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popculturebuffet · 1 year ago

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Batman The Animated Series: Christmas With the Joker Review (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Happy Holidays all you happy people! Christmas Season is here, and why wait to december when I can spread some holiday cheer now?

So to begin our holly jolly holiday coverage this year, i'm taking a look at a christmas classic i'm honestly baffled it's taken me this long to revisit. I grew up with this episode and fondly remember it being on the batman tape I had or rented back then. I just simply forget sometimes I have Batman the Animated Series right there and cant really take that for granted since the person in charge of Warner Bros thinks it's "brave" to burn down content for the insurance money.

For those who haven't experienced this holiday classic, Christmas With the Joker is the second episode of batman the animated series, though it aired later in broadcast order to line up with the timing. IT's also our first exposure to the magic that's Mark Hamill as joker, it certainly was mine thanks to aforementioned Tape.

Hamill got the role thanks to serendipity: The crew had initally cast Tim Curry, god on earth, to play the part. It SEEMS like perfect casting.. but it just didn't quite fit, as we can see from what footage of Curry as joker we have. Tim wasn't bad and I could see his joker working and him playing the part again sometime had he not sadly had to retire. The problem is his version didn't quite match what the team was going for with Mr. J. Curry's joker is one who jokes and what not, but comes off like a bastard who makes the bad jokes half heartedly as an excuse to do mayhem. The DCAU joker is the best of both worlds: he GENUINELY loves his bad puns, his craft: he lives in his own demented world where everything's a joke. When Curry's joker doe sa bit or a line, it feels like he's putting on an act, with Hamil's it's a PERFORMANCE. It's what he does. He's an entertainer, he's a comedian, he's a clown, he's going to give em a hell of a show and the death, horror and other mayhem that comes along with it is part of the act. It's key to it. It's the spice to him. Tim Curry didn't do BAD, he just didn't fit the bill. Hamill by contrast when auditioing for the now open part saw Joker's laugh as an INSTURMENT. You could tell what he was feelilng just by it's inflection. Hamill understood the character and tha'ts why he's the best at playing him: He gets just how to play Mr J, every nuance and fascet. Just as Conroy felt batman rise.. the joker's laugh escaped out of mark hamill and never went back until sadly, there just wasn't a batman to chase anymore.

The episode itself is something diffrent from the previous 3 batman the animated series episodes i've covered: I Am the Night and Two-Face were psycological adventures, the former going literally into bruce's head and showing the pain in his life, and the latter showing the gradual downfall of a man who simply needed help but wouldn't let himself get as much as needed, who put duty over himself.

Christmas With The Joker.. is a wacky christmas adventure. It has stakes and what not, but it's ultimately Batman and Robin not getting christmas eve off after the Joker decides to hyjack the airwaves with a demented holiday special. Yet.. it's still so damn good. Sometimes you need a fairly deep character study of batman or one of his foes.. and sometimes you just need the Joker deciding to do a holiday special with recurring characters as the hostages, and Batman and Robin on a deadline to stop him. Just let Mark Hamill ham it up, let Batman punch some people. BTAS has some truly stunning masterpieces.. but it also knew how to just have fun and lay back once in a while. This episode's just .. pure fun and i'll show you why under the cut.

We open at Arkham Asylum, the happiest crime against psychatric care on earth as it's Christmas Eve and Joker gets one of the best character entrances of all time. While I forgot a detail or too about this episode i've never forgotten this intro: the inmates are all singing carols, no one we'd know yet as most of Batman's Rogue's haven't been introduced. It's something I liked about Batman TAS and that seems to have stuck for the comics afterword: Anytime we visit arkham we usually see some of Batman's other rogues even if we're there for say the Joker finding out someone did a copyright infringment on him, so it's weird to see no one else present yet.

So the Joker enters the series singing that classic version of Jingle Bells. If you haven't heard it, there's only one proper way to introduce you to the best version of the song outside of this episode. TAKE IT AWAY ROBERT GOULET!

