The Joker’s “One Bad Day” Philosophy and its Connection to Batman: My Analysis
I think a central part of the Joker’s character and what he allegedly stands for is the idea presented in The Killing Joke. That everyone is simply “one bad day” away from becoming as insane as he is. You see this idea referenced all the time, used as a way to drive home how scary this character is. However, upon closer inspection this philosophy only applies for one person, and it’s not even the Joker himself.
The point of The Killing Joke is that it proves the Joker wrong. Gordon does not go insane, despite his best efforts, provoking Batman to state the following:
Yet what Batman knows about the Joker at this point is only what is told to him. He doesn’t know his past, while we, as the reader, is only given an incomplete and unreliable account. The Joker himself admits that the story being told with the Red Hood gang may not be true. Yet from what we see across other media, it can be reasonably concluded that what the Joker went through was not just one bad day, but a multitude of bad days that led to this moment. As the antagonist, his words aren’t chilling because they ring true for everyone, but rather that they ring true for Batman specifically.
Bruce’s “bad day” was the night his parents were killed, while living a relatively normal life before. It was the catalyst that led to him becoming Batman, and thus indirectly resulting in (in his own mind, at least) the tragedies that followed, due to the rogues acting out in response. Of course, Bruce is not embracing insanity in the way the Joker does, but from what we know about his own paranoid personality, would it be unreasonable to conclude that these doubts worm their way into his mind? It would certainly explain (at least in part) why he doesn’t give up on the Joker, because if adhering to this philosophy, he is separate from Gordon and all those he views as “normal” and “sane,” and is rather in the same group as the “insane” like the Joker.
Giving up on the Joker would then, therefore, be akin to giving up on himself, and the possibility of a life beyond being Batman. Because if there is hope for someone like the Joker to recover, then there must too be hope for Bruce himself to move past his own trauma. This idea rings true for both sides, and is furthered in the New52 in Batman: Bloom.
Joker’s insanity involves the delusion and rationalism that it was that day at ACE Chemicals that him insane, while in reality it was merely the final step. Batman’s insanity comes from the idea that he desperately tries to convince everyone, including himself, that the “one bad day” rule does not apply at all while he himself is almost a perfect example of it.
Each has convinced himself that they are inextricably tied to the other, thus creating the paradox at hand. They can’t hate each other without hating what they understand as a large part of their own, self-crafted identity.
TL;DR, I argue that batjokes is a chronic case of “no one understands him the way I do.”
Bibliography
Moore, Alan. The Killing Joke. New York: DC Comics, 1988.
Snyder, Scott and Greg Capullo. Batman: Bloom. New York: DC Comics, 2016.
this post may be implicit/common knowledge, but having not seen much discourse around the mechanics of batjokes' dynamic compels me to catalog. there's sm to unpack here, so excuse lapses in structure or flow.
first off and most importantly, joker's battle with bruce is an existential one, he wants to justify himself in the eyes of his maker, his reshaper, whose perpetual control and prowling enabled, and ultimately exposed, the failure of his veneer of heroism and ability/adeptness, and birthed a distillation of that failure. the failure to circumvent criminality and violence, continually indulging retaliative brutality and unresolved anger, edging catharsis in assuming a protective and dominant role as to compensate for his loss and pantomime vicarious past reclamation and authority. constantly stagnant, incessantly unfulfilled, an everlasting outburst if you will, addressing not his material conditions but feeding his metaphysical ones. joker moulds himself around bruce's worldview, concerning himself with the salvation eternally eluding bruce, achievable through the violence that birthed batman and reinvented joker in turn.
this is a dialectical affliction, one desperate in nature, to validate that he wasn’t a mistake, a deviancy, to prove that a singular, perhaps seemingly insignificant element can transform anyone, unchain them, and joker refuses alternatives because batman forever dances, is forever chained by both his insistence on normalcy, but also his neglect of it. joker wants foremost, to matter to his creator, to break perfunctory monotony and elicit true understanding and oneness, have his existence be purposeful and intentioned, proving himself worthy, the one that finally cracks the elusive figure and chiefly, achieves ordainment in the eyes of his saviour — embrace, his personhood returned to his creator’s hands as to ascend batman into godhood, inextricably coalescing them.
it’s a labour of love, devotion, joker truly loves THe BaTmaN, bleeds and lives and offers up gothamite sacrifices as to resuscitate his vacancy, bless him with unadulterated purpose, validate the meaningless of the earthly. ultimately, batjokes are cyclical, that: from ash you were birthed and to ash you shall return, sh1t. what confuses that however, is how dialectical they are (as aforementioned), they embody a yin & yang dynamic after all. however, ultimately, joker wants to birth the batman who laughs [like when you think about it — batman realizing joker's philosophy and transcending humanity], to eliminate bruce's restraint and contradictory morality as to, ironically, create a pure, militant reaper encompassing gotham's brutality and abandon. joker is fighting for gotham's soul in more ways than one, on the physical level — crippling its normative function, inundating it with senseless violence, and on a metaphysical level, fighting for its symbol of order and constraint, someone who arose as an abstract embodiment of gotham's institutional enforcement, a distillation of authoritative fear, gotham’s punitive restrictiveness, the abstraction of otherworldly, insurmountable power, an inverted reflection of the very thing bruce is and was unable to overcome, aiming to strip them of their defences as to coax their primality, a violent denuding as to be sculpted anew, the same enlightenment he was afforded. to be broken so thoroughly that you become pure. to shatter pretence and baptize gotham, or its seemingly intractable moral paragon, in hedonistic freedom, uniting them with his gory rebirth. and joker, with this hedonistic perspective, recognizes that capacity in batman, recognizes it as his truth as one who was born from that brutality and violence and continues to endure it, seeing it as the purest form of expression and the underlying nature of existence.
