Joker’s Revenge You Get What You F****** Deserve

The essay below originally appears as Chapter 8 of Joker and Philosophy.

You Get What You F****** Deserve

Greg Littmann

Joker: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?…You get what you fucking deserve.” (Shoots Murray)

There’s something satisfying about watching Joker blow out Murray’s brains. I feel a little uncomfortable admitting that I feel that way, but after all Joker’s been through, there’s a pleasure in seeing him take murderous vengeance on the smug TV presenter who publicly humiliated him. Haven’t we all fantasized about taking revenge? Maybe you’ve even imagined going “werewolf” like Joker, and taking the lives of those who’ve wronged you. At the very least, you must have dreamed of paying someone back in some fashion, if only by exposing their wrongdoing.

Is Joker morally justified in taking his revenge on Murray? Can revenge ever be morally justified? Before we can even try to answer those questions, we need to decide what revenge is. What makes it different from simply punishing someone? One difference is that punishment need not be motivated by a desire to see the wrongdoer harmed. Someone might be punished, for instance, purely as a deterrent to others. That still isn’t enough to distinguish revenge, though, because some punishment is motivated by a desire to see the wrongdoer harmed. Many people believe that justice requires that wrongdoers suffer for their actions. So, for instance, in many versions of Christianity, sinners are tormented in Hell because that’s what they (fucking) deserve. Punishing someone on the grounds that they deserve it is known as “retributive justice.”

Revenge vs. Retributive Punishment

American philosopher Robert Nozick (1938-2002), in his Philosophical Explanations (1981), identifies what he takes to be the five differences between revenge and retributive justice. One is that revenge is personal. The revenger is avenging a wrong done to them or to someone they have ties to, like a parent or friend. In Joker’s case, he murders Murray for publicly humiliating him. As Joker points out, “I’m not political.” Rather, he kills Murray for purely personal reasons. Another is that revenge is enjoyable. Joker has a blast killing Murray, turning it into a game and mugging for the camera. Interestingly, he also toys cruelly with his co-worker Gary, mocking his terror as he tries to leave the apartment where Joker has just stabbed his other coworker, Randall, fatally in the neck. It may be that Joker’s enjoyment is derived here from a sense that he’s taking revenge on everyone in society, even those like Gary who have not actively persecuted him.

Thirdly, retributive punishment is done for a wrong, whereas revenge may be done for a harm or slight that need not be a wrong. On this view, Joker doesn’t need to think that Murray has done something immoral in order to take revenge on Murray for humiliating him. Likewise, this model could explain how Joker can take revenge on Gary, who’s never done him any harm. This model also explains how mass shooters can take revenge on people they’ve never met or barely interacted with. Each individual they kill might not have wronged them, but they are part of a society that they think has hurt or insulted them.

Fourthly, retributive punishment must be limited by the seriousness of the wrong, whereas there’s no limit to the revenge someone might take. In other words, if you punish someone too much, you are no longer punishing them justly. The Babylonian law code of King Hammurabi (18^th century BCE) famously lays out the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” limiting the punishment someone can receive to something equivalent to the harm they’ve done. On Nozick’s view, Joker could have taken revenge on his subway attackers and on Murray by killing them, even if he hadn’t thought that they deserved death for what they had done.

Finally, Nozick says that in the case of someone who imposes just retribution, there must be a commitment to seeing similar retribution for similar wrongdoings. So, if Joker punishes Murray out of a sense of justice, Joker must wish to see anyone else who has acted like Murray be punished in the same way, with a bullet to the head. On the other hand, if Joker is only taking revenge, he need not have any particular opinions about other cases.

“You decide what’s right or wrong the same way you decide what’s funny or not”

There’s a lot that could be challenged in Nozick’s account of what revenge is, but it should be close enough to identify revenge in most cases. Now we can ask whether revenge can be morally appropriate. Joker explains to the television audience, “You decide what’s right or wrong the same way you decide what’s funny or not.” He’s accusing us of being arbitrary in our moral judgments, of deciding whether an act is right or wrong by how we feel about it, just as we decide whether a joke is funny by whether it makes us laugh.

