(This was initially offered as a comment on the Batman post by my friend, Bill, but I found it so insightful that I decided it needed its own post. Bill attends the Austin RoundTable and has interests in all things Jungian, especially Marie-Louise Von Franz, and how they relate to myth. Thanks Bill!!)
One of the more impressive scenes in TDK was the Joker burning that huge pile of money. This act puts him into the category of archetypal evil because by burning the money he shows that he is not motivated by the same pay-off that the typical criminal is(I’m separating the greedy criminal types from those guilty of crimes of passion and the victimless crime of drug use- victimless, that is, until somebody whacked on alcohol, speed or whatever, injures another or themselves). I don’t remember a lot of the movie but I don’t think the Joker had a power or prestige motive necessarily either(correct me if I’m wrong).
The other less-than-savory characters, as well as the less-than-savory aspects of the more “common” people, in the movie and everyday life, are molded into their unique shadow-ego make-up by the process of selective retention of what they deem(consciously and unconsciously) to be desirable psychic characteristics and repression of the undesirable that Priscilla described above; and they can therefore be described in terms of the ego and personal(as opposed to the archetypal) shadow-more or less.
The Joker, on the other hand, seems to be a product of that purely archetypal layer of the psyche that is the dark side of the Godhead. In our dualistically split, Christian way of putting God as the champion of the good Satan as the perpetrator of evil, the Joker obviously represents the latter(when we get right down to it, Christianity is really polytheistic; or perhaps duo-theistic would be more accurate: God and Satan. Whereas in Hinduism, properly understood, the plethora of gods and goddesses are seen as various aspects of one god-Vishnu; thus making it technically a monotheism; though I may be taking too many liberties with the definitions of monotheism and polytheism; but I digress).
In her “Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales” Marie-louise von Franz says that in religions where both good and evil are seen as two sides of one god, an arch-criminal like the Joker would be somewhat respected: even as he was being executed. To commit the most heinous attrocities, with full knowledge of what one is doing, is beyond the power of ordinary humans. Only a person possessed could be capable of acting as cruelly as the Joker with complete disregard for the more human pay-off of ill-gotten wealth. When we call particularly twisted criminals “monsters” we only confirm that we feel that they are beyond human and possessed.
I remember a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer. In it he said that he was glad he was stopped. He said that he was depressed before he killed, dismembered and then ate his victims but that he just couldn’t help himself. This guy was the incarnation of the darkest side of Kali; his ego, which did feel remorse, was no match for the devouring side of the Godhead which worked through him. Why him? I don’t recall any details from his past that would have made him like that. Had he had a twisted upbringing then there would also be an element of the personal shadow involved. And there seemed no motive of money, power, or prestige(would an Adlerian say that he wanted power over his victims maybe? If that is so, then surely there are less gruesome ways of doing it. Perhaps the power motive became contaminated with archetypal evil; but, no matter, the Jungian recognition of archetypal evil is the correct way of “understanding”(as if we’ll ever be able to “understand” archetypes) the atrocities of Dahmer). In short, there seems to be nothing that he experienced personally that could have caused him to turn out the way he did: he had become possessed by an archetypal, beyond human, content of the Unconscious. And it seems that it never became conscious to the point where he could fight it.
I remember the scene in the courtroom after Dahmer had been convicted and the mother or sister of one of his victims, in an understandably distraught outpouring, tried to excoriate Dahmer. She approached him while pouring out here grief and anger and had to be restrained. He stood there with his eyes downcast but otherwise unfazed. I say that she “tried” to excoriate Dahmer but she was way out of her league. I think she had as little conception of what she was dealing with as Dahmer had(at this point we could open that huge can of worms labeled “Freewill: Fact or Fiction” but we’ll save that for later; maybe as a “Question of the Day”). As much as we curse God and Fate in the attempt to be heard, it all falls on deaf ears. Dahmer had become a force of nature like Disease, Famine, War, Plague, etc.. The Joker’s motivations feel beyond revenge, greed and the like(although I vaguely remember the Joker saying that he had been maimed by his father or something like that).
Anyway, reading back over this response, it seems that I’m using the example of the Joker as a springboard to talk about the Archetypal level of Shadow because I don’t remember enough of the movie to talk about him in that context. So please forgive me if I misrepresent Him as he appears in TDK. So, to continue: it seems to me(after reading von Franz) that Evil(the Joker) as the Shadow is the Shadow only in the dualistic thinking of the Christian West where God’s goodness should be emulated by the ego and Evil repressed. In the East, what we call The Shadow, is the acknowledged flip-side of the One; and therefore the term is not applicable in the same way that we apply it in the dualistic worldview of the West.
At this point you’re wondering if there’s a point to all this. Uhhhhh… Well, How about this: the Joker is beyond human categories of good and evil but is a force to be resisted and subdued if possible in order to further the goal of the evolution of consciousness. It requires a leap of consciousness to co-opt the force that he represents. I could see this as looking squarely at cruel nature, like those who worship Kali, and realizing the opposites of the Godhead and thereby achieving transcendence. Perhaps this transcendance would be the “amor fati”(love of one’s fate) that Campbell often refers to; not only your individual fate, but also your fate as a human animal caught up in the unfathomable mysteries of Good and Evil, life and death, dark and light, etc.
