Almost all incarnations of the Joker from Batman are sinister. A few tread the line on goofy, and a couple are absurd. But accomplishing just one, or even all of the above, do nothing more than to establish a comedic villain, which certainly the Joker is. But in how many representations is he Evil? Which he really is.

As Terry Eagleton is able to define the condition in On Evil, a certain stigma of a warped personality emerges which ideally suits the character. Evil, as that endless yearning for Nothingness in a material world of creation, is inherently destructive. If the Joker plans to poison the Gotham water system, it is because he cannot stand the thought of a well-organized machine whose only purpose is to sustain life.

Christopher Nolan has suggested through his films that it is order the Joker rebels against, but if the Joker really is Evil, which I feel he is, then it wouldn’t be order proper that he’s opposed to but rather the order of Existence. For the Evil, according to Eagleton, desire that empty, nothing state of nonexistence, and, as far as things go, there is nothing more chaotic and uncertain than life. The Joker, if we follow this train of logic, would prefer above all things to be among the regular motions of the void, aka the consistent schedule of nothing. It is that chance encounter of happiness, or the fluctuating and random possibilities of diversity and life, that he cannot stand.

Now it’s often repeated that an individual’s life is nothing more than a joke to the Joker, thus giving him the ethical imperative to murder at will. This is where the obscene laughter comes in; as Evil, the Joker looks with disgust and embarrassment at God’s creations—life, the world, existence—and his crackling cackle is the Damned defying their Creator —Satan snarling at God. But the laugh is above all things a deficiency, and it’s at his expense. For no matter what dastardly heinous crime or killing spree the Joker can plan and execute no matter what act of ultimate destruction he manages to bring to fruition, the plan fact is that life does exist, and that it continues existing. His clownish exterior hides a terribly anguished interior, anguished that he can ultimately do nothing substantial against existence —against God.

This is where Batman enters. For even Nolan was correct in emphasizing the relation between Batman’s existence and the Joker’s; without Batman there would be no Joker —not the other way around. Batman came first, and, though Nolan’s Joker may pretend to relish in the fact, that such is such is a source—the source—of never-ending discomfort for the Joker, as God’s presence invariably is for the Evil. As Eagleton tells us, Evil comes from Good, just as the desire for nothing is one that arises out of a confrontation with material reality. So then, Eagleton says, Evil leeches off of Good, and thus has no substantial independent character or purpose of its own sake. (That Evil exists for Evil’s sake is true, but since Evil is only feasible as a negation, its “own sake” can only be that of an antithesis —Life, and life alone, can only exist purely for its own sake.) The Joker may work tirelessly to bring Batman low, but that is all he can do, and even then it forever eats at him that he cannot extinguish what Batman represents —think Satan’s futile campaign against Heaven in Paradise Lost. All a villain can ever be, no matter how Evil(or interesting), is as a foil to the hero.

Nolan and the Animated Series (among others) were thus correct in assuming that money to the Joker was a means and not an end. What could someone who would like nothing better than to see the world returned to a state of non-existence do with money other than to buy dynamite? The Joker accepts with every fiber of his being that it’s either complete annihilation or a constant return back to the confines of Arkham —living comfortably and indulging in material satisfactions never enters the equation. If it did he wouldn’t pose the threat to Batman that he does. (He has this in common with a majority of Batman’s Rouge’s gallery as well, their motives usually being pathological and generally unobtainable.)

And so the Joker’s troubling relation with Harley Quinn; it is easy enough to believe that she is in love with him (or at least the idea of him), but quite impossible to believe that he is capable of loving anything, much less himself. The Evil cannot love, for if they could they would most likely cease to be Evil per say, and the obscene enjoyment they derive from defiance and destruction hardly mirrors anything consciously called love proper. Love is a sort of ultimate acceptance, as well as intimacy with the human condition, and both of these things are as foreign to the Joker as the motives for perpetrating a bank heist are to Batman. It is possible that he fancies the idea of her (not least in twisting someone from a “normal” life unto his own twisted trek), and the possibility that he keeps her around as the perfect scapegoat in case he needs a hasty get-away is so cliche that it hardly needs saying, but whatever the case, nowhere does the genuine concept of love enter the equation. (The Animated Series, which introduced her, was usually pretty good about this.)

So thus the Joker emerges as something much more lethal and Damned than the simple comic villain —he is Evil in all its Classical form. Once again it becomes necessary to invoke the scenery of Paradise Lost, with God’s prophetic words action as Batman’s silence and swinging fists, and Satan’s Pandemonium as an ominous abandoned comedy club.

– Nolan Kane (3/13/13)