The Not So Secret Message of The Joker's Outfit

Okay, a YouTube video, professing to explain the history of all the Joker's costumes, made me mad enough to write this post.  Why am I continually surprised at the shoddy scholarship on YouTube?!  Why do I keep imagining that I will learn something by clicking on these videos?

BAH! FOOLS!

In this case I never got past 01:10, where the video describes the Joker's original costume as "straight out of film noir gangster films".

This, for those of you who are not familiar with sartorial history, is incorrect.

"Gangsters" did not wear TAILCOATS.  Nor flat-topped hats, nor vests, nor wing collars, nor string ties. These are elements of clothing from 40 to 50 years earlier than the "Gangster Era".

Nor dress gloves.

I get it. When you are a child every four-legged animal is "doggy" for a while, until you learn more terms and details to distinguish among quadrupeds.  So, too, if you are a contemporary unstudied person, you lump together decades worth of clothing styles in a big box labelled "OLD".

I am more empathetic than I sound. My husband is a costume designer (his work above), and compared to HIM, what I know about clothing can't fill a thimble.

So I will explain to you what the Joker's original outfit is meant to evoke (which would have been MUCH clearer to people in 1939). In short, the Joker is outfitted AS A CARDPLAYER.

Are you familiar with the Gambler, from the Injustice Society?
Does his outfit look familiar?

The hat that the Joker wears? It's not a "fedora"; it's literally CALLED a "Gambler's Hat".

Its top is FLAT and low, unlike a fedora or trilby.

The string tie? Its common name is a "Kentucky tie", and it's associated with Southern cardplayers (and those who drifted to the Wild West with their style intact).

Such as this guy in this Western film.

And WHY is the Joker dressed this way? It's obvious: he's coded as a CARD PLAYER. 

John Carradine ("Stagecoach"1939) would have made an interesting Joker.

And a sneaky one, not a good honest cowboy type, but a sneaky, sneering, aristocratic SOUTHERN one.

The first image of the Joker is from the splash page of his first story shows him...
dealing a hand of cards.

The time we see the Joker smile is when he self-identifies as a cheating card player.

The pinstriped pants and spats...

Or the "stirrup" pants, another old-school element 

...are also part of the look. Everything about the Joker's outfit says "shady gambler."

There are some echos of the Wild West UNDERTAKER, but the hat, the color of the suit, and pants and spats undercut that association severely, leaving "gambler" the only on-target association.

Thanks to period films and closer proximity to the era, the Southern/Western Gambler was a more familiar trope when the character of the Joker was introduced. This type of clothing (particularly in a usually "villainous" color) was really all the Joker needed to be thematically costumed.  

With due deference to the artists of the Bronze Age, a lot is lost by outfitting the Joker in contemporary styles and there is a reason these looks don't stick (despite their effective color scheme).