and Batman need to play this 'game' with each other, since there really can't be one without the other. Batman has a psychological need for Joker, since it justifies his existence. Otherwise, why dress up as a "flying rat" simply to catch a few crooks? One madman deserves another, after all! But has the game gotten out of control? Each one seems to think so: Joker ratchets up the stakes, as if to challenge Batman to end things once and for all, and Batman is desperate not to take the game to its inevitable conclusion. It's like of like a kid trying to stay outside for a few more minutes when it's long past time to come home. 

We also discussed the idea that historically, supervillains came first. The first 'superheroes' were super powerful men in the 19th century that turned to evil and mayhem, such as Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, The Invisible Man, and Dracula. The first superhero drew on these prototypes, and Superman was originally evil--a creature called "The Superman," who later became the prototype for Lex Luthor. Batman, unlike Superman, was a combination of the super villains of yore, and the new superman...he was Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, Superman and Lex Luthor rolled in one! Hence his appeal.  

As Jules Fieffer writes in The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965): "What made Batman interesting, then, was not his strength but his story line. Batman, as a feature, was infinitely better plotted, better villained, and better looking than Superman. Batman inhabited a world where no one, no matter the time of day, cast anything but long shadows—seen from weird perspectives. Batman’s world was scary; Superman’s, never."

Finally, I used a passage from Sigmund Freud to discuss the appeal of Joker and supervillains: like superheroes, they are a representation of "us," the normal people. But they suggest we're all monsters inside, and that if we ignore this potential for monstrosity, society breeds even more monsters and criminals. Batman is the "dark knight" because he refuses to ignore his inner darkness, and instead, embraces is to create something powerful. As Freud writes in Totem and Taboo: 

“we ourselves are subject to a temptation to kill someone and that that temptation produces psychical effects even though it remains out of sight of our consciousness…where there is a prohibition there must be an underlying desire.  We should have to suppose that the desire to murder is actually present in the unconscious and that neither taboos nor moral prohibitions are psychologically unnecessary but that on the contrary they are explained and justified by the existence of an ambivalent attitude towards the impulse to murder.”