Mad Love: The Joker and Harley Quinn

We live in a society that emulates villains. It’s cool to be bad, to fuck the law, to screw others. We love super heroes but now even they have taken a backseat to their adversaries. No more so than the Joker and his assistant/ love interest Harley Quinn. Sophomore year of high school I had two friends who idolized the Joker and his relationship with Harley Quinn. They dressed up as the pair. He dyed his hair green. They reenacted scenes from the unpopular 2016 Suicide Squad. “You gonna kill me Mr. J?” simpered Harley Quinn who has fallen for the Joker. “No, I’m not gonna kill you,” said my friend Derrick (onscreen Jared Leto) “I’m just gonna hurt you real real bad”. First of all who the hell wrote those lines and maybe they should consider a different profession. Second, when did we start glamorizing violence in relationships? The Joker and Harley Quinn never had a healthy relationship but people seem to think that if you are both villains that makes it normal.

Comic expert Justin Favaro had this to say “Joker’s treatment of Harley is textbook abuse, gaslighting and manipulation. What was depicted in the show dwarfs what the comics put her through. The way their relationship was handled in 2016’s Suicide Squad essentially glorifies what is one of the most toxic relationships in comics” I haven’t watched Suicide Squad in it’s entirety (I just didn’t have the heart) but I did watch the beginning which had Harley Quinn’s origin story. She was a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum and she fell for the Joker, a patient. She helped him break out of Arkham (small detail: with a machine gun).  At one point they are at ACE chemicals. The Joker asks if she will die for him. No, no….will she live for him? She says yes and lets herself fall into a vat of acid just like the Joker did. He jumps in after her and they kiss in the vat of chemicals. Jared Leto’s laugh is heard as the scene fades. (Many critique Jared Leto’s role as the Joker but I kind of liked it. Nowhere near Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger but he had his mannerisms down. It was just godawful dialogue he had to deal with).

When I was younger, I believed love was supposed to hurt. Nobody’s ever thrown me out of a window but I lived in fear of more than one of my boyfriends, walking on eggshells to please them. What’s scary is I can see myself as Harley Quinn in that past. Giving everything up for “love” It’s not love, it’s control, it’s power, it’s desire. It’s falling backwards into a vat of acid and hoping someone dives in after you just so you can kid yourself into thinking they care.