Clown Shirt for Clown Times
WACKO MARIA has been Jokerfied. The 20-year-old Japanese clothing label is doing straight-up Joker merch. The fans love it. And I kinda do, too.
It's amusing enough that WACKO MARIA made a collection of Joker clothes, though it fits well enough within the yakuza-meets-greaser label's tendency to turn out $350 shirts printed with pop culture references as unsubtle as Basquiat and Superbad.
But I find WACKO MARIA's take on Joker, Batman's most famous villain, ironically compelling.
What can I say? I know the Joker lore.
Due primarily to Heath Ledger's co-starring role in 2008's Dark Knight and, to a lesser extent, Jared Leto's apocryphal Joker method acting (and incredible "Damaged" forehead tat), the Joker has come to represent so many self-described and epically self-serious "dangerous loners" (though, honestly, those far more likely to idolize the likes of Patrick Bateman).
As such, the Joker is quite funny in a detached sort of way: We live in a society, I'm going through a Joker arc, Joker's trick.
But the WACKO MARIA Joker clothing isn't really a joke.
I mean, it's certainly a little self-aware. This is goofy stuff. But WACKO MARIA doesn't license things ironically.
Further, its Joker clothes feel — gulp — kinda timely?
You don't need me, random writer man, to tell you that the times, well, they do be crazy. And maybe it's just my irony goggles strapped a bit too tight but isn't it a little comforting to see the clown prince of crime on some silly T-shirts?
And the shirts are indeed quite silly, mostly utilizing that one famous photo of the Joker doing his signature head-tilt thing.
A short-sleeved summer shirt is printed with four giant Joker heads and one little Joker. One T-shirt wears a "SUBJECT: THE JOKER" graphic so absurd that you'd swear it was ripped from the racks of Hot Topic.
But this was no laughing matter for WACKO MARIA's customers, who immediately picked the racks clean. Sick and twisted, indeed.
