He's Batman's greatest foe, an agent of chaos, and a psychological puzzle. Join WatchMojo as we delve into the mind of the Joker to explore his potential insanity, his relation to Jungian archetypes, and whether he truly suffers from mental illness or something far more complex. We'll analyze different interpretations of the character, from Heath Ledger's chaotic mastermind to Joaquin Phoenix's broken soul, to unravel the mystery behind the Clown Prince of Crime.
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00:00I'm just ahead of the curve.
00:02Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're taking a deep dive into the inner psyche of one of Batman's most twisted villains, the Joker.
00:09We'll be looking at all things Joker, so consider this your spoiler warning.
00:13Wait till they get a load of me.
00:18The insanity situation.
00:20It wouldn't be a comprehensive exploration of the Joker's mind without focusing on several important aspects of the character.
00:26Whether you're a seasoned scholar or completely clueless, something that pretty much everybody knows is that the Joker is one crazy supervillain.
00:37He's an unhinged force of nature that has taken Batman to town and brought Gotham to its knees.
00:42It's safe to say that the Clown Prince of Crime is the poster boy for insanity.
00:46As a lightbulb battered bug, simply rule me.
00:52Or is he?
00:53With the Joker, insanity is a little complicated.
00:57Martian Manhunter once telepathically peered into his brain and temporarily turned him from insane to sane.
01:03But then there were also times when Joker was just faking the illness.
01:07Don't talk like one of them, you're not.
01:09So what's the deal with this crazy clown then?
01:11Is he actually insane or not?
01:13Okay, you're probably expecting an answer to the question, and the truth is, well, we'll get back to you on that.
01:19The Trickster and the Shadow.
01:21What we can say for certain, though, is that Joker is clearly modeled off of two distinct Jungian archetypes.
01:27No need to dust off that old Psych 101 textbook, we're going to explain what this means.
01:31Batman has been outwitted and the fabulous jewel collection is ours!
01:36Carl Jung, a controversial yet renowned psychologist, came up with a list of several different archetypes.
01:42Archetypes are a complex concept, but we can boil them down to being types of identities representing common traits and characteristics found in people.
01:49Many of these archetypes more or less shape the world around us.
01:52Of the many Jungian archetypes, two are known as the Trickster and the Shadow.
01:57The Trickster is the character who doesn't play by the rules.
02:00Are you listening out there, fat man and boy blunder?
02:04Boy, how I'd like to top him with a punchline.
02:08They don't adhere to logic or rationality.
02:10They can lie, cheat, and steal, but they also like to have fun.
02:14In stories, they typically take great enjoyment from messing with the protagonist.
02:18Ultimately, they're people who go against the grain.
02:21With an archetype that's called the Trickster, it's hard not to see how it relates to the Joker.
02:34But Joker isn't just jokes, though.
02:36There's more sinister stuff that lurks underneath the surface.
02:39That's where Jung's concept of the Shadow comes in.
02:42The Shadow is our darker impulses, our negative thoughts, our pent-up aggressions.
02:47Basically, the part of our inner psyche that we block out.
02:50Now it all works!
02:52Except you had to explain it to me!
02:54If you have to explain a joke, there is no joke!
02:57They're the version of yourself that wants to cheat on your exams, cut in the front of the line, and burn down the DMV.
03:03They're the evil we could be, that we know we never should be.
03:06While Shadows are risky business,
03:08Jung also stresses that they're aspects of ourselves that we need to acknowledge as long as we don't embrace them.
03:14My motives are never clear! I'm an agent of chaos!
03:18But if someone gives in to those darker impulses and drinks the Kool-Aid that their Shadow is offering,
03:23then you've got chaos.
03:26When Tricksters and Shadows represent chaos,
03:29then the agent at their disposal is Heath Ledger's Joker.
03:32I believe whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you...
03:38...stranger.
03:41His appearance in The Dark Knight grabbed the audience's attention within seconds.
03:45To call him a villain feels like a disservice to the character because he's clearly way more than that.
03:50This version of the Joker represents pure anarchy.
03:53And we're not just saying that to sound cool.
03:55He plays his henchmen against themselves,
03:56waltzes his way into mobster meetings,
03:59burns all of his money, and pisses off Batman.
04:02I have one rule.
04:03Oh, then that's the rule you'll have to break to know the truth.
04:06Which is?
04:08The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules,
04:10and tonight you're gonna break your one rule.
04:13I'm considering it.
04:15In an interview with the New York Times,
04:17Ledger himself used words like psychopathic and schizophrenic to describe his Joker.
