The Joke

There is a scene in the movie The Dark Knight where, in the middle of a fundraising party, Bruce Wayne goes outside by himself and tosses the champagne from his glass over the side of the building. Later in the same scene, the Joker crashes the party and also tosses the champagne before drinking from his own empty glass. It seems both men do not drink while at work.

Also in the movie, Police Commissioner Loeb is poisoned while having a drink from a liquor bottle stashed away in his office desk drawer. Seconds later, Judge Surrillo is blown up in front of her home as she sits inside her Mercedes Benz. Using the luxury car’s large emblem on the steering wheel as the background, the camera shows Judge Surrillo taking out a piece of paper from an envelope and reading the word “up” before her car explodes.

Bruce Wayne’s most effective use of his Lamborghini is to intercept a truck that’s about to ram another vehicle, using his sports car as a shield and destroying it in the process.

Somewhere out there, not in the movie world, a man is working eighty hour weeks so that he can save up for a Lamborghini. A woman is losing weight and making friends with people she doesn’t really care about so that she can be invited to parties to shmooze with the rich and popular. A group of people is spending an hour discussing champagne.

There is a gleeful absurdity with Heath Ledger’s character that, as viewers of it, takes us one step away from our slavish lifestyles of dues, duties and conformities. The Joker openly mocks and disrupts a system that we are unable to mock and disrupt ourselves, because we are bound to the judgments and preconceptions of our environment. The Joker picks environments that he ultimately wants to control, while we pick environments that ultimately control us.

One night a year, on Halloween, adults get to hide behind masks, get to hide behind alcohol, and get to pretend to be what they really want to be every day of the year, if only it were socially acceptable. On all the other days and nights, we hide behind our own version of a Mercedes or a Lamborghini, an office suit instead of a batsuit, a fake smile instead of a prosthetic one, a diplomatic handshake instead of a knife.

I am thinking of being the Joker this Halloween. I did some quick research on YouTube to see how others have done it, how they dressed and how they spoke. Some aped Heath Ledger’s delivery line for line, pause for pause. Some mimicked his makeup and costume down to the stitch. To emulate the Joker and recreate his words of anarchy, they copy him exactly.

I am short and stout and do not look anything like Heath Ledger. I do not match. I am unable to copy. It is impossible for me to fool anyone to think that I am Health Ledger’s Joker.

All of the above reasons are why I am thinking of being the Joker this Halloween. Or not.

* Eight hours after writing this, I looked up the exact definition for “slavish” and was surprised to read #2: