In Jest, there is Truth : The love that dare not speak its name

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | August 16, 2009 at 09:03 am

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Heath Ledger's Joker may be less an indictment of Obama, than of the right, whose unconscious voices what it disowns. A Freudian subtext is benath the surface, a guilty expression of the right-wing mind.

The Latin phrase runs, In iocus illic est verum: "In jest, there is truth". Indeed, the Joker as Socialist picture, playing on the "why so serious?" quip made famous be Heath Ledger's stunning genius of his pre-death appearance on the big screen, which is appearing now, they say from coast to coast, may be more than a viral prank. It may belong to that larger scope of life, the transcendent realm in which Jung assured us no accident takes place. I recall seeing The Dark Knight ( I was dragged to the theater against my will) and being rapt and awed when Ledger's Joker made his appearance. What distinguished his Joker, was the subtley of the soical meaning of his role: In Dark Knight, the Joker had a certain honesty to him: He took the weight of the social order on his shoulders; he spoke their repressed thoughts, he gave a voice to their forbidden desires. Barack wears the Joker well indeed. Socialism is the taboo, the love of America, that dare not speak its name.