Analyzing Evil: The Joker From The Dark Knight

hello everyone and welcome to the 36th episode of analyzing evil featuring our patron pick for the month of july the joker from the dark knight a maniacally depraved and disturbed character this iteration of the joker has been imprinted in the minds of us viewers since this film's release nearly 13 years ago and for good reason though a character is first conceptualized with the written word it's often the case that the actor who portrays a character really makes the character who they are and heath ledger in this role is one of the greatest examples of this if you take the time to read the screenplay for this film you'll find that there's so much of the joker that heath ledger made his own a good amount of which is found in the minutia the little details that really make this character who he is suffice to say without heath ledger there would have been a joker in this film but the joker as we know him wouldn't have been possible without heath in this video i'll be taking you through every detail of this larger-than-life character one who instills within us a macabre sense of awe a character who stood the test of time proving himself to be one of the most definitive iterations of the joker without further ado let's begin let's start off by discussing a possible background for the joker now with these videos i typically make my own inferences regarding a character's backstory from what we're given in the film and i'm still going to do so however this character is one that has inspired many many fan theories over the years and as one in particular is in line with a few things i observed in this film i'm going to give mention to it in this part of the video the way i see it there's three things that may be true for the joker's backstory he likely had an abusive childhood he had a wife that was maimed by the mob due to gambling debts and he served for a time in the military which is the fan theory i mentioned before the thing about these three theories is that all some or none of them could be true i myself am partial to all of them being true but as there's no concrete evidence for this in the film we'll never truly know exactly what's true and what isn't but to support the idea that all of them are true we have a few things that point to this fact first of course are the speeches he makes to gamble and rachel regarding his scars which both indicate that he may have had an abusive childhood and a marriage that ended in the maiming of both himself and his wife in one speech he states that his father came at him with a knife one night during a drunken argument with his mother and he cut into the joker's face for being too serious and in the other he says that he cut his face himself after his wife suffered facial injuries at the hands of loan sharks again we have no way of really knowing that these stories are true as they could very well have been fabricated for dramatic effect and the parts about how he got his scars cannot be both true at the same time but the reason i believe they may be true is the fact that the joker has obviously suffered to a certain degree in the past and both of these scenarios being true could partially explain why he is the way he is an abusive childhood coupled with the maiming of his wife himself and the destruction of his marriage may very well have been enough to drive this man into madness now on top of that could be the fact that he also served some time in the military which we can assume had a negative impact on him even being where he may have acquired his scars perhaps suffering this injury after being captured or in the midst of combat a fact that may be supported by a line the joker says during his interrogation by batman where he states that batman is a freak just like him and once his friends in the law have no more use for him they'll cast him out like a leper just like the military and society may have cast out the joker it would make sense that he served in the military and was cast out from it as he displays multiple skills throughout the film that would indicate he's had some sort of training in endurance combat explosives and firearms or this could be entirely false and he was self-taught in all of these things but it is a great way to explain his distaste for society and his skills now there's one thing we'll definitely never know and that's how exactly he got his scars as all three of these scenarios could be true or none of them could however we can tie these theories together to give us a scenario that could explain how he got them imagine you're a child who manages to escape an abusive home and after doing so you find the love of your life and marry her afterwards you join the military in an attempt to create a prosperous future for you and your new bride after a lengthy tour filled with many unfortunate occurrences including the scarring of your own face you become disillusioned with society and the government upon returning home you discover your wife had gotten into trouble with organized crime going into debt due to an excessive gambling addiction leaving your newfound life and wife in ruins now imagine she takes her own life or leaves you because of who you've come back as and all you have left in the world after escaping an abusive home and living through mental and physical torture during your time in the service is nothing nothing to come home to nothing to look forward to you're just a broken soldier one who's been kicked around by not only his family but the government and criminals you go mad mad with grief and rage the absurdity of life has broken you to the point that you have nothing nothing matters and the cruel machine that is the world of men has brought you pain and only pain your life up to this point has all been one big comedic act and the