Joker is a box-office smash, despite the shrill dyspepsia and faux hysteria surrounding the movie’s release. Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, it offers an origin story for the grinning “Jester of Genocide,” Batman’s arch-nemesis.
Though the Joker created in 1940 by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson, the character’s origin dates back much further. The trickster who dresses in bright harlequin clothing and boasts a constant smile, takes inspiration from the fool or jester of old.
Jesters are commonly associated with the courts of medieval and Renaissance Europe, but can be traced back to antiquity. The Roman poet Horace wrote of balatrones in his Satires — itinerant jesters or professional buffoons who entertained the wealthy in exchange for a measure of hospitality.
The motley-clad entertainers gained a popular reputation for being perceptive observers and wry truth-tellers, whose comedic armor shielded them from a ruler’s displeasure. This is largely thanks to Shakespeare, whose jesters — Feste, Touchstone, and the unnamed Fool in King Lear — instruct characters and audiences alike with sly wisdom and probing ridicule.
It was during the Civil War that the jester made his way into the deck of playing cards. The Joker was created in the 1860s as a trump card for the wildly popular game Euchre. It was soon adapted into a wild card for other games, often bearing an illustration of a jester.
The Joker’s creators drew on both jester and joker. They say the character’s appearance was inspired by a sketch of the playing card and the disfigured visage of actor Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs, a 1928 film adaptation of a Victor Hugo novel of the same name. Veidt portrayed Gwynplaine, a 17th century traveling jester whose mutilated face carries a perpetual grin.
Murdering supervillain, sage fool, or cheeky trump card, the Joker always seems to ask: “Why so serious?”
—By J. Grant Addison
