John Ahern writes,

In light of the fact that Regina’s already reviewed the Dark Knight, Jeremy Sauder intends to (or intended to the last time I talked to him), and that Mark and Nick have talked to me (separately) about the various profundities behind the Joker, I think perhaps he (the Joker) would be an interesting subject to bring up in a little more depth.

Oh, there are spoilers here. I’m not going to put it in all caps and italics, because if you’re the sort of person who refuses to read anything that isn’t in all caps and italics, then your happening to see spoilers down there isn’t the least concern of mine.

My argument overall is about negative capability through the portrayal of the devil. The devil ran across my mind the morning after the midnight showing of DK as I thought back on the Joker, searching for some Biblical archetype. Earlier that morning (3:00ish), a friend of mine had leaned over to me during the credits saying, “That’s not your average film.” It stuck with me, and that’s why I was searching for something close to the Joker elsewhere. He was obviously something that didn’t show up often. I dismissed the Joker-devil connection because I thought the devil had a motive behind his sin – ostensibly pride – and the Joker obviously had no such motive.

But then – I think he was the first to suggest it – Sam Thielman expressed what I’d been thinking about the Joker and then convinced me I was wrong about the devil.

“The film’s early reviews have been gently quizzical about the late, lamented Heath Ledger’s magnetic performance as the Joker. It’s obvious that he’s doing a superb job, but nobody seems to know what he’s doing. Let me clear things up: He’s playing Satan. Ledger flicks his tongue like a snake, tempts people to kill one another, and is gleefully sloppy with bullets, bombs, and knives. Everyone else plays gangland archetypes; Ledger’s Joker has escaped to the movies from Milton, or C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra.”

Among my friends who all read WORLD magazine, for which Sam Thielman reviews movies, it became the accepted interpretation – Heath Ledger was playing the devil. If you don’t believe it, watch the scene where Batman is being tempted to torture the Joker by the Joker. This is a person who’s so sadistic he’s willing to be a masochist to get there. Perhaps the Joker even knows he’s going to be beaten in the end, but he’s there to twist as much fun out of the situation as he can while he goes. To quote Thielman’s review again, “Terror is not his means, it’s his end.”

Two things are essential to understanding the Joker’s character. One – he’s a liar. The Tolkienist, in commenting on Regina’s post, cited the fact that the Joker says he’s “a man of my word”. But that can only be irony – he’s so obviously not a man of his word. He only uses truth insofar as it’s conducive to the spreading of lies. Think how he got his scars (something I’ll bring up later). He tells two stories, both of which are obvious lies. He says he’s not a man with a plan, but Jason Bourne couldn’t think as far as the Joker could. The Joker tells Batman that Rachel Dawse is at this address and that Harvey Dent is at that address. Batman grunts to Gordon that he’s going for Rachel, but he arrives there to find Harvey Dent. Then, bang. Batman should have remembered the time-honored truth that, when talking to dragons, always treat what they say as a lie.

Second, the Joker is eerily perceptive. He’s always dealing with people on a soulish level. The effective tactic that the Green Goblin always uses against Peter Parker (capturing his girl) looks shallow in comparison with the way the Joker can see through people’s emotions. The Joker knows almost too well how people are going to react. As he tells one cop, “I know your friends better than you ever did.” And, the fact that the Joker’s story of his scars to Rachel Dawse is vaguely symbolic of her relationship to the Batman I don’t think is coincidental. I think he’s being a perverted Aslan – he’s telling everyone their own story. In a way, he’s too omniscient to be just a character. His knowledge is almost authorial.

Two central themes recur. First – Batman’s maculate fight against evil wouldn’t be complete without the Joker’s contribution. “You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

Second, the Joker is willing to do anything he can – including pain not only to other people (a clichéd villain tactic) but pain to himself – to win “the battle for Gotham’s soul”. I think he actually wins (here’s where I slightly disagree with Regina) in the end by converting, if you will, Harvey Dent into a monstrous Nietzschian villain, 2face. Harvey Dent represents Gotham’s bright future. A bright future, by the end of the movie, that’s a little burnt. But the film has a hopeful ending, somehow.

But this first point is the important one – it’s another of the Joker’s lies. C. S. Lewis talks in “the Invasion” in Mere Christianity about the lie of duality, which he says “is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market [besides Christianity]. But it has a catch in it.” Duality is basically the idea that there is a good God and an evil God who are equal in power and competing for control over the universe. That’s what the Joker wants us to believe – that Batman’s goodness really wouldn’t be complete without the Joker’s evilness. The “catch” in it is something Christopher and Jonathon Nolan seem to recognize – that if you have a dualistic universe, there’s no law higher than both of these equal powers that would determine if one was Good and the other Bad. Or, as the Joker says, “[The one rule is that the] only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you’re gonna break your one rule.”

When talking to Nick Embrey about this (who adamantly disagreed with this interpretation), he pointed out that the Joker, as a character, is an actor – he’s playing out a part. I thought this was a dazzling insight and it just so happens to fit my argument perfectly. If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered, “Why is the devil so stupid if he knows God is more powerful than him and he’s going to lose in the end?” I think Nick answered it perfectly. There’s a persona the devil has to put on and he puts it on just to be evil.

Now, did the Nolan brothers consciously think of all this? No, probably not. I hope my post can convince you of one thing though – these are authors who have created such a vivid character that he developed intelligible profundities beyond what they might have intended. That happens with other similar villains, like Richard III or aristocracy from Robert Browning, and I think this is negative capability in startling form.