An Exploration of the Joker As a Psychopath
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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON An Exploration of the Joker as a Psychopath ‘Maybe he is special, and not just a gruesomely scarred, mentally ill man addicted to an endless cycle of self- annihilating violence. Stranger things have happened.’ Deborah Bell 4/25/2016 Disclaimer: In this thesis, there is discussion of some controversial topics; such as rape, murder, torture, and mental illness, including psychopathy and repressed trauma. Some readers may be sensitive to this particular content, therefore, caution is advised. Deborah Bell 1 | Page Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to my supervisor, Dr Cristina Massacessi, who has shown me constant support and given valuable and constructive advice throughout. She showed interest in my ideas from the very beginning until the end, and for that I thank you. I am grateful for the support my family has shown me, in particular my brother, Jonathan Bell and father, Dr Angus Bell. I especially would like to thank my brother for the artwork on the front page. I would like to thank Freya Blundell-Meyer for listening and encouraging me throughout this project. Your help has been greatly appreciated. Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson for creating the Joker, for without them, this project could never have happened. Additionally, my appreciation extends to Grant Morrison, Dave McKean, Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger; I thank you for your phenomenal work which has inspired me. Deborah Bell 2 | Page Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….4 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………...5 i) Methodology and Ethics…………………………………………………………….…7 ii) The Joker as a Patient…………………………………………………………………8 iii) The Joker: the Good and the Evil…………………………………………………...18 iv) The Joker and Sanity………………………………………………………………...21 v) The Joker and Batman………………………………………………………………..26 vi) The Joker Onscreen……………………………………………………………….....29 vii) Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….….35 Works Consulted………………………………………………………………………...36 Deborah Bell 3 | Page Abstract This essay focuses on the character the Joker, originally created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson. There has been a lot of psychological and literary research concerning Batman; however, there appears to be a gap in the literature concerning his nemesis. The focal point of this research is an exploration of how and why the Joker is portrayed as a psychopathic, in The Dark Knight, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and The Killing Joke. The essay aims to clarify what is meant by ‘psychopath’ using clinical criteria to assess the Joker’s character traits. Additionally, it explores the significance the Joker has in relation to the concepts of good, evil, and mental illness. Overall, this paper shows how despite being a fictional character, the audience relates to the Joker whilst each author portrays him as something different depending on what society needs at the time of publication. Deborah Bell 4 | Page ‘I don’t want to go among mad people.’ ‘Oh you can’t help that. We’re all mad here.’1 An Introduction The Joker, The Clown Prince of Crime, The Man Who Laughs, Mistah J, whichever of these names he is given, there is never any doubt which villain we are referring to. He remains one of the most popular villains in the superhero industry, and is continuously being reproduced in comics and films. He used to appear as more of a frenzied clown with a bad taste in jokes, but in recent publications has appeared as a psychopathic villain. The Joker being depicted as a violent mentally ill character seems a far cry away from the jumping clown armed with practical jokes. Whilst this may appear as just differences in authorship, the portrayal of the Joker as a psychopath is becoming increasingly popular and I would argue is highly significant. Within this thesis, I aim to explore the psychopathic portrayal of the Joker and the significance this holds, in order to gain further understanding of this character and why we remain to be so captivated by his presence. I shall do this from a mainly psychological perspective as I attempt to give the Joker a diagnosis using clinical criteria that will better enable us to understand what is meant by ‘psychopathic depiction’. Next, I shall question why this shift in the Joker’s development occurred and how the Joker may represent paradigms between good and evil. This shall lead into a discussion of mental health, and how the Joker contributes to what we deem mental health to be. Moving on, I endeavor to analyze the relationships the Joker holds with Batman and how this contributes to his identity. In order to support my argument, I will be using evidence from three primary sources, as follows: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland 1988 1 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Deborah Bell 5 | Page The Dark Knight directed and produced by Christopher Nolan 2008 Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean 1989 There will be a specific focus on The Dark Knight as I conduct a contextual sequence analysis in the final chapter, in order to show how the topics discussed earlier are represented onscreen. I will engage with the similarities and differences of my sources, and discuss how they support the conclusions I have drawn to. Overall, I will attempt to explain how and why the Joker is depicted as a psychopath, what effect this may have, and why we must ‘remind ourselves not to root for him’,2 ultimately rendering him much more than just a villain. I will be combining knowledge from Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, Film and Sequential Art in order to understand the character from multiple aspects, and perhaps demonstrate that ‘maybe he is special, and not just a gruesomely scarred, mentally ill man addicted to an endless cycle of self-annihilating violence. Stranger things have happened.’3 2 Dan Hassoun, ‘Shifting Make Ups: The Joker as Performance Style from Romero to Ledger’, in The Joker A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime. Edited By Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G Weiner. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), pp. 3-19 (14). 3 Grant Morrison, John Van Fleet, Batman #663 The Clown at Midnight, (DC Comics, 2007). Deborah Bell 6 | Page i) ‘Nobody panics when things go according to plan’4 Methodology and Ethics I will predominantly be using qualitative research methods as this is mostly a literature review within an interdisciplinary paradigm. The sources were selected because I wanted to explore stories which presented the Joker as mentally ill. In addition, the sources differ greatly in style; each one adds another story to his character which is why it is important to bring them together and see how this affects our perspective of the Joker. The Psychopathy Checklist Revised criteria will be my starting point, in addition to other psychological theories.5 The implication of my research is ethically contentious, because I am dealing with clinical criteria, however, because the subject in question is a fictional character I do not need to directly apply this. This deems my research minimal risk by UCL Ethics guidelines so I therefore have not needed to seek ethical approval. Any conclusions I may draw to are my opinion only and is not a professional diagnosis of the Joker, it is merely my interpretation of one depiction of the character, and that character only. 4 The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. 2008, 109 mins 5 Robert Hare, Craig Neumann. ‘Psychopathy as a Clinical and Empirical Construct’. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 4:2 (2008), 17- 46. < 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091452> [Accessed: 15th February 2-16]. Deborah Bell 7 | Page ii) ‘You can trade your gloom for a rubber room and injections twice a day’6 The Joker as a Patient The Joker is presented as suffering from a mental illness within the comics and The Dark Knight from the onset. The Joker himself even says ‘I went crazy as a coot. I admit it’.7 He is referred to as a ‘murdering psychopath’, and is told he will be in a padded cell forever.8 The president and publisher of DC Comics said, ‘I keep coming back to the way the Joker physically incarnates madness’.9 However, in order to fully understand the Joker, the term ‘mad’ does not seem adequate enough, and is certainly not a clinical term. The concept of a psychopath is complex, often obscured by ambiguity due to its misuse and confusion with psychosis and personality disorders. Harvey Cleckley stated that a psychopath is ‘a patient who fulfils all the ordinary theoretical criteria of a sound mind and yet within this apparently sound mind is more incomprehensible than the psychotic’.10 Therefore, in order to clarify who the Joker is and what is meant by the term psychopath, it is necessary to turn to the specific criteria of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a clinical term established when Harvey Cleckley devised certain characteristics in order to recognise and accurately diagnosis psychopathy as an illness.11 Consequently, this led to Robert Hare devising the more empirical Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), which is a diagnostic tool used to rate a person’s psychopathic tendencies.12 6 Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, The Killing Joke. (New York: DC Comics, 1988), p.23. 7 The Killing Joke, p. what page?? 8 The Dark Knight, 98 mins, 134 mins 9 Cohen A: The Joker: torn between goof and evil. (National Public Radio, July 16, 2008.) Available at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92572470 10 Cleckley, Harvey. The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality, 2nd edition.