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That's brilliant enough... but then he hops on the christmas tree, turns it into a rocket, and flies off laughing all the way. AHAHAHHEEHAHAHAHAHAA. It's a perfect joker move: it's overly complicated, required a ton of prep work, a ton of money we don't know how he got..

Okay we know exactly how he got it we just can't talk about it on a children's show, and it's hilaroious. in less than a minute we know the Joker's a madman, he's clever, and his crimes are over the top because it's just more FUN that way. It's what seperates the joker from most other Batman TAS villians: the others are, with exceptions like Penguin or Rupert Thorne, sympathetic on some level: Mr Freeze just wants his wife back after a corrupt rich asshole tried to kill her and made him a popsicle, Poison Ivy wants to save the planet no matter who she has to kill, Two Face's DiD consumed him, Baby Doll was traumitzed by being stuck in a body she didn't want, Killer Croc is an alligator man, which sounds boss on paper but really isn't.

The Joker is diffrent in that we don't know WHY he does this. It didn't hit me till this watch that he's one of the few foes in TAS who isn't given a full backstory upfront. While I love the film, I honestly forgot for a second that Mask of the Phantasm revealed him to have been a plainclothes gangster before he became the clown prince of crime.. and even THEN we don't know what made him like this. Maybe he's always been this way, maybe some trauma shaped him, we don't know. And that's what works: that mystique: we dont' know why the joker is the way he is, he just.. is. It's what makes him the perfect counterpart to Batman: Bruce is a man trying to take a chaotic world and give it order, give it someone who can provide justice where the law can't or simply is outnumbered to, all in the hope that one day no kid will ever loose his parents like he did, even if the quest to eats him alive (and at least in this contiunity as seen with his older self it certainly has in some ways). Joker simply wants to have fun, to put on a show... it's just his show is chaos, death and funny only to him. What he finds funny is frankly disturbing. He's the only one in on his jokes and he's happy that way.

This episode emphasies that, as well as the contrast: Batman is worked up that christmas eve, worried the Joker will pull something. Robin, being less experinced with the joker and costumed punching people what good brushes it off, thinking no one would possibly work on christmas. Bruce gets that maybe the theatrical clown who escaped on a christmas tree rocket he smuggled into a psychatic hospital has other christmas plans and they aren't good.

While Bruce is on edge partly because he's a workaholic, to the point he nearly stops a guy returning a package to an old lady on suspcion he's a mugger, he's not WRONG: the Joker is flashy. The bigger the audience, the better the show. It's why he frequently hyjacks the airwaves in this show: EVERYONE has to watch. He's fine with a small audience , but it has to be carefully curated... i.e. he's fine if it's just bats as bats is the perfect straight man. The perfect grim brick wall to play off of and someone he knows will never end his shit entirely for a simple reason.

So he's not going to stop baiting him. Bruce's mistake.. is SEARCHING for the joker. See while Batman knows the Joker... the Joker knows Batman. He made an audacious exit so Batman would KNOW he was out there and sweat it out trying to find him... but he also knows Bats well enough to avoid detection right away. To wait till it's time to start the show. Then it's fair play and Brucey can have all the clues he wants, it's an even match. But to Joker nothing would be less fun than batman spoiling his fun ahead of time. It's part simply how the game works for him and part simply being the kind of person who HAS to control the game. It has to be played by his rules , it's his show, he planned this, batman is simply performing it.

So Bruce gives up, has a nice christmas dinner for once, and everything's fine.... until he and Dick sit down to watch it's a wonderful life. I like the joke of Bruce not watching it because of the title. It's not only a common problem, many assume the film is super cheery because of it's title, but the idea of one man being important enough to make a diffrence is bruce's whole life. Of course the idea of a film where someone doubts that wouldn't be something he'd go to voluntarily. To him it's all about control.

