Did TDK kick off the "No Origin" craze for Joker?

[BatmAngelus]

Due to recent events on the TV show Gotham, I see more and more people objecting to the idea of giving Joker a backstory.

And while I understand how that's become a preferred interpretation...it's not exactly true to the character's history, is it?

The Joker debuted in 1940. He didn't have an origin story, but then again, Batman, Catwoman, and Penguin didn't have origin stories in their first appearances either.

Joker's origin story The Man Behind the Red Hood (written by Bill Finger himself) came out 11 years after his debut, in 1951. Which means that the Joker's had an origin for over 60 years.

It wasn't just an obscure one-off comic, either. There have been tons of references to his Red Hood origin over the years. The most notable have been:
- The Killing Joke, which gives more insight into the man who was wearing the helmet. Granted, Joker later gives the "multiple choice" line, but the story is still a variation on the Red Hood origin and is always one of the top recommended reads about the Joker.
- Under the Hood/Under the Red Hood when Jason Todd returned and took on the Red Hood persona to refer to the Joker's origin as Batman's previous failure.
- Even in the New 52, in Batman Zero Year, which has the Red Hood Gang as full blown villains against a rookie Batman.

Hell, eliminating the Red Hood aspect from the Joker would actually invalidate a lot of the current comic stories, from either Zero Year to the significance of Jason adopting the Red Hood persona.

Other interpretations include the gangster origin, brought to us by the 1989 movie with the Jack Napier backstory. Batman: The Animated Series featured a similar take, along with Batman: Confidential's Lovers and Madmen story and a Black and White story by Paul Dini and Alex Ross.

In virtually all the takes, whether he dons a Red Hood or not, the Joker almost always starts out as a criminal who fell into a vat of chemicals during an encounter with Batman. Granted, that's not a ton and he's never had an official in-comics "real name," but it is STILL an origin.

The biggest exception has been the recent take by Scott Snyder that the Joker is an immortal who is older than Gotham itself. But this is still, in a way, a backstory since it gives us information about how old he is and how he's been able to escape death so many times.

If anything, the only version of the character that asked the question of "where did he come from?" and deliberately left it unanswered with no clues whatsoever...was the Nolan/Ledger Joker.

This makes the "Joker has no origin" take an exception rather than the rule in the history of the character.

What do you guys think, then? Is this insistence that "we shouldn't know anything about how the Joker came to be" a symptom of The Dark Knight's influence?
I certainly don't think the 1989 film got any flack, at the time, for showing us the man before he became the Clown Prince of Crime.

[The Laughing Fish]

A very perceptive question and well-analysed post there.

It seemed to me that a lot of people always preferred the no origin take on Joker even long before this movie was made, but I never believed that exploring the character's past goes against who he is. In fact, those examples you demonstrated say otherwise.

In fact, I'd like to talk about The Killing Joke for a little bit. Lots of people argue that Ledger's take resembles closely to that version of the character, but I for one don't see it. It may be true that the two share a bleak view on human nature, but I think they have different motives:

• The Dark Knight Joker - He is only interested in chaos and violence for the sake of it, and has no personal investment in what he does. Corrupting Harvey Dent was an attempt to make everyone in Gotham City lose hope when their law-abiding DA went insane. Complete bullsh*t, but there it is.
• The Killing Joke Joker - A disturbed psychopath who wanted to be understood by trying to break Jim Gordon, in an attempt to prove everyone that life could cause any sane man crazy.

The thing is despite what TKJ Joker said about the 'multiple choice' comment, he seems very convinced that something devastating did happen to him. One could interpret his torturing of Gordon as his way of trying to convince himself that he was once an innocent man until he fell victim to tragic circumstances. The Joker here wasn't trying to cause people to lose hope over a fallen public personality, he was only trying to validate his belief about how sad and fragile life is.





Does this look like anything that Ledger's Joker would do? I don't think he'd ever take offense to Batman telling him that he is alone in his insanity. In fact, the movie never makes a connection between the two characters as deep as The Killing Joke; where Joker argues that he and Batman are both products of 'one bad day', and nearly guesses what sort of tragedy that drove Batman over the edge and dress up as 'a flying rodent'.

My point is that I don't fully buy into the idea that Joker is unreliable in The Killing Joke. I think he had some idea of what happened to him, and that is what made him do those things in that story. I don't think an unknown symbol like the TDK's Joker is as sophisticated as this, and I don't think trying to put him in that scenario would pack the same emotional punch as TKJ does.

[The Dark Knight]

The Joker here wasn't trying to cause people to lose hope over a fallen public personality, he was only trying to validate his belief about how sad and fragile life is.

That's it, right there.

I don't believe for a second that The Joker is an unreliable narrator who doesn't truly remember his origins. He would absolutely know, clear as crystal, the events that caused him to go over the edge into a warped lifestyle.

Quite simply, I don't think he wants to talk about it. As this quote demonstrates: "Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away...forever."

[BatmAngelus]

Good points on the Killing Joke. One wonders why Alan Moore would even bother spending pages and pages of his comic...on a fake backstory for Joker. If he really wanted to convey the "multiple choice" point, wouldn't he have given us flashbacks of different backstories instead?

The "multiple choice" line is also said for Batman's benefit when our Dark Knight is not even aware of the "failed comedian" origin. It'd be one thing if Batman learned it, believed in it for most of the story, and then the Joker shot it down with that line, but Batman's not even thinking much about who the Joker was before the chemical bath. Why would the Joker bother shooting down a backstory that Batman doesn't even know about?

