Someone Should Rescue the Joker
By Tom Farr
For decades the Joker has made some of the worst decisions a human being could make. He’s a madman who has relentlessly stolen and killed all in the name of his overarching goal of destroying all that is good. Everything is a joke to him, and there’s no greater joke than watching people destroy one another. He’s an agent of chaos and no one would flinch if someone put a bullet through his head.
He’s also my daughter’s hero.
The Joker as a Good Guy?
Wait, what? Don’t misunderstand. My daughter, who is five years old, knows nothing of the life of the Joker as described above. In her eyes, the Joker is a good guy, and he does great things to rescue other people. To her, the Joker is Batman’s best friend, and they save the day together.
It all started a couple years ago. My wife Lindsey and I have three children, and our daughter is the oldest with two brothers that followed close behind. I’ve always been a fan of Batman. He’s a man that gives everything inside of him to rescue the people of Gotham city. I’ve always found the Joker intriguing as well, but not seriously until my daughter started playing with the small Joker action figure that came with the Batman play set that my wife bought for our son. She was instantly drawn to the Joker’s purple suit, bright green hair, and white makeup. Ironically, she thought he was a girl.
My son would play with the Batman figure while my daughter played with the Joker, and together they would save the day. My children easily understood that Batman was a superhero, and once my daughter associated the Joker with the superhero label, my wife and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Joker was actually a bad guy. We’ve always been well aware that our children would learn someday the gravity of evil in our world. But when she started imagining the great things this hero named the Joker (or “The Joster” as she called him when she was 3) did in the name of saving people, we decided to wait to reveal the real character of the purple-wearing clown. It’s her imagination, after all. The Joker can do anything she wants in her mind.
The Joker, the Greatest…Superhero?
One thing bothered us about deciding to wait on telling her who the Joker really was. It was the question of how she would react when she found out the truth. We knew she would find out eventually, and we think it’s important that she does. But we didn’t want it to be too soon. Many of us know the feeling of witnessing a hero fall, and I didn’t want her to have that experience in discovering who the Joker really was.
So the Joker has been one of the greatest superheroes ever in our house. He and Batman are always saving the day, and my daughter never associates him with the bad guys her and her brother are always fighting against when they’re playing.
The Joker’s a Good Guy, Right?
I think she’s starting to catch on, though. She seems to be constantly looking for affirmation that the Joker is, indeed, a good guy. One day, while waiting in a doctor’s office waiting room, she asked me to read her a Batman book that was in the waiting room. The book was about Batman and Robin stopping the Joker from causing destruction in Gotham City. My daughter can’t read yet, so as we were flipping through the book and looking at all the pictures, I made the story up differently than what was was actually written on the page. In my version of the story, Batman and Robin were chasing the Joker for fun. This was one of those times that she really wanted affirmation that the Joker is a good guy.
During that conversation, as I read to her about the Joker having fun with Batman and Robin in Gotham City, my daughter asked me, “The Joker’s a good guy, right?”
How to answer a little girl who just wants this character to do the right thing?
“Yeah,” I said, “he’s a good guy,” At least he was in the version of the story I just told and every version of the story she’s been telling herself up until now.
I could tell she was having some doubts as she looked at the pictures. It didn’t quite look like the Joker wasn’t up to no good. We talked about heroes and how heroes rescue people.
Someone Should Rescue the Joker
Suddenly, she asked me a question that got me thinking. I know that the Joker’s a bad guy. I know that the character of the Joker is a terrible man who deserves to die for all he’s done. But my daughter opened my eyes to something significant about the Joker.
“If the Joker’s a good guy, shouldn’t someone rescue him?” she asked.
It’s a simple question from an innocent imagination, but for me, it was a profound question. I thought about the Joker and realized that, yes, someone should rescue the Joker.
We All Have a Little Joker in Us
Imagine for a moment that the Joker could be rescued from who he is. Imagine that Batman, instead of trying to eliminate the Joker, could bring him to the good side by rescuing him from everything inside of him that makes him evil. It’s a scandalous thought that a villain could be turned into a hero, but who of us hasn’t been a villain in some area of our lives? Who hasn’t, at one time or another, been the villain in another person’s story? To varying degrees, we all do things that hurt someone else. We all have a little Joker in us.
We don’t typically think about rescuing the criminals among us. We expect Batman to rescue those who are being oppressed by the criminals. We wouldn’t expect Batman to relentlessly fight for the redemption of the Joker. But what if he did? It would at once be the most offensive and most beautiful story.
Jesus Rescues the Joker
It’s never been difficult for me to get from Batman to Jesus. I’ve always seen every superhero as a dim reflection of some aspect of the ultimate hero that Jesus is. I would be willing to bet, however, that if we’re thinking of the redemptive story that superhero stories reflect, we would compare ourselves to the hero or the one being rescued. But that’s not who we are in the story where Jesus is the hero. We’re the villain. We’re the Joker. Though we don’t consciously realize it most of the time, we’re bent on destruction of everything Jesus has worked so hard for. We hurt other people more often than we would like to admit.
And what does Jesus do? Eliminate the Joker and save those who deserve it?
He’ll never find anyone who deserves to be rescued. He’ll only find the Joker. And incredibly, he rescues the Joker.
Becoming the Hero of the Story We’re In
Jesus rescues us, and in him, we get the opportunity to be the hero of the story he’s placed us in.
My daughter wonders if the Joker is a good guy, and I don’t know when she’ll realize that he’s not. But whenever that day comes, I want her to also realize that he could be, and that her love for him when she was a child made him a good guy for just a little while.
