The Changing Face of The Joker
Posted by on December 16, 2007 in Blog tagged withSince his first appearance in 1940, the Joker has been one of Batman’s most intriguing enemies. His identity, along with his past, has always been extremely difficult to pin down. In the 1988 The Killing Joke he says of his past that, "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… if I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" In many ways this approach to personal history is inscribed in his changing appearance as seen in numerous comics, television series, animated cartoons and feature film productions. What I’d like to do here is to show you a few of the visual interpretations of the Joker, before finishing with the most recent images from the new film The Dark Knight.
This was how the Joker first appeared in the 1940 Batman comic; his bleached skin, red lips, green hair and rictus smile becoming the basis for all future interpretations.
Here we have the 1966 tv version played by Caesar Romero, and I don’t know about you, but I find the image distinctly unthreatening. The Joker’s role in the series was more comedic than murderous. However, if we move forward to the 80s, and back to a comic book version, we find a far more disturbing presentation.
The glare of homicidal insanity is much more evident in this illustration, from The Killing Joke (1988) by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, than in the role Romero played on screen, don’t you think?
Then of course, we have Jack Nicholson’s Joker from the 1989 film Batman directed by Tim Burton. As with all Burton productions, a darkly humerous approach was taken, and Nicholson’s development of the Joker’s laugh became an iconic component of the Joker’s identity. Fast forwarding on to the 00s, and news broke that the newest Batman film was to feature Heath Ledger, of Brokeback Mountain fame, as the Joker, leaving Batman fans to concoct possible images for the newest incarnation of the demonic clown.
To say this guess was far from the mark would be putting it mildly. Have a look at some the images released by Warner Brothers for The Dark Knight, due to be released July ’08.
It looks like we have moved into a new stage in the development of the Joker’s appearance; one which is far darker, infinitely more disturbing, and seemingly more rooted in the horror genre than ever before. In many ways, this psychotic clown seems closer to Stephen King’s Pennywise than Caesar Romero’s Joker. What do you think of the changing face of the Joker? Does it reflect a change in times? Or is it, perhaps, that the essence of the Joker’s violent insanity, as portrayed in the comic books, has finally been faithfully translated into the medium of film? Of course, it’s hard to assess with any conviction prior to the film’s release, but from the images and trailers released leading up to its premiere, it would appear that we’re in for a treat of the most sinister kind.
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Interesting to see the images from the new film! From what I know of Batman (which isn’t very much) the original comics were much darker than the TV series ever suggested. Bruce Wayne himself was a more complex character, which the original films tried to touch upon. They lost their way after Tim Burton stop directing, until Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins which was dark, gritty and complex in its characterisation. The Dark Night is of course the sequel to Batman Begins. The grittier more disturbing joker is probably modeled to fit the film’s grittier look and the audience for the film will be more sophisticated than the TV series audience. Hope this helps!!
Let’s put a smile on that face:
http://www.atasteforthetheatrical.com/deathtrap/default.htm
I enjoyed that Beth. Heath is getting a few wrinkles, or is that just for horrific effect?
The development of the Joker was needed, he has always been The Batman’s greatest fo, because he is crazy! He doesn’t fit the mould of any criminal or homicidal manic, nor the wide range of other imformace Batman fo’s and for that reason Batman through out the history of the comics, has found him a challenge, that and the fact that the Joker has always pinpointed his dasderly deeds against Batman, in the comic books and also the very well down batman cartoons, he constantly taunts Batman with amazing fits of evils.
So i welcome this new Joker and hope Heath does well in bringing him to celuloid once again. If he can do a gay scene, im sure he can do a homicidal maniac thats interest include makeup and well tailord suits! Hang on?
P.S. I’m sorry for all the spelling and grammer mistakes, Matt taught me english.
I’m glad this came up! I’m not sure one can say that The Joker has always had the “violent insanity” evident in the Dark Knight screenplay, posters and trailers. People have referred to this new Batman franchise as stripping the mythos down and going back to the core of the original comics, but that’s not really all that accurate when you consider the entire history from 1939. The darker, twisted Joker didn’t really evolve fully until the later part of the 20th century. It is, I believe, more accurate to say that the filmic Batman and Joker we’re getting now are in tune with the comic Batman and Joker of the 1980s. Even the title of the new film, The Dark Knight, harks back to Frank Miller’s 1986 masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns. Bale’s Batman and Ledger’s Joker can be found in the pages of that seminal work (albeit a bit older), as they can in Killing Joke and several other (often British) writer’s and artist’s interpretations of the mythos throughout the 80s and early 90s. It’s interesting to see how Batman’s gritty, political era is only now carried onto the screen, 20 years late, at the same time as other more ‘adult’ comic works from the 80s such as V For Vendetta & Watchmen get the same Hollywood treatment. I wonder what this says about the importance of those comics by Miller, Moore et al, that they have lasted this long and have managed to rewrite history in the canon of DC Comics – something any comics fan will tell you, is very difficult for a writer to do with full reader support. What does the re-emergence of these potent political writings concerning the 1980s say about us today in 2007/08?
While I’m not a huge Batman fan (meaning that I can’t comment with any certainty on the history of any of the characters or the various interpretations of said characters), I have taken notice that Hollywood tends to take wonderfully dark characters and twist them into something they think is more palatable to their intended audience. They either sanitize the characters completely (consider what Disney has done to the Grimm Brothers), or turn the whole thing into camp so that its viewed as a joke, sacrificing lessons for the sake of a laugh.
I did love the darkness of Batman Begins (especially Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of The Scarcrow), and I hope that the tide continues turning with The Dark Knight.
Heath Ledger as the Joker is HOT!!!!