Batman vs. Joker and morality

[MoonWater]

Simply put, from a moral perspective, should batman kill joker? That is, is it more ethical to kill him, or more ethical to simply keep throwing him in arkum asylum knowing he will just escape to torture and kill more people? Why?

Now I don't want to get into a continuity debate and i do realize that there are marketing and character reasons to prevent him from doing it, but i want to focus on this purely from a moral standpoint.

Also for the purposes of this debate let's focus on the comic book version of the joker rather than the animated version (and certainly not the adam west version:cover

Well have at it, i'll post my own thoughts later.

 

[LuisDantas]

No, he shouldn't. Realistically, the only reason why Joker keeps escaping is because the writers and editors keep wanting to use him. It takes a meta justification to make killing him appear like a real need.

In a realistic universe he would be in Guantanamo or under similar supervision.

Heck, Guantanamo is probably a better deterrent than DCU death. The Joker did die in his very first appearance back in 1940, after all.

 

[Me Myself]

Its hard to say because as Luis says, there are elements of comic ithere and we cant simply apply real world logic.

If we accept that in Batman universe for some reason Joker is not in Guantanamo and if he was, lets face it, he would escape somehow (again, in DCU) then yes he should kill the joker.

By the other side, if we accept the comic logic then we must accept the reasons for this logic: readers. If Batman kills the Joker, then it is an Elseworld. And the real "should he should he not" answer would be dealt with by the preference of the writter.

I love comics, I wouldnt want at all Batman to kill the Jker, but frothe knowledge Batman had of his universe, he really should.

If we just go by what Batman knows (and scratch all the readers and elseworlds, etc) then yes, Jokers life causes just a huge amount of pain.

I remember reading it was somewhere explored that the real reason Btman doesnt kill is because of the influenc eof his "Bruce Wayne" persona. Bruce Wayne was so impressed by his father the doctor and his respect towards life, that he simply couldnt bring himself to become a murderer. So he is not.

Then still keeping on with possible logical variants Batman could see frowiin his universe we would have the public relationships stunt it would be for Batman to actually kill the Joker. How would this impact society? Maybe if he did, he should do it in a way that looks like he really didnt kill the Joker and the Joker just died form a random accident (actually, this could be interesting as an elseworld... Him actually dying from a random accident, just like what spawn him)


Omg sorry I went unhinged. I blame you because you put Batman on the title

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Well...as stated, it's hard to ignore the comic-book reality being different to ours. But I'd see it as a balance of the lives the Joker would likely take (based on his history, and his ability to continually escape) versus his own life, plus the blurring of the personal ethics of Batman (as in, this time the Joker dies, next time some two-bit stick-up artist).

Tough call, but Batman is in the best place to make it, since he is the best one to answer whether killing the Joker becomes the thin edge of the wedge.

If I have to go with a black or white answer, I'm saying the Joker should die. But it shouldn't be Batman that kills him. The thief-catcher is therefore absolved of the responsibility, which may make it easier for him to hold on the side of law in the future. Due process is followed, and the Joker gets lethal injection (or whatever), and a humane burial/cremation.

 

[Dingbat]

Superman once said the reason he doesn't kill is so that he will always be stronger than the villians he puts away. Constantly fighting threats while your previous enemies rot in cells makes you the stronger of the lot. I can't remember the supervillian he was fighting but they used that to highlight the whole point it keeps the hero in prime condition unlike his adversaries. Makes sense in a comic book way where the enemies will never stop appearing even if you kill them.

 

[Quintessence]

I don't tend to concern myself with whether or not things are "moral" or not, only with whether or not they are ethical, and by what standard. Each person cultivates their own sense of virtue and character. Batman should do whatever serves the virtues or personal character he wishes to uphold within himself. If he wishes to uphold the virtue of Mercy, then he probably shouldn't kill to resolve disputes. If he wishes to uphold the virtue of Vengeance, then he probably should kill to resolve disputes. Which virtues he wishes to uphold is a decision for none of us to make; it is only for him to make for no one else can make it.

 

[Badran]

If Batman's main goal is to protect others, the answer seems pretty simple to me.

That is, speaking within the premise given. If he puts him in jail knowing that he'll most likely escape (based on him doing so before many times), and end up torturing and killing more people (again, based on him doing so before many times), it seems pretty clear cut.

And this would be strictly from the stand point of protecting others.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

If Batman's main goal is to protect others, the answer seems pretty simple to me.

That is, speaking within the premise given. If he puts him in jail knowing that he'll most likely escape (based on him doing so before many times), and end up torturing and killing more people (again, based on him doing so before many times), it seems pretty clear cut.

And this would be strictly from the stand point of protecting others.

If he tops the Joker, and ends up in jail himself, he can't protect people from OTHER threats though...

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I say that it is ethical to kill those who harm others to prevent them from harming others in the future.

