Echoes of Laughter in The Pale Moonlight: Notes on Joker
“You are only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” — Robin Williams
In the late twentieth century, a writer named Emil Cioran was invited to speak in Zurich. He was introduced with much reverence and compared to some of the greatest existentialist philosophers in history like Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer.
Upon hearing this lofty praise, Cioran remarked, “But, I’m only a joker.”
Cioran’s literature reveals exuberant beauty through devotion to truth and authenticity. His words are devastatingly dark and full of bleak aphorisms like, “The problem with suicide, is that it’s always too late.”
His titles speak for themselves:
On The Heights of Despair
Syllogisms of Bitterness
The Trouble with Being Born
He was profoundly conscious of isolation within urban spaces and commented on civilization’s inability to surmount the reality of loneliness. “Only the village idiot, thinks they belong.”
“Every life,” Cioran wrote, “is utterly peculiar, and wholly unimportant.”
Cioran said that all of civilization was merely a distraction from the truth. “By clinging to reality you’re denying the reality of the situation.” — The Joker
A Killing Joke
On December 22nd, 1984 Bernard Goetz boarded a downtown 2 train in Manhattan. Goetz had been mugged on the subway three years before and had purchased an unlicensed weapon for self-defense. After seeing him board, four African-American teenagers signaled each other and surrounded him. One of them said, “give me five dollars.”
Bernie Goetz immediately shot all four men.
“That’s how far the world is from where I am, just one bad day.” — The Joker
Goetz went about his business, and, when he was ready, turned himself in.
The Oxford English dictionary defines sanity as the ability to think and behave in a normal rational manner. The word comes from the Latin sanitas or sanus meaning healthy.
“You’re only as healthy as you feel.” — Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver
“I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.” — The Joker
“Madness need not be all breakdown, it may also be breakthrough.” — R.D. Lang
“The Joker’s a special case…In fact, we’re not even sure if he can be properly defined as insane…It’s quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here….He can only cope with that chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That’s why some days he’s a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the Lord of Misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd.” — Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
A jury found Bernie Goetz not guilty of all charges except carrying an unlicensed weapon.
“So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.” — The Joker
“Giggling in a Corner, Bleeding”
Aristotelian tragedy and comedy are defined chiefly by the concluding beat of the story. As Welles said, a happy ending depends entirely on where you stop your story. Alan Watts posed the idea that since it is not certain whether the universe is ultimately comedic or tragic, one may determine for oneself which to make the universe.
“The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real…all laughter then is occasioned by a paradox…this, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being The Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.” — The Comedian, Watchmen
“I used to think my life was a tragedy, now I realize it’s a comedy.” — The Joker
In his review of Joker for the New York Times, A.O. Scott said the movie, “isn’t any fun, and it can’t be taken seriously. Is that the joke?”
The answer is, of course, yes.
And no.
You Wanna Know How I Got These Scars?
DC has admitted there is no complete canonical origin story for The Joker.
“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice.” — The Joker
“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.” — Emil Cioran
“Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.” — Emil Cioran
Send in The Clowns
Don McLean casts Bob Dylan as “the Jester” in his song American Pie.
When directly questioned about this, Dylan denied it, claiming the Jester must be somebody else.
“Chaos is a friend of mine.” — Bob Dylan
“I’m an agent of Chaos.” — The Joker
“Chaos reigns.” — The Three Beggars, Antichrist
Send in the Clowns is a song by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night. It is a ballad from Act II in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life. Among other things, she looks back on an affair years earlier with a lawyer named Fredrik. Meeting him after so long, she finds that he is now in an unconsummated marriage with a much younger woman. Desirée proposes marriage to rescue him from this situation, but he declines, citing his dedication to his bride. Reacting to his rejection, Desirée sings this song. The song is later reprised as a coda after Fredrik’s young wife runs away with his son, and Fredrik is finally free to accept Desirée’s offer.
The following is an excerpt from a 1978 interview Bob Dylan gave to Ron Rosenbaum for Playboy Magazine:
DYLAN: The truth is that we’re born and we die. We’re concerned here in this life with the journey from point A to point Z, or from what we think is point A to point Z. But it’s pretty self-deluding if you think that’s all there is.
PLAYBOY: What do you think is beyond Z?
DYLAN: You mean, what do I think is in the great unknown? [Long pause] Sounds, echoes of laughter
I Am Pagliacci
“I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing.” — Soren Kierkegaard
On August 11th, 2014, Robin Williams, the funniest man in the world, committed suicide at age sixty-three at his home in Paradise Cay, California.
On May 16, 1984, Andy Kaufman, the funniest man in the world, died of lung cancer at age thirty-five at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Andy’s brother, Michael Kaufman, insists that Andy is still alive and that he faked his own death, “to get away from being Andy Kaufman.”
Michael says he found Andy’s detailed plans for the faked death.
He says it’s all a grand hoax.
An elaborate prank.
One
Big
Joke.
A Martin Scorsese Picture
Since he was unable to produce the film himself due to his work on The Irishman and a documentary about Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese’s producer of seventeen years, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, produced Joker on Marty’s behalf. The director, Todd Phillips, had an extensive conversation with Scorsese about the film, which is largely based on the work of Scorsese, Schrader, and De Niro.
Phillips has declined to repeat what Scorsese told him.
Paul Schrader announced that he has seen Joker, and refuses to comment.
Robert De Niro was excused from The Irishman for nine days to appear in Joker. He has said almost nothing about it.
In the 1989 Batman movie, the way Batman finds out the Joker killed his parents is by recognizing a strange question the Joker asks him. It’s a question, the Joker says, he asks of everyone he kills.
There’s no reason.
No meaning.
He just likes the sound of it.
Like an inside joke.
“I get the joke. Nothing is real.”
“Why aren’t you laughing?”
“Why so serious?” — The Joker
Further Study:
Scorsese/Schrader:
Taxi Driver (1978)
The King of Comedy (1982)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Light Sleeper (1992)
Shutter Island (2010)
First Reformed (2017)
Additional Films:
Ace in The Hole (1951)
Blow Out (1981)
You Were Never Really There (2017)
I’m Still Here (2010)
The Warriors (1979)
Psycho (1960)
Fight Club (1999)
Arthur (1981)
Modern Times (1936)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Network (1976)
Titicut Follies (1967)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1985)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Master (2012)
Let There Be Light (1946)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Antichrist (2009)
White Heat (1949)
The Killing Joke (2016)
