When the film is discussed by fans and critics, the flashback sequence is almost always mentioned, as is Terry’s role as the “redeemer” of Bruce Wayne’s failures as Batman, and his confrontation with the “new” Joker that had been “hibernating” in Tim Drake’s body since his childhood. Other than destroying Bruce emotionally, why exactly does the Joker kidnap Robin? Why kidnap Tim, a child? Why not Barbara or Nightwing? This is central mysterious core of ROTJ, which makes it even more intriguing. Why does he choose to re-create another, younger “self” and then use that body to duplicate himself, a twisted version of a parent’s need to “live forever” by siring a child? “Robin is mine,” the Joker tells Bruce. “The last sound you hear will be our laughter.” This puts the Joker in a much more complicated place than many have considered him to be.
With the 50’s sitcom music, armchairs and giant toy blocks, the Joker’s version of “our happy home”, the fake living room at the now abandoned Arkham, is a dark, fun-house reflection of the “ideal” version of family. What could have inspired the Joker to think up this insane scenario? A scenario involving not a bomb, a giant trap, mass produced laughing gas or a grand, theatrical theft of some kind, but a family. Might the Joker’s attempt to “adopt” a child (however grotesquely) point to a repressed loneliness? Perhaps, as Batman is a lost soul trying to create what is essentially a family, in some bizarre and extreme way, the Joker is not so different. Harley’s statement “Rather than go through all the ‘joy’ of childbirth, we decided to adopt” raises the question of whether or not the Joker can even have children. Have his scarring and chemical burns rendered him impotent (or sterile)?
And the heart of this central mystery might also be found in the most disturbing scene in the film: “Our Family Memories”—the Joker in his “Kiss the Cook” apron and chef’s hat, (the classic “Father Figure” of suburban Americana) waving to the camera, picking up the tongs, and shocking Robin who is strapped to the table. Possibly in the Joker’s twisted psyche, sadism is the closest he can ever come to expressing “love”. Since he obviously lacks, or at least has no use for, normal ways of bonding, the Joker’s only method of doing so is to hurt and terrorize. After Terry thwarts his plans, the Joker doesn’t even feel like bothering with the whole ‘fight’, and, merely walks away. “Thanks for wrecking everything, kid. See you around” He has no psychological investment in Terry as an adversary and would thus get relatively little pleasure in hurting him, so he leaves him alone. Obviously his feelings were different with Bruce, and, most horrid of all, Tim.
Since Harley had once tried to go straight (“Harley’s Holiday”) , and is a female and thus a potential mother, her role in Tim’s capture is portrayed as especially heinous, and this tension is resolved with her apparent death, shocking in itself, (since Harley was always considered to be a funny and somewhat sympathetic character, despite her alliance the Joker, and her delirious obsession with him was also played for laughs). Here, her ditzy personality loses all of its humor (as does the Joker’s earlier clowning and scheming) and is rendered both heartless and cruel. Her death is indeed the right dramatic payoff, which is unfortunately spoiled at the end of the film when she is revealed to be alive and well as the Deed’s grandmother, once more placing her character in the “funny” villain/category, and not the corrupt enabler. (Harley’s deux ex machina occurred because of writer Paul Dini, who despite writing an otherwise marvelous script, could not kill off one of his favorite characters, whom he had basically created.)
The flashback scene is in the abandoned Arkham Asylum (and its present-day counterpart during the climax at the candy factory) both reflect childhood innocence lost—big ABC blocks, jack in the boxes, a teddy bear, etc…This can also can be seen in the candy factory's colorful, grinning, terrifying Jack-in-the-box mascot (which bears a resemblance to the Joker.) Even though Bruce finally finds the Joker’s hideout, the damage has clearly already been done. Tim survives, but in body, not in mind. The adult Tim Drake, despite being “helped back to sanity” by Leslie, being married with a family and a respectable job, is almost a complete emotional blank, like a puppet-like approximation of a “normal person”. He seems as though he is not really living his life, but simply enduring it, his tone flat, his movements careful and guarded. Although four decades have passed, Tim Drake has never really left Arkham. The adult Tim is a ghost, (unlike the Joker, who is still alive and well in the form of DNA on a microchip) a man who barely exists at all.
The Joker’s hurting the child Tim might also have stemmed from his own disappointment that learning Batman’s secrets (“sadly anticlimactic”); his nemesis’ vulnerabilities as a human being (perhaps reminding Joker that he, too, is only human) When the Joker says: “It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic,” he almost sounds angry, as if Batman had let him down by proving to be only “a little boy…crying for mommy and daddy.” The cruelty might also be a result of his possible jealousy of Batman/Bruce’s ability to live a dual life: Batman, borderline psychotic vigilante; and Bruce Wayne, wealthy respected billionaire and adoptive father. Unlike Batman, the Joker can’t “switch” identities b due to his physical disfigurement and, of course, intense madness. He can only be who he is. “I suppose I should salute you as a worthy adversary, but underneath it all, I really did hate your guts!” This is the closest the Joker could ever actually come to say he that someone mattered to him, even as an enemy; for in the Joker’s twisted mind violence and humor, fear and hate, extreme cruelty and whatever it is in the Joker’s mind that might possibly, in some alternate universe perhaps, resemble love, all blur into one grotesque mass of unchecked, unbridled insanity. When Terry taunts the Joker at the film’s climax, he says: “What’s the matter? I thought the Joker always wanted to make Batman laugh!” The Joker, enraged, replies: “You’re not Batman!”
The theme of film and photography as a narrative is also very present: The Joker films all of his horrid acts with an old movie camera and projects it in an operating theater…(always with a “taste for the theatrical” as Gary Oldman opined in the current film version.) with the express purpose of showing Bruce what he has done to Tim. In The Killing Joke, he films atrocities inflicted on Barbara and likewise forces her father Jim Gordon to watch. (Even Tim Burton’s joker similarly broadcast himself on TV several times in Burton’s films.) “What’s the matter, Batman? No witty comeback? No threat? Then I’ll provide the narration.” A film, and a photo, is in itself a story or “narration” as is the very concept of a “joke” Most importantly and most disturbingly, the unholy and sadistic acts that the Joker inflicts on others are also his own brand of storytelling—the only stories he would ever consider worth telling.
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Because, the version I heard, reflects the version I have.