04:21And when watching him, it's definitely not hard to see some of those traits at play.
04:25They're schemers.
04:28Schemers trying to control their little worlds.
04:32I'm not a schemer.
04:33I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
04:40He incites and encourages violence,
04:42utterly corrupts Harvey Dent,
04:44and turns the city against Batman in the end.
04:47His whole manifesto is to cause Gotham to come crashing down to his level.
04:51He wants to expose everyone for the hypocrites he sees them as,
04:54and rules are just restraints for him to take away.
04:57So, for the Joker, chaos reigns supreme.
05:01See, madness, as you know, is like gravity.
05:06All it takes is a little push.
05:08Ha ha ha ha!
05:10The Broken Loner.
05:11If Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight opens with a Joker who is incredibly powerful,
05:15then Todd Phillips' Joker opens with a Joker who is incredibly powerless.
05:19Ah!
05:20Ooh!
05:21Whoa, whoa, whoa!
05:22Come on, hey, come on!
05:23Beat this ass up!
05:24Come on, this guy's weak, he can't do nothing!
05:26Hurt!
05:26That's the whole thing about Arthur Fleck.
05:28He's a man at his wit's end.
05:30He's picked on, disrespected, stricken with poverty, and ultimately alone.
05:34He's essentially a punching bag for all of Gotham.
05:37Themes surrounding mental illness are also at the forefront of this character.
05:41At various times, he suffers from spontaneous and uncontrollable laughing fits.
05:45Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
05:51While the movie never outright states his condition,
05:53it's likely pseudo-bulbar affect.
05:56It's a rare, real-life disorder that causes people to laugh uncontrollably at random.
06:00Arthur also shows signs of depression.
06:03To combat it, he regularly takes multiple medications
06:06and attends meetings with a social worker.
06:08Nothing really works, though.
06:09And when social services get their funding cut, it leaves Arthur high and dry.
06:13How am I supposed to get my medication now?
06:19Who do I talk to?
06:23I'm sorry, Arthur.
06:25He also experiences delusions,
06:28like how he makes up an entire romance with his neighbor Sophie in his head,
06:31which suggests he could be living with schizophrenia.
06:34It's all of these factors that boil over
06:36until Arthur finally snaps against society and the Joker is born.
06:47Believing that he's been persecuted long enough,
06:50his lifelong feelings of inadequacy fester
06:52until he's now seemingly embraced his own madness.
06:55An infectious madness.
06:57Once you're mad, you've got to share that madness with others.
07:01And Joker does this a lot when he infects people with his toxin.
07:04I know what you're saying!
07:05Where can I get these fine new items?
07:09Well, that's the game.
07:11Chances are, you bought them already.
07:13Ha ha ha ha!
07:14Bravo, Joker!
07:16The deadly gas typically makes people laugh until they die,
07:19leaving sickly smiles plastered onto their faces.
07:23He can also charm his way onto people,
07:25and Harley Quinn is probably the greatest example of that.
07:28Here, here!
07:30Whee!
07:33Though their relationship has become toxic over the years,
07:35in its heyday, they were an impactful supervillain power couple.
07:39The dynamic between them is a pretty good example of folie a deux.
07:43If that phrase sounds familiar,
07:44that's because it's also the name for the second Joker movie.
07:47You can do anything you want.
07:51You're Joker.
07:53But what is it?
07:54In the most literal translation, it means madness for two in French.
07:58It's when two people close to each other share similar delusions,
08:01and it starts when one of them picks up these beliefs directly from the other.
08:05The condition has never explicitly been associated with the two until now,
08:09but there's still a lot more here.
08:11More specifically, another case of folie a deux could exist between the Joker and...
08:16another Joker?
08:17For fans of Gotham, the Batman prequel series that ran on Fox,
08:21the Valeska twins were practically cult icons.
08:24What are you gonna do to me, Jerome?
08:26Come on.
08:27I'm gonna kill you.
08:28Of course.
08:29But first...
08:32I'm gonna drive you mad.
08:35Jerome was the psychopathic prankster,
08:37while Jeremiah was the stoic sadist.
08:39And they were essentially both Joker,
08:41just different aspects of him.
08:43Sure, several clashes with copyright prevented Gotham from calling either of them the Joker outright,
08:48but even if they were just proto-versions,
08:51it's clear that madness ran in their family.
08:53Given how folie a deux works,
08:55they're a good example of the disorder too.
08:58Before dying, Jerome rigged a jack-in-the-box which infected Jeremiah.
09:02Hello, brother.
09:04Didn't think you could get rid of me so easily, did you?
