The Joker as an existentialist

I came across Steemit just recently and it seems like a fantastic place for creators and people with original content to share their stuff. Here's a little thing I wrote that I thought some of you may be interested in. Hope you like it.

*I reference a few different existential works and writers throughout the post, all of which can be found at the end under Works Cited.

Most existential characters are created by the somewhat dark and twistedly eloquent minds of existentialist writers.
Writers such as Sartre, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard convey the core of existential thinking through their works and characters. Most existentialist works are in the written form, but with today’s advancements in media, there are many other ways for existential characters to be represented. One might think that the written word is the most effective medium for conveying a complex topic like existentialism, and indeed it has been the most popular, but popularity does not always guarantee superiority. Movies, for example, can be just as effective if given effective characters and effective actors to play them. It may seem far fetched to say that a superhero movie could be existential, especially a superhero movie that involves a billionaire name Bruce Wayne who dresses as if halloween wasn’t celebrated only once a year. But on a much narrower scope one character in particular stands out as exemplifying existentialist thought. Heath Ledger’s experience with the Joker in The Dark Knight is perfect for introducing the character as existential. Not only is Ledger’s involvement in the role conducive to showing the Joker’s existentialism, but the character himself is existential as shown throughout his storyline in his comic books. The following essay will be using the comic Batman: The Killing Joke and Heath Ledger’s role in The Dark Knight as the Joker to show that the character is existential because he is the product of his own choices, he recognizes rationality and acknowledges that he can achieve it if he wants, but chooses to remain mad, and he exercises his absolute freedom of choice to commit crimes simply for the sake of committing them. The Joker’s potent existentialism is further proved through his relatability, and his effect on those who relate too much.
So how did the Joker begin? Funnily enough, he began as a comedian. A failing comedian granted, but the business is tough. So tough in fact that the Joker (his name is not given) and his pregnant wife are teetering on the brink of poverty. The Joker is so devastated by his most recent flop in the realm of comedy that he decides to find other means of supporting his wife and soon-to-be newborn baby. He becomes acquainted with some criminals that want to break into a factory that he happened to work at in years past. He offers to guide them through the factory and lead them past any security in exchange for a cut of the profits. The criminals accept his help, but on one condition. He must wear a red mask to hide his identity as well as to mimic the look of a local criminal persona called “The Red Hood.” The Joker agrees eagerly and they begin planning the heist. They meet in a restaraunt the morning of the following Friday, the day of the heist, to solidify their plans and have a drink. As they are talking, a pair of cops approach their table and ask the Joker to step outside with them. He is frantic as they lead him outside for fear that he’s been found out. They tell him something very different than what he’s expecting to hear. His wife, in a freak electrical accident, has been electrocuted, killing both her and their unborn baby. The Joker is devastated by the news and sulks back inside to tell his friends that the heist is off. They apologize for his loss but tell him that anyone who backs out of the heist now will suffer dire consequences. The Joker decides to go through with the plan rather than risk his knees and possibly his life.
At this point in the story the death of his wife has already begun working at the Joker’s sanity. He decides to continue with the heist out of fear for his life and the promise of a large sum of money. The night of the heist the Joker meets his fellow criminals outside of the target factory and dons the red hood. They get inside via his instructions and run into a security guard that the Joker had not accounted for. The whole plan begins to fall apart as the guard calls for backup and a firefight ensues. The Joker, still wearing the red hood, runs for cover as his fellows are shot and killed. He makes it onto a causeway, right above a vat of chemicals, just as Batman confronts him. Instead of being caught and going to jail, the Joker decides to jump into the vat of chemicals and try his luck at escape.
The next scene shows the Joker washing up outside of the factory into a chemical dump area. He crawls ashore and removes the red hood that has saved him from the chemicals. He peers into a puddle and realizes that although the mask has saved him, it has left him grotesquely disfigured. The Joker now is recognizable as the famous super-villain with green hair, red lips, and a paper white face. But even more important than the look is the fact that the chemicals, mixed with the grief of his failings as a comedian and the deaths of his wife and child, have left him completely insane.
No doubt that the Joker has met with quite a bit of misfortune that seems to have been outside of his control. But, if looked at from the base, it becomes clear that he has become what he is through no one’s choices but his own. First, from his failings as a comedian, he could have looked at getting a job that was not involved with illegal activities. Second, he could have chosen to take the criminals up on their bluff that he might be hurt if he backed out, or even reported them to the police. And third, he could have chosen not to jump into the vat of chemicals to get away from Batman, and gone quietly instead. All of these choices were his and his alone, and he has become, and has stayed, a psychopathic maniac because of them.
