Joker: An Instructive and Realistic Image of Villain

Taking the Dark Knight and Joker as Case Studies of the Villain in Films

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220131.057How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Joker; Villain; Violence; Mental illness; Realistic character; Characterization

Abstract

“Joker”, as a character experimental movie, brings the iconic villain—Joker of the DC Comics back to the screen. For the first time in DC movie history, Joker becomes the protagonist to narrate his background story as a person Arthur before his criminal identity Joker appears. Another prominent portrayal of Joker can be traced back to Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” from his famous Batman trilogy. “The Dark Knight” constructs Joker’s tyrannical and antisocial nature in a realistic perspective. Both of the movies are innovative in their successful establishment of Joker image. However, while “Joker” and “The Dark Knight” turned Joker into an iconic villain with personality and depth, their success of character setting also generated unexpected Joker mania. In particular, “Joker” even aroused psychologists’ concerns about society’s prejudice against mental illness. Both films build Joker as an image that has research implications for villain portrayal in the film and television. This article aims to analyze the factors that make villains impressive and the possible approaches that lessen villain’s negative social impact. To achieve these objectives, the article will discuss the reasons for the successful portrayal of Joker and the controversy this character had caused by analyzing the movie “Joker” and “The Dark Knight”. As a result, villains with complex personality and keen sensation to human nature are more realistic and destructive compared to superficial evils with formidable superpower.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ziyan Liu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/02/01
TI  - Joker: An Instructive and Realistic Image of Villain
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Education, Language and Art (ICELA 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 316
EP  - 320
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220131.057
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220131.057
ID  - Liu2022
ER  -