pressure_hinges muses about free will and choice.
Capsizing the Failboat
It seems to me that a lot of people (not just fans, mind, as evidenced by the backwards-ass hamfisted handling of the whole affair even by the writers in many cases) have a knee-jerk reaction to Joker/Harley that consists entirely of OMFG OPPRESSION!!11!1eleventy-one and leave it at that. So everything they write is more or less 'Harley as Chew Toy' or 'Harley as Broken Idiot' or even just 'Harley as Ghostly Presence on Periphery for Random Punching Purposes When We Need To Show the Joker Being An Asshole'. Sometimes there's a bit of 'fanservice' in which ZOMG HARLEY BURNS HER BRA BECAUSE SHE IS LIBERATED, MAAAAAN, but all of these different (and I use the word very loosely) takes on the 'ship often amount to so much fail that 'fail' doesn't even begin to describe the fail level being perpetrated. Way to entirely miss the point of a relationship YOU MADE UP YOURSELVES THERE, DC. CONGRATULATIONS, GENTLEMEN. PROMOTIONS ALL AROUND.
As everyone here and over at JokerxHarley has pointed out, there is SO. MUCH. MORE. that could be done with this relationship in terms of character development and just plain telling a good story. Hell, if you want to get all pretentious lit. major about it, challenge people's assumptions about relationship dynamics, what actually constitutes 'abuse' as defined by both 'victim' and 'perpetrator'. (Did you catch all the air quotes in here? Duck! ;P) Portray a fascinating and complex interaction between some wildly headfucked people instead of, O, IDK, turning almost every goddamned scene with them into one of those 'He only brought her flowers once' pamphlets down at the free clinic.
Look, we are all rational beings here. We all KNOW what the ‘best’ thing for Harley would be, because Harley works on a certain level as That One Friend. You know them; you've got one. (Maybe you've even been one now and again.) The one that no matter how many times you sit them down on your couch to have The Talk, they just keeping on running right straight back to That Fucking Asshole the very next time he can be bothered to place a 2 am booty call. The one you keep telling to get a restraining order and a 12 gauge because you know the only truly effectively way to handle their situation is one in the head and two in the chest. The one you swear you've seen crying on the lawn on an episode of COPS while Mr. Right gets frog-marched into the squad car after the basement meth lab went up in flames and set the neighboring Airstreams ablaze. The one that...well, you get the picture. Logically we know this is a godawful situation for anyone to be in and it’s all going to crash and burn like a downed DC10, but to use one of my favorite quotes that sums up the relationship rather perfectly imo: "We are terrible for each other, and yes, we are a disaster- but tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever."
And that, I suppose, is really kind of the point of Joker & Harley. That they possess an intensity unseen (and frankly unimaginable) in any other comic couple. They're practically the operational definition of earthquake weather: where the heat hangs for days and even the ground beneath your feet turns treacherous, so that eventually fear turns to desire, and nerves like that can only be bought off by catastrophe. (Thanks again, Ms. Hempel.) It's what makes it such a compelling relationship, because unlike so many portrayed with their banal and overused triangles or other such talk show-standard fare, this one can't be reduced to simple terms and it defies easy categorization.
Which is more or less what a lot of writers (and, it must be said) fans do with it. THIS IS ABUSIVE AND WRONG! they cry, their moral sensibilities outraged, and so the portrayal of nothing more than 'pitiful victimized woman' vs. 'horrendous stereotype of vicious, controlling bastard' continues. It all becomes another episode of Oprah and people seem to long for the uplifting vindication of poor Harley finally realizing that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down and starts keeping a spirit journal to document her newfound personal empowerment. Which is, once again, entirely missing the fucking point- fine and well if this sort of thing is your scene, but it's not Joker/Harley. If you think it is, I can only say you probably should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque, because you are definitely in the wrong goddamn fandom.
I'm not arguing that this relationship isn't abusive- it most certainly is, by any definition of the term. What I would argue is that the abuse is actually largely incidental to what's really going on here. Think of it as a kind of currency in their own personal economy: constantly changing hands but used merely as a means to an end. This relationship is about power: who has it, how much, and how that keeps shifting subtly (and not-so-subtly) throughout the course of its development. People who don’t really get this inevitably portray it as completely one-sided and honestly rather simple-mindedly: the Joker hits Harley, so naturally he is Bad and she is Oppressed and there’s an end to it. Roll credits, drive safe.