world is laughing at you instead of succumbing to despair you think to yourself why not laugh back you've had a life of misery and despair so now it's time you had some fun forget the rules and laws of men you no longer operate according to any morals and you'll take your pleasures however you like while you're at it why not take your grief and your sorrow and throw it back in the face of this cruel world showing them that everything they have made everything that stands falsely in the name of law order and justice can be dismantled much quicker than it was put in place so you disappear erase yourself from the known world and you plan and wait until just the right moment comes the moment that allows you to unleash anarchy and chaos upon a city that's become laden with corruption bringing heat and fury to a world that's as cold and unfeeling as the black void of space now this is all just theory and none of this could be true at all but if these exact circumstances aren't what happened i imagine something similar to them did some combination of despair and unfortunate circumstance that led him to developing into the man we see in the film with these things in mind it's easy to see how his personality has developed into what it is bold and confident with a brazen fearlessness in the face of danger the joker is maniacal passionate cruel cheeky and unhinged he's someone who thrives in a hostile environment a man who can look down the barrel of a gun with a smile on his face and laugh as you pull the trigger he's a bit touchy when it comes to his state of mind prone to bursts of anger when he's trying to make a point and he has a habit of moving in an erratic and unsettling way like when he licks his lips but otherwise he's rather composed for someone who's so disturbingly whimsical in the way he handles his criminal enterprises he seems to have little to no empathy for anyone he comes in contact with seeing every life as just another mode of entertainment for his ever expansive pursuit of chaos his iconic appearance is a great representation of his personality as it's a mixture of grim and grimy with makeup that looks like it was applied days prior hair that's stiff and unwashed and a fine custom-made suit that's slightly tattered and dirty telling us that he wishes to impress upon people a certain amount of fear with his appearance but at the same time he cares very little for the upkeep of his outfit his personality melds well with his motivations and his philosophy his potential background may make it seem as if what he's doing is all in service to exacting revenge against those who have wronged him but i believe this is only partially true while animosity certainly has something to do with his actions it's overridden by an insanity that has caused him to relish in the misfortune of those around him transforming him into a man whose pleasures now lie and dismantling the world as we know it the joker's primary motivation in this film is the disruption of the natural order of gotham city through a philosophy that i like to call planned chaos the joker says he isn't a man with a plan but this couldn't be further from the truth in fact you could call him a master tactician i think it would be fair to say that he doesn't know exactly where his plans will take him but everything that occurs as a result of his actions throughout this film is without a doubt planned there are three reasons he's pursuing this chaos for the fun of it to prove a point and to create for himself a world to live in that he would consider to be fair the joker is looking to prove that the established order is essentially imaginary and in proving this point he's going to remake the world into a wonderland of chaos one where everything is left up to the whims of each and every individual and where he can live a life of depraved fun a fun he never had prior to his ascension to this mad clown in a way the joker is advocating for a sort of revolution and that isn't necessarily a bad thing as the world as we know it was built on revolution however this isn't a revolution to evolve society into a better state but one that will devolve it into its base or form a society where law and order takes a backseat to the primal chaos that is present within all mankind however there is one person one entity who is exempt from being dismantled and that's batman as the joker says batman has completed him he has allowed the joker to thrive and created a world where he's able to do what he wants to do if there were no batman the joker would not exist and in a similar vein if he took him down he would have no one to compete with a cat without a mouse so to speak so in his pursuit of chaos though he wishes to hamper batman's efforts to preserve the natural order he doesn't want to kill him he's playing a game with him one he never wants to win a constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction that they'll play for as long as either of them lives again depending on your point of view the chaos the joker is advocating isn't necessarily a bad thing as this type of world view is in line with how some anarchists would want the world to be ordered no it's not the idea of a so-called fair and chaotic society that makes the joker evil it's the way he goes about pursuing this goal and his personal reasons for doing so to get a full understanding of this we have to look at each component of his plan while we go through his plans we'll also keep account of the murders he's responsible for to give us a better idea of the scale of his crimes now robbing a bank is a crime and a terrible thing to do robbing a mob bank may be a bit more forgivable but at the end of the day still a crime the robbing of the bank isn't the worst part of this act though it's the plan behind it storming into a building and making