(electronic jingle)
- We've been talking a lot about
The Killing Joke these past few weeks.
We've discussed misconceptions about the book,
and the meaning behind its mysterious ending,
but at the heart of it all, is writer Alan Moore,
and artist Brian Bolland,
who brought this piece of art to life.
They know what happened during the final panels.
They know what story they were trying to tell.
However, if you recall, Moore once said about the story,
quote, "I don't think it's a very good book.
It's not saying anything very interesting." End quote.
And yet here we are, three videos later,
four if you want to count the
Batgirl sex scene from the movie,
which you know, not many people do,
but the point remains, clearly, the story is interesting.
It's a critically acclaimed, award-winning comic,
yet Moore dismisses it as pretty much garbage.
Even Bolland wasn't happy with the
initial release of the comic,
that's why he went and recolored the whole thing.
They might be the authors of The Killing Joke,
but do their opinions, and intents even matter that much?
(rock music)
As this is the final part of our three-part saga
on The Killing Joke, I would like to
remind everyone that parts one and two are right up there,
and in the description down below.
It's been a few weeks, so let's do a quick recap.
We discussed a few fan theories
surrounding The Killing Joke, including
an idea popularized by Grant Morrison,
that Batman kills the Joker, as well as
Julian Darius's theory about how Batman
stabs the Joker with the clowns own poison needle.
We also learned what exactly Alan Moore
intended the ending of the book to be.
According to The Killing Joke's script, quote,
"They are now both helpless with laughter
and have collapsed forward onto each other,
both ragged and bloodied, each holding the other up
as they stand there clinging together
in the rain." End quote.
So, does this mean that all of those interesting
interpretations we've discussed so far are just meaningless?
I mean, we have what looks to be our answer.
The text tells us what happens.
Is it pointless to speculate our
own understanding of that iconic story?
Of course not, which is why I said, in part one --
- I'm not saying that you can interpret
Joker dying at the hands of Batman
simply because Moore didn't explicitly write that.
- Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense, right?
Shouldn't we be trying to find out what the author says,
and cite that is the ultimate meaning of a comic book,
or novel, or movie, or whatever?
Doesn't an author get the final say on their own work?
I mean, sure, we could have our own interpretations
of why Batman is looking at his hand in this panel,
or what exactly Jokers joke means,
but none of that holds any weight,
compared to anything Moore and Bolland say about it, right?
That sounds like an intuitive idea,
but philosopher and literary theorist,
Roland Barthes disagreed with this notion
in his 1967 essay, The Death Of The Author.
In it, Barthes explains that an author's
interpretation of their work is absolutely valid,
but, no more valid than ours, as the readers.
Comics are meant to be read, so we, as the reader,
should be the ones to find meaning in a work,
or, as John Greene puts it --
- Because the book does not exist for
the benefit of the author, the book exists
for the benefit of you.
- Again, I want to stress here that this
does not say that an author's intent is meaningless.
It is indeed valuable, but what they believe
the meaning of their work to be is not
the interpretation, but an interpretation.
For example, Moore once explained
his interpretation of the comic as this, quote,
"The Killing Joke is a story about Batman and the Joker;
it isn't about anything that you are ever
going to encounter in real life,
because Batman and the Joker are not like
any human beings that have ever lived.
So, there's no important human
information being imparted ...
... Yeah, it was something that I thought was clumsy,
misjudged, and had no real human importance.
It was just about a couple of licensed DC characters
that didn't really relate to the real world in any way."
That seems completely absurd.
No important human information being departed?
No real human importance?
I asked you guys on Twitter,
and got dozens of different responses for
applicable life lessons learned from The Killing Joke.
Even if Moore never intended for them
to be in the story, they are still there.
Are we just supposed to ignore them
because it was never his intent?
Of course not! His intent doesn't matter.
Now, if your goal is to specifically find out what
Moore and Bolland actually intended for The Killing Joke,
then yeah, their perspectives might be useful
to you in that particular pursuit,
but if you're simply looking for
meaning in the comic itself,
you don't need anything but the comic itself.
Before you get your pitchforks ready,
this does not mean, however,
that every interpretation is valid.
If theories and headcannon are based on
flawed understanding of the text,
then they are also flawed.
I also can't just propose an interpretation that is
completely random, with nothing in the text to support it.
For example, I can't say that at the end of
The Killing Joke, Joker suddenly turns into R2-D2,
and beep-boops away as Batman stares in awe,
silently finishing his tuna fish sandwich he
had been saving in his utility belt,
thus the story is meant to be an allegory
for the dangers of commercialism.
That is nonsense.
The idea here is not that every single interpretation
is created equal, no matter how absurd it is,
but rather the simple idea that
the author's own interpretation of
his or her own work isn't that special.
You could also see how little
authorial intent seems to matter,
by looking at the comic book industry itself.
In a field filled with reboots, alternate universes,
retcons, and just so much deus ex machina,
just so much, one can't help but feel if
anything being written in the comics right now
will even matter in the future.
Besides all the big universe altering events,
comic book characters get tossed around
from one creative team to the next constantly.
Even a simple change in writers or artists can
make Batman feel like a completely different character,
effectively undoing everything the previous authors
attempted to do with the character.
"But, that's just how it is in the
world of big-time funnybooks."
Limited comics writer, Eric Larson,
in an article he wrote, regarding the time he almost
made Elektra a Skrull, a story that we
actually covered on this channel before.
"The creative baton gets handed off to the next runner,
and the next runner can take it anywhere he's allowed to
bu the powers that be, even if it means
undermining the efforts of those who came before him.
But all is fair, his stories will inevitably
be undone by the next guy."
