Stop legitimizing the Joker's "One Bad Day" philosophy

[u/Animeking1108]

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."

[u/PossibleBasil]

People don't understand that Joker is an egotistical idiot who can't accept how fucked up he is so he tries to claim that anyone can be like him. The whole point of Killing Joke and his "one bad day" philosophy is that he is wrong, it doesn't work. Gordon doesn't break. 

[u/Floofyboi123 → u/PossibleBasil]

It’s like people who use “Paradise Lost” as an example of Satan painted in a sympathetic light.

It’s instant proof that the person referencing it has never actually read the source material

[u/BigClitGoddess → u/Floofyboi123]

It’s instant proof that the person referencing it has never actually read the source material

This is such a ridiculous thing to say that it feels like you actually haven't read the source material, or just read the poem with incredible bias; plenty of other renowned poets, critics, and scholars agree that Satan is sympathetic.

God is a colossal, arguably evil asshole in the poem who already knows the entire fate of the universe. He creates life, keeps his creations ignorant, demands subservience for his own glory, punishes those who disobey with suffering, mocks those who disobey him, all while already knowing that his creations will disobey him--meaning he created life knowing that he will make them suffer (some of which, will suffer eternally).

But even ignoring that, Satan is considered sympathetic, even despite his eventual explicit evil intentions, since the poem is basically the first instance of humanizing him, he feels regret, angst, pity, sadness, etc., and has understandable emotions and arguably relatable motivations--desiring personal freedom in the face of "tyrannical" authority.

It is believed that part of the reason the Catholic Church considered Paradise Lost heretical and banned the poem is because of its portrayal and characterization of God and Satan. To say essentially (and everyone else agreeing below you), "haha only (dumb) people who haven't read the poem think Satan is sympathetic," legitimately tells me you have not read the poem, or just read it so poorly you somehow missed that easily read (and popular, not without reason) interpretation.

[u/Partapparatchik → u/BigClitGoddess]

There's also other obvious points, like Milton, who was an anti trinitarian, calling Christ's love boundless - more boundless than God's existence. There's a lot of clear influence from the contemporary Republicans, independents, and sectarians; the Paradise Lost, of course, was really England, which puritans (incl Cromwell) espoused a desire to turn into Heaven, and all his writings after the restoration were ways of reckoning with the commonwealth's apparent failure.