The Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime

The antithesis of Batman in personality and appearance, supervillain The Joker is bizarre to look at and alienates everyone, even other criminals. He is shifty, unreliable, inappropriately irreverent and a chronic liar. It is no wonder, then, that in this age of post-truth, internet trolls and deplorable politically-incorrect memes, that The Joker is also a villain that speaks to the dark side of the modern age.

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The recent psychological thriller film Joker offers an intimate character study of this notorious felon. In the movie, set in 1981, a failed comedian called Arthur Fleck encounters violent thugs while wandering the streets of Gotham City dressed as a clown. Ignored by society, he begins to go mad as he transforms into the criminal mastermind known as The Joker. Director Todd Phillips says he wished to distance the film from the DC Comics character. Yet the role, played by Joaquin Phoenix, clearly draws on historic influences that gave birth to and helped develop the Clown Prince of Crime. 

THE LAUGHING MAN

Joker first appeared in 1940 in the debut issue of the comic book Batman. Young artist Jerry Robinson came up with the character as an anti-hero figure, and made a sketch based on the joker in a pack of playing cards. Comic book writer Bill Finger said it reminded him of the leading role in a silent film called The Man Who Laughs. Directed by the German Paul Leni, this gloomy romantic melodrama from 1928 was set in 17th-century England. It featured a man called Gwynplaine who is disfigured with a permanent grin, falls in love with a blind woman and becomes the freak show star of a travelling carnival.

THE MAD SCIENTIST

Although the comic book Joker was supposed to be killed off during his initial appearance, he survived by editorial intervention. However, a backstory was not provided for him until a decade later. In a 1951 edition of Detective Comics, the character is a laboratory worker who tries to steal from his boss and then jumps into a vat of chemicals to escape Batman. He emerges with bleached white skin, red lips, green hair and a permanent grin. His expertise in chemical engineering enables him to develop poisonous concoctions and thematic weaponry that include razor-tipped playing cards, deadly joy buzzers and acid-spraying lapel flowers. 

THE TRAGIC ANTI-HERO

In the late 1950s, regulation by the Comics Code Authority obliged comic book creators to tone down the violence. In the 1960s TV series, Cesar Romero plays The Joker as a goofy prankster. By the early 1970s, however, The Joker had returned to his warped, criminal roots. His sadistic tendencies were psychoanalysed in the highly influential 1988 DC Comics graphic novel The Killing Joke. The story became famous for portraying The Joker as a tragic figure, a family man and failed comedian who suffered “one bad day” that drove him insane.

I WARNED YOU

One of the most iconic portrayals of the anti-hero was that of Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman. He played The Joker as a powerful, despicable  mobster who seeks to foment popular greed by giving away money. Nicholson wanted to reprise the role, but Christopher Nolan cast Heath Ledger in the role for his 2008 film The Dark Knight. The Australian actor played him as an avatar of anarchy and chaos who revels in a number of origins: “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” It was an Oscar-winning performance with a tragic twist: soon after the film was finished, Ledger died of a drug overdose. Nicholson claimed he had warned the young actor of the psychological toll of playing the part, but the film crew vigorously denied that he was struggling. Christian Bale, who played Batman, said that Ledger had told him that playing The Joker was “the most fun I’ve ever had.” 

INDIVIDUALISED

Joaquin Phoenix has previously played demanding roles such as that of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, a traumatised war veteran who joins a sect in The Master, and a man who falls for his operating system in Her. He seems like the ideal choice to play The Joker of today. Rather than cite as influences his predecessors in the role, which most recently include Jared Leto in the film Suicide Squad, Phoenix says that his Joker was informed by iconic film roles that transformed the way we judge criminality. They include Taxi Driver, starring Robert de Niro, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson and Serpico, starring Al Pacino.  

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In his 79-year history as a character in comic books, TV series, films and video games, The Joker has claimed a number of origins, including that of being the long-lived jester of an Egyptian pharaoh. He may be lying, but he knows his history: jesters were comic entertainers whose madness, real or pretended, made them popular in Ancient Egypt. The ancient Romans also had a tradition of professional jesters, and they were popular with the Aztec people in the 14th to 16th centuries, too. A jester or fool was an entertainer during the medieval and Renaissance eras. In late 16th-century English Elizabethan drama, the fool is the most insightful and intelligent character in the play; Shakespearean fools use their wits to outdo people of higher social standing. The Joker’s reinvention of himself as a jester reveals him as a master of manipulation; his claim to be an anti-establishment figure who speaks the truth to power is prescient and sinister.