Batman vs Joker is Really Just Man vs Woman
Posted by Arsene Hodali in Society/Beliefs
Batman represents Man.
A being haunted by his past failures who goes out to put his mark on everything to prove to himself his own self-worth. Hurt by his past he rarely trusts anyone. He’s a workaholic, and chases women mainly as a ploy to prove to everyone that he’s ‘normal’, but he occasionally falls for his own stunt; he occasionally falls in love. And of course, every man loves the souped-up car, and the ultimate bachelor pad. (Butler represents his mother. Someone who he thinks he can live without but really can’t.)
Joker represents Woman.
A being who, to themselves and all others, constantly acts irrationally yet in the end somehow proves to be the smartest person in the room. The bleached skin, red lips, and green hair signify Woman’s constant battle with make-up and outward-appearances. (Harley represents her ideal best friend in the opposite sex, someone who’ll go the the ends of the world for her; someone who’ll kill for her.)
Batman vs Joker is really about Man vs Woman. The two constantly face each other, constantly trade wins and losses, but in the end they both can’t exist in a world without each other.
photo credit: Sabbath Photography
That’s a stretch.
Also, every time i read about men vs. women, men are bad and women are good… even here, you’ve taken the hero and turned him into the bad one: His past failures (having one’s family die in front of them while a child is not a failure.) He goes out to put his mark on everything (I don’t think Batman’s intent was ever to mark his territory, even the bat symbol goes away the moment the light is turned off… some say Batman is a copy of Zorro. Zorro’s big thing was leaving his mark. One of the biggest differences between them is that Batman doesn’t do that, so this point is flat out the opposite of Batman. Unless you are saying going “out there” to do anything is to metaphorically attempt to leave one’s mark on it… if you’re a man… because men are ruled by their territorial instincts… because men are animals… If your a woman, however, doing anything at all is to metaphorically enrich everything with a selfless giving of your mark… It’s the same thing, but never forget: Women are good!) He sometimes “falls for his own stunt” (here you seem to be saying that a man who isn’t in love is a manipulator and a man who is in love is a fool trapped by his own folly.) He has a bunch of stuff (we live in a capitalist society, people with money decide what stories will be fed to the public, stories about rich people using their wealth to do extraordinary things while making us normal people jealous permeates our pop culture… but here you imply that materialism is a man’s exclusive problem.) His butler takes care of him (Alfred represents his parents, but the concept of “parents” as supportive and nurturing is a positive concept, and parents can be both women and men… so here, Alfred has to represent the concept of the female parent only, fathers don’t count, they’re men! They’re bad! ‘nuf said!)
Meanwhile, the Joker (who represents barbarism and chaos) being the concept of “woman” is portrayed completely positively: She seems irrational (but only becuse we are too stupid to understand the proven “smartest person in the room”) Her vanity is represented by Joker’s crazy looks and clothes (but here again, “woman” means “good” and vanity is not good… so this Joker is a victim of society, constantly putting up the good fight against the makeup that a male-dominated society forces her to wear… oh the indignity those darn men put her through!) And Harley Quinn somehow represents “the opposite sex” which is somehow still female… because women are the best friends ever! They are nothing but supportive and devoted and willing to kill for her.
I know I’m ranting. And you won’t hear my argument… but the “Men are bad! Women are good!” point has been made to me 3 times this morning alone by different sources from the internet. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that men are bad this year so far, and we’re only half-way through February! It is trite. It is wrong. I am sick of it.
I’m sure someone will tell me (if anyone even reads this) that this sort of gender stereotyping is what women have to face everyday (as if I don’t) but I have yet to come across a single webpage, blog, TV show, movie, or video game that deals with issues of gender (supposedly) seriously and (again, supposedly) without hate, that didn’t describe men as monsters (even the guy forced to sit there in his cubicle all day, he’s thinking hurtful-to-women thoughts! He gives his whole paycheck to his wife? That’s how he manipulates her! The poor woman who is married to him, so oppressed!) and women as victims/heroes (the woman in the next cubicle over might be in the same situation… she might be getting paid more to do the same job, but statistically she should be getting paid waaaaay more, because abstractly speaking, there’s some man out there getting more than her… Anyways, she’s a victim, forced to work against her will and a hero: keeping her chin up every day is an act of heroism, as long as it’s a woman’s chin that is being held up.)