Since going insane, the Joker has been testing his limits when it comes to freedom. In light of his new marital status and mental state, his view of the world is rightly pessimistic. As The Killing Joke progresses, the Joker proceeds to kidnap and torture a police commissioner in an attempt to drive him insane and prove the point that “all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy” (40). The Joker does this because he can. And further, because he believes that life has done something similar to him. When the police commissioner is unable to speak to the Joker about his experience with the torture, the Joker mocks the commissioner and says that maybe he’ll be more talkative “once he’s had time to reflect upon life and all its random injustice” (30). Although this was said mockingly, The Joker really does believe that life is randomly unjust. He blames his misfortune on the universe exercising its freedom to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to. It can be said that the universe is subject to the same type of dread that the Joker now feels after losing everything. The Joker’s situation is comparable to Kierkegaard’s essay “Dread and Freedom” in which it is said “that which passed innocence by as the nothing of dread has now entered into him, and here again it is a nothing, the alarming possibility of being able” (104). The Joker, after his loss of everything, has nothing to lose. A whole world of possibilities opens up to him with respect to his actions. Kierkegaard’s views on dread are now perfectly applicable to the Joker in that “...dread is the reality of freedom as possibility anterior to possibility” (101). The Joker recognizes this dread, and utilizes it in the most grotesque ways possible as a sort of retribution. In his eyes at least, life has no restrictions pertaining to its actions, so the dread he was exposed to after life’s injustice (the loss of his wife and sanity) should be utilized for committing more unjust actions. The Joker enjoys the dread that he feels and the freedom that he now takes advantage of. He enjoys it so much in fact, that, when offered the chance to be rehabilitated, he refuses.
The Joker’s choice to remain in his state of madness comes towards the end of The Killing Joke. Justice has prevailed, as is the trend with superhero comics and movies, and the Joker is caught by Batman. The relationship between Batman and the Joker is complicated though, each holding a deep seated hatred for the other, yet neither wanting to kill the other. This leads to a semi-peaceful conversation between Batman and the Joker before the cops arrive. In this small window of peace from outside intervention, Batman makes an offer to help the Joker. “We could work together. I could rehabilitate you. You needn’t be out there on the edge any more. You needn’t be alone” (46). Despite their differences Batman feels a sort of sympathy for the Joker. Unfortunately, the Joker is content to stay as he is. Not only does he enjoy the freedom with which he now acts, but he has an aversion for facing the reality of his past. His earlier conversation with the police commissioner illustrates how the Joker feels about memories:
Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away...forever. (23)
He feels that the pain of remembering hurts more than the loss of his sanity. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man had a similar experience with his choices as well. A few days after visiting a brothel and having a talk with a prostitute named Liza, the Underground Man is given the opportunity to choose happiness. She comes to visit him in his home and listens to him talk about his problems. He begins to cry and she comforts him, just as he did for her in the brothel. Things start looking up for the Underground Man. Liza is essentially offering him the opportunity to choose happiness with her over the solitary misery he has been living in. The Underground Man realizes this and reacts just as the Joker did. He refuses. The opportunity to be good after so much time of being miserable is too much for the Underground Man to handle. He thrusts a wad of money into Liza’s hand, in mocking payment for her services. She is rightfully offended and leaves him to his solitude. Later, the Underground Man shows remorse for what he has done. He writes:
I did mean a moment since to tell a lie—to write that I did this accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through losing my head. But I don’t want to lie, and so I will say straight out that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite. It came into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room and she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain: though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the heart, but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that I could not even keep it up a minute—first I dashed away to avoid seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened the door in the passage and began listening. (Dostoevsky, 197-198)
He makes a half-hearted attempt to stop Liza, but she ignores him and walks out of his life. He fails pursue her further than a measly 200 paces before giving up, knowing he has already made his choice.
Both of these characters had the opportunity to change, to make themselves better through making better choices. Both failed in that they were unable to overcome what was familiar in favor of what was best. The key lies in their ability to choose. The undesirable choices that were made notwithstanding, they both were given the option, and both were free to choose whichever he wanted. This is the core of existentialism.
Existential characters, at their core, are relatable. Existentialism itself aims to illustrate the odds and ends of the human condition, and in that illustration there is a level of human relatability. The Underground Man, for example, has a large amount of unsavory traits, but at his base there is a sort of parallel between his emotions and the reader’s. To an extent the Underground Man represents some of our most basic thoughts and feelings. He fears solitude but also fears rejection, he wants love but is afraid to pursue it, he aims to justify his shortcomings to himself instead of admitting them.