I think Joker is right that we tend to do that, but it’s hard to think of what else might count as evidence that something is right or wrong, apart from how it, and similar cases, make us feel. Philosophers often appeal to our moral feelings to argue that something is morally acceptable or not. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote in Utilitarianism (1861):

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.(i)

Mill’s point is that since people desire happiness, happiness is a good thing. However, as contemporary philosopher Joshua Gert points out, if the popularity of happiness is evidence of the value of happiness, then the popularity of revenge is evidence of the value of revenge.(ii)

Revenge has been a feature of all human societies and is a major means of social control until a society grows complex enough to establish official authorities. Yet even when governments have taken over the role of administering justice, and revenge is restricted by law, humans still revel in revenge tales. Positive portrayals of revenge appear across cultures in our earliest stories. In Egyptian mythology, when the god Osiris is murdered by the god Set, Osiris comes back from the dead to avenge his murder and reclaim the throne. In the oldest works of Western literature, the Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey, written in about the 8^th century BCE, heroes take vengeance as a matter of honor and even moral obligation. In the Iliad, when Achilles’ best friend Patroclus is killed in battle by the Trojan warrior Hector, Achilles not only kills Hector, but desecrates his corpse by dragging it around behind his chariot for three days. In the Odyssey, when King Odysseus returns from the Trojan war to find his palace filled with freeloaders who are trying to marry his wife, he personally slaughters all 108 of them.

The Old Testament also contains many positive portrayals of what can be considered revenge. Perhaps the most famous is the revenge of Sampson. Tricked out of his supernatural strength, blinded, and chained up in the Philistine temple, “Samson called to the Lord, ‘O Master, Lord, remember me! Strengthen me just one more time, O God, so I can get swift revenge against the Philistines for my two eyes!’” (Judges 16:28). God obliges and gives Sampson the strength to pull down the temple, killing everyone inside. There are many references to God taking revenge Himself. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” as He promises dreadful punishments for Israelites who worship other gods (Deuteronomy 32:25). He adds, “I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me” (Deuteronomy 32:41).

In the Indian epic Mahābhārata (c. 400 BCE-400 CE), princess Amba takes revenge for her abduction by prince Bishma by reincarnating as the enemy prince Shikhandi. In Aztec mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli kills or banishes his 400 siblings for murdering their mother, Coatlίcue. In Cherokee folklore, when a hunter needlessly shoots an eagle, the eagle’s brother kills seven of the hunter’s tribe with magic. In West African folklore, when Tiger breaks the pot of the God Anansi, Anansi tricks him into falling into a pit.

Likewise, revenge has been celebrated in fiction across time and cultures. In the 11^th century French poem “Song of Roland,” God stops the sun to help king Charlemagne get revenge on the Saracens who killed the knight Roland. In Wu Cheng’en’s 16^th century Chinese novel Journey to the West, the Buddhist Priest Tang Sanzang, epitome of virtue, watches as his father’s murderer is tortured and killed, and then offers the man’s heart and liver, gouged out while he was alive, as a libation to his father. In Japan, an entire genre, known as Chūshingura, is devoted to fictions based on the actions of the 47 samurai who sacrificed their lives to take revenge for the death of their daimyo, Asano Naganori.

In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (1601), Hamlet takes revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering his father. Hamlet’s need for revenge is so great that he postpones striking Claudius down after Claudius makes confession to a priest, for fear that if Claudius dies right after repenting, he won’t go to Hell. In The Merchant of Venice (1598), the Jew Shylock compares Christians to Jews to show how similar they are, and one of the similarities he points out is that both take revenge when they are wronged.

Sympathetic tales of revenge have been a common theme in popular literature for as long as popular literature has been around. For instance, in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein (1818), the monster takes revenge on the creator who abandoned him. In Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Christo (1844), Edmund Dantès’ enemies conspire to have him wrongfully imprisoned, but Dantès escapes, acquires a fortune, and uses it to ruin them. Rudyard Kipling reveled in tales of revenge, as in The Second Jungle Book (1895) in which the boy Mowgli burns down a village for trying to harm his parents. More recently, the space-emperor Paul Atreides assassinates the man who killed his father in Dune (1965), King Robb Stark marches to avenge the murder of his father in A Clash of Kings (1998), and the boy wizard Harry Potter destroys the man who killed his parents in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007).

Filmmakers have been just as keen to capitalize on sympathetic stories of revenge. Revenge drives classic Westerns like Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), True Grit (1969), and Unforgiven (1992); classic martial arts films like Fist of Fury (1972), Cripped Avengers (1978), and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003); superhero films like The Crow (1994) and V for Vendetta (2005); and crime flicks like The Godfather (1972), Death Wish (1974), Mad Max (1979), Django Unchained (2012), and John Wick (2014). Even popular songs are often smug celebrations of how badly an ex-lover is doing, like Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River” (1955), The Beatles “I’m Looking Through You” (1965), and Taylor Swift’s “We are Never Getting Back Together” (2012).