Well, all right. Hitting people is bad, I mean, we all learned this after that unfortunate incident with the Legos back in preschool. It's especially bad to hit someone you're nominally supposed to care for. (Insofar as you’ve established a monogamous romantic relationship with them.) But what happens when the one you're hitting does not, in fact, object to being hit? If they accept it entirely as being merely part and parcel of the rules of the game you've both acknowledged you're playing, and has demonstrated to you repeatedly that they actually prefer your hitting them to any alternative? That when you stop hitting them, they become first confused, then upset, and finally try to have you killed because you've stopped keeping up your end of the bargain? Are they just some brainwashed delusional masochist with a deathwish? Maybe. But maybe they've also decided that you're seriously fucking with their happy little grasp of the balance of power and they’re going to make damned sure you either get with the program or GTFO. Permanently.
Which is what Harley actually did once. Hardly the behavior of a poor victimized woman desperate to escape this hellish nightmare of codependency but simply can't find the strength. The fact of the matter is, whatever your own personal take is on Harley’s motivations, you cannot argue that she’s unaware of the stakes and would really rather prefer to just buy a minivan and settle down somewhere in suburbia. If she did she would have been overjoyed to find the Joker suddenly transformed into Grade A Uncut Take-Home-To-Meet-Mom Sensitive Lover material. But she wasn't. She was frankly fucking disgusted and got just as deviously vicious as her so-called oppressor to try and reestablish the status quo.
Now try and define what 'abuse' actually means in a relationship like this one.
(And if you really wanted to get philosophically hair-splitting about the whole thing, abuse can be a two-way street. The Joker may indeed abuse Harley in a myriad of fiendishly creative ways, but couldn't you also argue that she’s doing the very same, albeit in a far subtler manner? After all, she's the one constantly cheerleading every time he pulls off the latest crime against humanity- if she really loved him in a healthy and supportive way, wouldn't she be the person most likely to turn state's evidence so he can get the help he needs instead of continuing down this path to ultimate ruin? Enabling someone's moral degeneration may not be as dramatically or obviously 'wrong' as beating them with an extension cord for burning the pot roast again, but you try explaining the difference to the grieving relatives screaming for the blood of the generous friend who just handed their loved one the hit that caused the OD.)
Another thing writers love to ignore about this relationship is the element of need- on both sides. While Harley probably needs the Joker more than he does her- he did function just fine all on his lonesome for years before she ever came on the scene- it can't be denied that he needs her too. Otherwise she wouldn't have made it past panel 1 without a bullet to the brainpan: he's made it perfectly clear he’s more than willing to dispose of anyone at any time for any reason. Especially if he finds them inconvenient, annoying, or just plain unfunny, which Harley is shown doing repeatedly, and yet there she stands, cranium intact and squeaking away just as giddily as ever. Writers Missing the Point™ have a tendency to just gloss over this entirely, because just how, exactly, do you explain it without delving into the finer points of their odd dynamic? And god knows we can't be having with any of that nonsense- there's bitch-slapping to be drawn!
A wise man once said that what a ship needs are sails and spars, but what a ship is is freedom. ;p And this holds true for another sort of ‘ship entirely. Harley needs the Joker because the Joker, to her, is freedom. From responsibility, from normality, from mediocrity, from sanity itself and all the infinite constraints placed upon average everyday folk with student loan payments and persistent rashes and that creeping existential dread that strikes in the middle of sleepless nights after too long a shift at a crap job you can't stand. He's elevated her above all that now, to a serene if deadly plane of pure whim and instant gratification. He saw in her a blank canvas crying out to be filled in, told her, 'Woman, thou art loosed', and gave her free reign to indulge in every dark impulse unrestrained and fully realized. As we all know from the flag-waving propagandists, no freedom is ever free, but I very much doubt she would consider any price too high to pay for what he gives her. She's worth something now, in her own eyes because she has been made so in his, and maybe one life in trade for that would still be counted cheap.
But what he also gives her, even if unintentionally, is himself.
The Joker, whose ego is so massive by this point it’s got about the same gravitational pull as a collapsing neutron star, needs Harley too- how immensely gratifying must it be to such a person to have somebody constantly standing around staring with reverential awe every time he just strings a sentence together? An ego like that demands an audience: an appreciative audience, no less, since, while he generally always makes sure people are paying attention, nobody but Harley ever truly enjoys the performance. And there's something else he needs her for too, something altogether too human for someone like him to ever consciously recognize, but there, in brief glimpses: God, some believe, created man in his own image, and the Joker created Harley in his. Mirror images, the creation inherently lesser, of course, but no less a mirror, and wouldn't it be so comforting to see in our reflections only those things we wanted to see? With her, this is possible, because he can allow himself to see only what he put there. She provides him with an anchor, something tangible in a world that must to him seem all too arbitrary and illusory- maybe he only hits her to make sure she's real, since, incapable perhaps of understanding other methods, he knows pain is just another way we know we're still alive.
All of which by way of saying that writers who really get this relationship are sadly few and far between. If they're not making it into an after-school special, they're trying to reduce it to the safely non-threatening slapstick of a children's story, forgetting that all the best children's stories are infused with a darkness that maybe only children are still equipped to see.
