The Dark Knight’s Next Villain
Star TrekStargate:AtlantisFireflyBy Lisa Fary
Where does Batman go for villainy after this? On the way home after the movie, John and I ran through the list and dismissed most of them. The Penguin? Lame. The Riddler? Meh. Catwoman? Maybe. But how threatening is she, really? She’s more of a burglar than a killer - she’s not exactly going to burgle Gotham City to its knees.
After The Dark Knight, only Batman vs. Alien vs. Predator can follow. That’s all I can think of that could be scarier and more challenging than Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Of course, we can’t talk about The Joker without bringing up Jack Nicholson. Nicholson’s Joker was dapper and elegant, prone to theme gags like murder by joy buzzer and toxic gas balloons (and really, when you get right down to it, it’s just Jack Nicholson in make-up - the guy hasn’t acted since Chinatown).
That Joker may have worked for that Elfman scored Gotham City at the end of the 1980s, but now he’d be more appropriate as the Guild of Calamitous Intent’s approved arch enemy for Dr. Venture.
And looking back, it’s hard to see why he was such a challenge for Batman to conquer. Nicholson’s Joker was kind of a pussy.
Ledger’s Joker is an animal. Worse than that, actually. An animal will kill out of predatory instinct - this Joker will do it because he likes it. He has animalistic mannerisms and he’s clearly a psychopath, but just as clearly, there’s a sharp mind at work behind that smeared greasepaint. This Joker is a worthy arch for Christian Bale’s Batman, and he’s scary as hell.
The reviewer in the New York Press, Armond White, said that The Dark Knight, by making The Joker so grim and showing the darkness of the titular Dark Knight (this one is a Nicholson lover, and would clearly prefer Batman drenched in a Prince soundtrack), panders to a hip, pessimistic, and nihilistic generation. In Rudy Giuliani fashion, White links this to 9/11:
“This pessimism links Batman to our post-9/11 anxiety by escalating the violence quotient, evoking terrorist threat and urban helplessness.”
OK, that’s kind of like poo-poohing pre-1990s James Bond for exploiting Americans’ Cold War fears. Movies and their villains have to work with the modern psyche - 1989 Americans were afraid of Russians with nukes and movies gave us plots and villains to match. In 2008, Americans are afraid of one unhinged dude blowing up one building at a time.
PRETENSION ALERT
Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a Cold War era villain. He wasn’t a Soviet, but he embodied America’s vision of those ideas. He wanted to re-make everything and everyone around him in the spirit of his ideal, sometimes on a one-on-one basis (his girlfriend, Alicia) and sometimes on a wider scale (Smile-X gas). Art and culture were not exempt - remember the scene in the art museum? The Joker wasn’t vandalizing - he was “improving” the paintings. In addition to invoking fear, The Joker was stamping out any competitive vision. That’s a very Soviet thing to do.
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We’re no longer afraid of the Soviets, so we need a different kind of villain. One whose motives can’t be understood. One who is unpredictable. One who can’t be reasoned with. That’s how America views the terrorist threat, so that view is going to find its way into pop-culture villains like The Joker, even if he isn’t explicitly the current, real-life enemy.
(BTW, many of us were grim and pessimistic well before 9/11 and for societal reasons that had nothing to do with xenophobic paranoia.)
PRETENSION COMPLETE
That said, Ledger is masterful as The Joker. No one can ever play this role again. That’s not out of respect for the late actor, but because he was so perfect, so definitive in his performance. He’s elevated The Joker to the winner of every hypothetical villain match up that geeks have over beer in the basement while switching DVDs.
The Dark Knight isn’t just dark - it’s effing pitch black. It’s horrifying, nerve wracking, and relentless. And it’s brilliant. If you haven’t already seen it, go see it now.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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