Reality is a Punchline

One can only see what one observes.
                                         -- Alphonse Bertillion

Some call it sick, but I call it weak.
                                        --- Don Henley

My dictionary defines reality as "the totality of real things and events." As definitions go, particularly of somewhat ineffable concepts, that's not too shabby. At least on the surface. But when you think about it, "the totality of real things and events" is not strictly what we mean by reality. The connotation is different from the denotation. "Reality" to most people is truth. It is the inescapable, the unavoidable, the inarguable, and more often than not, the unpleasant. When we tell someone to "come back to reality" we mean the world as it actually exists. The world of our senses, foremost among which is sight.

Beauty comes in at the eye; so does reality. The phrase "what you see is what you get" is for human beings quite literally true. To us, sight is the means by which we make contact with the thing we call reality -- the denotation of reality and the connotation of reality. When we come out of a daydream, we abandon the mind's eye for the two plugged into our brain, but in both cases we are seeing. Our experience of the "real world" generally begins with what we see.

Not long ago I was watching, or rather re-watching, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, when I was reminded of an interesting but seldom-reflected upon fact. Gamma Rays, X-Rays, Ultraviolet, Infrared and Radio Waves are all different kinds of light. The human eye can see only that which which exists between the ultraviolet and the infrared -- what we refer to as "the visible spectrum", which is in fact only one sixth of the total spectrum. So what I am seeing right now as I type these words is in essence only a fragment of what we might call True Reality.

Put another way, what we see is not what we get -- not by a damn sight. Our concept of reality is imprisoned within our senses, and our senses are incomplete and shallow. What we see -- and what we hear, taste, smell and touch -- is not True Reality. And this holds true of other animals as well. Sharks have poor eyesight but possess “mechanosense”, the ability to "see" the electrical impulses generated by living things. Rattlesnakes hunt by seeing heat; bats by sonar, which is another way of seeing sound. For these creatures, "reality" is quite different than it is for us, but not necessarily more accurate. They interpret the universe through the senses they possess; and their view of the universe is shaped by those senses. Who is to say that a mole sees the world more rightly or more wrongly than an eagle? Is not each creature's view of reality simultaneously incomplete and valid? Is what the spider sees somehow more "true" than the vision of the fly?

Taken at its most basic level, The Killing Joke is not a clash between combatants but between reality systems, world-views, philosophies of life; what the Germans call Weltanchauung. The three principal players in the drama all interpret reality in a different way, and each one believes the views of the others to be wrong. The superficial question posed by the graphic novel is whether The Joker or The Batman is "right" in their particular interpretation of the world. A much deeper and more important question is whether or not True Reality might not encompass all three beliefs. But to even attempt to answer that question we must first take a look at the three antagonists and their ideas of what is inescapable, inarguable, unavoidable...or in other words, true.

The Joker's outlook is perhaps best described as a kind of train-wreck of existential nihilism, absurdism and chaos theory. His belief-system attacks all other belief-systems by its very nature. To him, the whole of existence is a joke, a sort of seething mass of absurdities thinly crusted by the delusion that life makes sense, that there is justice in the world, and that people and their actions are firmly rooted in sanity. Though viewed as delusional by others, the Joker maintains quite the opposite; he and he alone gets the joke, and everyone else is simply kidding themselves. Perhaps tired of being viewed as "community of one", he makes a vicious and extremely well-planned attack on the sanity of Jim Gordon, repeating his theory that "one bad day" is all that separates the ordinary man from the insane one. Indeed, the Joker by his very existence is a kind of attack, not on sanity but on security. On meaning. On the belief that, well, life makes sense, there is justice in the world, and that sanity reigns. In that sense he stands somewhere between the Jewish interpretation of Satan and the Norse god Loki; he stumps for everyone who struggles not to burst out laughing when confronted with horror or tragedy, and if he were a song lyric he would probably be, "I wanna cry, but I have to laugh."

The Batman is often presented as the "flip side of the coin" in relation to The Joker. He had the "one bad day" the Joker refers to, one which clearly effected his sanity and shaped his personality, but is outlook on life is exactly the opposite of the Joker's in every other respect. Although he employs brutal violence against his enemies, he never intentionally takes life; whereas the Joker leaves corpses everywhere he goes, often in great profusion. (Bruce Wayne values human life too much to commit murder, whereas the Joker uses murder as the ultimate expression of contempt for the so-called "inestimable value" of that life.) Most importantly, the Batman believes that justice is obtainable; indeed, his every action is in essence a violent attempt to impose order upon chaos. But it is not the order of a police squadron but rather a disciplined vigilante mob. In this respect he is the straight man to the Joker's anarchist clown; the grim, dour, unsmiling son of a bitch who refuses to admit that life is a pointless, existential farce, and will always be there, bucket in hand, to douse whatever flame the Joker has kindled in Gotham City.

