(11/6/09)
If Harley and Ivy is the first of Dini’s Harley spotlights, in which she becomes defined by more than her gimmicky association with the Joker, then Harlequinade is the second of this unofficial trilogy, Harley’s Holiday capping it all off. All are comedies that argue in one way or another that Harley is fundamentally different from the object of her girlish romantic desires, in that she is ultimately forgivable for the crimes she co-commits with him. She is technically guilty, but only because she has been ruthlessly exploited by the Joker. All of these outings take on a screwball comedy format, and Harleqinade especially succeeds in juxtaposing an innate sense of terror with this traditionally lighthearted genre, simultaneously subverting its conventions and making a powerful statement about the state of Harley’s and the Joker’s relationship.
We can see the farcical aspects of the story early on; Joker’s bomb theft is outlandish even for his standards. Are there really auctions for such weapons among Gotham crime lords in rundown warehouses with security so pitiful that a clownish man can waltz in with a small explosive? The idea is absurd. And not soon after, Batman and Harley are partners, trying to deduce his whereabouts. We know what to feel about Harley from her introduction; she is a goofy, blonde, bumble-gum chewing kid. Unlike the Joker, she actually has some physical persona beneath her garish clown attire. As a screwball comedy, I am reminded of My Man Godfrey, Batman a William Powell with a short fuse and Harley a sillier, more naïve Carole Lombard. A lesser writer would have hammered in the danger of the bomb, building a false suspense for something that any sensible viewer knows is not to happen. Dini peppers his script with fun interludes; when Harley launches into her song-and-dance number I forget the bomb entirely.
And yet Harley betrays the dynamic duo to return to the Joker, defying the conventions of the screwball, in which Powell and Lombard would have ended up together in bliss. It is at this moment that we are aware of her pathetic longing for the Joker, but Dini delays our realization of its terror. For even as Joker commands the aircraft from which to deploy the bomb, his erudite stature and facial expression, drawn from the typical angularity of his design, is played for comedy. This is the Joker at his most threatening, and Harley at her most mixed up, and yet Dini reminds us that even with the intention of annihilating millions, he remains likable, and to Quinn, who has realized that she was to be a casualty, lovable.
It is only until the last minute that Dini shocks us. Harley is prepared to kill the Joker, and he, exerting his psychological dominance over her, fearlessly, sinisterly grinning as the barrel of her gun is aimed directly at his face. This is more terrifying than the bomb and the implications of Joker’s amorality that surround it, because this is a matter of severe, deadly tension between two deeply intimate characters, not the cold meaningless abstraction of a population. And yet the ultimate tragedy, ironically played for laughs, is that Harley’s love of the Joker is so unhealthily unconditional that any grave offense on his part is instantaneously erased by his characteristic charisma. The Honeymooners ending makes light of Harley’s tragedy and allows the couple a happy ending in spite of their inevitable capture.
Mad Love gets the same point across with unrelenting morbidity; Harlequinade circumvents such tonal straightforwardness for a delirious sequence of events that defies logic, undermines story conventions, and stamps a lighthearted comic tone onto grim subject matter.
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