Bruce's first watch of It's a Wonderful Life is interrupted by a holiday special.. CHRISTMAS WITH THE JOKER! Live from.. somewhere in Gotham, Joker's doing a cheesy holiday special, the kind I haven't seen a lot of , but that caked the 70's, down tow earin ga sweater ala bing crosby. He taught joker everything he knows about being terrible.

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Naturally Joker needs a studio audience and while his awesome audience of cutouts, including batman and robin themselves, is fun and all, he needs some live hostages. Really ties the room together. So he kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock.. and Summer Gleason

Summer is Gotham's reporter. If you forgot her, huzzah! It means it wasn't just me... but it's also fair as she really is just there for exposition and dosen't have Kent Brockman's lunacy or Perd Hapley's mastery of the worm

So it's easy to forget she exists, and weird she's here instead of Renee Montoya. Maybe they wanted a civlliann with the cops, maybe they thought of doing the mayor as one of these but found Gordon and Bullock both too fun to let out. Maybe she was supposed to be bigger in the series and just never quite hit it with the writers. We don't really know, though if I had to guess it'd be the last one. It feels like they intended to have more for Summer to do as she shows up more in the earlier episodes.. but it became clear they didn't really need her for more than just the ocasional smattering of news exposition, and even then really didn't need news exposition THAT often as Batman often did his own research better and used newspapers more.

Joker's kindapped the "Awful Lawfuls" as his requisite hostages and plans to kill them if Batman dosen't find him by midnight. Batman does trace the broadcast.. but when Robin points out it's easy, Bats counters it's NEVER this easy with the joker.

The Joker.. dosen't let Bruce down, as while their headed to the scene they not only have to deal with the giant toys rampaging through gotham.. but also a train. The train .. is easily the weakest part of this episode. It just.. stops for a bit so Batman and Robin can save a train. That's it. I forgot this entire sequence and it's easy to see why: in an episode full of colorful joker chaos and him in the best christmas sweater ever, it's just... a train. I love me a good train, and most trains are good trains. Except Gordon he's an asshat. But this is just.. filler. It feels like the episode went under time in scripting so they added a set piece.

Thankfully the episode picks right back up from this derailment with our dynamic duo heading to the gotham observatory.. naturally.. this is a trap and joker has turned the observiatory into a canon.

So Batman distracts it while Robin battles some joker themed tin soldiers inside. overall it's fucking amazing as it is out of left field. But unlike the train not being really jokery as a crime, this fits him perfectly. Turning an observatory into a laser.. simply because he can.

While stopping it is rad as shit, it dosen't get our heroes anywhere closer to the Joker. Thankfully the joker throws Batman a Bone, as this just isn't fun if Batman entirely misses the deadline and isn't there to either save the hostages just in the knick of time.. or watch as they die horribly in person. It just isn't the same on tv it has to be life dammit. SO he holds up a doll that Batman instantly identifies and know's it's factory shut down years ago.

Batman's Doll Trivia saves the day though as our heroes arrive and we get an awesome bit as Joker plays the nutcracker sweet as he sends out an army of weaponized toy, a beautifully animated utterly awesome sequence.

Turns out though Joker was just waiting for his cue, revealing himself via curtain dropping, of course, to have all the hostages suspended over a vat of.. acid? lava? it's something what hurts bad is the point so he forces Bats to open a present. It's a pie to the face!

This leads to a chase as Joker naturally cuts the cord anyway, but Bats manages to rescue them in time and chases joker on rollerskates.. and saves him when he almost dicks himself into the generic murder vat.

With that Bats can actually enjoy christmas.. as much as Bruce can enjoy anything, with him genuinely loving i'ts a wonderful life and christmas with his grown man boy wonder. Meanwhile the joker sings to himself in Arkham, entirely happy to pick this up again another day.

Christmas With the Joker is mostly an action set piece, but it's a well done one: in one ep we get who the joker is, why he's a match fo rbatman and how this whole game of cat and also cat works for him. It's a wonderfuly demented holiday special and if you haven't seen it it's more than worth your time.