Joker’s traditional nemesis, Batman, has been driven by revenge from the start. In Gardner Fox’s story “Legend: The Batman and How He Came to Be” in Detective Comics #33 (1939), it’s revealed that Batman fights crime because his parents were gunned down by the mugger Joe Chill. Kneeling in prayer, young Bruce Wayne swears that he will “avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.” In Batman #673 (2008), Batman drives Joe to suicide.

Batman’s feelings for the Joker have often become similarly personal, as when the Joker shoots and paralyzes “Batgirl” Barbara Gordon in Alan Moore’s graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), when the Joker beats “Robin” Jason Todd to death with a crowbar in Jim Starlin’s “A Death in the Family” in Batman #427 (1988), and when the Joker, rather than Joe Chill, guns down Thomas and Martha Wayne in Tim Burton’s film Batman (1989).

The revenge of other superheroes has likewise often been shown in a positive light. Blade wants revenge on all vampires for the death of his mother. Spawn seeks revenge on the man who burned him to death, the Crow on the men who shot him to death. Wolverine, Deadpool, and V all want revenge on the scientists who kept them captive and experimented on them. When the Green Goblin throws Spider-Man’s love-interest Gwen Stacy off a bridge in Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), Spider-Man swears vengeance and violently beats him. The Punisher is driven by vengeful feelings towards all criminals after the Mafia killed his family. To be fair, he’s presented as a morally gray anti-hero, but he’s a sympathetic and popular one.

In short, revenge seems to have enormous appeal, across time and cultures. Obviously, revenge has often been condemned as well. Philosophers routinely assume that revenge is bad. Some religions, like Buddhism, reject revenge. Others, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, condemn revenge taken by humans, even while presenting God, in His perfect goodness, as a revenge taker. Still, if the fact that humans value something is evidence that it’s valuable, we have considerable evidence for the value of revenge.

Revenge as a Social Good

Another argument in favor of revenge would be that in some cases, it’s the only option for achieving justice. Joker may go too far in killing Murray, but if Joker doesn’t do something to Murray, Murray will never be punished for humiliating him. Society has consistently failed to protect Arthur, ignoring him until he strikes back for himself. After he guns down his three attackers in the subway, including one who is trying to run away, he explains to his health care worker, “For my whole life, I didn’t know if I even really existed. But I do, and people are starting to notice.”

Similarly, Batman’s war of vengeance against all criminals is the best chance for protection that the citizens of Gotham City have. With all due respect to Commissioner Gordon and the brave officers of the Gotham City Police Department, were it not for the private vendetta of the caped crusader, criminals like the Joker, the Penguin, and Catwoman would run amok. Or to take a historical example, imagine a family living on a frontier, far from the protection of the law. If someone kills a member of the family, revenge could be the only alternative to just turning the other cheek. Or closer to home, consider some wrong that a boss or co-worker has done you that doesn’t rise to the level of a reportable offense. If you don’t find a way to punish them, nobody will.

Some contemporary philosophers have championed revenge. For instance, Jake Beardsley argues that “revenge is a good to which victims are entitled.”(iii) Beardsley points out that in the US, juries award compensatory damages to plaintiffs. For example, if Joker had managed to take to court the young thugs who beat him up when he was trying to advertise a sale, they might have been required to pay him a certain amount of money in compensation for the harm they’d done him. Beardsley argues that if victims can be entitled to compensation, and if revenge can be good for victims, then revenge can be a compensation to which victims are entitled. This echoes the view of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) that punishment offers compensation to the victim. Nietzsche writes that victims are “granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain sensation of satisfaction…The compensation…consists in a claim on cruelty and a right to draw thereon.”(iv)

Similarly, philosopher Tamler Sommers claims that victims must be allowed to take part in the process of punishing, so that they can regain self-respect.(v) We might think of the way that, after killing Murray, Joker stands proudly on the hood of a police car, posing for the admiring crowd. He certainly seems to feel better about himself after having taken revenge! Peter French argues that revenge is a useful way to link bad behavior to penalties, particularly in ordinary cases that aren’t serious enough to involve the law. Such revenge “can play a positive role in strengthening the moral foundations of a community.”(vi) In other words, we might all behave better if we knew that wronging others might lead to payback. Joker’s revenge-killing of Murray certainly might make the citizens of Gotham less likely to hold others up to public ridicule in the future.