people hold live grenades and setting up a chain of murders to be orchestrated between the members of your crew during this heist is what makes this stand out above your run-of-the-mill bank robbery to be fair if you sign up to rob a bank and the man who hired you tells you to murder other members of the crew once they've completed their jobs and you don't stop to think that maybe something similar is waiting for you you're partially to blame here but the man who uses people and their greed to further his own ends and then discards their lives as easily as one would put down a hammer after a job is the one who's most to blame not to mention inspiring absolute terror in what i assume are innocent people as they quite literally hold on for dear life during this sequence we see four men murdered due to the actions of the joker now what he does with his crew here is a common theme for the joker manipulating people he takes advantage of two types of people in particular the not so innocent criminal and the mentally ill the next component of his plan involves taking advantage of the former in robbing a mob bank he simultaneously got the attention of the organized crime structure in gotham while proving to these gangsters their vulnerability and his own skills the joker anticipated the mob growing fearful of the ever-expanding encroachment into their assets on two fronts by batman and the authorities and once they'd come to a point of desperation he reveals himself to them to propose an alliance of sorts a deal that will see the batman dead and their former glory restored this worked to an extent as gamble definitely wasn't willing to work with the joker but once the joker kills gamble and batman captures lao the joker gains the upper hand giving moroni and the chechen no choice but to hire the joker which provides him with two crucial tools that he'll need to further his plans the resources of the mob and a free pass in the criminal underworld to do as he pleases during his attempt to convince the mob to hire him he murders three of gamble's associates gamble himself as well as orchestrating the deaths of two more associates after they try out for his crew bringing his kill count to ten however it's not only the mob that he needs to submit to him but the government and legal system of gotham city as well as the general populace sure he can use the corrupt and the greedy to perform inside jobs for him and attempt to work the system from the inside but the total capitulation of the government and the populace of the city wouldn't be possible without fear intimidation and murder gordon isn't wrong in characterizing the joker as a terrorist as terror is ultimately what he's looking to inspire into the people of gotham during his search for the batman the murder of the copycat vigilante on television which brings his kill count to 11 is meant to both inspire fear into the everyday citizen and turn them against batman painting him as a self-centered blight on the city one that's causing the deaths of innocent people murdering the police commissioner and judge cirilio lets everyone know that nobody is safe and that any who dare stand up in court in an effort to undermine the joker's plans will suffer the same fate he also attempts to do the same to harvey dent and if he had succeeded in doing so he would have eliminated three of batman's most crucial allies in one fell swoop further isolating him as an outcast and a selfish man who won't give himself up to prevent the deaths of others you could argue that the joker isn't murdering so-called innocent people during this time as he's murdered a vigilante a commissioner and a judge who could all be guilty of various crimes themselves but that's a poor argument at best and murder is still murder and he also murders two other men who for all we know are definitely innocent all of these deaths bring his kill count to 15. in the next phase of his plan he attempts to murder the mayor and after harvey reveals himself to be batman attempts to catch him once again all in an effort to dismantle the natural order inching gotham city further and further towards the chaos he so desires during this second attempt to capture dent the joker ends up being responsible for the murder of five more police officers the truck driver who may or may not have been working with him and three civilians bringing his kill count to 24 whether or not being captured at this moment was part of his plan is unknown but he did at least plan for it in that he planted a cell phone bomb into the abdomen of one of his associates this associate as well as thomas schiff the paranoid schizophrenic that was involved in the plot to murder the mayor are the only examples we have of the joker using the mentally ill as pawns in his game but this is quite the heinous crime to commit the mentally ill have a certain amount of their own free will to be sure but to coerce these obviously sick men into participating in his plans is malicious and is yet another reprehensible part of his character it could be argued that he's giving these men a chance where others wouldn't but that's a stretch considering that the joker seems to have no concern for anyone or anything innocent or otherwise especially when you consider that he used one of these men as a living bomb killing that man and four others in the process which brings his kill count to 29 the next step in his plan the capture of rachel and harvey dent ensures that he wins no matter the outcome knowing dent is edging closer to extrajudicial action the joker knows that if rachel dies he breaks dent past the point of no return if dent dies he rids the city of dent through death either way dent would be dealt with and he would be one step closer to turning society on its head the next few actions he takes are meant to test the