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By Eric Jones
The
question bound to end up etched in the drywall above every
water cooler
in every computer geek entrenched cubical farm where it is (one
assumes) that
geeks hang out is
'which Joker is better?' Tim Burton’s smile encrusted
mobster-turned-psycho or the Heath
Ledger/Christopher Nolan concoction that has the world
spread eagle and begging for more of
‘The
Dark Knight’
Well,
if
you’re asking me then you’re asking the right man
and that’s going get you
points
on the geekometer. Good job. So let’s attack this quandary
right where
it hurts: in the balls.
PART 1: The Balls
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There is a fundamental question, first off, of
whether or
not there is any test to a man’s mojo if he’s
absolutely
bat-shit insane. Sure, I wouldn’t have the gull to walk into
a
room full of pistol packing wise guys, but then again I am in full
control of my faculties. For this article let’s assume that
each
representation of the Joker is equally insane and can therefore be
measured on a relative ball-scale in the same way that you and I might
also be measured in relative terms, being both of us sane and male (or
female with genitals).
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Both Jokers willingly break up a meeting of the
most villainous gangsters lurking beneath Gotham’s
treacherous
fingernails, but only one has the gusto to do so alone and wired to
blow himself sky high. That was the Joker of ‘The Dark
Knight’, Heath Ledger, who also makes a pencil disappear into
a
man’s eyeball. That doesn’t just take a lot of
moxy, but
meticulous timing and training as well. I can’t pontificate
long
enough on how many pencils I’ve broken trying to replicate
that
trick.
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Nicholson’s Joker uses a hand buzzer to fry the mob leader
into a
crispy green bacon-face while laughing and dancing. After that scene
appeared on screens in 1989 the sell of hand buzzers went through the
roof because every kid knows that all it takes to fry somebody to a
salty crisp is a trip to your local adult novelty store.
Nobody’s
buying more pencils, people, because it's not enough just to have the
pencil. You gotta have the balls as well.
On the other
hand, Ledger’s Joker proves to be less capable than
Nicholson’s. His tirade of violence eliminates court
justices,
cops, and mafia members, but barely touches the general population
whereas The Joker in Tim Burton’s even darker movie lures
hundreds, if not thousands (had the budget been a little bigger), to
their death via poisoned gas balloons. Where the younger, more
naïve Joker decides to burn his money, the older role throws
it to
the people along with a heavy dose of lethal fumigation. Any Joker can
threaten millions of lives, but it takes a heavy sack to do it. Not
just any sack either, but a hundred sacks floating high over Gotham
dispensing toxic chemicals down Main Street. With the advantage of age
and resources, the Joker from the original Batman
seems to have more than one leg up on Nolan’s current
incarnation, thus giving him the much larger (and in this case more
bouyant) set.
But the contest
isn’t over. You can really only truly judge the winner once
all
of the evidence is in, and since it’s really the clothes that
make the man, let’s take a look at the clothes that make the
Joker.
PART 2: The Style –
Fashion isn’t really my strong suit,
but evidently
it isn’t the Joker’s either. One could feasibly
argue that
it was his bad fashion sense that led the Joker down his twisted
schizophrenic path to Arkham in the first place. The clown look was
suitably killed off in the in the seventies, but he’s still
sporting the purple coat and green disco jacket inspired by the
irrevocable Jesse Green. Damn you, Seventies!
Of
course, the new Joker gets
bonus points for wearing cloths that were actually made in the
seventies, even if they have been molding in the drainage ditch of a
bio research facility for several decades. That only makes them MORE
vintage. Jack Nicholson looks like he raided the wardrobe department at
Warner Brothers and then borrowed an outfit from Prince when he
couldn’t find anything else. It’s hard to terrify
millions
of onlookers when you look you just strolled off of an episode of Seinfeld.
What matters most though isn’t
what clothes the Joker
wears, but how he wears them. There is a sinister way that
Ledger
hunches forward, constantly smacking his lips and running his tongue
over his grimy teeth. Nicholson goes for an opposing friendly look
which more often confuses people than scares them. Am I being attacked
or entertained? A subtle twist of his eyebrows are all that Nicholson
requires to turn his dancing smile into a horrifying malevolent one,
and his timing of that twist is what gives his smile the upper hand.
Although the contest is close, Ledger
wins in
overall style, not because of his outfit or his corn-nibblet teeth, but
because of his total lack of self awareness. When a man
is confident, he often shows it by not showing it at all, meaning that
it exudes from him naturally. Nicholson’s Joker is so
flamboyant
and showy that everybody knows that he’s making up for
something. And he
knows that they know, and that means that they all have to die.
Ledger’s Joker has the ability to forgo his own ego for the
sake
of blowing things up and that means he’s a go-getter.
Congratulations, New Joker, you’re the better looking of the
two in that you look worse.
Right now the two Jokers are tied, but
don’t worry
because I’ve saved the best category for the last category.
Since
there is really only one way to evaluate which Joker is better
portrayed and that is by looking beneath the make-up and taking a
ghastly gape at the men who make the Joker.
PART 3: The Man –
George Clooney settled the agonizing
question
bouncing in pharmacy waiting rooms across the country, ‘who
would make the
best batman?’ after 'Batman
& Robin' was released and the
answer became ‘anybody but George Clooney. Even that guy from
American Psycho
would be better than George Clooney’. But after Jack
Nicholson’s iconic role as the villain in the original Batman
movie, the question of who could follow his performance lingered.
Nearly twenty years later, the
question lingers no
more since Heath Ledger took the challenge. The greatest difference in
Ledger’s performance is that he demonstrated a transcendence
of
his earlier roles as the good looking “stud-muffin”
(that’s a real quote, by the way. I quoted it after his
performance in '10
Things I Hate About You') to the revolting toad that
he creates for 'The Dark
Knight'. There is no debate that Jack Nicholson
delivered an intoxicating performance as the villain of the original,
but was there any doubt that he would have made a good Joker
beforehand? After playing a psychopath with a sense of humor in 'The
Shining' and a crazy jokester in 'One Flew Over The
Cuckoo’s Nest'
it’s clear that Jack Nicholson didn’t have to reach
down
very far to find the Joker within himself. But when it was announced
that Heath Ledger would be embodying the role fans weren’t
just
skeptical, they had to wonder if the casting agents had gone plum out
of the their skulls.
The
Joker as a twenty-something pretty boy? Not hardly. Heath Ledger showed
an awareness of his own fantastic limits by molding himself into the
perfect embodiment of a fictional entity, a creature that only exists
within the subliminal culture of American pop-lore. As an ironic
testament to that transcendence, Ledger died soon after the completion
of the film. His ability to channel the purity of that spirit,
and the legend
that he created in doing so makes Heath Ledger, by far, the better
Joker.
It’s hard to say whether or not there will ever be another
contender. Nobody could have predicted that the Joker would steal the
show in 1989, but in 2008 we all know that the star of ‘The Dark
Knight’ isn’t the Dark Knight at all.
However, we never
expected to see such derangement that it could steal the previous
Joker’s spotlight as well. Who knows what we can expect to
see in
the next twenty years?
That’s right, Andy Dick. I’m looking at
you.
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Eric Jones
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