Themes
Another theme explores the possibility that Batman is just as insane as the criminals he faces, but manifests insanity in a different way. In an interview, Moore summarized the theme: "Psychologically, Batman and the Joker are mirror images of each other."
Says critic Geoff Klock: "Both Batman and the Joker are creations of a random and tragic 'one bad day'. Batman spends his life forging meaning from the random tragedy, whereas the Joker reflects the absurdity of 'life, and all its random injustice'."
The Joker also serves as an unreliable narrator. He admits to his own uncertainty, as he has disparate memories of the single event ("Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"), accentuating the comic's depiction of "a world unraveling toward relentless urban violence and moral nihilism..."
Red Skelton performed the basic joke on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 29, 1968.
Read more about this topic: Batman: The Killing Joke
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)