#batman #batman the animated series #christmas #the joker #mark hamill #kevin conroy #comissioner gordon #harvey bullock #summer gleason #christmas with the joker

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thechanelmuse · 1 year ago

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Juneteenth is a Black American holiday.

We call Juneteenth many things: Black Independence Day, Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day. We celebrate and honor our ancestors.

December 31 is recognized as Watch Night or Freedom’s Eve in Black American churches because it marks the day our enslaved ancestors were awaiting news of their freedom going into 1863. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But all of the ancestors wouldn’t be freed until June 19, 1865 for those in Galveston, Texas and even January 23, 1866 for those in New Jersey (the last slave state). (It’s also worth noting that our people under the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations wouldn’t be freed until April 28, 1866 and June 14, 1866 for those under the Cherokee Nation by way of the Treaties.)

Since 1866, Black Americans in Texas have been commemorating the emancipation of our people by way of reading the Emancipation Proclamation and coming together to have parades, free festivities, and later on pageants. Thereafter, it spread to select states as an annual day of commemoration of our people in our homeland.

Here’s a short silent video filmed during the 1925 Juneteenth celebration in Beaumont, Texas:

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(It’s also worth noting that the Mascogos tribe in Coahuila, Mexico celebrate Juneteenth over there as well. Quick history lesson: A total of 305,326 Africans were shipped to the US to be enslaved alongside of American Indians who were already or would become enslaved as prisoners of war, as well as those who stayed behind refusing to leave and walk the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. In the United States, you were either enslaved under the English territories, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, or under the Nations of what would called the Five “Civilized” Native American Tribes: Cherokee, Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminoles. Mascogos descend from the Seminoles who escaped slavery during the Seminole Wars, or the Gullah Wars that lasted for more than 100 years if you will, and then settled at El Nacimiento in 1852.)

We largely wave our red, white and blue flags on Juneteenth. These are the only colors that represent Juneteenth. But sometimes you may see others wave our Black American Heritage flag (red, black, and gold).

Juneteenth is a day of respect. It has nothing to do with Africa, diversity, inclusion, immigration, your Pan-African flag, your cashapps, nor your commerce businesses. It is not a day of “what about” isms. It is not a day to tap into your inner colonizer and attempt to wipe out our existence. That is ethnocide and anti-Black American. If you can’t attend a Black American (centered) event that’s filled with education on the day, our music, our food and other centered activities because it’s not centered around yours…that is a you problem. Respect our day for what and whom it stands for in our homeland.

Juneteenth flag creator: “Boston Ben” Haith

It was created in 1997. The red, white and blue colors represent the American flag. The five-point star represents the Lone State (Texas). The white burst around the star represents a nova, the beginning of a new star. The new beginning for Black Americans.

Black American Heritage Flag creators: Melvin Charles & Gleason T. Jackson

It was created in 1967, our Civil Rights era. The color black represents the ethnic pride for who we are. Red represents the blood shed for freedom, equality, justice and human dignity. Gold fig wreath represents intellect, prosperity, and peace. The sword represents the strength and authority exhibited by a Black culture that made many contributions to the world in mathematics, art, medicine, and physical science, heralding the contributions that Black Americans would make in these and other fields.

SN: While we’re talking about flags, I should note that Grace Wisher, a 13-year-old free Black girl from Baltimore helped stitched the Star Spangled flag, which would inspire the national anthem during her six years of service to Mary Pickersgill. I ain’t even gon hold you. I never looked too far into it, but she prob sewed that whole American flag her damn self. They love lying about history here until you start unearthing them old documents.

In conclusion, Juneteenth is a Black American holiday. Respect us and our ancestors.

#juneteenth #juneteenth flag #black american history #black american culture #ben haith #black american heritage flag #melvin charles #gleason t jackson #grace wisher #american flag #mascogos #juneteenth 2023

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