"How Gotham city conquered was
And how the folk turn'd apes- because."
-Linkum Fidelius, as portrayed by Washington Irving
"This town needs an enema!"
-The Joker, as portrayed by Jack Nicholson
When the world feels too large, it can be tempting to shrink it down. The onslaught of dispatches from its every corner can be overwhelming, and the enormity of the chaos unbearable. It's tempting to retreat into a city, especially a fictional one. Whether in a comic book, or a movie or TV series, these fictional landscapes have a familiarity that comforts us while simultaneously operating by different rules, being both home and a land far, far away at the same time. These places can be visited, regardless of their material reality. Cities like Gotham have their own spirit, being almost a character themselves in the tales set within them. These locales can act as a twisted funhouse mirror of our own hometowns, and while we might enjoy spending time watching a Caped Crusader win the day there, we are glad to be safe from the Rogue's Gallery on our respective couches. They stay in Gotham, in the fictional world, where they are Batman's problem.
I had heard once, from a local historian, that my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, helped inspire the city of Gotham in the comics. I have never been able to verify this in any way, but it hasn't stopped me imagining a Bat Signal over downtown. Most would associate the DC Comics setting with New York City, as it is sometimes referred to as "Gotham". The name was first applied to New York by Washington Irving, under a pseudonym in his a satirical periodical called Salmagundi. It was his way of making fun of the city and its citizens, in reference to an English town of that same name. Dating back to the 1500s, stories were spun about the town and its eccentric residents culminating in The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham. There are several variations on the title; as madness is merely a matter of perspective, the folk of Gotham are also called "Wise Men". Accounts of their foolish activities include trying to drown an eel or send rent checks via hare to their landlords. They tried to build a hedge around a cuckoo, whose presence signified springtime, with the idea that keeping the bird captive would ensure endless warmth. When the bird escaped by flight from its roofless confines, they resolved to just build higher walls on their next attempt.
The motivation behind these apparent acts of lunacy is a strategic one. The tales were borne out of the same time period and location as those of Robin Hood, when everyone in England was taxed into poverty to subsidize wars elsewhere. A road had been planned, going through Gotham, for the King's use. At the time, the townsfolk would be responsible for the maintenance and financial burden of such a road, and feigned madness to make their home a less attractive choice. Madness was considered contagious at the time, and the wisdom of being "mad men" granted them some amount of sovereignty. It is interesting to consider how the social and political challenges of the era informed the tales of a resident vigilante and hero to the people, as well as an assortment of apparently deviant people within the greater Nottingham area. We can see also the corollary to the Gotham of the comics, its hero and its villains.
After the Mad or Wise Men, but prior to Batman, Chester Gould's Dick Tracy comics introduced outlandish outlaws and established the concept of a "Rogue's Gallery" working against the hero. Often the particular villains were distinguished and identified with some physical abnormality, like Pruneface with his dramatic wrinkles and Flat Top, who- you guessed it- had a flat top to his head. The memorable gangsters Dick Tracy fought undoubtedly influenced Bob Kane and Bill Finger as they developed their own Rogue's Gallery; Batman's antagonists upped the ante and became full-fledged supervillains, with flamboyant personalities and fantastical means of accomplishing their grandiose goals. Additionally, this creative admixture of influences probably had some element of true crime included, as well as depictions of organized crime in cinema. The drama was balanced with absurdity, though; villains like the Joker, the Riddler, and the Penguin were so weird and quirky that no one could reasonably worry we'd see anything like them in real life. The nonsensical elements kept the monsters trapped within the panels and pages of a comic book.
