A jester hat, clown makeup, a killer personality, and crazy love; these are all things that have always drawn me to Harley Quinn. Originally Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, a psychiatric therapist and doctor, Harley Quinn is an animated villain most acknowledged for her quirky antics and odd devotion toward the destructively incorrigible Joker, the maniacal arch-nemesis of Batman. Harley Quinn is a beautiful conundrum who is never fully examined before another character trait is discovered to further inhibit complete understanding of her mind. She has an endearing tendency to teeter between the seductive immorality of insanity and the cold reality of her conscience. She has not quite lost herself in madness, but she desperately yearns to do so to earn the love of her beloved Mr. J. The more I observe Harley Quinn, the more the intricacies of the human mind seem to enthrall me. How can someone be so seamlessly manipulated that her conscience is completely eradicated? How can someone defile a being so completely that he creates such a fantastic human anomaly as Harley Quinn? And how in the world can anyone fall in love with a sociopath?
Harley’s mind is a thing that I would love to dissect, however, one thing that Harley has taught me is that some things, or in this case some people, can never be fully understood. Some things are meant to be puzzles and some minds are never meant to be cracked. Watching her actions as a child had me laughing at her silly mischievousness; however, observing Harley now that I am older has me contemplating the fragility of the human mind and what goes on in the heads of the ‘villains’ in today’s society. Harley Quinn sparked my interest in understanding the minds of humanity’s outcasts, criminals, mentally unstable, and the clinically insane. She fuels my desire to be able to differentiate between a man acting out and a man who just wants to watch the world burn.