And then I was thinking about madness, and the Joker. From the first minute of the Dark Knight, it was infuriating that they're sketched him as a man capable of apparently random acts of violence, a 'mad man'. Like a friend put it, his madness is in fact, like that of a writer. Poetic, random, breaking rules and running wild.. an Iago. Evil that exists for 'anti-social' acts alone. But such a person would rather be diagnosed with a personality disorder and not Schizophrenia. But Christopher Nolan obviously has got it confused. Or he's deliberately picked the worst of the depictions of mental illness and made a collage out of it. The flicking tongue and the scarred and painted face is just funny.
Anyway, the sad part is that for most people, he is just an extreme form of madness. While in fact, most schizophrenics never commit violence unless threatened. And thanks to these guys, the real schizophrenics get some more stigma, and possibly increased risk of violence themselves. That apart, the other schizophrenics who're depicted to be vulnerable to suggestion to be a part of more organized crime, is probably true. If you go by all the accounts of mentally ill suicide bombers in Iraq.
will sign off with a note that, however underhanded the technique to tickle the viewers' brain, it worked.. And the movie is quite brilliantly amusing. The earlier Jokers were probably just not worthy of comment. :) And then, a sad good bye to Heath Ledger. And no, he probably wasn't insane, but just got high on too much coke.
Osho