 

[Badran]

If he tops the Joker, and ends up in jail himself, he can't protect people from OTHER threats though...

Sure, but i think that's just part of the risk he's generally taking with his vigilante work.

In addition, he could decide to not kill the Joker, try jailing him again, then the joker escapes and kills him instead. Then, he also can't protect others, and he's dead.

Also, i think it's not unreasonable to say that the possibility of the joker escaping is higher than that of the Batman getting caught. So, if he decides to kill him, he would be taking a risk, but a lower risk (of him getting caught). If he puts him in jail knowing that he'll most likely escape, then he'd be taking the higher risk (of the joker escaping) to avoid a lower risk.

Finally, if he perceives some increased possibility of getting caught, for example, he could try to do this:

If I have to go with a black or white answer, I'm saying the Joker should die. But it shouldn't be Batman that kills him. The thief-catcher is therefore absolved of the responsibility, which may make it easier for him to hold on the side of law in the future. Due process is followed, and the Joker gets lethal injection (or whatever), and a humane burial/cremation.

If he basically ensures that he's dead without doing it himself, all the better.

 

[InformedIgnorance]

If he knows that there is good chance the Joker will escape; and
If he knows that if the Joker escapes there is good chance he will inflict great suffering; and
If he had the opportunity to prevent this possibility to escape then he has some measure of influence over Joker's possible crimes, thus he would be responsible to some extent for any such crime.

That does not mean he should or should not kill Joker, but rather that he faces the dilemma of being potentially partially responsible for much suffering on one hand and directly/indirectly responsible for one death on the other hand.

In terms of which option is worse, well the former may have negligible or significantly worse outcomes for a significant number of unspecified people who likely have no direct input to the situation in which the original choice (of whether or not to kill Joker) arose nor influence within subsequent situations (such as when the Joker breaks out); while the later option has a far more centralized distribution of outcomes with the majority of stakeholders directly involved in the situation in which the original choice arose and significant influence over subsequent situations.

High centralisation of impacts, high stakeholder involvement in initial cause and over subsequent initiatives would suggest that the later course of action (neutralising Joker) would be the appropriate course of action under the assumption there is a moderate to high chance of re-offence without neutralisation.

 

[Karl R]

Simply put, from a moral perspective, should batman kill joker? That is, is it more ethical to kill him, or more ethical to simply keep throwing him in arkum asylum knowing he will just escape to torture and kill more people? Why?

If you're looking for an ethical solution, Bruce Wayne could invest in a $2,000,000,000 security upgrade for Arkham Asylum.

The huge mistake is viewing this problem as being either/or.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

Simply put, from a moral perspective, should batman kill joker? That is, is it more ethical to kill him, or more ethical to simply keep throwing him in arkum asylum knowing he will just escape to torture and kill more people? Why?

Now I don't want to get into a continuity debate and i do realize that there are marketing and character reasons to prevent him from doing it, but i want to focus on this purely from a moral standpoint.

Also for the purposes of this debate let's focus on the comic book version of the joker rather than the animated version (and certainly not the adam west version:cover

Well have at it, i'll post my own thoughts later.

It would be a useless endeavor to continue to throw the Joker in Arkum Asylum since, from my knowledge this facility is housed to serve as mitigation for destructive behavior. It may also serve as a facility for rehabilitation. Since the Joker is extremely dangerous and psychotic, he continuously pose a danger to himself (well, not really) and to society.

 

[Me Myself]

If you're looking for an ethical solution, Bruce Wayne could invest in a $2,000,000,000 security upgrade for Arkham Asylum.

The huge mistake is viewing this problem as being either/or.

Irs comicbooks, it really doesnt matter.

If the allmighty scriptwritter needs the Joker out, Necron comes out of hell and makes a portal that transports Joker out of the Arkham Asylum (yes, I am serious, craziest things have happened. Again, its comics)

 

[Penumbra]

Simply put, from a moral perspective, should batman kill joker? That is, is it more ethical to kill him, or more ethical to simply keep throwing him in arkum asylum knowing he will just escape to torture and kill more people? Why?

Now I don't want to get into a continuity debate and i do realize that there are marketing and character reasons to prevent him from doing it, but i want to focus on this purely from a moral standpoint.

Also for the purposes of this debate let's focus on the comic book version of the joker rather than the animated version (and certainly not the adam west version:cover

Well have at it, i'll post my own thoughts later.

The main reason the Joker gets out is because the writers need the archvillain to continue to be present. Batman doesn't purposely kill because he constantly touches a line near insanity and obsession and needs certain self-imposed unbreakable rules to keep him disciplined. As a dark character that's also firmly categorized in the "hero" camp in his genre and the DC universe rather than the "anti-hero" camp (which is a bit tricky to do, a dark hero rather than an anti-hero), there has to be certain aspects of differentiation from an anti-hero, which for Batman includes interrogation and violence but not murder.

