Signal Boost: Signal Boost: Stitch's Media Mix

[shy_magpie]

isabellerecs posted: Signal Boost: Stitch's Media Mix

Queer-Coding, Bad-Bat-Takes, And Why The Joker Isn’t That Important to Batman

I never realized how much I merely tolerate Joker as a means to get to Harley Quinn. Every time I tried to come up with a Batman-Joker interaction that refuted anything said in this essay or was even actually interesting to me I came up with Batman having a complicated emotion about Harley. On the plus side, I am no longer getting my Batman content by watching the animated series after school so I can simply read comics that have Harley but not Joker. Always weird coming across stuff about a series I used to be really into, especially since this was one of those "fan but not in the fandom" things where I keep forgetting that I'm not in middle school and I can talk to people other than my indulgent older brother about it.

Back to the essay itself, my only quibble is that I think of Joker more performing queerness because its a way to make people uncomfortable than as a character who sees sex and love as anything other than a power play (and not the fun kind). I spent a chunk of middle school obsessed with the Batman Superman adventures so I hope I can be forgiven an essay pulled out of my...memory of that show and the few comics I've read. In the cartoon anyway Joker broke Harley more or less for the lulz and lost interest in the game once he was sure of his control. He calls people darling and makes passes at men when he wants to unsettle them or hint at his power ("you can't stop me" being more important than the actual implication of sexual harassment/rape). If we are to see his sexuality as a dark mirror of Batman it is in that neither Bruce nor his alter ego even seem comfortable with power imbalances in a romantic relationship(except possibly the fun kind, he wears too much leather and likes Catwoman too much to ignore the possibility). I can't see him even flirting without making it clear that he was fine with a no. Consider two he is most often shipped with: Catwoman caught his interest by besting him without actually crossing his moral lines (his attempts to stop her usually being perfunctory or more of a game than a real objection to her actions), and Superman is one of very few outside of the Batfam he actually asks for help or seems to regard as his equal as a Superhero. In short, Joker strikes me as liking to fuck with people more than fuck people.