Acid

People have been talking about Harley Quinn for years now. And like some Gen X hipster, I’m the person that says “I was there, I saw her being ‘born.’”

So, full disclosure, I have a few points to make before I go on to my main goal.
I’m a Batman fan. Always. Not a comic reader. Scandalous, sure. Sacrilegious. Yeah. Okay. But comic books are like anime. Crack is cheaper. This also goes for the games. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to play them, brain masturbate over the previews, and feel like I truly missed out on an experience. It just didn’t happen.

I have not seen Suicide Squad. Not yet. It’s been out almost a month. I had some personal shit, and then there was the “Lack of Joker” murmur.

A very nice young man at my place of employment asked me if I had seen the Batman origination movies. At first, I was all, wow, this kid knows his shit. Respect. Then he started describing Penguin. Catwoman. “You mean the ones with Two-Face and Riddler in the same movie?” Excited, he said yes. “Uh, those are Tim Burton movies. I own those.” I thought he meant something older. Since people seem to be forgetting how old the concept of Batman is. I digress.

There are two things eating away at me about Harley Quinn right now. And one sub-point for The Joker.

First, the Millennial Love Worship.

Here is the best example that I have found. I present unedited and anonymous for effect:

“Harley Quinn and the joker do not have an abusive relationship. The comics portray it that way as in order to say love is beyond crazy, hostility binds two into one as does love. They push each other to their hostile limits as to see how much they can handle only to them show that their love for each other can conquer that. There’s so much more to their love than anyone can imagine. Their love should be a symbol to couples everywhere.”

I shit you not. Verbatim. God bless Facebook for showing us how damned Millennial Relationships really are. First, I love how Harley’s name is correctly capitalized, but not the Joker. He’s an afterthought to this person. What this person loves is Harley’s devotion, no matter what it is to. They love the intensity that they’ve been raised with. At no time have they not known superhero and comic book movies. I don’t know what skewed their view of relationships. But if I recommend viewing A Clockwork Orange, or The Cell, it’s a “trigger.” They idolize, and indeed Hollywood edited, what The Joker and Harley have always been. The dysfunction Gen X didn’t have the Internet to talk about. Did I answer if I think The Joker loved Harley? I will in a moment.

Second, the lack of Joker in Harley’s descriptions. This is the meat of the walnut. I studied before writing this subject, which has been under my skin (and hopefully tattooed on it one day) for some time. I didn’t want to go in with just my idea of Harley. Psychology Today did a good article on their blog, and girloncomicbookworld.com was a wonderful resource into how Harley changed according to medium and over time.

Through all the YouTube, blogs, sites, fan posts, steamy fan art, and general chatter, I noticed one thing.

No one mentions The Joker.

They “mention” The Joker.

Skip over him like a stone that at best was a catalyst, and at worst, a mere ripple in her personality.

One thing I will concede, she had to have that madness in her before she met The Joker. The abused will seek to be abused over and over again. Not consciously. Either out of familiarity, or the “at-least-they-are-better-than” syndrome. So, let’s follow Harleen’s story, either as an overachieving child in a neglectful and at the very least emotionally abusive home, or abandoned by a family member’s death, emotionally, blah blah. Everyone reaches the same conclusion. Nature and nurture had already played their Greek Tragedy on Harleen. Now she’s fascinated with the Joker. And everyone either voices this with an air of contrivance, or predictability. Really? After a decade of Criminal Minds, Tarantino movies, Call of Duty, and “bullying awareness?” A society that soaks itself in the fascination of what a good person does on a bad day (or, as I like to say, a bad person does on a good day) really wonders how easily Harleen was drawn to The Joker? Click the Legos. Take out all of other societal bullshit people project onto her, we would do the same. And we do. When we fight about which Joker is better.

Here’s the side note. Stop comparing Jokers. Just stop. Ledger’s Joker is not even the same person, let alone the same kind of Joker. I can go into a dissertation about psychosis, sexuality, and character contrasts. Instead, focus.

In a controlling relationship, and for Harley specifically, people assume that it’s one-sided. That The Joker feels nothing, maybe not even contempt.

This is a fallacy. The person being controlled will tell you “sure, it gets bad, but when it’s good, it’s great.” To the person who is the controller, the dominant, their love is a gift, a favor that’s to be paid back, the show of power they have over the submissive’s emotions. Those times when he feels genuine affection for Harley, he’s lost control, and those are the situations where he tries to kill her. It doesn’t matter who gets in the way, they won’t get in MY way.

The Joker needed a submissive as much as Harley was comfortable having a dominant. Being the responsible one, escaping abusive home life, sustaining your own well-being and pressure to not turn out like them, it’s being Atlas. A masterful dominant, The Joker saw that weakness in her from the start. For those two, it was love. Love in the sense of an emotional connection, in the sense of seeking out what the other needed, already groomed to the damage. Because she was used to being weak in relationships, she saw the affection she wanted to see. Because he was used to being able to manipulate everyone flawlessly, he was angered by the lack of control emotions take. He wasn’t expecting her to be eternally breakable.

For Harley, this control was freedom. A punch in the face knocks the world off of Atlas’ shoulders. Being slapped around removes the pressure of being a real person to that person you are being controlled by.

To Harley, that was the freedom she was familiar with.

So her life became just one choice.

Either become The Joker, or drown in the acid.