The Joker.  What is it that makes him so compelling a character? Well, some people find him fascinating for the elaborate nature of his schemes. Others, because of the fact that he is essentially a mirror image of the Batman. Where Bats reveres order & justice, the Joker embodies entropy and anarchy. Still others are drawn to the Clown Prince of Crime because of his obvious charm & his willingness to do pretty much whatever comes to his mind. I mean, c’mon: how many of us have ever wanted to just go off the rails and act on every base impulse that struck our fancy? However, could any of us really stomach being that insane? What if, though…just what if the Joker isn’t as insane as we’ve all come to believe he is?

Recently, a YouTube video came to my attention, and the evidence that the host presents on this topic really made me reconsider my view on the Joker. For instance, I was reminded that Joker breaks the fourth wall a lot, he talks to his“audience” or “fans” who aren’t there, and every now & again he makes a statement that really speaks to the nature of existence. Are his “fans” and “audience” just a figment of his imagination, or is the Joker (and by extension everyone in the DC Universe) a figment of the audience’s imagination?

What if the Joker knows he’s a fictional character? Sure, Deadpool knows it, and that fact is used in his story arcs for comedic effect.  With so many parallels between the DCU and the MCU, Joker’s assumed knowledge of his fictional existence could just be being used in a darker fashion.  “Super sanity”, the host of the video calls it.

French painter & sculptor Jean Dubuffet is quoted as having said, “For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.”  This makes a lot of sense when you overlay that definition onto the Joker’s actions.  His schemes are always wildly creative, and extremely imaginative – just look at the amount of planning it must’ve taken to execute the scheme he used in ‘The Killing Joke’ in an attempt to drive James Gordon insane.

While I highly doubt that Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson intentionally created Joker that way, I would not be surprised if recent writers of the Batman books have used that notion to evolve Joker as a character.

What do you think, dear readers?  Does the idea that Joker may know that he’s fictional make you see him in a different light, or do you still think that he’s insane (even though all psychological evidence points to the contrary)?