It seems to me that a lot of people (not just fans, mind, as evidenced by the backwards-ass hamfisted handling of the whole affair even by the writers in many cases) have a knee-jerk reaction to Joker/Harley that consists entirely of OMFG OPPRESSION!!11!1eleventy-one and leave it at that. So everything they write is more or less 'Harley as Chew Toy' or 'Harley as Broken Idiot' or even just 'Harley as Ghostly Presence on Periphery for Random Punching Purposes When We Need To Show the Joker Being An Asshole'. Sometimes there's a bit of 'fanservice' in which ZOMG HARLEY BURNS HER BRA BECAUSE SHE IS LIBERATED, MAAAAAN, but all of these different (and I use the word very loosely) takes on the 'ship often amount to so much fail that 'fail' doesn't even begin to describe the fail level being perpetrated. Way to entirely miss the point of a relationship YOU MADE UP YOURSELVES THERE, DC. CONGRATULATIONS, GENTLEMEN. PROMOTIONS ALL AROUND.
As everyone here and over at JokerxHarley has pointed out, there is SO. MUCH. MORE. that could be done with this relationship in terms of character development and just plain telling a good story. Hell, if you want to get all pretentious lit. major about it, challenge people's assumptions about relationship dynamics, what actually constitutes 'abuse' as defined by both 'victim' and 'perpetrator'. (Did you catch all the air quotes in here? Duck! ;P) Portray a fascinating and complex interaction between some wildly headfucked people instead of, O, IDK, turning almost every goddamned scene with them into one of those 'He only brought her flowers once' pamphlets down at the free clinic.
Look, we are all rational beings here. We all KNOW what the ‘best’ thing for Harley would be, because Harley works on a certain level as That One Friend. You know them; you've got one. (Maybe you've even been one now and again.) The one that no matter how many times you sit them down on your couch to have The Talk, they just keeping on running right straight back to That Fucking Asshole the very next time he can be bothered to place a 2 am booty call. The one you keep telling to get a restraining order and a 12 gauge because you know the only truly effectively way to handle their situation is one in the head and two in the chest. The one you swear you've seen crying on the lawn on an episode of COPS while Mr. Right gets frog-marched into the squad car after the basement meth lab went up in flames and set the neighboring Airstreams ablaze. The one that...well, you get the picture. Logically we know this is a godawful situation for anyone to be in and it’s all going to crash and burn like a downed DC10, but to use one of my favorite quotes that sums up the relationship rather perfectly imo: "We are terrible for each other, and yes, we are a disaster- but tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever."
And that, I suppose, is really kind of the point of Joker & Harley. That they possess an intensity unseen (and frankly unimaginable) in any other comic couple. They're practically the operational definition of earthquake weather: where the heat hangs for days and even the ground beneath your feet turns treacherous, so that eventually fear turns to desire, and nerves like that can only be bought off by catastrophe. (Thanks again, Ms. Hempel.) It's what makes it such a compelling relationship, because unlike so many portrayed with their banal and overused triangles or other such talk show-standard fare, this one can't be reduced to simple terms and it defies easy categorization.
Which is more or less what a lot of writers (and, it must be said) fans do with it. THIS IS ABUSIVE AND WRONG! they cry, their moral sensibilities outraged, and so the portrayal of nothing more than 'pitiful victimized woman' vs. 'horrendous stereotype of vicious, controlling bastard' continues. It all becomes another episode of Oprah and people seem to long for the uplifting vindication of poor Harley finally realizing that the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down and starts keeping a spirit journal to document her newfound personal empowerment. Which is, once again, entirely missing the fucking point- fine and well if this sort of thing is your scene, but it's not Joker/Harley. If you think it is, I can only say you probably should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque, because you are definitely in the wrong goddamn fandom.
I'm not arguing that this relationship isn't abusive- it most certainly is, by any definition of the term. What I would argue is that the abuse is actually largely incidental to what's really going on here. Think of it as a kind of currency in their own personal economy: constantly changing hands but used merely as a means to an end. This relationship is about power: who has it, how much, and how that keeps shifting subtly (and not-so-subtly) throughout the course of its development. People who don’t really get this inevitably portray it as completely one-sided and honestly rather simple-mindedly: the Joker hits Harley, so naturally he is Bad and she is Oppressed and there’s an end to it. Roll credits, drive safe.
Well, all right. Hitting people is bad, I mean, we all learned this after that unfortunate incident with the Legos back in preschool. It's especially bad to hit someone you're nominally supposed to care for. (Insofar as you’ve established a monogamous romantic relationship with them.) But what happens when the one you're hitting does not, in fact, object to being hit? If they accept it entirely as being merely part and parcel of the rules of the game you've both acknowledged you're playing, and has demonstrated to you repeatedly that they actually prefer your hitting them to any alternative? That when you stop hitting them, they become first confused, then upset, and finally try to have you killed because you've stopped keeping up your end of the bargain? Are they just some brainwashed delusional masochist with a deathwish? Maybe. But maybe they've also decided that you're seriously fucking with their happy little grasp of the balance of power and they’re going to make damned sure you either get with the program or GTFO. Permanently.
