Would Terry's Mind Games Have Worked On Any Other Version Of The Joker?

So remember that scene in Return of The Joker, where Terry turns the tables on the Clown Prince of Crime, mocking him as nothing but a poor comedian who's trying (and failing) to make Batman laugh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjTTmT_o5io

I've always loved that moment but I'm wondering if this could be applicable to any other versions of the Joker. Would it have worked on Ledger's version, who's not as showy as the DCAU version? How about Moore's version? Or Miller's? Hell, would it have worked on the "real" Joker that existed in the DCAU? After all the version Terry defeated was just an A.I based on the Joker's consciousness and genetic material, not the flesh and blood genuine article.

edited 10th Aug '16 2:08:45 AM by windleopard

The idea is that the Joker has (probably) allowed one pivotal event to define his entire worldview. That's what Terry mocks, while Bruce wouldn't because he's not so different himself. The Joker's uncertain past is one of his strengths, since finding a particular motive would give Batman the ability to ascribe the Joker's actions to it, and start drawing some logical conclusions. It would make the Joker predictable, forever pinned down to a specific diagnosis, just like everyone else in Arkham. The way Bruce deals with it is by focusing on the crisis at hand and shutting the Joker out; but Terry just goes for a spitball, presenting his own theory and mocking that. As a result, the Joker is in a Catch-22 situation - even if he denies this one theory, he's still one step closer to being pinned down by a certain past, a certain motive, a certain reason that anyone can review, a bluff that finally gets called.

In a way, Moore's Joker was defeated the same way, by his own hand even - he forced Gordon through an ordeal he thought enough to turn anyone insane... and failed miserably, the one saving throw being claiming that wasn't the "real" story. Ledger's Joker also spouts origin tales, each sillier than the last (there's even a fan theory he's actually a war veteran shredded by an IED and abandoned by the state), but that just opens him up for mockery, rather than dramatic Michael Caine speeches. Again, Bruce wouldn't be able to do it. Gordon would, Terry would, but Bruce is just as guilty of letting one tragedy define his own life, so all there is between him and the Joker is the impasse of a bluff that never gets called.

So essentially, it could work on any Joker depending on how it's worded, but Bruce specifically won't be able to pull it off.

Edit: one question

How does that open him up for mockery if he's telling a different origin story each time? Terry's speech works in part because on DCAU Joker because he does have a specific origin. Ledger's Joker does not.

edited 4th Aug '16 8:50:11 AM by windleopard

It should be noted that in Arkham City, Hugo Strange attempted getting into the Joker's skin over the multiple origins.

Ledger's Joker is trying to intimidate, just as the DCAU Joker is trying to creep out and impress. As gruesome as it might sound, it's like how when a couple of Japanese men were kidnapped by terrorists and threatened with torture and death, Japanese social media turned the whole thing into a silly meme - you can't beat a people like that. Ledger's Joker can be mocked just as easily - "So you cut your face to please the wife, eh? You're a special kind of stupid, ain't ya?" "Wanna know why the Joker uses a knife - because he's too incompetent to operate anything with moving parts." "Wanna know how he really got those scars - he cut himself shaving and was such a wuss about it that he screamed so hard he tore his mouth open." Really, the sky's the limit.

The Joker's main shtick is that he's unpredictable and scary. It works on the primal, instinctive level, but overcome that, and he's got nothing. He can be mocked, and hence defeated. The problem is that his main opponent chooses the same repertoire - evoking primal fears of night predators. But realistically, a bat is a harmless creature, more ultrasonic bark than bite. For Terry, however, the bat is more a professional costume than a personal emblem. Unlike Bruce, he doesn't call himself Batman in his own mind. That's why he can win where Bruce can't.

edited 4th Aug '16 9:34:27 AM by indiana404

I have a feeling it would have worked ONCE on any Joker, thanks to the surprise and gall of someone doing that to him. But the more times people would try, the sooner the Joker would have wisened up and started going around it. After all, if Green Goblin can keep up and match with the banter of Spider-Man, why can't the Joker eventually learn to make sharp comebacks?

And if the Joker noticed people were trying to not take him seriously, he'd step up his murder-sadist game to compensate, and then mocking him would be a bit difficult. For example, he could have responded to "So you cut your face to please the wife, eh?" with "You wanna know what I did to my wife? How about a demonstration... on YOURS." and... followed through with it.

That's the problem - he's been a full-blown sadist for years now, there's not much worse he can do. And it's not like not aggravating him makes him any safer to be around. It's the same thing with real life terrorists - they should be mocked whenever possible, precisely because being civil makes no difference whatsoever; if anything, it works to their advantage.

The other problem with the Joker is that, in the greater weirdness of superhero comics, he's really nothing special. He's a squishy guy in bad makeup trying to compete with alien warlords and demonic invaders. If anything, being so kill-happy as to have no genuine allies should've left him a pale stain on somebody's fist decades ago. I'm pretty sure most of his appeal comes from the delusion that insanity is like a secret superpower giving him an edge, kinda like how Owen Wilson does a James Brown in Shanghai Noon - "I don't know karate, but I know ka-razy". At face value however, all he has is pretense propped by contrivance.

