This sentiment, idolizing a
psychopathic killer, is kind of disgusting, indicative of degraded and deluded
21st century attitudes.
In fact, this supposedly mature viewpoint is immature. The Joker is a predatory child on Kohlberg's scale of
moral development, while Batman is a fully morally developed human being.
My friend Mitchell Brown said: Personally, I'm not surprised the Joker gets the majority of attention in the Batman universe (and the DCU in general, given Batman's own outsized importance in the franchise). Joker is id personified, the logical end result of a society in which everything is relative and we're supposed to "understand" killers/child molesters/etc. as products of their environment ("dipped in a vat of chemicals") with zero personal responsibility for their actions.
ReplyDeleteThat's why as I get older "The Killing Joke" looks less appealing as a story -- the whole point of the plot, as far as I can tell, is Joker telling the Batman that all it takes is one bad day for anyone to go insane. Well, we all have "one bad days" -- and many other days beyond that. So we can either choose to continue reliving that one bad day over and over and blame everything in our lives we can't overcome on that one bad day OR we can wake up the next day, dust ourselves off, prove we're stronger than an unpleasant 24 hours and act like a f**ing adult. (And I say this as someone who may or may not have had a particular bad day in the past that was worse than most.)
So I guess what I'm saying is yes, totally agree this T-shirt makes me roll my eyes so hard that Richter fellow is revising his numbers.
The Joker is, however, the proper hero for the Trump crowd.
ReplyDeleteActually, I can see Trump in nursey drag, casually blowing up hospitals.
ReplyDelete