"It wasn't just that every character seems
to get a new voice and personality
and face and physique when handed from one
creative team to the next,
but often everything that came before was ignored,
contradicted, or written off as somehow not real.
It's at a point where I can no longer believe
that these characters are the same people anymore,
and it's to a point where I can't get caught up
in their adventures, because I know that
somewhere down the line, whatever
had happened will be tossed out the window,
just as everything else had been countless times before."
Of course, this is mainly applicable
for the big two publishers.
Creator owned comics can be a little better about this,
by having one writer, and the internal logic
of the characters, and the world they inhabit
more often remains intact,
but when you open that world up to be a shared universe,
with countless authors contributing new stories
every single week, toes are going to be stepped on.
Remember, despite what you may have heard,
The Killing Joke was always meant to be cannoned,
so Moore and Bolland were tasked with creating a story
in a universe they shared with everyone else at DC comics.
Even still, he left a lot of the story elements open ended,
for the next creative team to pick up,
and do whatever they want with it,
regardless of what Moore may have intended.
That team just so happened to be husband and wife duo,
John Ostrander, and Kim Yale,
who were working on Suicide Squad at the time,
and they absolutely hated what Moore and Bolland
did to Barbara in their story.
They took it upon themselves to transform her into
the computer hacking, intelligence gathering Oracle.
There's no hiding the massive popularity of Oracle,
but it's not like Moore intended for Babs
to take on that new identity when he made Joker shoot her.
Ostrander and Yale took it upon themselves
to fix what they thought Moore had ruined.
It's a double-edged sword, right?
Sure, the nature of comic books can make an author
question whether or not it's worth putting
so much effort into a story, when it will likely be ignored,
and become undone by the next author to
tackle the character, but that same
disregard for authorial intent is also what
can fuel great stories, like Under The Red Hood,
or Winter Soldier, or any of the
Rebirth stuff going on right now.
Authors who worked, or are currently working
on those books were at one point
just like you and me, readers.
Readers who realize the original author's intent is not law,
there is always some wiggle room.
And, for the sake of opening
this very video up for interpretation,
let's bring someone else in here,
someone who is skilled at breaking down
the meanings behind comic books.
- [Hass] Hello, I'm Hass, from the
YouTube channel, Strip Panel Naked,
where we do weekly videos, breaking down comics.
I'm just popping in to add my two cents,
as the meaning behind the work is something
I find really interesting in comics.
The intent from an author in a piece of work
is always fascinating, because any art with intent,
be it just to tell a good story,
or to change the world, will be
read by people who are bringing
their own individual baggage to the story.
It means that if both, say, Scott and myself
read a comic, like The Killing Joke,
regardless of if Alan Moore said it wasn't
saying anything very interesting,
we both walk away from that with our own
interpretations and meanings.
What's interesting is that those interpretations
will undoubtedly be different, in huge, or subtle ways,
because we bring our own individual life experiences
to our readings of it, and that's why
I consider it a flawed response to say
that a book inherently isn't very interesting.
I mean, how many times have you seen
a bad review for a movie or book that you really liked?
If I read a book, I bring with it my own experiences,
vastly different to that of the author,
and vastly different to that of the other readers,
I take my own meaning from the book,
implied from your story.
So, for me, The Killing Joke was more about dealing
with the problem of an unfacable, unspeakable evil.
When you have to deal with something
that seems so unstoppable, so insurmountable,
how do you approach that?
Was not the reason Moore told the story?
By all accounts, and from his very mouth, no, it wasn't.
The other question though is,
does it invalidate my reaction and response to it?
That's the reason why artists create art in the first place,
right, to get a reaction from an audience.
The idea of art is to provoke,
to allow us to examine and to understand.
If the work opens up other doors to a reader,
that isn't in the authors initial intent,
why should that make any genuine human understanding
derived from it less real?
- An author doesn't get the final say on their work.
An author gets the first say, and then releases
it to the world for us to interpret it
through our own experiences,
knowledge, beliefs, and culture.
Thanks for the wise words, Hass.
People might not know this,
but you have a brand-new show,
right here on NERDSYNC, right?
- [Hass] I do indeed.
It's called Comicana, and in each episode,
I take an in-depth look at a part
of the craft of storytelling in comics.
In the first episode, we looked at how you
control pacing through panel design and dialogue.
In the latest episode, we talked through
how speech balloon and caption placement
plays a role in guiding your eye through a page.
That episode is available right now,
linked in the description a day early
for those of you watching.
Check it out, and I'll see you over there.
- Sounds great!
In the meantime, I'd love to know
what you guys think about all of this.
How much does authorial intent really matter?
Does the comic book industry even allow it to matter?
And, what does The Killing Joke mean to you?
Let's talk about it all in the comments down below.
If you liked this three-part series on The Killing Joke,
go ahead and give this video a like.
If you miss the first two parts,
or just want to watch them again,
you can check them out right here,
in one convenient playlist.
In part one, we bus Grant Morrison's theory
about how Alan Moore always intended for
Batman to kill Joker, and learn a little bit
more about the development of The Killing Joke comic.
Part two was about an insanely cool theory
you may not have heard of before,
was joker really paralyzed at the end of the story,
to mirror what he did to Barbara?
Click right here to find out.
And once again, check out the latest episode of Comicana,
and show Hass some love.
If you're new here, make sure you hit
that big sexy subscribe button,
so you don't miss out on all the new videos
we make for you every single Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
that explore the history, science, art,
and philosophy behind your favorite comic book superheroes.
Until next time, my name is Scott,
reminding you to read between the panels,
and grow smarter through comics. See ya.