21st Century's New Satan Part 2

A Little History

               It is important to discuss the history of the Joker and how he came to be the symbol in popular culture that he has evolved into over the past seventy years. In order to understand his rise we must not forget that his past, present and future are inextricably connected to the birth of the Batman and his development. Both the Joker and the Batman made their first appearance in Batman #1 in 1940. The Joker from this very issue seemed to be responding to the sense of justice and order that Batman was suppose to represent. At his inception the Joker possessed all the qualities which are now found in more modern depictions of him such as “the mirthless grin..the absence of remorse while racking up a gruesome tally of kills” and “[his] appetite for mayhem.” (Wallace 24, 25) The Joker was not meant to be a funny trickster; portrayed as having a sense of humor and an affinity for theatrics, his main concern when he was first introduced was destruction and chaos. This character is a response to the new secular evils which prevailed at this time. Society lacked confidence in their old religious symbols of evil to explain the greediness and inexplicable malignity of man, causing them to search for new symbols to fill the void that Satan had left behind. 
 

               The evils that plagued Americans in the forties were social evils that had arisen from the Great Depression and the devil would simply not suffice any longer as an explanation for these ills. A new mythology had to be created that was more in tune with the times and this arose within popular culture, in pulp novels and within comic books. Batman seemed to be a response to the troubles of the Great Depression and was presented as an illustration “of the common person helping herself or himself.” (Johnson 21) It only makes sense that his greatest nemesis was also a human being, devoid of super powers, and who could represent the unfairness and violence of the time that arose not from curses or monsters, but from within other people. The character of the Joker seemed to be modeled more after a typical gangster or thug in his sharp purple zoot-suit than a fantastic super villain. His first scheme, although somewhat intricate and complex, involved the murder of a wealthy citizen of Gotham and the robbery of a diamond, actions which hardly seemed too far fetched. This mundane aspect to the Joker's crimes is in itself a reflection of the concerns of the time, although somewhat theatrical, his crimes did not involve anything massive and out of this world. His crimes were grounded on earth, they had nothing to do with the heavenly, but rather they proposed that evil was also found on earth and not in a place beyond it. One interesting way to view the type of struggle of good and evil that the Joker and Batman depicted during this time, as suggested by Jeffrey Johnson in his book Super History, is to “replace Bruce Wayne with the average 1930's American citizen and substitute the criminal that killed...[his] parents for economic and social forces that robbed many Americans of their former lives.” (24) What Johnson is touching on with this analogy is the feeling of helplessness that Americans felt during the Great Depression and argues that it is mirrored in the face of the young Bruce Wayne, who although still wealthy, has lost the security and stability his parents had provided. Batman can then be said to represent the Americans of the forties who struggled to reestablish the security and stability lost during the Great Depression and who now had to battle the new issues brought upon by the chaos of World War II. It can be argued that the Joker, as Batman's arch-nemesis and opposite, represented the constant chaos that Americans had to labor against during the forties. At the same time the Joker could also be seen as a response to the growing question of the origin of evil within man himself. The forties were a time when evil began to rise in the form of Hitler and the Nazi Party bringing the question of evil to the forefront of everyone's mind. Michael Smith suggests in his essay “And Doesn't All the World Love a Clown?” that the Joker's inexplicable birth and evil came at a time when the events of World War II appeared as senseless acts of violence and evil. Smith asks us to consider that “the Joker emerged full bloom in the 1940's a time when millions were being subjected to unspeakable deprivation and degradation when millions died horribly –all victims of a highly organized, bureaucratic, industrial system of death...none of it made any sense, really.” (Smith 197) To the people who were being slaughtered, to the people who heard the rumors, none of it made sense to them. Hitler was a monster, who had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere and who in a few years had managed to spread his evil far and wide. The Joker seemed to emerge much in the same way in Gotham as Hitler did in Europe. The Joker seems to represent the battle that humanity was fighting during the forties in attempts to reconcile the injustice, unfairness, and evil nature that resided within man. People were being forced to recognize that a “tiny silly human could matter so much – and how easily so very much could happen.” (Smith 198) 
 

