Day 5 – What I learned …

[Isti Madarasz]

What’s most interesting in this scene is Batman trying to scare the Joker, but he can’t, this is a man you can’t scare, he’s not afraid – it’s very hard to corner someone when you don’t know what they want, what their goals are.

Although it starts out as an aggressive interrogation, they soon sit down to talk, it seems that’s what the Joker wants – and he seems to be in control. Soon he draws parallels between himself and Batman, which the latter tries to deny, but actually makes perfect sense. At one point Batman loses his temper, gets more and more aggressive, the other cops want to come in, but Batman shuts them out – he becomes a bad guy too, the Joker was right, they’re not so different.

When Batman realises that his love is in danger, too, he has no choice but to keep beating the Joker as long as he can – but the Joker keeps laughing. The initial balance of power changes very quickly and that’s what makes the Joker really scary.

What I learned is that I also have to find some similarities between the protagonist and the antagonist, because that makes their relationship more interesting.

[Deb Johnson]

In this lesson, I learned the importance of the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist. I re-examined the structure of my antagonist to make him mirror and contrast my protagonist more effectively. This was a profound insight. I was able to find a theme in my story that I hadn’t seen before.

[Mary Dietz]

• What makes this scene great?
• How these two enemies are similar and how they are different.
• What are their motivations for being in this relationship?
• Interesting action and dialogue.

This Batman scene has the Joker hitting with words and Batman hitting with fists. Both hit hard.

The Joker seems to want to save Batman some grief by telling him how to play the game: loosen up your rules. This only makes Batman more stringent and demanding. He wants information. When Joker concedes and reveals the locations, he adds that now Batman has a dilemma–he can’t save both persons because they are in two different locations. The rules won’t work. There’s a dance of subtle violence with overt violence. As the audience, I’m surprised to see the Joker giving decent advice. I’m also surprised to see Batman seemingly being brutal in his tactics when he intends to save lives.

Both characters live on the margins. Both are passionate about playing their “game.” Both put their face in the other guy’s face; though they use approach things differently, both are serious about the outcomes.