The feedback loop between what we think of as reality and our fiction, though, is more complicated in its effects and manifestations. In writing about the Joker in the past, I had referred to Richard Widmark's role as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death as being tied to both the character of the Joker and that of the Riddler. It seems Widmark was at least in part inspired by the Joker character, and the unhinged Udo inspired Frank Gorshin in his portrayal of the Riddler in the 1960s Batman TV show. Meanwhile, in real life, a young mobster was similarly inspired in both his dress and sadistic tendencies after seeing the film noir classic. "Crazy Joe" Gallo is said to have started mimicking Udo early in his career as a mobster in New York, ultimately culminating in his demise violently at age 43. In the TV series Gotham, the infamous murder scene in which Udo, laughing maniacally, pushes a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs is recreated with the Riddler as the murderer. More recently, the Riddler is depicted in The Batman (2022) as having shades of both the Zodiac Killer and the Unabomber to him.
Meanwhile, since the writing of the aforementioned Joker post, the character has bizarrely been served up in the form of Arthur Fleck in Joker (2019) and Joker: Folie a Deux (2024). Having nothing to do with the Joker we know from the comics, TV shows, and movies, Fleck lives in a liminal Gotham between the one we know and 1970s NYC. The first movie seemed derivative of The King of Comedy (1982), even to the point of having a late night TV personality character, played by Robert De Niro. The second one, a jukebox musical with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, was trounced at the box office by Terrifier 3. The prevalence of clowns in an election year is worth noting, and Art the Clown and Fleck aren't the only examples- a documentary called From Darkness to Light was shown at festivals, examining Jerry Lewis's long lost movie The Day the Clown Cried- which involves a clown named Helmut, played by Lewis (who incidentally also starred in the aforementioned The King of Comedy) at a concentration camp.
The proximity to evil, and politics with the clown energy is a running theme, and exemplified well by the fact that then-candidate Donald trump was facing trial not far from where the court scenes of Joker: Folie a Deux were being filmed. In one event, throngs of protesters, really just actors for the movie scene , nearly came into conflict with real life ones. Law enforcement was reasonably concerned such a protest might manifest in support of the felon who would later secure the election, and the confluence behind fake-Joker Fleck's mob and the hordes who blindly support trump is almost too obvious a point to belabor. An egregore of toxic cult mentality and discord existed in both the liminal Fleck Gotham and the New York of the present day simultaneously. By the end of the election cycle, the Insane Clown Posse were endorsing Harris for President.
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| Incidentally, if you want to hear me discuss the Joker sequel I do so here on John and Alexx Hate Stuff |
Folie a Deux ends with (spoiler alert) what we presume to be the "real" Joker murdering Fleck, and carving a Glasgow smile into his face a la the Heath Ledger Joker from The Dark Knight. This reenforces the idea that the Joker exists as a mind virus more than as a singular personage. One might note Ledger's method acting in the movie was reportedly difficult for him to shake, leading some to speculate that it led to his death from prescription medication. Jared Leto, in his minor Joker role for the movie Suicide Squad, annoyed his fellow cast members by playing terrible pranks in the interest of "method". In 2012, during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises at a Colorado movie theater, a mentally ill gunman -reportedly inspired by the Joker- committed mass murder. This "mind virus Joker" is explored in the series Gotham as well, which keeps you guessing about who the real Joker will turn out to be. In addition, it shows how this ephemeral Clown Prince inspired other killers.
Gotham did perhaps the best job of amplifying the multifaceted villains of the eponymous city of any interpretation other than the comics themselves. The show managed to give audiences a little bit of all the different permutations of familiar characters, relying on every wacky trope from evil twins to literally raising killed-off characters from the dead. Far from the expected formula of origin stories leading to the hero or villain in action, we see the interactions and the effects they have on each person metamorphose over time. As the series progresses, we see Edward Nigma go through every variation on the Riddler, from the campy Gorshin-esque one to the Udo-esque killer. The series balances well the stakes of a drama with the absurd concatenations of comic book logic. It leaves up walls and dams of unreality between the micro world of Gotham City and the macro world in which we live, while more recent attempts detonate them- not unlike the Riddler in The Batman, flooding the streets with uncertainty and incredibly strange new challenges.
