Patton Oswalt, the comic actor, recently theorized that the Joker, played by Heath Ledger in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” was a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Given that May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, it is appropriate to consider Oswalt’s comments beyond a simple late-night ramble.
In his lengthy Facebook theory post, Oswalt explained that the Joker “feels like an ex-Special Forces soldier returned stateside and dishing out payback.” I can only imagine that Oswalt means to say that he “feels” such a backstory is accurate based on Hollywood’s portrayal of special operations units, since Oswalt has never been a member of a Special Forces team or served in the military to my knowledge — although according to the actor, his father was a Marine.
In support of his theory, Oswalt cites many scenes from “The Dark Knight,” each exemplifying what he believes is veteran-centric and post-traumatic stress-inducing. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence to support Oswalt’s theory that the Joker is a veteran or suffers from military related PTSD, or that veterans or PTSD sufferers would act like the Joker.
While it is interesting to speculate on the backstory of fictional characters, we must also remember that conflating fiction and nonfiction can be problematic.
Veterans don’t need any additional stigma associated with their military experiences. Those veterans suffering from PTSD already have enough on their plate simply trying to get proper and timely care from the notoriously duplicitous Department of Veterans Affairs. Ongoing appointment delays, data manipulation and other short-comings have been repeatedly identified from irrefutable evidence, reported in media, and discussed in congressional hearings for many years with no apparent end to the chicanery in sight. The last thing veterans need is to be lumped in with the clown-faced sociopath from Gotham.
The trouble with believing that films accurately and wholly represent actual situations became painfully clear to me in 1994 when a mother confronted me regarding her son’s wish to join the Marine Corps. She aggressively protested his enlistment because, as she said, she had recently seen “Les Miserables” and knew “for a fact what happens in the military.” The play, based on Victor Hugo’s novel, is set in France around 1815. In my 20-plus years in the Marine Corps, I saw many things, but never anything resembling a real-life version of Valjean and Javerte or Fantine and Cosette.
Contemplating the lives of our favorite fictional characters can be fun, and when you’re left doing so late at night it can be a welcome distraction. Yet, in a world where not a single day goes by without veterans committing suicide, imagining the Joker as a veteran so shattered by his experiences that he loses every shred of his humanity is not an idea that I can idly entertain. Veterans suffering with PTSD are all too human. They hurt, and theories which morph their personal pain into comic book terrorism hurt, too.
Eric Hannel, previously the staff director for the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is a Marine Corps combat veteran.