09:08He would downplay the effects of the spray and claim that he was actually always disturbed,
09:12but the exposure clearly did something.
09:15One way or another though,
09:16Joker is like a disease you don't want to catch.
09:19Super sanity.
09:21You may have heard Joker once describe himself as, quote,
09:24ahead of the curve.
09:25And, well, you really don't know how true that is.
09:28Considering the character has been around for more than 80 years,
09:31it's only fitting that writers would offer their own interpretations on what the Joker's deal is.
09:35One of the most well-known writers to throw their hat into the ring is Grant Morrison.
09:39In their Arkham Asylum graphic novel,
09:41the term super sanity is coined by Joker's therapist.
09:45It's a condition she speculates he may have.
09:47Through the lens of super sanity,
09:49he doesn't process the world in the same way we do.
09:52The unconventional way in which he absorbs information results in his often sporadic behavior.
09:58He switches his personality depending on whatever fits the current circumstances.
10:02With super sanity,
10:03it argues that Joker is so sane that we just can't quite understand it.
10:08If we were to go to the most extreme end,
10:10it could even mean that he's self-aware.
10:13If that's true,
10:14then he knows about the fourth wall and his role as a fictional character.
10:18That's right, he could be like an even more unhinged Deadpool if he really wanted to.
10:23But beyond these implications,
10:24his heightened state of mind has been expanded upon.
10:27Chip Zdarsky's Batman run gave updates to Joker's lore,
10:30and possibly connected it back to the super sanity concept.
10:34Specifically, a retcon was made that revealed that Joker received training from one of Batman's own mentors,
10:40Daniel Capshio,
10:41who helped him to broaden his mind's capabilities.
10:44Through Capshio's teachings,
10:45he was able to learn how to create three different yet equally destructive personalities of himself to exist within his consciousness.
10:52The long and short of it is that Joker essentially learned how to weaponize his own brain,
10:56and pick and choose his blends of crazy.
10:58We'll admit that the comic doesn't exactly label this as him utilizing his super sanity,
11:03but the ability for him to adapt his consciousness on a large scale draws clear parallels to the condition.
11:08Heck, Capshio himself even calls Joker's mind superhuman,
11:12so there's definitely something there.
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11:30Diagnosis Maybe
11:32At the start of this video essay, we asked an important question.
11:35Is the Joker actually insane?
11:38And after everything we've been over, we can say that the answer is probably not.
11:43We know, it sounds shocking, but there's a lot that goes into deeming someone insane.
11:47Just think of it from a legal standpoint for starters.
11:50For most states in America, you need to pass the McNaughton Rule to be deemed criminally insane.
11:55It's basically a benchmark to figure out if a person is fully in control of themselves
11:59and or has a firm grasp of right and wrong.
12:02If it's clear that they don't, then they can be considered legally insane.
12:06Joker would need to meet at least two of this rule's three conditions to have that happen.
12:11But since he's both aware of his own actions and the immorality of them,
12:15then he'd likely fail and be deemed sane.
12:18He can be pretty psychopathic, sure, but he doesn't really show signs of psychosis,
12:22meaning he knows what he's getting up to.
12:25So what's the deal then?
12:27What does he have?
12:28Well, we can pretty much guarantee that he's kind of a cocktail of conditions.
12:32A hodgepodge of this and that, but nothing definitive.
12:35In the Batman Arkham franchise, Dr. Young did a full psychological profile on him.
12:40He showed signs of multiple conditions like narcissistic,
12:43borderline and antisocial personality disorder.
12:46However, she stressed earlier in the profile that Joker's deranged behavior
12:50made classifying him as something difficult.
12:53He's a mixture of lots of serious issues,
12:55but we can probably never truly pinpoint an exact disorder.
12:59You can take a look at him in any form of media he's shown up in and take a guess,
13:03but nothing conclusive has been shared.
13:05In all honesty, that's probably the way DC wants it to be.
13:10The surgeon always said, if you gotta go, go with the flow.
13:16Joker is a fictional character, which also means he's bound to get contradicted.
13:21As more stories involving him get told, the lines will only start to blur more.
13:26We can't quite diagnose him like he's a real person,
13:28since his state of mind can always change on a whim by writers and editors.
13:33But there's a silver lining though.
13:34The uncertainty of what exactly he is adds to the character's intrigue.
13:39Not quite knowing what goes on in his brain gives him an unpredictable edge
13:42that has made him one of the greatest supervillains of all time.
13:49Are there any special concepts related to the Joker you think we missed?
13:53Give us your breakdown in the comments.
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