The series also explored the Penguin more than virtually any other character. We see him as a young lackey to mobster Fish Mooney (invented for the show) working his way up through an increasingly bizarre series of misadventures, double crosses and incarnations. The trademark umbrella of the character is present, and part of his evolution into super villainy. Penguin, aka Oswald Cobblepot, traces his origins back to one of Dick Tracy's rogues- a character called Broadway Bates. The character was also partially inspired by a literal penguin in a Kool cigarette advertisement, which makes sense if you consider the traditional cigarette in a long-stemmed holder he is often portrayed having. The series touches on one told several ways in the character's long history- that of him running for mayor, which again adds to the political correlations. Versions of this were done in the 1960s series and in Batman Returns, where Danny DeVito's monstrous, sewer-dwelling version of the character is propped up through internecine city corruption and campaigning. Considering Gotham to be a small world mirror, the correlations to our world are again fairly obvious.
The Penguin of The Batman, though, who got his own spin-off miniseries for HBO, is a different animal altogether. Colin Farrell's physical transformation for the role, from good looking actor to scarred and portly tough guy, deviates strongly from the rotund and goofy Penguin we're accustomed to. His Penguin seems like he would be more at home in an episode of The Sopranos than in Gotham. It's worth noting that Joachim Phoenix lost a lot of weight for Joker, undergoing perhaps a more extreme transformation. Whether either form of physical alteration was necessary is up for debate, but its interesting that the choices were made. Instead of finding actors who looked the part, the actors molded themselves into a strange new version of familiar characters. One might see it as a weird version of the well-loved "origin story" or "Joker moment" these villains are known for. It can also be seen as a strange way of humanizing them, bringing them ever-closer to our world which is bereft of Batmobiles and Bat Signals, and anything else with a "bat" prefix. Batman is even noticeably absent from The Penguin, and is in fact never even spoken about. The titular character's name is "Oz Cobb", getting away from the Golden Age goofiness of the traditional, longer alternate identity. He is kind of a middleman in Gotham's underworld, and his business is largely the drug trade. Gone are the poison tipped umbrellas that turn into helicopters somehow; no large rubber ducks or actual penguins equipped with rocket launchers are to be found. Entertaining though the series is, in the way that "binge-worthy" dramas are designed these days, it's eerily bereft of whimsy and most importantly, heroes. In the end, Oz / Penguin gets everything he wants through one important lesson- empathy is weakness, and having people you care about is a liability. Sound familiar?
What are we to take away from this melding of realities? Why is the fictional Gotham getting harder-edged, more dangerous, as the real world gets so cartoonishly stupid and hellish? Where are our heroes? If we shine a signal into the sky, who will come to our aid?
The Mad Men of Gotham were wise in knowing that madness isn't actually contagious, but using the fact that this was widely believed played the part. Madness is only contagious if you agree that it is, and allow yourself to contract it. The characters that fall prey to the Joker's mind virus were already inclined toward murder, and were just looking for an excuse- similarly the mobs aligned with trump, Musk, and their ilk long had hate in their hearts and are overjoyed to have permission to express it fully. The appointees being forced on us in this administration are like the super villains of the comics, more than the ones of the current media- they are singularly minded, obsessed with their own pet issues to rant about. The difference is, we've enabled and normalized these weird hills that these ghouls are willing to die on. Most of them are very, very dumb- or just crazy, and sadistic. Their only strength is having a ton of financial backing and an imperviousness to consequences because they refuse to play by the rules. You can't outsmart crazy and dumb, and, as Alfred Pennyworth said in The Dark Knight, some men just want to watch the world burn.
Such burning may be inevitable. It seems likely that it will get much worse before it gets better, but I for one am confident that the Rogue's Gallery hasn't won completely. Perhaps the burning will be purifying, all-encompassing; maybe we'll rise from the ashes and rebuild. I'll be watching the Worcester skyline for any signals, but I'm not holding my breath.
