The Jewish Joker
In his sequel to the film that gave Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar, director Todd Phillips further explores the character with very Jewish roots
A serial murderer and criminal mastermind with a sadistic sense of humour may not be the kind of nice Yiddishe boy we would claim as one of
our own. Indeed, many would struggle to see any Jewish qualities in the Joker, who first appeared in the debut issue of the comic book Batman in April 1940.
“He finds humour in the meaninglessness of existence,” says US comics expert Roy Schwartz. “He’s an agent of entropy. If anything, from a religious perspective, the character is anti-Jewish.”
However, the story is indivisible from a heimishe mid-century milieu and all three co-creators – Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson – were of the faith. A new blockbuster, Joker: Folie à Deux, is released in October. Its director Todd Phillips, co-writer Scott Silver and star Joaquin Phoenix are Jews too.
And the character was born in the most Jewish of settings, Grossinger’s, a hotel in the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York. Dubbed the Borscht Belt – after the beetroot soup so popular among Ashkenazi immigrants – the area catered to holidaymakers who were banned from many other resorts (some ads even declared: “No Hebrews or Consumptives”).
Crucially, it was where comic book writer and artist Bob Kane met a journalism student, Jerry Robinson. He was struck by the 17-year-old’s white linen jacket adorned with his own cartoons and offered him a job in his studio as a kind of ‘ghost artist’.
It is not unreasonable to suggest the dark comedy of the Joker may also have originated from the Catskills. Entertainment was provided by young comedians looking for their break. Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason and Joan Rivers would all start out plying their trade in the “Yiddish Alps”.
“I don’t think it was as sinister certainly as this forthcoming movie is portraying the character,” says Simcha Weinstein, a Manchester-born US rabbi and the author of Up, Up, and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero. “The Joker initially was a little more Borscht Belt. Writers write about what they see around them.”
The comic was “a Jewish-American invention”, says Schwartz, because it was seen as “the very bottom rung of publishing,” an industry that largely kept Jews out. “Back then, comic books grew out of the schmatte business,” adds the author of Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero. “They followed the same sweatshop structure where it was a factory line in a room – one person writing, the other one illustrating with pencil, the other one adding inks.”
A key part of the genesis of the supervillain was a concept drawing by Robinson, inspired by the Joker playing card.“That came from the fact that a lot of the people in Jerry’s family were championship bridge players,” says Arie Kaplan, a graphic novelist and author of From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books, who knew Robinson for about a decade before his death in 2011. Bridge has long been a popular Jewish pastime, so much so that in 1940, German radio warned the population of the Reich not to spend the Easter holiday playing what it called “an Anglo-Jewish game”.
The trio were also influenced by the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs, starring Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, whose mouth is disfigured into a permanent smile. Berlin-born Veidt fled Germany with his Jewish wife before becoming one of the many émigré actors and the highest paid star in 1942 movie classic Casablanca.
The setting and themes of Batman also have an unquestionably Jewish flavour, says Schwartz, “beginning with the origin story of Bruce Wayne being orphaned because of random horrific violence that stole both his parents from him”. Batman was first published less than a year and a half after Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom, and Schwartz says it is assumed a key influence was “that sense of insecurity Jews felt of being gunned down in the streets – of violence being able to erupt any moment – against this backdrop of gothic European architecture”.
Wayne also suffers from survivor’s guilt, says Kaplan. “It is possible that that ties in to Jews of that generation and the feeling that by random chance they happened to be in America whereas their relatives who were in Europe had been slaughtered by the Nazis.”
But while these comic books are pickled in Jewishness, ironically, Batman was Kane’s escape route from it. Weinstein describes the playboy philanthropist as a form of “wish fulfilment because he gets by on his seichel, his smarts, not his superpowers.”
“Bruce Wayne was effectively his means into waspyness,” says Schwartz. “He was either disinterested in his Jewishness or tried to leave it behind.” Kane, born Robert Kahn in New York, “legally changed his name as soon as he really had some money. And when he finally released an autobiography, he doesn’t mention anything Jewish at all.”
Robinson, on the other hand, spoke proudly of his identity. “He told me he wished I was his rabbi growing up,” Weinstein recalls. “That was one of the greatest compliments.” They also spoke about “the notion of double identities, masks, name-changing and this being allegorical of the Jewish immigrant experience.” Members of the new generation reinterpreting the characters have also commented on the impact of their lineage.
Phillips – born Todd Bunzl in New York – was co-writer and the original director of the film Borat, before creative differences with star Sacha Baron Cohen led to his departure. He said: “Working with Sacha has always reminded me of the strength and versatility of our heritage. It’s something I try to bring into my work, including The Joker.”
Both Phoenix’s maternal grandparents were New York Jews. And some have observed that his rendering of Batman’s archnemesis – named Arthur Fleck in the 2019 film and its upcoming sequel – is detectably Jewish.
The US magazine Tablet noted that “given his family name, he and his mother might be the last remnants of a once-Jewish neighbourhood [in the Bronx].” In the British website JewThink, Sean Alexander pointed out that “fleck” means “stain” in Yiddish, while one of the stand-ups Arthur watches in preparation for his own debut makes a joke about not using his “real Jewish name”. Could the alias of the Joker itself be an invented identity to mask his true background? Alexander concludes that, with his “underdog status”, Arthur is “coded as Jewish – the classic ‘neurotic nebbish’”.
One thing that can be said for him, insists Schwartz, is that “he is not an antisemite, since his Girl Friday, Harley Quinn, is Jewish”. Yet few will be surprised if that aspect of the Yiddish-quipping Harley’s identity is omitted from the new film, in which she is played by Lady Gaga. In July, it was reported Jewish-Israeli Marvel superheroine Sabra would be rebranded as a Russian-linked agent in the upcoming film Captain America: Brave New World.
Schwartz says he wants to see more Jewish life portrayed “positively and authentically” on the pages of comic books. “And unfortunately, what we’re seeing is less. Jewish characters have been whitewashed – particularly in the Marvel movies – cast with non-Jews, which in and of itself would not be a problem except that it’s beginning to form a pattern. The tidal wave of antisemitism has gone completely ignored and that to me stands out as a glaring omission.
“I don’t think any company or creator is motivated by a desire to erase Jews. They’re motivated by a desire to avoid any controversy. Unfortunately, being Jewish right now is a controversial premise. It’s cowardice, whether people are aware of it or not.”
Weinstein points out that these stories were born at a time of heightened antisemitism.“There are parallels with today. What we really need is a new generation of creatives and artists that can have some uncomfortable conversations. Superheroes have always provided comfort in tough times. We need them now more than ever.”
Joker: Folie à Deux opens on 4 October
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