he glamorizes his own death at the hands of the one who rebirthed him bc it will rebirth his creator in turn, allowing him to fully embody his godhood. it will afford the joker true meaning — once again my metas coming back to the struggle for existence but universal themes gonna universe [with the melody] — however, bc of the dialectics of batjokes, the struggle is a testament to their bond, it’s a seduction, a courtship, its authenticity and potency dictated by scale and intensity (aka their Stockholm is mad), the commitment to enduring joker’s forcible conversions, and foremost, to joker martyring himself to batman’s perpetual aggrieved ministrations, the irony in trying to fix someone through cruelty, conflict everlasting in one’s subjugating machinations. the more joker seizes, the further his cost sinks. bruce becomes steadily entrapped with and by the one person who can never leave him, the magnitude of those around him continually strained against the joker, the onus to humanize a sadistic, inhumane murderer forever ballooning. joker’s mortality, his humanity becoming further pathologized, his undying ceaselessness a type of consolation, a mark on bruce’s own consciousness, to save the one person forever bound to him, justifying his heroism and the incongruity between them, the fundamentalist moral dividing them: do not kill. batman's consideration, thusly, is birthed from a deep resentment, the flagellation of abstinence, maintaining the one thing delineating human from unfeeling instrument [of violence]. that resentment festering into a neurotic sort of dependency, joker acting as his NorthStar of morality, subsuming his sense of self, entrancing and ensnaring him. without the joker, batman is slowly cannibalized, unable to exist. whatever, i’m tired. this better be good enough cause its going up either way.
to conclude, this song [pay for it by jeff and the mindful selfless chastites]
encompasses batjokes perfectly. the eternal struggle, the damned position and conundrum batjokes find themselves saddled with, their respective lives being their sort of penance, an inability to ever truly connect without eliminating the other, love transmorphed into a twisted, destructive passion disinterested in its untainted iteration and consequently further estranging them.
(there was another song too but i forgor 🤷🏿♂️ [AN: not bc i was high, i could not conceive of this high)
before/during the bronze age of dc joker and batman were often written as fun rivals, nothing really insane happened until the killing joke was released just a few years after the bronze age
the killing joke was so popular it was basically used as canon for future comics to come even though it's not canon. it provided a backstory for joker (even today joker has no canon backstory since he also said in kj "if I were to have a past I prefer it to be multiple choice..." so he makes up his past on the spot to make the victim feel sympathy for him) and a relationship between Bruce and joker of "I don't want us to end." that relationship is now applied to every comic ever that involves them.
the killing joke only revealed the tip of how manipulative joker can be and it's scary. death in the family was released after the killing joke which went more into jokers and batman's obsessions with each other. joker killed Jason because he felt like Jason was taking batman's attention from him, that he would disturb their never ending game
batman himself doesn't even realize his own mental state and how messed up his head is too and how he refuses to let joker die— he constantly saves joker for no reason other than the "I don't want us to end" thing. scott snyder does a rlly good job w that in his comics by making their relationship dependable and unhealthily obsessive. in the Batman who laughs, joker and batman have a similar conversation to the one in the killing joke. batman admits his feelings, but in bwl joker admits he doesn't want batman to die and only does things that he knows batman can get out of, saying that one of them can't be left standing; if they die, they die together.
in injustice Superman saw through Bruce's feelings to joker dying even though joker doesn't deserve that grief. superman straight up told batman "you loved him didn't you" which shocks the reader the most and again shows how messed up bruces mentality is with this attachment
in another comic, joker talks to catwoman (after learning about selinas and bruces wedding) about the end of the killing joke where bruce and joker laughed together under the rain and held each other, again showing obsession. he also tells Selina how she can't marry him because Bruce's attention will leave him. joker needs batman to hurt him, he needs Bruce's undivided attention.
there's also a comic where each year joker would give batman presents in hopes of guessing his birthday. and one year he decided to give himself up as a present. he said they're going to play the game forever until they die. there's no escaping each other and Bruce sadly realizes that what joker said was true. but in catwoman lonely city #4, joker stops their game to tell Bruce he feels tired, he wants them to stop. and Bruce wants the same, but they end up dying together at that moment where joker showed that transparency. both comics show joker calling batman "Bruce" telling the reader that he knows who batman is under the mask. joker only calls him Bruce when he wants to stop their game, when he feels vulnerable. both comics are also centered around a decision of either joker or civilians, and Bruce chose joker. this again goes back to the killing jokes and vaguely connects to it— that they'll be the death of each other, or when they choose to stop, they don't want to lose each other.
in new 52 joker finally loses his grip on his obsession w batman that he goes the farthest he can in showing batman that they need each other. he takes each of Bruce's kids and captures them doing a whole performance or whatever and at the end of death of the family, Bruce tells his kids about jokers intelligence, revealing joker knew who batman and his robins are under their masks basically their entire history (which is also shown in other comics where joker knows Bruce is disguising himself for a case) but joker doesn't mentally accept their identities because it would ruin their game
batman endgame goes even further into that, adding a lot more romantic subtext into their relationship than death of the family did. making them fall in a heart shaped pool of blood, a cover where they posed together as the molds of two lovers found from the remains Pompeii, but still following the killing jokes set relationship of "I don't want us to end"
batman and joker have so much history into them and even in stand alone comics there are still elements of the killing joke, joker reading through batman, Bruce saving joker even though he could've left him and more
also in the joker war Bruce is left with the decision of leaving joker behind or saving him from the explosion and since he knows just how smart joker is he tells him "if you were smart enough to rob the batsuit u can escape easily" and leaves him because he knows he's going to survive similar to how joker leaves Bruce to survive his own games