The Joker is very similar in his relatability. In his life, the Joker has been through many trials and has experienced numerous unhappy accidents. The same can be said for anyone who has ever lived. It is no secret that life contains as many unpleasant situations as it does pleasant ones. In this respect we are similar to the Joker. There is always a small part of us that whispers about life’s absurdity. As Nagel stated when analysing what makes life absurd, “This analysis requires defense in two respects: first as regards the unavoidability of seriousness; second as regards the inescapability of doubt” (The Absurd, 719). To clarify, he is stating that life is absurd because we all take our lives seriously, and we all inevitably doubt whether or not life actually matters. The Joker goes through the same thing, but he chooses to give in to his doubt after he sees the extent of life’s hardships. This is where we differ from the Joker. We deal with hardships and eventually move on. The Joker was met with hardship and decided not to think about it anymore. He decided that losing his sanity was better than dealing with the demons of his past. As little as anyone would like to admit it, there is always that lingering feeling that the Joker might not have it so bad. There is always the feeling that it would be decidedly easier to go insane than deal with what life puts us through.
To further illustrate the existential relatability of the Joker, we will use a real world example. Heath Ledger was given the opportunity to put himself in the Joker’s shoes; To experience some of the emotions the Joker might have felt and to put himself into the Joker’s mindset. A small exposure to the Joker’s mindset is something that everyone has experienced. It is easy to put oneself in the Joker’s shoes and see why he chose insanity over the pain he was feeling. We may not agree with his choice, but we can see why he did it. Heath Ledger had a prolonged exposure to this line of thinking. In order to prepare for the role, Ledger locked himself in a hotel for a month and really got involved with the character. He kept a diary of images and notes about the Joker and related subjects to help him further into the mindset. “The diary is filled with images of playing cards, scenes from Batman comics, photos of hyenas, and stills of Alex DeLearge from A Clockwork Orange. The word “Chaos” can also be seen, written in caps and highlighted in green” (Derschowitz). He fully immersed himself in the role and as a result he put on one of the best acting performances of all time.
The consequences of being in such close contact with the character were almost immediately apparent. “Heath spoke of how the role of The Joker in his last completed film, The Dark Knight, left him unable to sleep and relying on sleeping pills that are, at this time, thought to be the reason behind his suspected accidental overdose” (Neumaier). Being in such close contact with a character that is psychotic and yet so potently existential, one that is so strongly relatable, can cause some damage to the psyche:
Prior to his death he spoke to Empire Magazine saying he 'feared' the role but wanted to make it different. 'I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices - it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. 'I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. 'He’s just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown, and Chris has given me free rein. Which is fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing intimidates him, and everything is a big joke.' (Chester)
After an entire month of seeing through the Joker’s eyes and thinking with the Joker’s mind, Ledger is under a large amount of mental stress. According to Daniel Freeman, insomnia is a symptom of psychosis and can exacerbate negative effects and cause misinterpretation of experiences (1196). As a psychopath himself, this is the same insomnia the Joker would be experiencing. The reason Ledger’s experience with the Joker was so damaging was not only because he was representing a psychopath, but also because the Joker, at his base, represents the existential whisper at the back of one’s mind that says “None of it matters.” He was representing the psychopath the lives in the shadow of every rational consciousness. It was easy to get so involved with the role because, at an existential level, every human is already partly considering the Joker’s choice. In this we can see that the Joker is more than simply a criminal mastermind. He is the existential representation of a choice to give up and take the road of insanity. That choice, whether it is admitted or not, lives in the mind of everyone. This is what constitutes the Joker’s existential relatability.
The Joker is not a character that is readily admitted as representing anything remotely human, much less anything existential. He appears to be a murdering, thieving, lying psychopath who cares only about ruining the lives of others. These appearances are correct. They are also the foundation for why the character is so readily relatable and existential. The Joker is existential because existentialism is about choice. He chooses to be the murderous psychopath that he is. Even after being offered help, he willingly decides to continue down the path of insanity. Existentialism is also about having the absolute freedom to control one’s actions and having to deal with the dread that accompanies absolute freedom. The Joker uses dread every day to guide his actions. He does the things that he is not supposed to do because they induce the greatest amount of dread. He has no boundaries regarding his actions because he believes that life has none. He acts freely to the fullest extent, making a point to commit the most gruesome acts possible as a statement against one’s greatest inhibiting factor: rationality. Finally, all existential characters are relatable at their core. They represent the most basic form of human consciousness. The Joker represents that part of the consciousness that implies the possibility of giving up in the face of life’s absurdity. The possibility of escaping the pain that life inevitably induces by throwing rationality to the wind. He is the manifestation of our deepest existential thoughts concerning our psyche.
The Joker is not popularly thought of as “human.” The choice to live a life of murder and violence would be rationally considered “inhuman.” But the focus is not on his choices in relation to good and evil, but on the fact that he has chosen the existential path of the quitter. The Joker chose to give in to his doubt of life’s value. The doubt that all humans have the burden of carrying. In this, the Joker is just as human as the sanest man alive. This, along with his actions and choices regarding his refutation of life’s meaning, is why the Joker is existential.

