“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.” One of Joker’s most memorable lines in The Dark Knight is about his anarchist perception. The Joker ultimately wanted to create a form of chaos in Gotham City, now the question is whether the Joker was actually an anarchist or more of a nihilist.
“Pure anarchy of someone who wants to do harm purely for its own sake and for his own entertainment” stated Nolan in an interview to describe the Joker. The Dark Knight’s Joker was intended to hold an anarchist ideology, but would it be better to call him a nihilist to Batman’s order?
There are roughly a couple of standard definitions for anarchy, it spans from meaning lawless absent government to a society free from authority. Nihilism is more of philosophical ethical perception, roughly meaning and extreme skepticism and rejection of moral principles. Is there a correlation between the ideological anarchy and concept of “chaos”? Some self-proclaimed anarchists have stated that anarchy does not include chaos, but simply the lack of authority or government. It’s just the common democratic ideal that a society without government causes chaos.
The Joker was a man without principles or regulations, clearly without laws, but he did have elaborate plans that had to work in specific manners. In his comic book counterpart, the Joker is pretty much insane. There is no logic or reason to his actions; he just does things, usually without any general direction. Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman was more of a stone-cold killer with direction to a goal, similar to Ledger’s but was more criminally-driven.
Insanity does not necessarily relate to anarchy or chaos, marking the major difference from all Jokers (Romero’s, Nicholson’s, Hamill’s, or Ledger’s). He has always been the clown prince of “crime”, not destruction of order. His insanity has and will always be incomprehensible, even by Batman.
Romero was more of literal joker, a jokester. Nicholson’s was more a narcissistic gangster. Hamill’s Joker (my personal favorite) embodies a criminal agenda motivated by his lack of guilt. There are debates on whether the Dark Knight’s Joker is a whole new different joker. How did you interpret his motives? Was he really aiming for anarchy (the rejection or law) or nihilism (rejection of values and beliefs) or something completely different?
Whether or not the Joker is an anarchist or nihilist, another question rises. If he wishes to destroy order and/or authority, and if he is the opposite of Batman, does that make Batman an authoritative fascist?
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