Sybil told me I could rant away and I’m going to run with that. I just saw The Dark Knight and my inner fangirl needs to run free. This is going to go in sections. First is a love letter to the Joker in general focusing on elements that the new movie really manages to capture, some subtly and some not. (C’mon, if they made a point about the Joker being chaos once more I was going to freak out. It was just like Batman Begins and fear. Nolan, most viewers can pick out themes on their own. Those that can’t likely couldn’t care less that those themes exist.) Second addresses a few aspects of the movie specifically.

The title refers to the fact that I’m pretty sure my English major side just had awkward sexy times with my inner fangirl.

THIS IS FILLED WITH SPOILERS. SPOILERS – SO LARGE PIMPS BE ENVIOUS OF MY RIDE. YOU ARE WARNED.

Also, this is slightly incoherent but I make enough decent points that I kind of like it.

The Joker
(Really, this is a bit of a love letter to the entire universe, I suppose.)

I adore the Joker. If I lived in Gotham City I’d be Harley Quinn. Luckily, I don’t and can just be a lucky fangirl. Because Gotham eats people’s spirits. It’s a city that didn’t need supervillains until Batman showed up. It could destroy itself.

Even with Batman, only the most fragile wisps of hope can survive. Harvey Dent, in the movie, is the ‘white knight.’ But Gotham isn’t kind to white knights. Its corruption is too deep and corrosive. All that can save it is someone like Batman, who cannot be termed a hero. He’s the man everybody and nobody wants to be because he does what needs to be done and he doesn’t whine about it. (He may not like it sometimes, but he doesn’t whine. He doesn’t even really angst or brood. He merely accepts it into the black hole of his psyche. Okay, I’m exercising my fan’s right of discontinuity. Shut up.)

He and the Joker fit.

Joker is the evilest supervillain, hands down. It’s canon that the others fear him. (Alfred says something utterly inane in the movie about men who just want the world to burn that people keep quoting. It could fit the Joker if it weren’t delivered like a Sunday School parable. Ugh.) He, like most villains, is an extreme. He’s chaos, anarchy.

But that certainly doesn’t make Batman order. Both men are subversive and refuse to conform. Their rivalry is interesting not because it’s a basic dichotomy, but because the Batman is barely removed from the Joker. Batman could save Gotham much suffering if he just killed the Joker, but that would remove the line between the two and ultimately solve nothing. Joker could just casually kill himself or Batman if he continued to care for nothing, but he does care. He cares about Batman.

Batman is a source of fun, of joy. He’s the mouse and the cat all rolled into a batsuit. “You complete me,” the Joker tells him in The Dark Knight. It’s not a pop psychology serial killer speaking to a dumb blonde in an RS. It’s the Joker gaining a goal, a quest. He wants to seduce Batman, who is perhaps all the more incorruptible because he’s so close to the line. He’s already broken and there’s not much left for the Joker to touch.

Batman doesn’t suppress the chaos and insanity that is the Joker; he intensifies it. He takes a man who is not a man but ideas given shape and he makes him into a man because he gives him a goal. A purpose. A reason to make plans. He makes the Joker human. And we all know humans are scarier than anything else out there.

I love Jack Nicholson’s Joker, which captured the character wonderfully. He’s camp, but he’s gay and subversive and he kills without remorse. Heath Ledger’s performance captures the same character equally well, in all the same ways but so very differently. It’s the beautiful thing about the large scale works of DC and Marvel. A character is rebooted, revised, re-envisioned, always a product of the current times and the past times. A basic idea can come in so many forms, all equally effective.

I’m terrified of the Joker. And I love him for it.

The movie itself

Awesome. Heath Ledger is, as everyone is saying, magnificent as the Joker. The posture (which I didn’t even think about until after the movie was over), the fact he’s never quite still, the weird voice which is somehow more freaky because it’s slightly inconsistent, and how he lies so sincerely we believe him every time.

I really thought I would hate the make-up, because it’s been consistent and a natural part of his face throughout all incarnations (okay, The Dark Knight Returns suggested the lips were lipstick), but it works for this story. It’s visually arresting and there’s something creepy, but equally elusive to explain, about how it flakes off as the cops beat him but no one removes it. He’s a man without an identity except for the makeup and the suit and no one can bear to strip that away and see what lies beneath. They’re too afraid.

Might I say that I think some of the film’s loveliest visuals come when the Joker is in jail? He sits behind bars, oh so still, especially compared to his usual movement. But everyone else is moving. He’s behind bars but he hasn’t lost control. He hasn’t conformed. He’s calling the shots and he’s telling everybody he’s calling the shots and no one can see it. And no one can see it because he does it all visually. Beautiful.

(I originally spelled that “bare”, and then decided to rescue ya’ll from my punning. Wrong Batman era.)

There are a few problems, mostly when the filmmakers blatantly MANIPULATE THE AUDIENCE for cheap emotional impact, but here are my top two:

1) Why doesn’t Harvey Dent figure out Bruce Wayne is Batman? Wasn’t it a huge tipoff when Bruce knew to stuff him in a closet just before the Joker invaded? Or how about when his girlfriend told him Bruce’s penthouse was the absolute safest place in Gotham? He’s a smart man and I think he gets multiple clues that he shows no sign of stringing together. (For that matter, why wasn’t more effort put into evacuating a VIP from the hospital? One man, really?

2) Barbara Gordon. They show multiple Gordon family scenes with the mother (also Barbara) and son. I could figure she wasn’t born yet in the Nolan movieverse timeline. But then Dent captures mother and kids and there’s Barbara clutched in her arms with the boy. BUT NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES SHE’S THERE. Dent threatens mom and then son. Jim Gordon gets to comfort son. Daughter says nothing and the camera never shows her face. This threw me out of the story a little. She’ll be Batgirl and then Oracle, member of multiple crime fighting teams. Her first appearance feels illegitimate. Sure, she’s no big deal now, but if you’re going to put her onscreen acknowledge that she’s there. Let her say a line or even have someone else address her.

Coda…

I like that the Nolan ‘verse saved the Joker for the second movie. Because this really just continues the massive origin story of Batman Begins, it’s just far less boring and shows just why a supervillain is needed in these sagas. And you can’t beat the Joker. Hopefully the movies will continue to increase in quality (rather than decreasing, as happened after Tim Burton’s Batman). Can I say I hope Catwoman shows up soon?

I’m a bit intimidated that this is my first Pondering. But at least now everybody knows on which side of the sanity fence I am. (And if you think about it long enough, that’s a pun, too.)