"Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another. If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice." So spoke the Joker, the white-faced villain in Alan Moore's greatest Batman comic, The Killing Joke. It's an apt comment, because the origins of the Joker have been retold many times and in many different ways. In our world, we know the Joker was created by Bob Kane as a villain for the early Batman, first appearing in the DC universe way back in 1940. The Joker was a perma-grinning serial killer from the very start--fond of poisons and elaborate delivery mechanisms--though later portrayals tended to focus more on his clownishness and pranksterism than on his homicidal tendencies. Still, 1978's seminal Sign of the Joker, penned by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, offered up a modern reinterpretation that firmly (and with luck, permanently) re-established the character as a creepy, brilliant, maniacal psychopath whose sadistic sense of humor left a trail of human destruction. In the ensuing years, victims of his spree would include superheroes Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd and the sanity of Gotham's police commissioner.But why the fluid past, the random jumps in character, the relentlessly restless sense of self? What exactly is wrong with the Lord of Misrule?
More to the point, why do we love the Joker so much that we'll flock to theaters in record numbers to watch him do terrible things? A sense of humor is one of the most important elements in being socially popular, but I think everyone will agree there's nothing funny about the Joker's twisted pranks. He isn't pretty, either, and he doesn't sing or dance or play an instrument. Well, maybe he plays an instrument. Either way, there's something undeniably appealing about him. My theory is this: Like many psychopaths (see "How Rare a Lecter?," March 2007), the Joker exudes a level of confidence that normal people find both irresistible and infectious. Escaped lunatics and small-time hoodlums fall easily into his orbit, yes, because the Joker so clearly seems to know what he's doing. And once he's proven the point, once a crazy plan or two has gone off without a hitch, even seasoned gangsters start paying attention.
The first and most obvious element of this is the Clown Prince's physical confidence. With quick reflexes and sure hands, he moves with a strange, unpredictable sense of authority. The Joker's clearly a black belt in at least one martial art, and has had many years of experience in dirty fighting. The Joker's also fairly athletic--not in any sort of freakish way, but he can wrestle and climb and move heavy barrels around. He can take a punch, too, and suffer through a car crash without batting (so to speak) a painted eye. To a man like that, the civilized world is more a playground than a jungle, and presents little threat.The Joker is also highly intelligent--another source of confidence in a society where the average person is, you know, average. And yet, lack of DNA or fingerprints on file tells us that the Joker has never been arrested or served in the military--not in America, anyway--which gives him the additional confidence of being unknown and untraceable. The Joker hasn't even applied for a driver's license, which means he knew from an early age that he'd pursue a life of crime. But without military experience, how do we explain his familiarity with weapons and explosives, and his limited but competent knowledge of electronics? He also seems to be an expert at psychological warfare--something that's hard to learn on the street. There are only a few places where such things are taught: MI6, the CIA, the KGB, the terrorist training camps of Al Qaeda. ... But quite frankly, the Joker is a little rough around the edges for a Cold War spook, and a little too refined for a religious fanatic.
The Joker, raised in the holy land?
I propose an alternative theory: the Mossad. Meaning no insult to Israel, I'll point out that they have a lot of enemies in the world, and their intelligence service is renowned for its competence, its secrecy, its vast network of undercover operatives, and its sometimes ruthless efficiency. Their training programs are like nothing else in the world, and I suspect the occasional bad egg who slips through their psych profiles ends up being a serious danger to society as a result. I'm imagining an American-born Jewish lad who moves with his parents to Israel as a teenager. The kid's a little off to begin with--a Gotham street tough with big dreams and minimal patience--and when his family is killed in a terrorist attack he flips out, joining the military and later the Mossad. He is sent to infiltrate a criminal gang in Turkey or Syria or maybe even Iraq, but ends up switching allegiance and gets kicked out of government service in absentia.The Joker lives the gangster life for a while, sampling the women, the drugs, the fancy cars and fancier clothes (note the very expensive, handmade vest and purple sportcoat). But our easily bored lad is not fulfilled. The criminal underworld of the Middle East feels cheap and confining against the excitement of Gotham, now overrun with escapees from Arkham asylum and additionally under siege my this mysterious Batman character. So. the Joker betrays and murders his colleagues in crime, leaving no traces the government of Israel will own up to, and sets off again for his home town, armed with everything he's learned in the lands of strife.
