La broma macabra que acecha al murciélago. Una interpretación arquetípica de Joker y Batman

Abstract

Batman and the Joker are two of the most iconic characters, not only from the comic-book’s world, but also from pop culture. Created in 1939 and 1940 respectively, their presence in graphic novels and movies have been frequent until our days, with more than seven decades of stories behind. Precisely due to that, both their looks and personalities went through changes in order to adapt to the generational change of readers, but at the same time, there are elements than remain immutable over the years, or even were brought back. This duplicity makes the Joker and Batman the perfect subjects of study from the theory of archetypes of the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, who pondered about the motives for which some myths’ components stayed in the imaginary collective, whether many others fell into oblivion. Another postulate of Jung was the dichotomy of the Shadow and the Mask, that enables to cut deeper into the parasitic relationship between Batman and the Joker. Therefore, so as to comprehend the bases that inspired many writers to portray the madness of the Joker, we will analyse two sociohistorical sources about the representation of the mental instability: the Madman’s card of Tarot’s deck, and the satire Stultifera Navis (The Ship of the Fools).