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Over the past 80 years, Batman's archnemesis The Joker has become one of the most recognizable fictional villains worldwide. It's not totally obvious why our civilization is obsessed with, of all things, a gangster clown, so this week Cracked's exploring the character's enduring popularity and what The Joker's many iterations reveal about us, the audience. Catch up with: part one, part two, part three, and part four.
In the mid-'00s, the Joker character was in flux, which is to say: no one knew what the hell to do with him. The makers of 2004's The Batman cartoon apparently threw some darts at a wall and gave him dreadlocks, a straitjacket, and no shoes, making him look like the lead singer of an awful nu-metal band called Hotdog Enema or something like that.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008) went with a 1950s-inspired Joker in keeping with the show's retro tone, while Young Justice (2010) made him look like a 1960s Japanese gangster, with some Cowboy Bebop and Lupin the Third thrown in there. Appropriately, this Joker looks like he hasn't eaten anything other than instant ramen in five months because he spends all his money on anime cosplay stuff.
Even Heath Ledger's excellent and unusual performance in The Dark Knight (2008) could easily be the result of the filmmakers going, "Okay, now what can we possibly do with this guy that hasn't been done before? Space pirate? Horse-riding chef? Junkie Tom Waits? Yeah, let's go with that."
So, which is it? Is the Joker a ruthless crime boss? A whimsical prankster? A complete maniac? Worse yet, a Jared Leto? According to writer Grant Morrison, it's all of the above. He's the comic book equivalent of David Bowie, constantly shifting personas to adjust to his environment and, let's face it, the trends of the market. Also, it's a little known fact that Bowie's song "DJ" stands for "Da Joker" (it's little known because we just made it up). He even dressed like a clown on occasion:
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source https://earn8online.com/index.php/152076/that-time-dc-comics-turned-the-joker-into-david-bowie/
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