Which is what Harley actually did once. Hardly the behavior of a poor victimized woman desperate to escape this hellish nightmare of codependency but simply can't find the strength. The fact of the matter is, whatever your own personal take is on Harley’s motivations, you cannot argue that she’s unaware of the stakes and would really rather prefer to just buy a minivan and settle down somewhere in suburbia. If she did she would have been overjoyed to find the Joker suddenly transformed into Grade A Uncut Take-Home-To-Meet-Mom Sensitive Lover material. But she wasn't. She was frankly fucking disgusted and got just as deviously vicious as her so-called oppressor to try and reestablish the status quo.
Now try and define what 'abuse' actually means in a relationship like this one.
(And if you really wanted to get philosophically hair-splitting about the whole thing, abuse can be a two-way street. The Joker may indeed abuse Harley in a myriad of fiendishly creative ways, but couldn't you also argue that she’s doing the very same, albeit in a far subtler manner? After all, she's the one constantly cheerleading every time he pulls off the latest crime against humanity- if she really loved him in a healthy and supportive way, wouldn't she be the person most likely to turn state's evidence so he can get the help he needs instead of continuing down this path to ultimate ruin? Enabling someone's moral degeneration may not be as dramatically or obviously 'wrong' as beating them with an extension cord for burning the pot roast again, but you try explaining the difference to the grieving relatives screaming for the blood of the generous friend who just handed their loved one the hit that caused the OD.)
Another thing writers love to ignore about this relationship is the element of need- on both sides. While Harley probably needs the Joker more than he does her- he did function just fine all on his lonesome for years before she ever came on the scene- it can't be denied that he needs her too. Otherwise she wouldn't have made it past panel 1 without a bullet to the brainpan: he's made it perfectly clear he’s more than willing to dispose of anyone at any time for any reason. Especially if he finds them inconvenient, annoying, or just plain unfunny, which Harley is shown doing repeatedly, and yet there she stands, cranium intact and squeaking away just as giddily as ever. Writers Missing the Point™ have a tendency to just gloss over this entirely, because just how, exactly, do you explain it without delving into the finer points of their odd dynamic? And god knows we can't be having with any of that nonsense- there's bitch-slapping to be drawn!
A wise man once said that what a ship needs are sails and spars, but what a ship is is freedom. ;p And this holds true for another sort of ‘ship entirely. Harley needs the Joker because the Joker, to her, is freedom. From responsibility, from normality, from mediocrity, from sanity itself and all the infinite constraints placed upon average everyday folk with student loan payments and persistent rashes and that creeping existential dread that strikes in the middle of sleepless nights after too long a shift at a crap job you can't stand. He's elevated her above all that now, to a serene if deadly plane of pure whim and instant gratification. He saw in her a blank canvas crying out to be filled in, told her, 'Woman, thou art loosed', and gave her free reign to indulge in every dark impulse unrestrained and fully realized. As we all know from the flag-waving propagandists, no freedom is ever free, but I very much doubt she would consider any price too high to pay for what he gives her. She's worth something now, in her own eyes because she has been made so in his, and maybe one life in trade for that would still be counted cheap.
But what he also gives her, even if unintentionally, is himself.
The Joker, whose ego is so massive by this point it’s got about the same gravitational pull as a collapsing neutron star, needs Harley too- how immensely gratifying must it be to such a person to have somebody constantly standing around staring with reverential awe every time he just strings a sentence together? An ego like that demands an audience: an appreciative audience, no less, since, while he generally always makes sure people are paying attention, nobody but Harley ever truly enjoys the performance. And there's something else he needs her for too, something altogether too human for someone like him to ever consciously recognize, but there, in brief glimpses: God, some believe, created man in his own image, and the Joker created Harley in his. Mirror images, the creation inherently lesser, of course, but no less a mirror, and wouldn't it be so comforting to see in our reflections only those things we wanted to see? With her, this is possible, because he can allow himself to see only what he put there. She provides him with an anchor, something tangible in a world that must to him seem all too arbitrary and illusory- maybe he only hits her to make sure she's real, since, incapable perhaps of understanding other methods, he knows pain is just another way we know we're still alive.
All of which by way of saying that writers who really get this relationship are sadly few and far between. If they're not making it into an after-school special, they're trying to reduce it to the safely non-threatening slapstick of a children's story, forgetting that all the best children's stories are infused with a darkness that maybe only children are still equipped to see.