Finally, unlike the Goblin who really can't help himself, the Joker actively wants to be feared and respected, essentially being a Stalker with a Crush on Batman. So long as Bruce shuts him out, he's gonna keep at it. But while being quietly villainzoned is little more than an incentive, active mockery would burst his delusions much faster. Even Lex Luthor got in on it by comparing him to a jealous schoolgirl... while being tied to a torture table himself. So yeah, safe to say the Joker trying to be even scarier wouldn't work. Chances are even regular DC citizens see worse on a daily basis. Imagine:

"I'm gonna make this pencil disappear!"

"My house just got vaporized by Cthulhu's uglier cousin. The whole suburb disappeared."

[Beat]

"That's rough, buddy."

Interestingly, judging by your first post, it's only the Batman that Moore wrote, and that writers have written since, that wouldn't be able to call the Joker out. Batman throughout the Silver Age and up to that time would, as that Batman was generally portrayed as a much more balanced individual.

It definitely wouldn't admit on DCNU Joker, who admitted in Death of the Family he outright knows he isn't funny and simply doesn't care. Also, going from his comments on the Batfamily, he wouldn't think Terry's opinion matters at all anyway.

I never got the impression that the Golden Age Joker thought he was particularly funny, either. Or that he was trying to be funny.

Agreed - Golden and Silver Age Joker has more of a fetish than a philosophy; for that matter the respective Batman is a lot chattier, so it probably wouldn't have affected him either. However, Nu!Joker still has the overt desire to be besties with Batman, which can be ridiculed. Other than that, I have to say he hasn't been all too consistent lately - it's like writers don't really know what to do with him. Even Endgame amounted to a shrug regarding his character, and the current cinematic version doesn't strike me as too coherent either. In short, he used to be chaotic, now he's just random, and that's about as scary as a tween girl's Facebook profile.

I suspect the writers aren't getting much in the way of editorial guidance on how to write the Joker. Or else, possibly they're getting too much. A lot of writers seem to want to make him monstrous and terrifying, but have no real idea of how to do that. So they leech all the actual entertainment value out of the character and make him loathsome, gross, and pretty much unassailable.

An interesting comment on the "one bad day" idea can be found in Paul Dini's "Harley's Holiday" from Batman: The Animated Series. The phrase gets repeated twice, with Batman himself uttering it at the end as he gives Harley the outfit she thought she was being accused of stealing at episode's beginning, which elicited her overreaction and started the chain of disasters that put her back in Arkham. His "I had a bad day too, once" is an interesting bit of sympathy, and one most writers these days wouldn't attribute to him at all.

I'd say Terry's strategy would be specific to DCAU Joker, cuz the DCAU Joker sees himself, in Mark Hamill's words, as an unappreciated genius. It would of course get under his skin to encounter someone who says "Oh, it's not that I don't get it. It's just that you're not funny."

edited 5th Aug '16 2:38:17 PM by Robbery

See, the Green Goblin is different in that he isn't an archetypal character. He has a goal, and that's become the kingpin of crime. Sometimes he messes with Spider-man, either out of revenge or because it's fun, and in the latter case that makes him like the Joker, but Spider-man isn't fun for the same reasons Batman is. Spider-man is a super strong joker who can trade both barbs and punches with him. Spider-man has a family, a non superhero civilian family he can screw with, Spider-man has a phobia of clones, so there's no friendship desire or psychological intrigue, the goblin just a lot of vulnerabilities to exploit. When Green Goblin spares Spider-man's life it isn't because he feels he's the only one that can kill Spider-man, or that he'll be incomplete without Spider-man, but because Spider-man just happens to be useful to his latest attempt to become crime's kingpin?

Also, Goblin has a much more stable and practical thinking mindset he mood swings in and out of called Norman Osborn.

The Joker wasn't always about screwing with Batman, for that matter. Once upon a time, he was a professional criminal, and his goals were to be a successful professional criminal. Now his goals seem entirely to be to spread anarchy and mess with Batman.

How does Joker feel about Batman in the DCAU? At times, he seems to enjoy messing with Batman even though he ultimately wants to kill the Bat. "The Man Who Killed Batman" and Mask of the Phantasm. And in Return of the Joker, he directly states that he hates Batman's guts. Maybe Joker loves and hates him at the same time, something like "Can't live with them, can't live without them".

It'd be interesting if Joker would much rather keep Batman alive after finding out that killing him would leave himself feeling empty, kinda like "Emperor Joker" from B:TBAB.

DCAU Joker didn't seem to think much of the 'and then what?' He'd set himself a goal, but not a second goal after succeeding in the first one— which is why in the Laughing Fish story he'd randomly decide to go after cattle after being done with fish. Like Comics!Joker, he seemed to really need Batman, but unlike him, he wouldn't stop to ponder that before attempting to kill him anyway.

Thinking about it, it was a fairly consistent element of the DCAU Joker that he was a sore loser, not really liking to be the butt of the joke himself, and depending on circumstances, would be angered at being humiliated and/or cowardly in the face of a threat. So the same kind of thing would work on the actual him, not just the AI version.

I'd also assume that the Joker in the eponymous graphic novel would be similarly affected, given that he totally loses it when Batman responds to a question at the end of the Joker's Hannibal Lecture about why Batman "does it" by answering "To mock you".

edited 12th Sep '16 9:45:09 PM by Hodor2