One thing they didn't need to teach him, though, was how to lie. Psychopaths come by this talent honestly (so to speak), and in fact are often so pathological about it that they can't stick to one story even when they need to. In the mind of a compulsive liar, the slippery truth is so much a matter of convenience or whim that we really have to wonder if they believe in a stable reality at all. And yes, the Joker displays this symptom prominently; everything he says is superficially plausible, but it's never reliable or consistent. The truth, if it exists, doesn't interest him. In fact, the psychopath's repertoire reads like an evil cousin of the Boy Scout Oath; he is superficial, grandiose, deceitful, impulsive, irresponsible, lacking in remorse or empathy or long-term goals, and attempts wherever possible to push the blame for his actions onto other people.
Broadening the clinical definition beyond mere psychopathy, criminal offenders score much higher than normal people on assertiveness, fearlessness, aggression, "unconventionality," extroversion, antisocial behavior, schizophrenia*, impulsiveness, hyperactivity and left-handedness*, and much lower than normal on conditionability. In other words, hardened criminals rarely learn from their mistakes--even disfiguring mistakes whose aftereffects stare them in the mirror every day when they're shaving. *This is not to say that all crooks are crazy or that all southpaws are crooks! Still, the incidence of delusional thinking and left-handedness are much higher among criminals than among the general public. It's not for nothing that the Latin word for left--"sinister"--is in fact a synonym for malevolence in our language. Anyway, the Harlequin of Hate hits all of these notes and more. Like all good Batman villains, he's a Jungian archetype, a hypertrophied example of the worst traits in all of us.
Paint on that smile
Still, although war paint has been used in almost every society both to mask identity and to frighten enemies, its use among criminals is rare. A mask can be discarded easily, whereas removing grease paint takes time and diligent effort. To step into a crime scene in full clown makeup is an act of incredible bravado and defiance, implying that the perpetrator simply does not believe he can be caught. Too, coulrophobia, or fear of clowns, is common even among adults, and the Joker's appearance is certainly off-putting even to people who would not fear an ordinary clown. He makes a statement, oh yeah.
But, restless soul that he is, he can't help taking it to a higher level. Although his makeup always appears runny, no amount of blood, sweat, fire, or rough treatment ever actually seems to completely remove it. The police had him in custody for several hours, and one imagines they must, at some point, have run a washcloth over his face so they could photograph him properly. But the Joker looks about the same when he leaves as when he went in. At the very least, he seems to have applied some sort of temporary tattoo. These are mixtures of pigment and adhesive that bond to the epidermis and remain in place until the skin exfoliates--usually a few days at the very least. Unlike ordinary paint, they don't wash off with soap and water. Still, other solvents such as alcohol or mineral spirits will often dissolve them, and under heavy exertion they can sometimes be scraped or sweated off.
A real tattoo, on the other hand, consists of ink particles permanently injected under the skin, and cannot be removed by anything short of a laser beam or deep abrasion of the underlying tissue. Tattoos are also used to embolden and frighten. For example, criminal gang members in Japan mark their bodies this way both as a symbol of allegiance and as a warning to potential enemies. The Joker sometimes claims to have fallen into a vat of chemicals at a playing card factory, but that story has a lot of holes. There really is a chemical called monobenzone that permanently destroys pigment cells in the skin, turning it albino white. It's used by dermatologists as a treatment of last resort for certain types of pigment disorder. Too, in some (though not most) pigment-deficient individuals, the lips really do stand out and appear much redder than normal. However, (a) there is no known chemical that can permanently alter hair follicles so the hair grows green, and (b) monobenzone is not used in the manufacture of playing cards! They're just rectangles of heavy paper, inked with patterns and coated in plastic or cellulose. Other than ordinary chlorine bleach, there is nothing particularly caustic or toxic in the manufacturing process. It's a nice story, but it just ain't true.More likely the Joker took to wearing clown makeup and then, in a fit of psychopathic whimsy, rubbed it into his face one day with a wire brush, just to see what would happen. Or was standing a little too close to one of his own bombs when it went off, driving grit and paint into his skin. Or the Turkish mafia did it to him, to mark him permanently as a "white" Western spy. Sometimes he remembers it one way, sometimes another. The resulting tattoo would look terrible unless covered again by fresh clown makeup, but it does kind of fit what we see on the screen, and it does kind of suit the temperament of the character. Hey, you: conventional world! Why so serious?
Sources:
Babiak, Paul & Hare, Robert: Snakes in Suits, When Psychopaths Go to Work, HarperCollins, 2006
Gottfriedson, Michael R. and Hirschi, Travis: A General Theory of Crime, Stanford University Press, 1990
Conroy, Mike: 500 Comic Book Villains, Chrysalis Book Group, 2004
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org): "MI6", :Mossad", "Caulrophobia", "Temporary tattoo", "monobenzone"
Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2008 Edition: "Tattoo"
