I want to preface my take with saying that Harley’s popularity has definitely led to DC as a whole marketing her as more of an anti-hero than an anti-villain, so I totally understand both writers and fans who view her as an intrinsically good person. I just personally came to love her more through her villain days, so I tend to view her redemption arcs through that lens.
For that reason, I did actually really like how the Clownhunter story arc acknowledges that Harley is capable of and has done really terrible things.
Harley presenting her case to Clownhunter - explaining her motivation behind her crimes and how she was different now - reminded me a lot of Detective Comics #831, where Harley is trying to do the same thing with Bruce Wayne. Bruce isn’t literally deciding whether she lives or dies, but as an executive member of Arkham’s board, he IS deciding whether she gets a second chance at life through being released.
Here, Harley deliberately misrepresents her case in order to garner sympathy from the board, and her internal monologue isn’t repentant so much as anxious to be free of Arkham (and her mind depicted as very literally crowded with instructive thoughts from her criminal alter ego).
Bruce, being inherently distrustful, turns her down and blocks her release. Later, Harley is broken out of prison by the new Ventriloquist, but turns on her criminal allies to work with Batman so as not to further endanger her potential reform.
Despite Harley obviously not being quite on Bruce’s moral wavelength, he acknowledges that her turning herself in proves she’s serious about wanting to be released legitimately. They also have a conversation about the original Ventriloquist that seems to affect Bruce more deeply than he lets on.
Bruce has Harley released from Arkham, and for the rest of the continuity she struggles to control her worse impulses (especially once she reunites with Ivy, since they do pretty transparently illegal things together even while both trying to “reform”).
When Bruce made the choice to give Harley a new chance at life, it wasn’t because he thought that she was repentant for her previous crimes, or even that she had turned into a good person. She merely convinced him that she was willing to change her behavior - and for the most part, this was true. New-52/Rebirth Harley just reads really differently to me in this way.
When Clownhunter confronts Harley for the death of his parents, she is unambiguously a good person. She is genuinely sorry for the harm she has done, and is not only avoiding harming innocents but actively seeking to do selfless deeds for others. Clownhunter killing her here would ONLY be revenge; he would not be preventing her from doing further harm to people like his parents. In fact, Harley didn’t even actually harm his parents: the narrative makes it clear that the real blame for that lies with Joker, not her. Harley wasn’t even in the ROOM when Bao’s parents died.
When Bruce decided to release Harley from Arkham, he was having mercy on an enemy who could easily have turned on him. Bao deciding not to murder Harley in revenge is NOT mercy. He would have to be a horrible person to kill this obviously repentant superheroine, it’s unambiguously the wrong thing to do in this situation.
I can’t help but think about how much more meaningful this scene would be, of Bao choosing to let Harley live, if she was written more like she was prior to the New 52. If instead of giving a whole speech about how guilty she felt and how she was a better person now, she was still ultimately selfish: struggling to resist her compulsions towards selfishness and cruelty, more out of a desire for freedom rather than a desire to be a good person.
If there was even the slightest indication that Harley might hurt more people the way Bao was hurt, then he might have been able to justify killing her. Deciding to spare her in that situation would have meant more for his character: he would be recognizing that what HE was doing was wrong, not that Harley had fundamentally changed and wasn’t the woman he thought she was. And for Harley, it would have shown that even if she ISN’T capable of making up for crimes, she’s still a human being. Her life doesn’t have to be dedicated to the benefit of others, to justify it not being taken from her.
This was all a very long way of saying that I DO like reformed Harley... just not as a repentant superhero.
Hiện bao PP dệt được nhiều đơn vị sản xuất gạo lựa chọn bởi thích nghi với tải trọng thực tiễn từ 5 - 50 kg, giá thành rẻ, độ bền cao, không độc hại, thân thiện môi trường, in ấn sắc nét giúp định vị thương hiệu mạnh mẽ đến khách hàng.
Hiện có rất nhiều công ty sản xuất bao PP dệt. Cùng theo dõi bài viết dưới đây để chọn được công ty sản xuất bao bì PP dệt uy tín nhất nhé!