Works Cited
Chester, Jason. "'Bye, Bye': The Chilling Words Heath Ledger Scrawled at the End of a Journal
He Kept While Preparing for His Role as the Joker Are Revealed as German Doco Resurfaces." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 11 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Derschowitz, Jessica. "Heath Ledger's Joker Diary for 'The Dark Knight' Surfaces in
Documentary." Entertainment Weekly's EW.com. N.p., 10 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "Notes From Underground." Web. 3 Dec. 2015. http://www.planetpublish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Notes_from_the_Underground_NT.pdf.

Dostoevksy, Fyodor Mikhailovich. "Notes From Underground."Existentialism from
Dostoevsky to Sartre: Revised and Expanded. Trans. Hazel Barnes. Ed.Walter Kaufmann. New York: Meridian, 1956. 52-82. Print.

Freeman, Daniel, et al. "Insomnia, Worry, Anxiety And Depression As Predictors Of The Occurrence And Persistence Of Paranoid Thinking." Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology 47.8 (2012): 1195-1203. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Kierkegaard, Søren. "Dread and Freedom."Existentialism from
Dostoevsky to Sartre: Revised and Expanded. Ed.Walter Kaufmann. New York: Meridian, 1956. 52-82. Print.

Nagel, Thomas. “The Absurd”. The Journal of Philosophy 68.20 (1971): 716–727. Web.

Neumaier, Joe. "Jack Nicholson Warned Heath Ledger on 'Joker' Role." NY Daily News. N.p., 24
Jan. 2008. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.