Supposing that the DC universe really existed, and Batman was a well-meaning vigilante and Joker was an amazing escape artist that could absolutely not be securely held, and he escaped multiple times leading to the death and suffering of people each time, it would indeed be ethically reasonable for the Batman to just kill him eventually imo, and be the guy Gotham needs.

In certain limited storylines, the Joker has indeed died:

Spoiler: Batman Killing the Joker

-The DC animated universe (spanning the shows of the Batman Animated Series, the Superman Animated Series, Static Shock, Batman Beyond, and the Justice League), which has its own internally coherent continuity different from the DC comics. In that universe, the Joker was killed by the third Robin (Tim Drake), after Robin was kidnapped, tortured, and driven insane over a period of weeks by the Joker and Harley Quinn. Batman and Batgirl eventually saved Robin, and during that event, Robin killed the Joker to save Batman by shooting the Joker in the chest, which resulted in his true death. The Joker, however, had implanted a machine into Robin that activated decades later, resulting in a copy of Joker's personality and memories (not a continuation, though). Batman Beyond (Terry McGinnis) killed this copy by destroying the machine.

-In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns comic, Batman does sort of kill the Joker. At the end of their fight, the Joker begins repeatedly stabbing Batman in the abdomen with a knife, and Batman resorts to partially breaking Joker's neck to stop his attacks. The Joker sits there apparently paralyzed mocking Batman for making him losing control, says he'll see him in hell, and then twists his own neck to finish the break, resulting in his death.

-The end of The Killing Joke is debatable. It's one of the most famous Batman story arcs. The story is mostly self-contained and involves the full Joker story from the origin. Towards the end, the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) through the spine, paralyzing her from the waist down. He then kidnaps her father Commissioner Gordon, keeps him naked and chained, and shows him naked pictures of his wounded daughter to try to drive him insane, with the theme that any person can go insane under the right circumstances. Batman shows up, Gordon convinces him to take him in by the book, and at the end when Batman is victorious, Joker taunts Batman a lot by suggesting he's insane too, and ends with a joke. Batman laughs along with the Joker, and it ends with Batman reaching his hands around the Joker's neck followed by a dark panel. It's ambiguous (probably purposely), but one of the legit interpretations of the ending is that Batman broke the Joker's neck. Barbara Gordon was later depicted as paralyzed for the next 23 years or so (1988 till around 2011) but three years in comic-book time, so they made that part canon, and the writer didn't intend it to be canon or continued like that.

There are also instances where the idea of Batman's inability to kill the Joker has been explored:

Spoiler: Ethics of Batman Killing

-There was a story line in the comics, combined into movie-form called "Batman: Under the Red Hood", where the second Robin (Jason Todd) was brutally murdered by the Joker (beat bloody with a metal pipe and then exploded with a bomb). Years later, a vigilante that was killing criminals named the Red Hood showed up, which turned out to be Jason Todd, resurrected by a magical pit in the DC universe that can bring beings back to life. Todd was furious at Batman, and couldn't believe that the Joker was still alive and loose so many years after killing him, finding it utterly ridiculous that Batman didn't kill him by now. He planned to kill the Joker himself, but Batman convinces him not to.

The Joker did die in his very first appearance back in 1940, after all.

True, but he died from accidentally stabbing himself rather than Batman purposely killing him, and writers realized they didn't want to kill him off so they included a panel later showing that he didn't really die.

 

[Penumbra]

Superman once said the reason he doesn't kill is so that he will always be stronger than the villians he puts away. Constantly fighting threats while your previous enemies rot in cells makes you the stronger of the lot. I can't remember the supervillian he was fighting but they used that to highlight the whole point it keeps the hero in prime condition unlike his adversaries. Makes sense in a comic book way where the enemies will never stop appearing even if you kill them.

Sometimes Superman fights aliens that are stronger than himself. He usually (though not quite always) shows mercy anyway.

Sometimes he kills, though:

Spoiler: Superman Kills

-Superman killed Doomsday in the famous "Death of Superman" arc. Doomsday was a mindlessly evil villain so powerful that he beat the Justice League, and Superman basically did a kamikaze with him to stop him after an extended fight that he realized he was losing. Superman was hurt down to an inch of his life (took months to heal, people thought he was dead), and Doomsday did die but he has the ability to regenerate from death, which Superman didn't know at the time because it was their first encounter. So as far as he was concerned at the time, he "killed" Doomsday seeing no other choice to save Metropolis, and realizing that he too would die in the process.