limits of society and show that people will indeed abandon their morals in times of need as well as cementing his position as top dog in the city with his murder of lao and the chechen he tried to test this before when he demanded that batman reveal himself or people would die but that didn't work quite as well as threatening to blow up a hospital now with a more tangible threat put in the face of the citizens of gotham they start going crazy proving that the joker may in fact be right that once something dear to a person is put into jeopardy all bets are off and they would go to great lengths to protect what's important to them not only does he succeed in revealing this side of society he manages to damage harvey dent further than he already had been shifting the blame for rachel's murder and his maiming to moroni losing harvey on gotham as an unwitting agent of the joker as batman says towards the end of the film dent was the best of them and the joker managed to corrupt him beyond the point of no return the death of rachel lao the chechen and the two police officers he murders at the hospital brings his final kill count to 34. though he's done quite enough already to cement himself as a remorseless cold-blooded murderer his final act is what really seals for us that his intentions are far below noble setting up a trap for batman and the authorities in which hostages have been dressed as hostiles the joker reads to sacrifice these lives as well as the lives of at least one entire boatload of people fortunately none of these lives are lost and you might think in this moment that the joker may have actually been attempting to test these people and attempt to see if humans really are as terrible as he believes them to be and now that they've proven to him otherwise these people needn't die up until this moment the joker has been blurring the lines between revolutionary and mass murderer claiming to the citizens of gotham that he's doing what he's doing to better the city ridding the world of the mob batman and the corrupt entities that have been bogging down this city for years even when he says to the chechen that the city deserves a better class of criminal perhaps in his eyes a proper criminal would be committing crimes in service to the transformation of society after all he says himself it's not about money it's about sending a message but here instead of acknowledging these people's choice to spare each other he says if you want something done right you have to do it yourself and proceeds to attempt to blow up one of the boats himself what message would he be sending here sure no one would know for now that he was the one who had blown up the boat but what does this accomplish proving people are terrible when they aren't if anything this just proves that the joker cares little for the people of this city and is only concerned with his vision for a quote-unquote better world one where the rules of society are obsolete and he can operate in any way he likes terrorizing the city of gotham as a mad clown hell-bent on macabre fun in the end the joker succeeds in a way as when we find batman years later in the dark knight rises he's become a broken man who's hid himself from society allowing for bane to bring to life a chaotic society that the joker would have been very proud of so in the end who was the joker he was a man who likely suffered through a substantial amount of hardship in his life hardships that broke his mind and warped him into a cynical unfeeling man who had his sights set on destroying society and remaking it into something chaotically fair one where he could kill and destroy with near impunity in his mad effort to create a world where he could play an eternal game of cat and mouse with batman he murdered 34 people ruined the lives of countless others caused an enormous amount of destruction and ensured batman would be broken setting the stage for the rise of bane the joker may have been trying to send a message with his crimes but when it comes down to it he was an incredibly selfish man one who reflected his own pain and suffering back onto society in an effort to satisfy his own sadistic desires there's not much in the way of redeeming qualities for this character and though he may have suffered to some degree that's no excuse for the amount of terrible crimes he committed crimes he had no remorse for whatsoever making him a man whose entire being radiates unrepentant and chaotic evil thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and i hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on the joker did i miss anything let me know down below and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode while you're at it if you like this video and want to see more like it appearing in your feed click the subscribe button to keep up on the latest episodes and feel free to leave a like while you're at it thank you once again to all of my existing subscribers for your continued and incredible support if you'd like to support the channel even further consider signing up as a patron over on patreon you can find a link to patreon down in the description thank you to everyone who signed up so far and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now join the channel's discord server to interact with myself and the community and follow me on the social media platforms listed in the description for occasional updates on the channel as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 1,129,675

Keywords: Joker, Dark Knight, Batman, Heath Ledger, Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, Evil, Villain, Analysis

Id: ZjNYPyI4yjU

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/skylark25666]

That was very interesting and helpful in understanding the joker and also I just want to say this is my favourite movie ever