The Joker Conundrum: Batman, Joker and the Dignity of the Human Person

Catholic Social Teaching is the Church’s instruction manual on how to live a Christ-centered life. It guides us in being the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the leaven which helps our society grow toward bringing about the Kingdom of God. In this seven-part series, we’ll examine the Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching through comic books – their stories, their heroes, and their ideals. We’ll look at how our favorite superheroes embody these principles of living a more Christian life.

The Superheroes’ Guide to Catholic Social Teaching – Read Part 1 here

Theme 2: Life and the Dignity of the Human Person; or The Joker Conundrum

It stands as probably the central and most oft-debated question of comic-book moral philosophy: Should Batman just kill the Joker and be done with it?

The answer gets us into some interesting issues of Catholic Social Teaching.

The basic premise behind the question is as follows. The Joker, the “Clown Prince of Crime,” chief arch-nemesis to the Batman, and all-around homicidal psychopath, has been responsible for countless deaths over the course of his criminal career. Batman, as often as he has defeated the Joker, has always stopped short of outright killing him – even when he had the opportunity.

So the central debate is this: does Batman share some culpability in all those deaths, which might have been prevented if he just killed the Joker when he had the chance?

The short answer is no: the Joker is solely responsible for his own actions, and Batman ultimately has neither the responsibility nor the right to take his life.

The long answer is rather more involved.

The morality of the question is rooted in the Church’s understanding of life and human dignity. Life is our first and most precious gift from God, and as such we hold it as sacred and sacrosanct.

This principle comes through in one particular scene from season two of the Netflix Daredevil series. The hero debates the issue with Frank Castle, aka the Punisher, who takes a much more lethal approach to his vigilantism.

“Really. You never think, for one second, ‘sh–, I just killed a human being?’ A human being, who did a lot of stupid sh–, maybe even evil, but had one small piece of goodness in him. Maybe just a scrap, Frank, but something. And then you come along and that one tiny flicker of light gets snuffed out forever.”

That tiny flicker of light is the Imago Dei – the Image of God in which we are all created. It is what gives every person an inherent worth, a basic dignity, a God-given grace which cannot be revoked. From the moment of conception until natural death, we hold that every life is sacred and not to be callously cast aside.

Daredevil is the vigilante alter-ego of scrappy orphan and blind lawyer Matt Murdoch who is a practicing Catholic. His confessor knows of his secret identity, and no doubt has guided him in this understanding of the inherent dignity of all people, even criminals. It is one of the prime teachings of the Church and a core truth of Catholic Social Teaching, that no person has the right to deprive another person of life.

And while we hold this to be true without exception, moral theology does offer certain limited concessions to the realities of living in a fallen and sinful world.

As Mister Spock famously said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one.” If the common good or the welfare of society is threatened, the legitimate civic authorities might use deadly force if it is the only way to preserve the lives under its care.

The key here is the understanding of legitimate authority. The State of New Jersey can claim the authority to execute the Joker for his crimes. A masked vigilante who prowls the streets of Gotham each night cannot.

There is also the caveat of legitimate defense, to preserve one’s own life or the lives of others from an immediate threat. The principle of Proportionality allows the use of force sufficient to neutralize the threat, without going beyond what is strictly necessary. Here, actually, Batman’s formidable skill as a crimefighter undermines any use of deadly force on his part. As he has demonstrated repeatedly, he is quite capable of defeating the Joker and delivering him to the proper authorities.

Whereas the Punisher, as his name suggests, seeks to punish wrongdoers. This is inconsistent with Catholic Social Teaching, and with Christian morality generally. “Vengeance is mine,” the Lord says in Deuteronomy 32: 35, and Saint Paul doubles down on this in Romans 12:19; “do not look for revenge, but leave room for the wrath of God.” And Pope Saint John Paul II, in his papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, makes the assertion that punishment should be aimed at rehabilitation and non-lethal methods, “because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person”.

One of the interesting things about exploring moral theology through comic-book heroes is that it can stretch the questions beyond what we would normally expect. In particular, the 2013 Superman movie Man of Steel, and the first season of the Netflix series Jessica Jones, present an unusual conundrum.

(SPOILER ALERT!! For those who don’t know how these properties end.)

General Zod and Killgrave, respectively, represent substantial threats which the appropriate civil authorities are simply not able to deal with. Where Superman is the only match for Zod’s destructive power, and Jessica the (apparently) only person immune to Killgrave’s influence, I think we can argue that killing them was truly the only way to protect the common good.

Neither Superman nor Jessica Jones qualifies as a civil authority, with the right to impose capital punishment. Nor can it be claimed that they were acting in self-defense since it had been established in both cases that they could adequately defend themselves against the threat posed by their adversaries. The extenuating circumstances, in this case, are the magnitude of the threat to the common good and the probability that no one else is able to protect the public.

The point here is that these are extreme situations. General Zod is an immensely powerful being who can destroy hundreds of lives without effort. Killgrave is a narcissistic sociopath who can completely override a person’s free will, making them do literally anything he suggests. And yet, as Catholics we still must recognize and acknowledge that spark – that Imago Dei – that remains.

If it were possible to neutralize their threat without lethal means, Christian morality would insist on that option. Our religion is one of second chances – of redemption, of forgiveness, even (especially) when it is underserved. Every life is precious in God’s eyes, and no magnitude of sin or crime can change that.