Abstract
Since his debut in 1940, the Joker, famed adversary of the Batman, continues to permeate the American cultural mediascape not merely as an object of consumption but as an ongoing production of popular imagination. Joker mythmakers post-1986 have reimagined the character not as superhuman but as “depressingly ordinary,” inspiring audiences both to empathize with his existential plight and to fear his terroristic violence as an increasingly compelling model of reactionary resistance to institutionality. This article examines the recent history of modern terrorism in conjunction with the “pathological nihilism” diagnosed by Nietzsche in order to elucidate the stakes and implications of the Joker’s legacy and popularity. Our analyses of the Joker lead us to conclude that “lone wolf” terrorism is an inherent affordance of a politically pluralistic society, a morally relativistic culture that stresses self-determination and authenticity as top priorities. These values impact “lone wolves” like the Joker in their function as media-driven auteur killers--striving for post-mortem recognition and dissemination. Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019) then proposes that this type of criminal can ironically result from a media-induced contagion, a discursive fear propagated by twenty-four-hour news cycles that incidentally creates a path for the socially impotent to make their television debuts.
Highlights
Dennis O’Neil writes: “Because he’s inhabited that vast, unbounded mirror world known as Popular Culture, where realities shift from day to day and change is the only constant, the Batman has had to remake himself every decade or so or risk almost certain extinction.”[1]
This article examines the recent history of modern terrorism in conjunction with the “pathological nihilism” diagnosed by Nietzsche in order to elucidate the stakes and implications of the Joker’s legacy and popularity
The same applies to the Joker
Summary
Dennis O’Neil writes: “Because he’s inhabited that vast, unbounded mirror world known as Popular Culture, where realities shift from day to day and change is the only constant, the Batman has had to remake himself every decade or so or risk almost certain extinction.”[1] The same applies to the Joker. This enterprise of regularly deconstructing and reconstructing the character – what we call “Jokerology”2 – is artistic, popular, and academic. As the panel title suggests, the Joker is not merely an object of consumption but an ongoing production of cultural imagination
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