-Particularly violent: When a character named Maxwell Lord mind-controlled Superman into believing that Wonder Woman was Doomsday, and that "he" (she) had killed Lois Lane, Superman went into a rage fighting "Doomsday" (Wonder Woman). During that fight, Superman screamed, choked her, shot heat vision at her face, flew her into space while choking and burning her, and tried to throw her into the sun to kill her. He later tried to punch her to death, tried to crush her with a boulder, threw her to earth causing an explosion the size of a nuclear detonation, and he managed to successfully break her wrist at one point, and used his x-ray vision to try to find her after she had eluded him to hunt her down and kill her. Wonder Woman eventually managed to beat Superman after all that though (she tends to beat Kryptonians in single combat on the rare occasion that she fights one), and she had absolutely no way to save Superman from the mind-control other than to kill Maxwell Lord, so she did so by breaking Lord's neck. Ironically, Superman was mad at her for doing that, even though he tried to kill her when he thought she was Doomsday and even though she had no other choice. But basically, the point is, Superman went into a murderous rage.

-In the DC animated universe, Superman was willing to die himself to make sure Darkseid died in an explosion in space. At this point, it was extremely personal because Darkseid had previously mind-controlled Superman to do terrible things (for which Superman had shown mercy afterwards) and is in general one of Superman's biggest threats and is a genocidal villain more powerful than Superman himself, so this time Superman decides he absolutely has to kill Darkseid. Batman tries to convince him otherwise as Superman walks towards a beaten Darkseid to finish him, but Superman ignores Batman and even hurts him by knocking him away, but Batman forcibly teleports Superman away as an explosion kills Darkseid (which would have killed Superman too).

Because Superman is a particularly difficult hero to write for due to his power, good writers often explore "what if" scenarios in parallel universes where Superman makes decisions that lead him to evil:

Spoiler: Evil Superman

-In an episode of Justice League, Lex Luthor became president, messed things up horribly, and murdered the Flash. Superman stopped him, and Lex taunted him about how he'll just throw him in jail and this whole cycle will repeat again, and that Superman is selfish and egotistic and only keeps Lex around so that he himself can be keep being the hero. So Superman killed him with heat vision, and then instituted martial law across the planet to be its dictator "for its own good" in a group called "The Justice Lords" (rather than Justice League). He regularly lobotomized his villains with heat vision to permanently neutralize them. He was eventually stopped by the good Justice League. In a later episode, the good Superman comes across a similar scenario and nearly kills Lex in a season finale, but decides not to after seeing what the other version of himself eventually became.

-In the game Injustice Gods Among Us, it explores the same theme. The Joker mind-controls Superman from another timeline to believing that Lois Lane is Doomsday, and also triggers a nuclear device in Metropolis to go off if Lane's heart stops. Superman, thinking she is Doomsday, kills her, resulting in the destruction of Metropolis. When he realizes what he did, he loses it, and kills Joker by ripping his guts out as Batman tries to stop him. Superman then takes over the world Justice Lord style, and murdered heroes that stood against him. He is eventually defeated by the good Superman from the regular timeline. The important theme with these arcs was that this other Superman wasn't any different; just a version of Superman that faced different events and made different decisions.

-The movie Superman vs the Elite is based off a story arc from the comics. In the movie, Superman keeps defeating this certain bad guy, but the guy keeps breaking out of prison, because he is super-powered. And every time he does, he becomes more powerful and kills more people. After like the third time, this other group of anti-heroes calling themselves "the Elite" kills that bad guy by shattering his skull, much to Superman's disapproval. Most of the public considers Superman outdated for not doing what needs to be done and blaming him for the deaths of the people killed by that bad guy, and Superman questions whether he can be the hero the public wants him to be anymore. The Elite eventually challenge Superman to a 4 vs 1 fight on the moon, and try to kill Superman. They are unable to, and he "kills" all four of them by going absolutely nuts and showing tenfold more power than he did during the rest of the movie. The public is terrified, but then he reveals that he didn't really kill them, he just beat them up really badly and purposely made it look like he killed them to the public, and wanted to show them an unrestrained version of himself to explain why he needs to give himself rules like not killing. He has too much power to just let loose, which he demonstrated by showing what it looks like. The public eventually accepts Superman again, though it's kind of shallow because imo it didn't fully address the original problem of the repeatedly escaping murderous bad guy.

 

[no-body]

Agreed that it's so they can keep the comic book plots going and nothing to do with morality. Batman like Superman works best in "elseworld" continuities when free from all the history and push to keep the status quo going.

But who knows he's a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime, having a crazy morality meter would be in line with the character especially with the "Bruce Wayne is the mask, Batman is the real guy" interpretation.

 

[Dingbat]

Agreed that it's so they can keep the comic book plots going and nothing to do with morality. Batman like Superman works best in "elseworld" continuities when free from all the history and push to keep the status quo going.

But who knows he's a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime, having a crazy morality meter would be in line with the character especially with the "Bruce Wayne is the mask, Batman is the real guy" interpretation.

If he didn't have morality he would just be the Punisher in a batsuit.