Just because a fictitious property depicts a struggle between good and evil doesn’t mean it is a depiction of men versus women. Either straight-up: “women are good” (bat[wo]man) and “men are bad” (joker is a man.) Or ironically: “Men think they’re good, but they are just unaware that they’re bad! (batman thinks he’s a hero, but really he just wants to mark his territory because he’s an insecure failure who needs his toys and his mommy. Joker is supposed to be the bad guy, but really he’s just misunderstood… which means, really, he’s a woman… who is good… no matter how many men she kills… women are good…)
There are feminists who would read this and still call you a sexist (against women). Selling out your own gender does not earn brownie points with them. And your average woman doesn’t care what you say about Batman at all. So I don’t know what you’re trying to do here. (unless you meant to troll… in which case, I have to give you a point: You got me! You win the internet!)
Woah, woah, woah – where in there was I saying anything about one being bad and one being good? I was just stating some psychological facts that ‘may’ be present, good and bad are relative, I left that relativism out (and into the readers hand if anything).
I never said anything about a man being in love being a manipulator, or an anomaly – Batman is notorious for not seeking out love, and if you don’t think he leans towards the more ‘I’d rather change the world than find a compatible woman’ side then I don’t know what comics you’re reading. And Alfred had to be the mother, psychologically (which this was all about) it’s the more correct choice to pick. Alfred can represent both parents, but it’s safer to say that the caregiver (which he is) is usually almost all the time the mother. (And in the comics where Batman’s dad’s personality is revealed it shows that he’s far from the type that would embody the caregiver.)
If Batman was the extreme logical being, then Joker is the extreme emotional being. For me, I’ve always found that over time if you can read emotions right, and if you can combine this with knowledge that the human race can and usually does go to new lows (which Joker does), then you have a pretty good chance of coming out on top.
And the Joker’s make-up is entirely self-imposed. Where did I say that it wasn’t? When I mentioned this I was talking about the fact that although the female (talking in a objective sense) shuns the idea of make-up and what it represents, she still voluntarily wears it, and from this I decided to let people draw their own conclusions (I didn’t want to impose my ideas). (My ideas including the one idea that this shows that the Joker is a very complex being and deeper study of the personality is needed over just imposing that they are completely good or bad.)
You’re completely wrong about my take on Harley. I said Harley represents Man. Harley to me represents the man who sticks by the woman, knowing she’ll never love him in the way he loves her, and yet sticks around to try anyways. Joker’s relationship with Harley for me represents the same relationship that most women have with guy friends they know want them (psychically and/or emotionally). The Joker knows that Harley loves him, and so he manipulates this. The woman knows this type of ‘best friend so you’ll love me’ man loves her, and so she manipulates him. This of course means I was painting woman in a negative sense… which I was. (According to you I wasn’t, just clearing things up.)
I in no way treated Batman as the good being unaware of how bad he is, and Joker as the evil being unaware of how good he is. The comics (the ones on the more shallow end of the intellectual pool) treat Batman as fully good, and Joker as fully bad – what I tried to do was to show that both sides are EQUALLY good and bad, and that they just do both in their own ways. This is the same portrait I tried to lay out for men and women, we are both GOOD and BAD. Because 1 – good and bad are relative terms so there’s that, and 2 – Both relative terms are apparent in both the sexes.
And if you think Batman vs Joker is ultimately a struggle between good and bad, then please read again. Batman vs Joker is ultimately a struggle against self, and the self seen in another who you deem wrong. And same goes for the whole Man vs Woman debate – both sides usually paint the other as ‘the other’ and psychologically ‘the other’ always takes the shape of the enemy, but when you take a step back you tend to realize that ‘the other’ is far from being the enemy and more a mirror of yourself.
I do not stand with the extreme feminists, I do not stand with the extreme masculists, I try to stand in the middle – saying from there (with a speaker-phone if possible), that both sides have their own demons and angels to fight, and that usually the ideas they hold us as their angels are usually their demons, and vice versa for the ideas they hold us as their demons.
