pressure_hinges muses about free will and choice.
Addiction
Harley is basically addicted to the Joker- like a bad smack habit, she's got to keep getting a maintenance level of him in her bloodstream just to feel okay. And like a drug addict, this is a choice she makes, and keeps making continually despite knowing the risks and having suffered some nasty consequences as a result of those choices.
But drug addicts aren't fucking stupid, and neither is Harley. Their choices may not seem to observers to be the smartest or the safest or the best, but they're making these choices because they have decided that the pleasure they experience from a situation to them far outweighs the risks and/or consequences. Do we as individuals, have the right to tell another individual "No, you must stop what you are doing because it makes me uncomfortable"? My own personal feeling is no, we don't, that's presumptuous, misinformed, and every bit as controlling as the situation we want them to get themselves out of.
The argument can be made that neither drug addicts nor Harley are capable of making decisions in their own best interests, because they've both been driven functionally insane in a certain rather specific way insofar as they demonstrate obsessive and often delusional behavior. So peope want to White Knight them, save them, or simply lock them up so we can all get back to feeling like good people with strong morals and we don't have to be exposed to any of that unpleasantness anymore.
So I do see where people are coming from when they scream that Harley is a self-destructive moron. I just happen to disagree. And as I said in the above post, 'abuse' is a rather slippery concept in terms of this relationship. It's there by any mainstream definition of the term, but it's there on both ends, and if both parties have agreed between one another that THIS is how they choose to interact with one another, it is once again presumptuous and misinformed to try and tell them any different.
It also has to do with gender roles, I think. Man Hits Woman is, in most cultures, automatically wrong no questions asked, and we're all programmed to think of this in very narrow terms defined by Lifetime Movies of the Week. In real life, this might well be the case depressingly often, but in the realm of fiction, that's a rather shallow and frankly boring interpretation.
That doesn't mean you can't feel terrible for Harley when she gets shoved out a window, or want to go beat the Joker to death with a pointy rock for being such a dick all the time. Inspiring those sorts of reactions is in some ways the point of the relationship, but I contend it's rather a small part, and by far the least interesting part. More fascinating to me is the exploration of how this all plays out, what it means to both involved parties, and what needs they, as individuals, are having fulfilled by this relationship.
Harley is basically addicted to the Joker- like a bad smack habit, she's got to keep getting a maintenance level of him in her bloodstream just to feel okay. And like a drug addict, this is a choice she makes, and keeps making continually despite knowing the risks and having suffered some nasty consequences as a result of those choices.
But drug addicts aren't fucking stupid, and neither is Harley. Their choices may not seem to observers to be the smartest or the safest or the best, but they're making these choices because they have decided that the pleasure they experience from a situation to them far outweighs the risks and/or consequences. Do we as individuals, have the right to tell another individual "No, you must stop what you are doing because it makes me uncomfortable"? My own personal feeling is no, we don't, that's presumptuous, misinformed, and every bit as controlling as the situation we want them to get themselves out of.
The argument can be made that neither drug addicts nor Harley are capable of making decisions in their own best interests, because they've both been driven functionally insane in a certain rather specific way insofar as they demonstrate obsessive and often delusional behavior. So peope want to White Knight them, save them, or simply lock them up so we can all get back to feeling like good people with strong morals and we don't have to be exposed to any of that unpleasantness anymore.
So I do see where people are coming from when they scream that Harley is a self-destructive moron. I just happen to disagree. And as I said in the above post, 'abuse' is a rather slippery concept in terms of this relationship. It's there by any mainstream definition of the term, but it's there on both ends, and if both parties have agreed between one another that THIS is how they choose to interact with one another, it is once again presumptuous and misinformed to try and tell them any different.
It also has to do with gender roles, I think. Man Hits Woman is, in most cultures, automatically wrong no questions asked, and we're all programmed to think of this in very narrow terms defined by Lifetime Movies of the Week. In real life, this might well be the case depressingly often, but in the realm of fiction, that's a rather shallow and frankly boring interpretation.
That doesn't mean you can't feel terrible for Harley when she gets shoved out a window, or want to go beat the Joker to death with a pointy rock for being such a dick all the time. Inspiring those sorts of reactions is in some ways the point of the relationship, but I contend it's rather a small part, and by far the least interesting part. More fascinating to me is the exploration of how this all plays out, what it means to both involved parties, and what needs they, as individuals, are having fulfilled by this relationship.