Whitley R.P. Kaufman maintains that, contrary to the usual assumption and to Nozick’s definition, revenge and retributive punishment have the same motive and same moral justification.(vii) In his view, both are intended to restore the honor of the victim. The only difference is that revenge is conducted privately, while retributive punishment is undertaken by the state. Kaufman doesn’t conclude that revenge is morally permissible but does think that we must regard it as morally permissible, in principle, if retributive punishment is morally permissible. Deciding that retributive punishment is not morally permissible wouldn’t mean giving up punishment altogether, just punishment intended to restore the honor of the victim. We could still punish to deter crime.

Kaufman points out three ways in which acts of revenge tend to be worse than officially administered justice. One is that revenge tends to result in cycles of violence, rather than resolving anything. If you take revenge on me, then I, or those close to me, might just take revenge right back. If Joker lived in a society in which revenge killings were acceptable, he’d likely get a visit from one of Murray’s children one day, looking to settle the score. It’s all very well to go “werewolf” until you meet another, possibly larger, werewolf.

Another problem with revenge is that it isn’t impartial. The one who wants revenge is also the one who decides whether revenge would be appropriate. It’s like having the plaintiff in a law case also be the judge and jury. Most of us wouldn’t have given Murray the death sentence for what he did to Joker. Joker probably only felt differently because he was Murray’s victim.

Yet a third problem with revenge is that it tends to favor the rich and powerful. If millionaire Bruce Wayne wants to take revenge on Joker for causing the riot in which his parents were killed, he has the resources to do almost anything he likes to him. If you get into a feud with Donald Trump and it devolves into a cycle of revenge, you don’t stand a chance.

Still, as bad as these problems with revenge are, Kaufman notes that they don’t rule out revenge in principle. At most, they give us good reason before taking revenge to ask whether we are the best judge of the situation and what the results of our act of revenge are liable to be. Joker could not have foreseen that killing Murray would result in riots, with more death and destruction. Still, he could have foreseen that his act would not make people any less “awful” but would leave Murray’s innocent family to grieve.

Cop: “The whole city’s on fire ’cause of what you did.”

Joker: “I know. Isn’t it beautiful?”

So where does that leave us? Not with a clear answer to the question of whether revenge can be appropriate, let alone whether Joker was right to kill Murray. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the issue. Hopefully, though, there’s some food for thought here.

Personally, I abhor revenge. I admit, there could be situations in which, in the absence of the force of law, revenge would be the best alternative available. I can even see the attraction of revenge in a case like Joker’s. I can empathize with Joker, taking satisfaction as he puts a bullet in Murray’s head. But lots of wicked things can be attractive, including cruelty and greed. In fact, if wicked things were never attractive, nobody would do anything wicked. I think that whenever we practice taking delight at the suffering of others, we train ourselves to be sadistic. I think that when we get used to enjoying hurting people, we make it easier for us to hurt other people in future. Far from “strengthening the moral foundations of a community,” as French would suggest, practicing revenge hardens us against one another. That’s an empirical claim, of course, and ultimately something for research psychologists to determine.

Joker’s revenge certainly left the world a worse place than it was before. Between his act of murder and the riot it inspired, men and women were left dead and children orphaned, and if there was any effect on society at all, it would be to make it more violent, less caring, and more “awful” in all the ways Joker condemned. Less dramatic acts of revenge by the likes of you and me may not orphan as many children, but our acts of revenge are probably less likely to reform the behavior of other people than to make the situation more toxic. People who suffer revenge from someone tend to feel wronged, and people don’t want to learn anything from someone they feel has wronged them. They are far more likely to want to repay revenge with revenge of their own. If we play the Joker, we can expect some fool to see themselves as Batman, o

(i) J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11224/pg11224-images.html.

(ii) Joshua Gert, “Revenge is Sweet,” Philosophical Studies 177 (2020), 971-986.

(iii) Jake Beardsley, “Shall We Not Revenge?” The Mudd Journal of Ethics 5 (2020), 13-19.

(iv) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm.

(v) Tamler Sommers, “The Three Rs: Retribution, Revenge, and Reparation,” Philosophia 44 (2016), 327-342.

(vi) Peter A. French, “Virtuous Avengers in Commonplace Cases,” Philosophia 44 (2016), 381-393.

(vii) Whitley R.P. Kaufman, “Revenge as the Dark Double of Retributive Punishment,” Philosophia 44 (2016), 317-325.