Maybe I didn’t hear your arguments in this whole thing, but I tried to. And maybe you won’t ever read this, but hey – I tried.
…Or I may just be the worst troll on the interwebs, who knows.
I’ve always felt that the Batman/Joker conflict is a representation of the conflict of the duality that defines human existence. The Joker and Batman truly are the same. This is demonstrated in comics like the original Arkham Asylum comic, where Batman is taken to Arkham Asylum and basically put on trial in front of the Arkham inmates.
The whole point is that the Joker feels that the rest of the world is just one really bad day away from becoming like him. He finds the natural order of the world to be absurd. He feels that the only way to respond to the world is with laughter. Also, if everything is absurd and chaotic, then there are no rules and even the most cruel acts aren’t cruel at all, just absurd like everything else.
Batman is the other side of the same coin. He sees the absurdity and chaos of the world around him. Instead of giving way to it, and becoming lost in “insanity” (debatable term from Joker’s perspective), he chooses to force order into the world to aspire to escape the chaos. By becoming the Batman, Bruce Wayne is committing to the same basic choice that as the Joker; to become a persona, more than human, to deal with the world, while losing his identity in the pursuit and becoming an exaggerated example of the absurdity of that world. The only difference between the two is motive, which, in the end, is what defines their path.
I have also sometimes thought that Batman may be suffering from schizophrenia, and that the Joker is the embodiment of that part of Bruce Wayne that wants to give in to the tragedy and insanity that has become his life. I would say that, if this were the case, then Two-Face is most likely an embodiment of the part of Bruce Wayne that actually accepts this dichotomy, as he is the personification of equality and understanding of both sides of life and humanity, both defender and executioner. There are other allusions that could be made, such as Alfred being that innate id that tries to protect the shattered Bruce Wayne, or Robin being the lost childhood that Bruce Wayne never experienced (like the comic book superhero version of Michael Jackson climbing trees).
Either way, I think Batman is a profound exposition on the many facets of man and mankind. The characters all seem to point to gritty aspects of who and what we truly are, rather than some arbitrary throwback to the super-sized characters and problems of the Greek legends like Superman (although I do appreciate Superman for what it is). I would recommend anyone who really wants to get in touch with the Batman/Joker dichotomy to read the Batman comic entitled “The Killing Joke”. It is dark, so be warned, this is not for children. It is, however, one of the greatest stories in the Batman canon…along with “The Long Halloween”, “Prey”, “Year One”, and the animated film “Under the Red Hood”.
Hope this gives you something to think about.
HA! I’m so glad you said this.
[DEAR EVERYONE WHO READS THIS - THIS EXPLANATION ABOVE IS MORE RIGHT THAN WHAT I WROTE. I JUST WROTE WHAT I WROTE TO WRITE IT.]
Batman’s my favorite comic superhero – I’ve read The Killing Joke, Batman, and Arkham Asylum, the fantastic three, and a lot more (and the Dark Knight is the best philosophical movie ever made if you ask me). Of course Batman and Joker are two sides to the same coin that answers “What will I do now that I see all this insanity in the world?”
I just wrote this because frankly the coincidences in this seemingly out of nowhere explanation were just too many. And hey, I searched the interwebs and nobody else had ever put this notion into the mix, so why not I?
Oh, and weirdly I’ve always thought the Joker was right about the whole thing. I find him to be more… realistic. For frankly Batman has a god/superman complex (hahaha, so ironic yet so right) in thinking that he can save the entire world and bring order to chaos. I root for Batman, yes, for I can’t do anything but back up the guy who says that he’s strong enough to carry the whole world, but frankly – if you think things through, and loose the egomaniacism you kinda figure out that you can’t save them all, and most likely you won’t even save one, and when you realize this how can you help but do anything other than kill yourself, or become the Joker?
This leading to my belief that there are actually THREE sides to the coin. Batman – who sees the world, sees it can’t be saved, and still has the balls (egomaniacism) to say he can save it, Joker – who sees the world, sees it can’t be saved, and joins in the destruction but in a pure 100% concentrated form, and some other soul – who saw the world, saw it couldn’t be saved, and didn’t have the ego to say that he could save it all, or the courage to destroy it all, so they shrivelled into their own cocoon and did nothing… or killed themselves.