Moments of intermediality: The use of television in joker narratives

摘要

This article uses the concept of intermediality to explore four different adaptations, across three different media, of the infamous supervillain the Joker. Independent of the medium representing him, a recurring practice is to have the Joker engage with media technologies. Television, in particular, is often used, as in the cases discussed here: Tim Burton's film Batman (1989) and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), the comic book Batman: Death of the Family (2014), and the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009). Understood as media combination, intermedial referencing (Rajewsky (2005) Intermediality, intertextuality, and remediation: A literary perspective on intermediality. Intermedialites 6: 43-64), and through concepts such as contingency and liveness (Doane (2002) The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press), these intermedial moments, by way of emphasizing the materiality and temporality of media, are found to promote immersion while simultaneously causing tension by destabilizing the act of viewing.