               Furthermore, when peace finally began to settle the Joker had become more interested in making pranks than mass murder. There were many reasons for this change in the characters of Batman and the Joker, ironically the fact that they had acquired mainstream popularity would cause DC publishing to “[dial] back the sex and violence” and “to push the pulp roots under the rug” in order to make the comics more palatable to children. (Wallace 171) At the same time, America was entering another shift in its society which now “expected conformity to the supposed homogenized culture and individualism or self-expression that fell outside acceptable limits was punished with ostracism.” (Johnson 72) Therefore, there was no longer any room for men with green hair, white skin and bright red lips, as he was the epitome of individualism and self-expression that was outside the norms of society. Comic book writers and the public were being limited by society and the government on how to act, live and think. This can be seen in way in which in 1954 the Comics Code Authority would “[ban] gore and innuendo” from comic books as “a response to the hysterical hyperbole of the industry's chief critic, Dr. Frederick Wertham.” (Wallace 171) Ideas began to float around which accused comics of perverting the young minds of its readers and DC was forced to tone things down yet again. Wertham expressed a concern in the images that superheroes were portraying to children. He accused “Superman for promoting fascism, Wonder Woman for engaging in sadomasochism, and Batman for encouraging homosexuality.” (Johnson 80) With these new restrictions on society and comic books the Joker's true evil nature would be locked up and put away so that he could become “a figure of fun” who with his “clownish stunts [amuse] a Gotham populace that kept score of the rivalry he shared with Batman.” (171) The change was apt for an America which was trying to regain some sense of peace and calm and which was enjoying a new found affluence after the war. America lost interest in comic books as a medium for serious discussion of crime and evil. Comics had become mere childish entertainment. The Joker would disappear for a couple of years but would enjoy mild success in comics again with a push from the Batman television show which debuted in 1966 but it would be short lived. As the DC editor Julius Schwartz states, “when the show faded so did the comic books” and once again DC was left with trying to find a way to sell Batman to the masses. (Wallace 173)

               It was in the early seventies when the Joker rose again from the ashes and returned to his murderous roots. In 1973 Denny O'Neil in “The Joker's Five-Way Revenge” had the Joker kill off five of his henchmen gruesomely and pointlessly, a pattern which would continue from then on. Again the Joker's appearance seemed to have hailed from destruction, death and war as his resurgence followed the outbreak of the Vietnam War. What also propelled this change was the growing popularity of comics among a now older and more mature demographic. As Wallace states, the Joker returned in such a manner because “in an era of antiwar protests” they “needed to reestablish their relevance as both an artistic and a storytelling medium.” (173) Once again America looked for a new field upon which a discourse of evil could be explored and although the seed was planted by O'Neil in the seventies it would not be until the eighties that Frank Miller would start up this discussion. In the wake of the Vietnam War and the Cold War vigilantism, evil and justice became more pertinent than ever and America 

began to examine the actions of its government with more scrutiny. These ideas could best be seen in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns where “Batman's war on crime has as a backdrop 1980's-style Cold War brinksmanship between a not-at-all veiled President Ronald Regan and the still extant Soviet Union.” (Bundrick 26) Miller's Dark Knight fights against what he sees as the corruption of the government in direct response to the questionable actions of the American government during the previous twenty years. While on the other hand Miller's Joker responds to the proliferation of the media and the access America had gained to visions of violence, mirroring the television coverage that the Vietnam war enjoyed unlike any other war before it. The Joker in Miller's graphic novel appears on a popular late night show as a guest brought on by a psychologist who is trying to prove that the Joker suffers from what he calls, “Batman Psychosis” and that it has been Batman who has been responsible for the Joker's madness all along. Nevertheless, his theories never receive a chance to be proven as the Joker promptly executes him, the host, and the members of the audience on public television. No longer were the evils of murder and war rendered motionless and distant through newspapers and pictures, they now were executed before our own eyes turning us all into willing witness. Frank Miller would not do this alone, Alan Moore would also join in to this discourse of evil in 1986 with his own rendition of the Joker in The Killing Joke where he would explore the possibilities of madness arising from one bad day or one traumatic experience alone and would also put into question whether the Joker is truly evil or not. These are similar themes to the ones Christopher Nolan would later explore in his Batman Trilogy, and more specifically in The Dark Knight.