Firlapalooza

I greatly enjoyed the 1989 Jack Nicholson / Michael Keaton comic-book based superhero action thriller, Batman, when it originally came out to movie theaters.  Nicholson’s performance as notorious archnemesis The Joker in that film was outstanding, and it is still worth watching twenty years later.  The Joker’s overwhelming insanity and colours are a perfect foil to Batman, a dark and serious bulwark of justice.   Last year, in the revamped series of Batman films, the same infamous supervillain made his debut in The Dark Knight, with an equally iconic performance by the late Heath Ledger (a clever fan-made movie trailer with both of them can be found here).  Some suggest the dread persona Ledger took on to be the Joker for that final film may have been the cause of his own death.

But who would have thought that imagery of Heath Ledger’s Joker, despite the obvious dastardly associations, would become a source of political statements in the U.S.?

Here is an image of Heath Ledger’s Joker from the Dark Knight movie, which came out to theaters in July 2008:

Around the time this film made its debut, Vanity Fair magazine featured a Jokeresque caricature by Drew Friedman of then-president George W. Bush.  It was printed as a visual comment, entitled ‘No Joke’, when he had six months remaining in his administration:

During the current president’s successful election run, Shepard Fairey’s iconic “Hope” poster of Barack Obama, created in January 2008, became a widely recognized symbol of his campaign:

That above icon of the former presidential hopeful was later modified by James Lillis in November 2008.  Entitled “The Audacity of Joke”, it combines Batman fandom with political statement (albeit unintentionally, apparently):

As well, the October 23, 2008 issue of Time Magazine featured a cover story about the presidential hopeful, entitled ‘Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President”:

That cover photograph was then usurpsed by Chicago-area student Firas Khateeb, who modified it in January 2009 to create the following Jokeresque image:

Someone in the last couple of weeks then took the above image, added the word “Socialism” at the bottom, and has posted it around the cities of Los Angeles and Atlanta:

The Joker, an egomaniac known for his clownish appearance, brilliance, as well as his psychopathic unpredictability, may or may not be an appropriate connotation for the above politicians, but a search with the word “joker” at PoliticalCartoons.com does reveal others who have been caricatured similarly.  Certainly that most recent poster has generated more debate than any of the others, with interesting commentary on its artistic significance.  Visual satire has always been a ready tool for expressing disagreement with the jokers in power.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009, and is filed under Mediums at Large, Political Machines. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. I reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.