The Joker

[Ivo Banaco]

Does this way of seeing this kind of problems resonate with anyone...?

Heath Ledger and The
Joker<http://astravoicedialogue.blogspot.com/2008/03/heath-ledger-and-joker.html>
by Astra Niedra
Sydney, Australia

My husband and I have just been discussing how difficult it must be for
actors when they play roles significantly different to their usual self to
re-establish that usual self after filming has been completed. It was
Australian actor Heath Ledger's death by accidental overdose of a number of
prescription drugs, inlcuding some for anxiety and some for insomnia, that
started us on this topic. Neither of know Heath Ledger personally and we do
not presume to know what was really going on in his life but when we look at
his situation as external observers a few ideas spring to mind. The main
thing that struck us was that Heath's recent role as the demonic Joker in
the latest Batman film required him to play a character who is such an
extreme opposite to how Heath Ledger appeared to be in person. So this post
is an examination of what some actors might experience when moving in and
out of character, and I've used Heath Ledger with his Joker character as the
example.

If in everyday life a person lived out such opposites as 'Heath' and 'The
Joker', and if they had no understanding of how the human personality is
composed of many inner selves, with the primary selves forming a person's
identity and the disowned selves existing in the unconscious, desperately
wanting acknowledgment, they would suffer extreme anxiety (see
http://www.voicedialogue.com/personality.htm for a full explanation of how
your personality forms).

So I can imagine it would be similar for actors when they express such
opposite selves. Even actors who play fairly mild roles have said it can be
difficult to return to their usual self at the end of the day, that their
'character' does not want to leave them. If that is so, it might have been
challenging to let go of a character as extreme as The Joker. Heath Ledger
himself described his Joker character as a "psychopathic, mass murdering,
schizophrenic clown with zero empathy". And to prepare for the role he lived
alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture,
voice and psychology - that in itself would cause most people to develop
severe anxiety.

There are many techniques available to actors to prepare for their roles but
those techniques involve to some extent drawing on the energies,
physicality, emotions and thoughts of their own inner selves to bring
characters to life. So Ledger would have accessed his own inner demonic
energies to play The Joker. And considering that in everyday life, by all
accounts, Heath had as a primary self such a Nice Guy self, you could
theorise that his inner Joker would therefore have been pretty demonic
indeed - for it's a law of the psyche according to the theory underlying
Voice Dialogue that the more extreme the identification with a particular
self, the more extreme the disowning of the opposite self; and the more
extremely disowned the opposite self is, the nastier or more distorted it
becomes.

In Voice Dialogue work, a person would not express an extremely disowned
self without spending plenty of time unhooking from their primary self first
so that they had a really strong aware ego in relation to their primary self
(an aware ego is a process in consciousness where you are unhooked from the
total identification of your primary self and can therefore access other
parts of your psyche). You have to remember that if you have a primary self
who is very nice, that self is terrified of not-niceness. Only the aware ego
can handle such an opposite. And the beauty with Voice Dialogue is that the
more aware ego you have in relation to a nice primary self, and the more you
understand why that self has disowned its opposites, and the more you come
to understand and embrace the selves that are different to the nice self,
the extremity of the not-nice self dissipates naturally because it senses it
is finally being understood and appreciated for who it is. It loses the
malevolent edge it would have had when it was locked away in solitary
confinement. And you, with your aware ego, would be able to handle this self
now because you are no longer so fully identified with its opposite. For the
selves - including your everyday primary self - do not have the ability to
effectively (without judgment and an agenda) handle their own opposites –
that is why they repressed them in the first place and is why the aware ego
is necessary if you want to integrate them.

If an actor did not have an understanding of this process and no training in
unhooking from their own primary self in order to consciously draw on other
facets of their personality, it would be unsettling to go straight to such
an extreme character as The Joker, and to try to return to their usual
personality afterwards.

If it were me playing such a demonic character, I know that after the
filming had finished, I would still have access to the Joker character
within me. If I simply flipped back to my primary self I would feel uneasy
about the Joker's psychopathic thoughts and feelings still in my mind – and
they would be there. For once such a self has been released, and has been
given such respect in the movie and in all the publicity, it would not want
to go underground again. It would make its presence felt and it would be a
struggle to get a hold on it and to lock it away again – which is what you
would have to do with no aware ego process. It would be difficult to sleep
because the protective primary self would not be able to relax enough and
let the guard down. And, added to that, our disowned selves like to come out
to play in the dream world. The only way I would be able to handle such an
extreme energy, would be to do so with an aware ego in relation to it and my
primary self, which would involve honouring the essence of both energies.

I do not envy actors who take on such extreme roles because to deal with
that kind of extreme energy, so much work would need to be done with the
primary self first – and the actors probably aren't given such time in the
film world with its deadlines and budgets. Heath Ledger must have had
training in some process of re-establishing his 'usual' psychic equilibrium,
but without an aware ego process it would have been incredibly difficult.

Please note, my analysis of Heath Ledger is all theory, based on my
knowledge of the Voice Dialogue model of consciousness. But I would be
interested to hear from other actors if this theory rings true for them.
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