Course Reflection

I’ve never liked writing, not in English or in Spanish, never liked English classes ever since I was little. English classes always tell you to write about something in a specific way trying to have all the check marks on a grading scale. Writing became boring and when I took this class I saw a glimmer of hope when I was told by Professor Longhany that we could choose any topic we wanted and in any approach we wanted. Felt that it was best to pick something that I truly enjoyed so when I wrote I would be interested.

I decided to do the research paper on the Joker, my favorite villain in the world of comics and the rival to my favorite hero Batman. I felt that while I did research I would find out new information on both of the characters, which would lead me to do more research since I was enjoying it. I’ve always been curious on the Joker’s actions, he has always interested me and in all honesty I have never thought he was truly insane. His actions always had reason, they weren’t the reasons that probably you or me would think about but they were still reasons nonetheless.

As I did research I found sources the supported by hypothesis yet I found interesting information that lead me to change my mind just a little. I have always known that the Joker had an abnormal obsession with the Batman but after reading up on it I discovered that it was more that just an obsession, in majority of the times his obsession was explained with love. Funny thing was that recently I had read Death of the Family, the newest Joker related comic in the New 52 in DC comics and in this series Batman is thinking and analyzing the Joker and he associates the Joker’s reaction everything that he sees him to that of somebody who is in love seeing their partner just from the way that the Joker’s pupils dilated.

Outcome 1: Research Proposal

When starting this research project we were asked to create a question that we wanted to answer. We were required to find the audience that this question’s answer would be directed to. This way we would be able to focus our style of writing and all of the processes we do to that specific audience. Establishing an audience and the question helps us understand what to research, it narrows down our research process.

To what extent can you classify the Joker as a genius, a psychopath, somebody who is in love or is he something more complex?

My readers would mainly be comic book fans or superhero fans who know who the Joker is but I want it also to be easy for somebody who doesn’t know he is and be able to understand the character. Knowing this, I would have to make sure that when I speak of the Joker I state which Joker I speak of the keep the development clear for the readers. I need to be able to connect with the Joker as the psychopath that he is but also as the genius behind the mask.

Outcome 2: Survey

After doing research on my topic and analyzing the areas that other people had touched on already I had found a gap in the research. After all the research done I came to the realization that there are multiple Jokers and each one is different than the last. As time passes the Joker evolves and changes with the people therefore arriving to one general diagnoses of the Joker would be flawed. I then created a survey to discover the way people think of the Joker today to establish what the general opinion is.

I conducted a survey to learn what the public opinion on the metal state of the Joker and to learn what they fear. I posted my survey on reddit under the subreddit of Batman and asked for participants who had knowledge of the Joker ranging from comics to modern movies. In my survey I asked the participants to state what mental state they believed the Joker had based upon from their experiences regarding the Joker. I asked this question to discover what the public opinion of the Joker was and to relate it to my discoveries while doing research. I wanted to know what the public opinion of the Joker was. Also I asked what their definition of fear was to deduce what fear is in today’s society. I followed this question by asking them whether they feared the Joker to discover if the Joker fell under their own definitions of fear and link it to my own conclusion on how the Joker represents society today. By conduction this survey I wanted to know how the public thought of the Joker and fear to relate it to see if it related to my findings.

Outcome 3: Intertextual Map

One of the assignments was to make connections between our sources, we were supposed to link sources for support and for opposing ideas. This way we would be able to make connections and have more support on all of our sections since we would be obtaining support from several sources. Also this assignment lead to the organization of our information giving it a more focused path.

GUSTINES, GEORGE G. "The Joker in the Deck: Birth of a Supervillain." New York Times (1923-Current file): 1. Oct 05 2010.ProQuest. Web. 12 Feb. 2014 .

·         News Paper article discussing the creation of the Joker.

·         First sketch of the Joker

·         Contradictions between the Joker and Batman, sense of humor versus seriousness.

Links with:

Langley, Travis. "Reflections on the Psychopathy of the Joker: A Comic-Con Panel Report."International Journal of Comic Art 13.1 (2011): 654-76. Print.

·         Discussion with the creator of the Joker, original thoughts on how the Joker was supposed to be and how he got his look.

