The Killing Joke

I just finished watching The Killing Joke. And this story always gets me really choked up. I had the same reaction when I read the comic years ago. And it’s the ending that gets me, the last exchange between Batman and the Joker that has me in tears.

I’m not sure why.

That might seem strange. I’ve had to think on it a bit, but having tears in my eyes at the end of that story is an unusual reaction. So I had to look inward.

It’s not the idea of ‘no one being beyond redemption.’ That’s an interesting tale, but not what I think this is about.

It’s the idea that some of us our broken inside. There is this aching, cackling, irrational lunatic screaming to pour forth that we hide from the world because there’s no place in the world for it. There are too many repercussions. We’d be judged or embarrassed or shunned or hurt again for showing that part of us.

And it might not necessarily be a murderous clown. It might be a singer, a dancer, a painter or poet or musician or chef. We might not even be good, but we just love doing it. The Joker isn’t always funny, but he keeps cracking jokes. And somewhere along the line we stuffed that liberated maniac down so deep into our psyche that we only see them in our deepest dreams and nightmares.

And then there’s Batman. The edge of that world. The darkness reins all of that crazy chaotic color back in.

But he’s also a safety net. He’s that person that always pulls the Joker back from the brink of destruction. At the end of each exhaustive rampage of lunacy, he’s there to bring the Joker home.

I think deep down, for every damaged, broken, stifled creative, we’d love to have a dark knight holding the back of our pants as we dangle over the precipice and laugh into the abyss, just to feel the rush. Just to feel alive. Just to laugh and forget everything miserable that ever happened to us. 

Just to know we can leap and survive the fall.

And Batman offers to help rehabilitate the Joker. And the Joker acknowledges that’s it too late. He’s too far gone. The dream is too far gone and there’s no hope of being unbroken again.

Perhaps we feel that same way. Perhaps we can’t ever feel that alive again, or can’t let ourselves be that free once more.

Maybe we can’t be the Joker anymore. But we can be the Dark Knight that keeps bringing that creative explosion back from the abyss, holds them until they stop shaking, and brings them home again. The world needs both.

Maybe that’s crazy. Maybe that’s more sane than anything.