Harleen Casts a Shadow

When very young, pretty much all one experiences is contemporary popular culture – except in school where the other stuff rarely is made remotely appealing. Over time this changes, not least because the popular culture of our youth (cars, films, music, et al.) eventually gets designated “classic” and joins the “other stuff” taught in schools. For us it then requires some effort to be less than entirely clueless about things a teenager assumes “everybody” should know. Accordingly, for the past few decades there have been some books, TV shows, movies, bands, and such that I at least sampled simply because they were a significant part of contemporary culture. Not every faddish phenomenon gets a look. I just couldn’t bring myself to watch Twilight, for example, when it was a thing. But to this day I try to sample enough of the current offerings to remain at least intermittently part of the conversation when pop culture comes up at the dinner table. (Not that people sit at the same table at present, unless the requisite six feet apart, due to the pathogen that shall not be named.) Often the samples are distasteful, but sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. That was the case with a graphic-novel (ordered for the reasons above) that came in the mail last week.

Despite the box office failure of the recent Birds of Prey movie, the comic book villain Harley Quinn remains one of DC’s most popular and potentially bankable characters. Potential is merely that, however, so I didn’t have high expectations for the revamped origin story in Harleen by Croatian author Stjepan Sejic. I was delighted to discover a well-written, well-drawn, intelligent, adult-oriented presentation that never disrespects its readers by dumbing itself down. A proper screen adaptation of this would rival the recent Joker.

Carl Jung is never mentioned by name in the comic, but many of his views are inherent in the plot. Jung talked of the shadow self, meaning the hidden side of one’s nature including dark elements that we don’t display in civilized society (unless we are sociopaths). Rather than denying its existence, suppressing it, or trying to excise it (Dr. Jekyll’s mistake), Jung emphasized the importance to psychic health of integrating the shadow into one’s whole personality. Don’t hand the shadow the keys to the car, but accept without guilt that it will always at least be a passenger. It’s OK, in a simple example, to enjoy Dexter without taking up the character’s hobby. Failing to integrate the shadow risks having it unhealthily emerge, especially under provocation. Thirty-year-old psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel, despite her academic awareness of the unconscious and subconscious, hasn’t come comfortably to terms with those aspects of herself. Harleen is narrated by Harleen herself.

Dr. Quinzel has a theory about desensitization and loss of empathy in “normal” people that might be useful in treating not only them but even extreme psychopaths. She developed it from interviews with soldiers accused of excesses in combat areas. Her work attracts the attention of the Wayne Foundation, from which she receives a grant to conduct further research at Arkham Mental Hospital where several high profile Gotham villains including Joker are under lock and key. She neglects to mention (inappropriately but understandably since it would jeopardize her access) that she already once met the Joker on the street when she just happened to be a bystander on the scene of one of his chaotic crimes. In a brief encounter he pointed a gun in her face but didn’t pull the trigger. (“Maybe my gun was out of bullets,” he says with a grin when she asks him about it later.) She also neglects to mention that when Batman arrived at the scene of that same incident, she found herself caught up in the vengeful enthusiasm of the mob of onlookers as he violently subdued Joker – her shadow peeked out, in other words. The memory of this shakes her self-image and her confidence in her own nature.

She proceeds with her research even though Harvey Dent (not yet Two-Face) and other law enforcement professionals insist to her that the sociopaths in Arkham are irredeemable. Dent highly offends her by calling the criminals in there “animals” and monsters. (Joker nonetheless agrees with him: “In the end at least the cops are honest. They see us as monsters because we are just that.”) Joker is a master manipulator and even bribes a guard to get copies of Quinzel’s research so he can use it to his advantage with her. Quinzel is neither naïve nor a fool however. She is a highly capable shrink. She knows exactly what Joker is doing. His words get to her anyway because they speak to doubts she already has about herself. They induce her to recognize her own dark animalistic fantasies (and she uses the word “animal”). She herself grows desensitized in the fashion predicted by her thesis.

Importantly, Quinzel is not Joker’s victim. He may be a manipulator, but she consciously allows him to be one. Though conflicted about it, she chooses to let hidden aspects of herself surface and to engage in ever more inappropriate behavior, conventional morality and political correctness be damned. At every stage, she herself chooses to embrace her dark and wild side and, while she is at it, Joker. The final moment when she goes fully over the edge, however, is [not quite a SPOILER but nearly one, so stop reading if you wish] during a mass breakout from Arkham when in a moment of stress she kills to protect Joker. This isn’t quite a spoiler because it was foreshadowed in earlier narration about Dent and herself: “It’s kind of funny…All of our big words and moralizing and yet within five months we would both become murderers.”

For a graphic novel/comic book, this is an utterly impressive work. Thumbs Up.

Opeth - Harlequin Forest