Justifying Joker in ‘The Dark Knight’
Let’s just start with his mask. A joker, right? Always a smile stuck to his face
Most of us can agree that Heath Ledger, the actor who played Joker in The Dark Knight just took over the film from Christian Bale who played Batman. If you can observe the precision with which Heath acted in the film ranging from his minute expressions and timing to his voice variations, I can say he played the best villain of all time.
“All you care about is money. This city deserves a better class of criminal and I’m gonna give it to them!” — Joker
The Joker is a very complicated yet strong character. Even though his actions are wrong, the conviction with which he explains the reasons behind his actions can even make the toughest audience align with him.
Let’s just start with his mask. A joker, right? Always a smile stuck to his face. There is no proper story for Joker’s past and as seen in the film he keeps on changing the story behind how he got those scars and uses mask to cover it. Joker while talking to Rachel Dawes says this
“Well hello, beautiful! You must be Harvey’s squeeze, hmm? And you are beautiful. Oh, you look nervous. Is it the scars? Do you wanna know how I got ‘em? [grabs her chin as she continuously tries to look away] Come here, look at me. See, I had a wife — beautiful, like you — who tells me, I worry too much, who tells me I ought to smile more, who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks. Hey, One day they carve her face. We have no money for surgeries. She can’t take it. I just want to see her smile again, hmm? I just want her to know that I don’t care about the scars. So I stick a razor in my mouth and do this to myself. [Directs attention towards the scars] And you know what? She can’t stand the sight of me! She leaves. Now, I see the funny side. Now, I’m always smiling.”
When we start caring about someone, slowly their opinions start to matter, and their happiness matters to us. We start changing ourselves to make them happy and be with them. Joker did the same thing too. When he gave himself those scars, all he was trying to do was get his wife out of her misery. He changed himself to help her. But what happened? She left. It hurts when we change for someone else’s happiness and they say you have changed, I can’t stay with you now. It sucks pretty bad. This hurt can change us so much that it can bring out the worst in us like it happened in the case of Joker
So never change yourself for anyone else except you. However close the other person might be, one thing to understand is no one is permanent. When they leave because of the changes you have made for them, you will have no clue where to go and how to get back on your life again. Your ideals and your character must be the same irrespective of the people entering and leaving your life.
“As you know, madness is like gravity…all it takes is a little push.” — Joker
No human being is born a villain. All it takes is one situation to bring out the worst in us. Harvey Dent, a successful lawyer was turned by Joker. He said “Their morals, their code; it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. You’ll see- I’ll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They’ll eat each other. See I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve”. This quote by Joker is what I like the most. We see so many people whom we take as inspiration or categorize them as heroes. We strive hard to become like them. But when tough times come up, people change. “They’re only as good as the world allows them to be”.
”Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos…” — Joker
Joker’s ways might be wrong, but he was proving a very good point here, that deep down inside everyone is dark. But the face which we all put on the outside is a mask, a joker’s mask. We all smile on the outside, trying to cover up for the hurt we have gone through but no one knows the pain behind them. If chaos is introduced into our lives, this mask drops down pretty soon. All it takes is a little push.
So before we call Joker the best villain of all time, let’s just ask ourselves is he really a villain? If so how different are we from him? Aren’t we also villains then? Are we so great and pious that irrespective of any situation we are guaranteed to be good all the time? How many times haven’t we been selfish? How many times have we done bad things convincing ourselves it’s just this one time and it’s just because of this chaos I’m doing this bad thing?
There were many situations where Joker pressured Batman to kill him. Though Batman knew this was the only way to stop him, still he chose not to. Joker wanted to test the extent Batman would go when chaos arises. He forced the people of Gotham to abandon their moral beliefs and do something they would never think of ever doing, thus questioning their character, their beliefs, and their true self. He wanted to prove that people are more self-serving than what they believe themselves to be.
So before branding others as villains, from now on let’s just question ourselves first, “Are we really heroes to brand others as villains?”