Jim Gordon is the third picture in the triptych. Although much closer to Batman than to the Joker, he nevertheless sees the world somewhat differently than Bruce Wayne. For Gordon, justice is not the final object, but rather the imposition of law, which of course is not at all the same thing. Although he uses the Batman freely, the decision to employ a vigilante is one of pragmatic desperation rather than sympathy; he has never personally adopted the Batman's methods for himself. His crust of "delusion" -- in other words, his grip on sanity -- runs all the way to his center; deeper, in fact, than even the Joker's worst atrocities can penetrate. And presumably deeper than Bruce Wayne's, who after all spends half of his life swinging around town dressed as a giant bat. When confronted with the "one bad day" Gordon wavers, but does not crack. Indeed, his devotion to the law is such that one can legitimately wonder if he isn't, in his own way, every bit as crazy as The Joker.

Here are three particular points in the spectrum, each adjoining the other and to some extent overlapping, yet each also distinct and separate: the anarchist, the vigilante and the cop. Who can honestly say that he does not possess some measure of each within him?

Everyone feels, from time to time, precisely as The Joker does, i.e. that life itself is a joke, and that attempts to impose order and discipline on it are futile. At the same time everyone also has outbursts of vigilantism within themselves -- impatience with the law, a desire to inflict vengeance personally even if it conflicts with the letter of the law. Somewhere in between is the need for consistency, for order, for obedience to the rules, for the things which allow civilization to exist – the Jim Gordon personality. And indeed, all three viewpoints are to some extent validated by existence. Not a day can pass when we don’t see absurdities, when we don’t feel a need for justice, when we don’t take comfort in the existence of law. There is, however, a fundamental difference between The Joker and his two counterparts, and the difference is much more significant than one of method.

If pressed, both Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon would probably confess to moments of sympathy with the Joker’s point of view. Every man is occasionally beset by doubts even of his most fundamental beliefs, and indeed, in a certain way, Bruce Wayne’s decision to become The Batman is partially rooted in an acceptance that order, fairness, justice and so forth are unobtainable in life without taking extreme measures. However, both men reject the Joker’s philosophy whenever they are directly confronted by it. When they are pressed, they cling more tightly than ever to their fundamental beliefs – this is evidenced in Gordon’s case by his refusal to let the Batman take vengeance on the Joker despite the terrible thing he did to Gordon’s daughter.

The Joker, on the other hand, seems to harbor a deep inner doubt as to whether his philosophy is actually valid, or simply a reflection of his own weakness…the failure of his pre-insane personality to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. One of the most common devices of narcissists and egocentrics is the insistance that because they failed, everyone must fail; because they were inadequate, everyone else must be inadequate too. It is a common failing to mistake one’s own decline or downfall with the downfall of the world, and The Joker, though he has forgotten most of his former life, seems to be haunted by its persistent echo of the man he once was. When The Batman taunts him by saying that it is not everyone who is “one bad day” away from being insane, but rather only The Joker, the normally impreturbable psychopath reacts with uncharacteristic outrage and anger – perhaps even panic. What if he really is a weakling who took refuge in madness because he wasn’t man enough to stand up to the unfairness of Life? What if the absurdities and chaos of that Life are not its defining quality but simply one facet of its jewel? Wouldn’t that invalidate his point of view? Wouldn’t it, in fact, make a joke of the Joker?

We are all to some degree vested in our view of reality. Just as human existence is governed largely by the way we interpret reality through our senses, our religious beliefs, political opinions and our outlook on life shape the way we see that life and how we interact with other human beings. A shift in the spectrum would cause extreme disorientation, perhaps even madness. But it does not have to cause madness, and this is the fact The Joker is desperate to contest. Bruce Wayne’s view of reality changed when he saw his parents murdered; he saw that life was unfair and that justice was not forthcoming without a shove, and he took radical measures to ensure that shove was given and given repeatedly. But he did not lose the essence of himself, simply because he now saw Life in a broader and darker spectrum. Bruce Wayne changed, but he remained Bruce Wayne; the man the Joker had been was obliterated so thoroughly we are fated never to know his name. Deep down, the Joker senses and despises his own weakness almost as much as he fears that his view of life is wrong.

It’s not that Batman doesn’t get the joke. He just ain’t laughing.