·         Nature of the Joker and change over time of him, Links with: Ioannidou, Joanna. "The Dark Defender: Dexter and Making Heroes out of Serial Killers." In this article the discussion of the most recent Joker in the movie Dark Knight is discussed and how his evil has changed. This article as links bank to "Reflections on the Psychopathy of the Joker: A Comic-Con Panel Report." as the Joker’s creation is left a mystery as the creator wanted.

·         Also this article it clearly states that the Joker is Psychotic bringing everything together as experts on the matter discuss his sanity.

Outcome 4: Interpretative Summary

            This assignment was in my opinion one of my favorites. Here we had to squeeze as much information of one source as much as possible to be able to use for our research project. This was a perfect start on how we should analyze each of our sources. With this practice analyzing the other sources was much easier and with the help we received in class the process on the other sources was for thorough.

The article begins with a description of psychosis and psychopathy to establish a clear line between the two; Dr. Langley and Rosenberg do not want any confusion to be made between the two when discussing the mental state of the Joker. While they describe each of the mental conditions they provide examples to some of the major characteristics describing each of them. For describing psychosis he clearly states that the Joker may have characteristics of a being psychotic like having persecutory beliefs and delusions of grandeur but he only has these characteristics because “people are indeed out to get him” and “he has reason to believe that he is a better criminal that others in Gotham City”.  

Outcome 5: Literature Review

           Without a doubt my literature review is the section of my paper that I worked on the most. Being the biggest part of the paper I had to revisit the section several times to fix problems within it. At first it was revisions done on my own, then came the adjustments that I made after peers reviewed my paper.

            “We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized they were inside us,” Stephen King utilizes this quote to explain how evil doesn’t have to be in the shape of a monster for every single human being is capable of it, they just try to ignore it. The state of one’s mind is not questioned when he or she jumps in to a fire to save another person’s life. It is usually filed under a selfless deed, for saving a life is a wonderful thing to do even though the idea itself is crazy from an uninvolved point of view. Risking one’s life to save another usually seems like the rational thing to do. Yet when discussing the sanity of the arsonist there is already a predetermined assumption that deviates from the norm of society, meaning that he was not in the right mind when he started the fire for whatever reason it was. The assumption that the person who started the fire would be negative meaning that there is something wrong with the individual making him different than everybody else. Or is he?  The Joker is an individual whose sanity gets questioned for his day-to-day actions. Most would agree that something is wrong in his head for all the chaos that he bring to the world but the question comes to mind wondering whether the Joker is actually insane or sane.

One of the parts that I worked on the most was the intro, a paper needs to have a strong intro and thanks to the help from my professor he made me come to realization that my introduction was misleading the readers on what the topic of my essay was going to be.

“We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized they were inside us,” Stephen King utilizes this quote to explain how evil doesn’t have to be in the shape of a monster for every single human being is capable of it, they just try to ignore it. The Joker is a man that doesn’t require an introduction in our world or in the DC universe. His reputation as a dangerous man to pedestrians, non super powered heroes and even to the super powered heroes. As of late his character has begun to grow more and more in popularity with movies, comic books, and video games. While his plans might not seem as well thought out as the other plans of the other villains in the DC universe, he still gets the job done. Yet he didn’t used to be as murderous as he seems now, at first he only killed 2 people until DC killed him off, resurrected him, and made him not kill again for 30 years. While still in this 30 year ban from killing his reputation grew and his actions still made people question his motives yet he is the Joker. Throughout all his “life” the Joker has gone through many changes like physical, mental, and most would agree that something is wrong in his head for all the chaos that he bring to the world but the question comes to mind wondering whether the Joker is actually insane or sane.

After revision I was able to introduce the Joker’s character in the world of comics and how to address what I was going to talk about in my research project.

This class led me to do research in areas that I have always enjoyed and explore my writing abilities. Instead of being assigned the entire paper at the end of the semester, the assignment was split up in to bite size assignments that were easy to accomplish while not being so trivial that we would ignore them and not do them. This is an incredible way of writing a paper, also each part was discusses and explained in class to maximize what we should be getting out of our research along side with how to do it. I know that thanks to this class I have improved my writing abilities and I now that I will be using this in my future career as an engineer.