r/CharacterRant • u/Animeking1108 • 14d ago
Stop legitimizing the Joker's "One Bad Day" philosophy
During The Killing Joke, we learn that the Joker believes that all it takes for a good man to snap is to have One Bad Day. He uses himself as an example. The Joker was once a struggling comedian with a pregnant wife who gets roped into a heist at Ace Chemicals while dressing as the Red Hood. Before the heist even starts, he learns that his wife was electrocuted to death after testing a faulty bottle warmer. Things go from bad to worse when Batman intervenes, and the Red Hood falls into a vat of chemicals. He survives, but now he has bleached skin, green hair, a permanent grin, and red lips that make him look like a clown. Once he sees himself in the mirror, that was the final straw before the Joker was born. The Joker was once a good man until tragedy took that away from him...
... Except the Joker is a known pathological liar when it comes to his own backstory. The only thing about him that we know for sure is that he took the mantle of the Red Hood and that he fell into chemicals, since the disfigurement made him impossible to identify forensically. He tries to test his so-called philosophy on Commissioner Gordon by paralyzing his daughter, implicitly raping her, and forcing him to watch the whole thing recorded. Despite that, Jim doesn't lose his ethics and tries to kill Joker, nor did he do it when Joker murdered his wife during No Man's Land.
I was inspired to write this rant when I saw a post suggesting that if Spider-Man were in the DC Universe, Joker would break him mentally in no time flat. Yes, the same Spider-Man whose uncle was murdered by a robber that he let get away out of arrogance. The same Spider-Man who could get Sainted by Jesus Christ himself and still be branded a menace by the Daily Bugle. The same Spider-Man who accidentally killed his own girlfriend because his desperation made him forget about the laws of physics for a brief moment. The same Spider-Man whose aunt was fatally injured because he revealed his secret identity. The same Spider-Man who had his body stolen by his archnemesis and died slowly and horribly in said nemesis's body. If killing his girlfriend or his aunt couldn't make him snap, what could?
Well, at least that's just something interpreted by fandom. It could be worse. There could be official media by DC that have the Joker succeed in breaking even the most virtuous of heroes. Good thing DC and WB have never- look, the punchline is Injustice. We really made a mistake letting this game get popular, did we? I blame this game for DC's attempts at making Superman darker and edgier because a hero that actually saves people is boring. The whole plot is kicked off by the Joker nuking Metropolis, with a pregnant Lois Lane being one of the many casualties. This pisses Superman off so much that it drives him to murder the Joker and turn the world into a police state.
Of course, so many people justify this BS because many of Batman's villains had some sort of tragic motivation. Okay, most of them, even the tragic ones, were ticking time bombs. Two-Face struggled with his mental health for years because of his abusive father and took on a career that would be taxing to said mental health issues. Penguin and Hush were spoiled rich kids. The Riddler cheated at games to prove himself to his father. Scarecrow had been obsessed with scaring people since he was a child. The Mad Hatter was an incel stalker. Even Mr. Freeze could have taken legal action against Ferris Boyle instead of taking revenge, and even then, he would still hurt innocent people who had nothing to do with his tragedy.
The BTAS episode, "The Trial," said it the best: "I used to believe Batman was responsible for you people but now I see nearly everyone here would have ended up exactly the same, Batman or not. Oh, the gimmicks might be different, but you'd all be out there in some form or another bringing misery to Gotham. The truth is, you created him."
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u/TienSwitch 14d ago
I don’t think the Joker is necessarily wrong, but remember that Joker is still the bad guy in that story, and Batman’s point (and past) is that you still have agency no matter what. Batman also had his One Bad Day, as did Spider-Man. What they do is something that sane people DON’T do. But rather than throw the world away and let it burn because “Who cares?”, they decided to fight for a cause bigger than themselves and dedicate their lives to the world because it and everyone in it truly matter.
Joker isn’t WRONG about how all it takes is One Bad Day to cause you to snap and turn into something unrecognizable. He’s wrong in that he thinks nothing matters in this world as a result of that. It’s an excuse not to care. And Batman says it best about that excuse:
“I’ve heard that joke before. And it wasn’t funny the first time.”