In order to bolster support for his public image in light of the frankly embarrassing state of Gotham crime, Mayor Hamilton Hill hosts a party for his young son Jordan, only to find that Jordan wants nothing to do with him. Instead, Jordan is enthralled with the party’s entertainment, Jekko the Clown – secretly The Joker (Mark Hamill) in disguise. Sore about being compared to his superheroic foe, The Joker concocts a scheme to embarrass Mayor Hill and rid himself of his hated enemy Batman, all with his usual taste for the theatrical.
In terms of popular reception, I often see “Be A Clown” compared to “I’ve Got Batman in My Basement,” another child-centric episode in which a youngster is caught between Batman and one of his villains. Moreover, these episodes usually don’t get much popular acclaim and are frequently derided because of their inclusion of young characters. For my money, though, “Be A Clown” has always been a favorite. It’s just so playfully weird, and the central role of The Joker is pitch perfect.
Shades of The Killing Joke abound in Joker’s use of a dilapidated carnival as his headquarters, but the episode replaces Alan Moore’s brutality with sideshow lunacy, as when Joker has a ready-made meringue pie to hurl at the television, or when he seeks advice from a fairgrounds fortune telling machine. This is to say nothing of the inciting action in which Joker doesn’t have any plans beyond getting even for a perceived slight in Mayor Hill’s statement that Joker and Batman are “cut from the same cloth.” Indeed, Joker isn’t even after Batman, but he snatches up the opportunity when it presents itself.
This is the Joker we’ve been waiting for, folks, neither too gimmicky nor too thuggish. Instead, he’s a perfect hybrid of master criminal and court jester, delightfully off-kilter in a way that nevertheless manages to come off frightening. And the thing I like the best about Joker’s role as antagonist is that Jordan Hill’s appearance at the carnival isn’t part of the plan at all, but Joker just rolls with it and decides to have a little fun warping a young mind while waiting for the inevitable confrontation with Batman. (This sense of inevitability pays off wonderfully, by the way, in one of the show’s finest hours, “The Man Who Killed Batman,” in Joker’s oft-repeated eulogy for the Dark Knight.)
There’s also something divinely carnivalesque about the way Gotham is portrayed in this episode. A press conference on reduced crime gets interrupted by a car chase involving tommy guns. Mayor Hill’s selfless acts for his son are supplanted by his own currying for favor among Gotham’s elites. Jordan is terrified of Batman but wants to emulate The Joker. Here, Gotham is a topsy-turvy city of misrule, precisely as it should be, and the stark contrast between hero and villain fits in a world where crime in Gotham is already turned up to eleven.
Plus it’s a commanding performance from Mark Hamill as The Joker. I’ve been a little lukewarm on “Christmas with the Joker” and “The Last Laugh,” but “Be A Clown” is for me the episode that first cements Hamill’s status as the iconic Joker. The laugh, the accents, the snarls – this is what it means to be a clown.
Writer: Ted Pedersen & Steve Hayes
Director: Frank Paur
Villain: The Joker (Mark Hamill)
Next episode: “Two-Face,” in which we double down on a two-parter.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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