This further supports the idea that the "multiple choice" line doesn't immediately invalidate the origin story that Moore laid out and, instead, it's there to point out how Joker's used madness to move on from his past.

I'd say that the conflicting "Wanna know how I got these scars?" stories from The Dark Knight is closer to Dini & Timm's Mad Love than to Killing Joke. In Mad Love, Joker spins a tale about his abusive father and Batman reveals that it's part of his schtick and he changes details about it all the time.

Even then, that story was more about how Joker seduced Harlene Quinzel into becoming Harley Quinn with this tactic, rather than "Oooh, look how mysterious this Joker is." Not to mention that BTAS very clearly established that the Joker was mob enforcer Jack Napier, worked for Sal Valestra's gang, killed Carl Beaumont, and eventually fell into a vat of chemicals after an encounter with Batman. That's actually more of a backstory than the show ever gave for Penguin, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, and Bane!

Personally, I always found the "Wanna know how I got these scars?" stories in the film to be a little extraneous. They're well-performed by Ledger, but they don't contribute much to the overall story or characterization and were simply there as a way for the writers to cement the "Our Joker's backstory is a mystery" point than anything else.

[The Dark Knight]

The Joker may live an extreme lifestyle, but he's not dumb. He's a criminal genius. Human beings will usually think of all the bad things first. All the hurt, shame and embarassment they've gone through. There's not a chance The Joker forgets his "one bad day". He's just launched full steam ahead into his new persona. One that laughs instead of cries. One who gives others orders and does what he wants.

The most honest quotation of this is found in B89. "You dropped me into that vat of chemicals. That wasn't easy to get over, and don't think that I didn't try." In this movie, his origin isn't up for debate, but you still get to see behind his mask. He refuses to be the victim, and refuses to let his past pain determine his future. In the comics he may play around with alternate origins as campfire stories, but I'm sure they're just that.

The Killing Joke is too on the nose for it not to be his origin. And I think it's a fantastic origin. He assumes Batman had a bad day like him. Batman is a mysterious individual as well, and Bruce knows why he suits up every night. It's the very basis of his existence. The same argument applies to The Joker.

I think the main driver is Joker's real name being a mystery, and his lack of fingerprints.

[The Dark Knight]

EDIT

[The Laughing Fish]

You would think that people would comprehend the tension surrounding the Joker in The Killing Joke and realize he's psychologically a different beast to the one that Ledger played. If Ledger had to play a scene where Batman offers him rehabilitation, he'd laugh right in his face.

I think what it comes down to is that people are attracted to the idea of a psychotic character who is completely ambiguous. They like the idea of someone who is completely mysterious and can't ever be understood; that their evil is above comprehension. But to me, that's no more sophisticated than a typical Saturday morning cartoon villain who wants to take over the world for the sake of it. TDK Joker is so 'perfectly evil' that he's also perfectly boring.  And the fact that we don't ever get a resolution to what happened to him by the end of the movie (nor a reference to his whereabouts in TDKR) makes his character feel so incredibly cheap. I doubt he'd want to stay silent and let Batman cover up the truth about Dent.

Nothing against Ledger or his acting, but the way people carried on over his performance throughout the years gives me the impression that a lot of them have never seen a psychopath on film or TV before. The unknown evil villain has been done way too many times; even Joel Schumacher touched a little bit on it in 8mm with Nicholas Cage.

[The Dark Knight]

Romero's Joker even had a concrete fact established about his background, even if there wasn't detail surrounding it. Batman said in his youth, The Joker was a hypnotist. And with the '66 comics, they introduced their version of the Red Hood. The Joker's mind was transferred into the helmet, with an Arkham doctor acting as a villain with Joker's knowledge.

Also, a point about TKJ. Joker says "If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice."

The key word here is prefer.

[The Laughing Fish]

I've mentioned this a few times on this forum, but here's a Joker origin story that may have influenced the Glasgow smile look. The 2001 Elseworlds story, Gotham Noir, was a story that reimagined the Batman mythos to resemble a 1940s crime thriller. The Joker of this story is called Napier; a mob associate who is snitching to the cops until P.I. Jim Gordon had him exposed to the mob. Napier had his mouth cut from cheek-to-cheek and was brutally beaten, but miraculously survived and plots his revenge against Gordon.


Now that I'm on the subject of influences, I'd like to address something about the comparisons between TDK Joker and the 1940 Golden Age Joker. While it's true that this original incarnation does broadcast his crimes in advance and is more of a ruthless killer than a trickster, the key difference is that the GA Joker is a kleptomaniacal serial killer who poisons rich people to death with Joker venom. The Joker's M.O. here is straightforward. He can't resist the urge to steal jewellery, and will kill to get what he wants. As you can see, he really likes to own possessions. Dare I say it – his motives here are a lot more realistic than what we see in this film.


In contrast, TDK's Joker doesn't value anything AT ALL. The only time we see him getting his hands on any sort of luxury...is the pile of money he burns. 


In my opinion, I'd say TDK Joker has very little in common with the GA incarnation. Defenders can refer to the lack of backstory and so forth all they like, but that's like saying DeVito's Penguin is just like in the comics because he had gross table manners like in one comic book back in the seventies. The difference is I actually like DeVito's Penguin, despite how radically different he is to the comics.

[The Dark Knight]

In fairness, Nicholson's Joker doesn't really see the value in money either. He dumps it all at the street parade, luring people out to kill them. I think the Joker could see beauty in having such items like jewellery, but money? I have to agree with TDK's take. What use or value does such a character have for it? Does he take out his wallet and buy something at a store? No. He's a brazen thief who does what he wants. He's a complete rogue.