Honey, I Finished The Internet

stuff 27 Comments

“There is still a misunderstanding to the portrayal of insanity in the Batman films and movies and what it means to be legally insane.” Pozios said. “For instance, the Joker has been repeatedly hospitalized at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, even though, in real life, he probably wouldn’t qualify.”

27 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The Internet”

  2. Yeah. I have issues with the whole “messed up rich guy battles crime single handedly because he’s a ninja” thing too. And do not get me started on the omnipotent (Jewish? Methodist?) Kryptonian alien boy scout thing.
    Gives me an excuse to link to this hilarious timewaster. (Just click on something from Most Popular or Newest and go from there.)

  3. ” ‘This discrepancy likely exists because in comic books, the mission is usually a plot device that drives the story,’ he explained. ”
    No shitski, Batman.

  5. “For instance, the Joker has been repeatedly hospitalized at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, even though, in real life, he probably wouldn’t qualify.”
    Just another joyless nobody who can’t be entertained for a lack of understanding the concept of suspension of disbelief.
    In real life, Nanny Bloomberg is Mayor of Gotham and that takes a suspension of disbelief every day.

  6. How many people here have suffered any form of mental illness? Me, I have been treated for clinical depression twice in my life. That’s a lot different from being “a little sad”. The difference the doctor is identifying between psychotic and psychopathic is very important and I actually appreciate the sense of humour he has to use comic books as a foil to make his point. Mental illness is real and terrible to deal with but very rarely is it dangerous, especially when it is treated. Psychopaths, however, are not “sick”, they cannot be treated, they do not suffer from mental illness, they’re just the ultimate a**holes who are unable to empathize or care. When people cannot tell the difference between mental illness and psychopathy we do real harm to the people who are mentally ill.
    This hits home for me, especially, aside from my own depression because we are in the process of adopting a little girl with a family history of schizophrenia. The fear that this misunderstood disease engenders in people is one reason I have no intention of mentioning it to anyone but our closest family. Education like this will help her.

  8. (BTW, I’m sorry for wasting bandwidth, but my link @3:30 wasn’t great. I pared it down to minimum to confound the filter demon. Google “superman is a dick” and click the first thing that comes up. Gets you to the best part of the website. [James Lileks also has a wonderful section on comic book covers.])

  9. How many people here have suffered any form of mental illness?
    Posted by: the rat at September 11, 2011 4:18 PM
    *raises hand*
    Depression is a nasty bit of work. You get depressed, don’t get enjoyment out of previously-enjoyed activities, leading to yet more depression. A vicious downward spiral that I’m all too familiar with.

  10. People who suffer real issues like depression and schizophrenia aren’t usually the same people, that everyone refers to as “insane” when referencing sadistic serial murders and terrorists.
    Batman villians are so over the top and merciless, that referring to them as insane is simply a shortcut for deviant.

  12. What Colin and Rat said. Been there, done that three times over my 65+ years. Not nice at all.
    Thankfully with help and understanding was able to get over it and come to terms with it.
    The illness is a hell of a lot more prolific than one realizes.

  14. The message I have for all parents … do not send you kids to the public education system unless you want them to become emotionally and mentally disordered.
    All you really need to do is teach kids reading, writing and a basic math. After that they can learn anything they want to.
    “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is”. – Isaac Asimov

  15. There is a certain segment of the population (IYKWIMAITYD) that has trouble distinguishing movies from reality. Naturally, someone from this segment is plunged into confusion when a movie turns out to be a work of fiction.
    These people get bent out of shape watching “Father Knows Best” or “Ozzie and Harriet” because these idealized, fictional families don’t correspond to their personal experience.
    It usually doesn’t last long, though. They go watch some Oliver Stone pic or a Michael Moore documentary and adjust reality to fit them. Everything’s fine after that.

  16. “For instance, the Joker has been repeatedly hospitalized at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, even though, in real life, he probably wouldn’t qualify.”
    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all you need to know about the state of modern psychiatry.

  17. People who are jumping all over this article need to get a grip. The issue is that there’s a specific medical definition of insanity, psychotic, and other terms that often get applied in colloquial language. It is far from a bad thing, let alone squishy bleeding-heart-ism, to call attention to this in an amusing way with a panel at ComiCon. I mean, no one’s trying to tell anyone how to speak here (as far as I can tell), so shouldn’t we all be in favor of promoting precise understanding of technical language?

  20. I think a lot of you are confused.
    The reason Joker would not have been hospitalized is because he is not psychotic from the psychiatry perspective. Moreover he can understand the consequences of his actions and can understand that his actions are not legal. Hence he doesn’t qualify for insanity defence and would be denied that excuse. He would be tried as anyone else of sound mind.
    However I do disagree with the psychiatrist in the article. The joker does fulfill the diagnostic criteria of bipolar I disorder as well as both antisocial and borderline personality traits. This doesn’t allow him to claim insanity as he still understands his actions and consequences. He may be able to apply diminished responsibility.
    Fulfilling the diagnostic above, bipolar, I probably would have placed him under a form 1 and hospitalized him for threatening to inflict immediate harm on the citizen called Batman. In Ontario I can do this. In some US states this is becoming very difficult to do and very likely, with Joker being extremely cunning he would immediately call for a C&C hearing and get off by denying any intent on harming batman.

  22. langmann – the problem there is that there isn’t one Joker. Every writing/editing team, every screenwriter, every novelist has their own take on exactly how delusional/not-criminally-responsible the Joker is. Some of them certainly qualify, some of them don’t.
    I’ve honestly never understood the predilection to try and analyze fictional characters as if they were real and consistent and independent, instead of what they are: theme vehicles and metaphors used by the author to carry a story. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of fandom a long time ago.

  23. I find Obama a lot more scary than the Joker.
    You’re more scared of a real person than a fictional character. Most sane people would be.
    For this specific real person what scares you the most?

  24. @ Daniel: sure, but I am just commenting on Joker here. Some of the comments here verify how little people know about both psychiatry and criminal law.

  25. “…he and two other mental health experts — who together form a trio called Broadcast Thought — will team up with Mark E. Safarik, a retired FBI agent, to speak at the San Diego Comic-Con on a panel titled “Detecting Deviants in the Dark Night: Profiling Gotham City’s Serial Killers.”
    And people are going to pay to listen to this?
    Naaawwwwwwwww. Got to one of those government grant things.

  27. This article is really sort of funny.
    Because experiment after real life experiment shows that psychiatrists can not reliably distinguish the ‘insane’ from ‘normal’ people, much less diagnose and prescribe mentally ill patients with significant consistency.
    Worse, a year of Freudian psychoanalysis by a licensed analyst has been shown to be less effective than reading a book on mental health, time and time again.
    And even the psychology industry publically acknowledges that they have about 10-15 diagnoses for every prescription, which is a blatant case of unnecessary complexity and churning.
    These folks should repair their overly controlling industry rather than picking on Batman. They sound like religious zealots. Which in many ways they are.

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