It’s been 13 years since The Dark Knight, aka “Christopher Nolan’s greatest film” was released and people still think Heath Ledger’s Joker got the physical manifestations of his madness because his dad was a drunk or because he made a mistake showing his wife how much he loved her. Typical victim-turned-mass-shooter backstories. But no reason to drive a campaign of terror and revolution. Not a real reason to dig up a decade-old comic book movie either, I grant you.
But the sickness Heath Ledger’s Joker embodied just so happens to be what plagues us most today. Here’s what I mean:
The real "answer" to the Joker's scars lies in why clowns wear makeup. They do it to enhance and bring attention to the kind of clown they want to portray, sometimes they'll even use it to call attention to physical features that serve the clown’s character.
We see that without the makeup, people either don't notice Joker's scars or intentionally ignore them out of politeness. In the police parade scene, he's able to stand in front of the entire police force and get a shot off on the mayor without anyone guessing he's the guy who killed fake Batman in a video he just released that the whole city saw (it was on the news).
This is the absurdity that the Joker both exploits and points out: people looking the other way and pretending what's hideous or wrong isn't there so as to maintain the facade that everything's fine and orderly. By applying a little blood-colored makeup, Heath Ledger's Joker makes it impossible to ignore those scars, i.e. to ignore what we’d rather repress. It's one of the first things he brings up because he knows the question of how he got his defining physical feature is what anyone who meets him wants to ask the most. Painting the scars red is a gambit that forces you to engage. But it's a trick because a clown is no more interested in showing you anything about the person underneath the makeup than a magician is in explaining how his illusions work. The clown is only interested in the face in the mirror. In who YOU see when you look at that face.
So why does the Joker ask, "Do you want to know how I got these scars?" It's not because he wants you to feel his pain or know who he was, it's because he's trying to push you over the edge. A clown's face portrays what the clown wants you to feel. The Joker is unhinged. His entire MO is to make Gotham see the world the way he sees it. The origin story for his scars is meant to unhinge the listener. They are all stories of how “someone like you” could have created “someone like him”.
That's why he claims he was mutilated by his father to the head of a crime syndicate: as a leader and killer of men in the underworld, not only is Gambol a father figure to his minions with his own daddy issues, but by claiming his own father was a “fiend”, the Joker is reminding the boss of the consequences of his drug-dealing business.
It's also why Joker's story for a bride-to-be is about a display of love gone horribly wrong: what's scarier than committing to a man who will betray you is committing to a man whose love you're forced to betray. The purpose of a joke isn’t to let you know who wrote it but to make you appreciate the world from its perspective. The question's a setup and the punchline is what you least want to hear. It's a joke weaponized to weaken the target's psyche, which is why Batman responds by hitting him in the face.
The truth is there just isn't enough in the movie to answer how he got his physical scars, but his actions suggest an answer to how he got his psychological ones. Remember the tagline, "Why so serious?" As much as we would like to explain away why the Joker is so crazy with a personal story of abuse and hardship, the real answer lies in why we are serious and why he's not: because he stared into the abyss while we pretend to be too busy, righteous, "good", and look away.
People speculate that the man who became the Joker once worked for the military, but it's even more likely he worked in intelligence. CIA maybe, given their involvement in foreign coups and revolutions in our nation’s past. But whichever arm of the US government is currently tasked with maintaining global order via localized chaos will do. More than a brilliant tactician, he's an expert at destabilizing democratically elected governments. He uses propaganda to sour the populace on Batman. He wipes out key political and legal figures, then reveals their corruption to assassinate both the person and their character. And the way he gets local thugs, mercenaries, and crazies to do his dirty work is pretty much how handlers treat their assets. The only difference here is that the Joker isn't telling himself he's doing it for "freedom", "democracy", or even "capitalism" nor is he interested in replacing the corrupt power structure with his own lackeys. Instead, he wants to create a void. The kind of abyss that would force Gotham to confront its own corruption. Batman sacrifices himself to uphold the facade of Harvey's incorruptible character and keep Gotham's faith in authority alive. In doing so, Batman at once proves himself a hero while also proving the Joker right: society is maintained through the hoax of willful ignorance.
Something obviously had to go horribly wrong for the Joker to do what he did. But I doubt "The Dark Knight" Joker's origin story is anything close to Arthur Fleck's "The Joker". Heath Ledger's Joker displays genius-level IQ while Fleck is barely literate. Whatever happened, it so obliterated the last shreds of the former's humanity that all we're left with is this eldritch embodiment of the answer to the question "why so serious?" Answer (according to Joker): Because seriousness is all a morally bankrupt society has left to stave off madness and ruin.
Sure, you can say that Heath Ledger’s Joker is just a character in a movie. But what makes such a movie resonate so deeply with the popular consciousness is the fact that it accurately captured something in the air, aka the zeitgeist. In the same way that we love superhero movies because superheroes could be anybody, thus allowing us to fulfill the fantasy that they could be us, the Joker’s killer clown mask is one that’s equally available to anyone tempted to be their worst.
While I don’t think we’re quite on the brink of madness and ruin yet, the tragic rise of violence since the movie’s release would suggest there are many who disagree. If we continue to ignore the evil that our society does, then it’s inevitable that there will be more Jokers than there are heroes to stop them.
"…because he stared into the abyss while we pretend to be too busy, righteous, "good", and look away." May we look deeply and bravely. May we return with fewer scars and without the madness.