The Cheshire Clown: Infectious Laughter

The Joker is one of our most notoriously laughing pop cultural nightmares. He creates worshippers and victims by spreading his infectious laugh and is both in personal union: one of the most polarising ‘gods’ and one of the most unholy and vile ‘monsters’ in popular culture. In DC comic books and (animated) films, Joker’s laugh can detach itself from that of the violent clown. It can spread. In visual fiction, Joker’s laugh is contagious in two ways: on the one hand, as a form of physical and mental illness, and on the other, as a symbolic vehicle for civil disobedience, escalating social protest and outbursts of public violence. In both cases, Joker affects the physiology of others by ‘jokerising’ them – those ‘infected’ by the Clown Prince of Crime not only behave but also look like the Joker. While other authors of this edited collection argue that humour and laughter turn gods into humans and bring to light the human in the monstrous, this chapter explores the opposite: monstrous laughter as a wicked facial disease, as the embodiment of sick jokes and a threat to society and the human. Focusing on the iconography and ‘epidemic’ impact of laughter in recent Joker stories, this chapter clarifies the post/moral ‘cultural work’, ‘aesthetic achievements’ and cultural ideas of science and art personified in one of the most iconic supervillains of our time.