The Joker: An Upholder of Feminism?

A free article on Movies

By: globalbpo1

A lot can be done in two and a half hours. You can do the laundry, go grocery shopping, and pick up the kids from school. Or if you happened to be a furor some decades back, then you can stage a blitzkrieg invasion on an unsuspecting country—use your imagination. Of course there’s also sitting through one of the best movies of this year, and having enough time between exhilarating action sequences to think how a certain character may—though somehow ironically—uphold feminist ideals.

Yes, The Dark Knight was good. In fact, it was better than Hollywood good; it was nothing short of amazing. The story was well presented, the mood was properly set, and the themes seemed more mature than the cereal box superhero movies we’ve grown so familiar with—take that to the bank Marvel. But what really caught my attention were the characters, namely The Joker. Controversy concerning Heath Ledger’s demise aside, he did more than justice to this role; he owned it. The credit also goes to the scriptwriter and director for doing a great job, maybe even better than some goth-ridden director ever did.

With that said, seeing the character of The Joker indulge my viewing pleasure, I couldn’t help but think how his ideals and overall character—which are revealed throughout the movie—are in some ways parallel to what feminist theorists are talking about.

Before I delve into arguments upon arguments (those of which I seriously hope will not bore you), let me shed a little light into some of the many discourses of contemporary feminist theory. A good place to start would be the concept of chaos. Feminists argue that chaos is something we are born into. When we are in our mother’s womb, it is when we are in complete chaos. Though it isn’t the same type of chaos most of us think of when we hear the word. It isn’t a place where “kill or be killed,” or “lawlessness” is regarded as the supreme law. Chaos, for feminists simply refers to the time when there was no meaning for anything. In other words, well, there were no words. Everything is nameless; there are no definite understandings of anything. So all that’s left are our emotions which are fluid and carry over one another like a course of a river flowing into other bodies of water. How many times have you felt something that you can’t simply put into words? Or how about, let’s say, you do manage to put them down but have a difficult time making them understandable? Chaos works pretty much in the same way.

What disrupts this stage in our lives is the moment when we exit out from our mother’s womb, and become subjected to the patriarchal order. “Patriarchal” points to the world as molded by men. The patriarchal order works in many ways, sometimes even unforeseeable. When we learn language we are subjected because we start to learn of vocabulary, and proper grammar (ok, for me not so much grammar). In using language, objects and emotions become final and pinned down to one meaning. Using the metaphor of the river, it’s like putting miniature dams to control the flow. So what happens is something unnatural or artificial. Feminists argue that the patriarchy uses “symbols” (names, words, etc) to sort of put us into a “mind-controlled state.” We don’t just learn their language; we also ingest their preferred way of thinking.

An example would be when I say the word “Man,” and “Woman.” When I say man, we don’t just think of a man, but we also think about what a “man” stands for. In most societies, a man is the breadwinner, the one who’s stronger physically and emotionally, and all those macho stuff. For woman, it’s pretty much the opposite: the housewife, caregiver, weak, and emotional.

Therefore science is one discipline that feminists mostly attack, because it seeks to make everything universal with all its experiments and findings. Truth, for feminists, can’t be contained within stagnant definitions; rather they should be free flowing and always open to change.

I hope that you’re still there, after that rather long winded explanation. Rest assured that from this point on, I’ll be talking about the movie.

Our first reaction when we see the Joker is a really scary madman with makeup who just wants to blow everything up. But as the movie progresses, we find that his motivations are very compelling. He wants anarchy, chaos, and destruction for a reason, and not because he just feels like it. During the scene when he talks about how everyone “has a plan,” and things should be “part of a plan,” right then and there we could see how he refuses to be a part of the patriarchal order. Plans are limits that people set for a number of reasons. One could be because they have goals they want to achieve, while another would be to make things easier by applying a schedule or rules. Without a doubt, the thing that ties all these “plans” together is our automatic response to make sense of everything, to limit everything that surrounds us so that we can understand. It’s identical to how words are created to define, and how science makes everything universal.

However, The Joker doesn’t just stop with resisting plans, as he even goes as far as resisting the things we now regard as requirements to exist. The burning of money (remember all that pile of money gone to waste?) symbolizes how he doesn’t care about monetary value. Money puts a price on everything, giving everything a limit. To The Joker, nothing should be regarded as cheap or expensive, it’s all the same. Whatever catches his interests is regarded as valuable in the same sense that nothing is less valuable than the other. It seems that, to him, burning money and burning people are just the same act.

One could also view The Joker as someone who is harkening back to his mother’s womb, or during the times when he was still living in chaos. Sure, he says it outright; wanting chaos and anarchy. But during the scene when he touches on his past, namely about his father, serves as a more interesting symbol to how he detaches himself to the patriarchy. His father gave him those scars, or so he says. He relives that night when his mouth was slashed with a knife in order to give his victims a sense of his agony and misery—emotions that he attaches to his father. The Joker recognizes how his father—the patriarch– made him miserable and turned him to what he is now. Therefore, his apparent obsession and passion towards chaos may be looked upon as a reaction to the patriarchal order which ruined him. It becomes a type of vengeance; one that has a sense of longing for chaos found in his mother’s womb, because it serves as the opposite to what his father upholds.

I also liked the part when The Joker further reveals his intentions, such as not wanting to kill Batman because “he’s just so much fun.” Ending Batman’s life has a lot in common with defining what surrounds us. When a name is given to a particular object, it can also be seen as an act of killing. That may be such a strong word, but giving something a name, and limiting it to just that one name does, in a way, “kill” its potential for other meanings. When a certain word is given to an object, its essence becomes contained in one word constricting word. Therefore, if The Joker did ever kill Batman, then he wouldn’t have merely ended his life; he would also be ending what Batman means to him. At first, The Joker was hired to kill Batman, but as the story progresses he ended up admiring him or wanting to maintain a conflict with him. The free flow of what Batman meant to him is parallel with how feminists don’t want the patriarchy to end a perpetual understanding of something by giving it a definition.

Another interesting way to see The Joker is through Batman; his opposite, or whoever he is not. If The Joker symbolizes feminist ideals, then Batman champions patriarchy. Aside from martial arts, he is also trained to be a detective. As we all know, a detective uses reasoning and applied science to get the job done. These practices are, obviously, patriarchal in its ideals. Also, his conversation with Alfred mirrors the relationship between feminist theory and the patriarchal order. The Joker is not like any other simple minded criminal, “He cannot be understood,” says Alfred, as “common things don’t drive him.” The fact that Batman can’t understand The Joker’s motivations and also how he tries to understand him is definitely how the order reacts to such chaos. If you’re still not convinced, we can also call into mind how Batman spies on millions of people using their cellular phones as sonar. Patriarchy works the same way. It spies on us, gets into our everyday lives, watches and defines the smallest details in our existence, and above all, it is all encompassing in its control. Lastly, the scene when the Joker was dangling upside down while Batman faces him is another strong symbolic scene. The scene becomes a visual manifestation of chaos and order. In Batman’s point of view, the Joker is upside down, while the view would be a whole lot different if we saw through The Joker eyes.

Before I conclude, I am in no way implying that feminism promotes anarchy and all that horrific stuff. I’m merely stating that feminist ideals (whether deliberate or out of coincidence) can only be found within the root of The Joker’s motivations. What comes out of those motivations is a different story.