Joker

Has anyone know about this theory of the origin of the Joker:

"So this wild card that puts play into play marks the place of death, the extinction of ego, the erasure of the subject. Traces of the joker's connection to death can be found in the card's history, beginning in 14 th-century in Holland when cards were still stencilled and coloured by hand. At that time artists who authored decks drew their portrait on a blank card as their signature, to be used as a wild card. Emmanuel Juker of Utrecht produced some of these early jokers and his name eventually became associated with the practice. When Dutch cards found their way into England, card makers there began including their own signature cards known as 'Jukers' for the card maker of Utrecht, which the English pronounced as 'jooker.' Over time, 'jooker' was replaced with the more meaningful English cognate, 'joker.' Later, as the plague began to spread through Europe, card makers began producing jokers wearing a black cap, thus renewing the association of the joker with death and Thoth, the god of death."

from “The Playing Card's Progress: A Brief History of Cards and Card Games“ by Joyce Goggin http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/goggin.shtml
Original source: Curtis Slepian, "The Joker is Wild" in Game (1994) 12-14.

Hi Mary,

Teheuti said:

Has anyone know about this theory of the origin of the Joker:

"So this wild card that puts play into play marks the place of death, the extinction of ego, the erasure of the subject. Traces of the joker's connection to death can be found in the card's history, beginning in 14 th-century in Holland when cards were still stencilled and coloured by hand. At that time artists who authored decks drew their portrait on a blank card as their signature, to be used as a wild card. Emmanuel Juker of Utrecht produced some of these early jokers and his name eventually became associated with the practice. When Dutch cards found their way into England, card makers there began including their own signature cards known as 'Jukers' for the card maker of Utrecht, which the English pronounced as 'jooker.' Over time, 'jooker' was replaced with the more meaningful English cognate, 'joker.' Later, as the plague began to spread through Europe, card makers began producing jokers wearing a black cap, thus renewing the association of the joker with death and Thoth, the god of death."

from “The Playing Card's Progress: A Brief History of Cards and Card Games“ by Joyce Goggin http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/goggin.shtml
Original source: Curtis Slepian, "The Joker is Wild" in Game (1994) 12-14.

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I've never heard that one; there are some obviously folkloric parts to it (not to mention Goggin's quasi-Derridian style). The standard theory is that, since there is a form of the game of Euchre played by Dutch and German immigrants which uses a "Best Bower" (from German "Bauer" the Jack), and since the game is called "Juker" as well, that Best Bower came to be called the "Juker", and thence normalized into "Joker". The difficulty with the theory are that there is no instance of the name on the card being spelled "Juker".

But it is a murky area, although the murk begins in the middle of 19th century in the United States.

From Google Books, we can see another form of the story that was published in 2004 in a book of activities for boys -

"In Holland (as the story goes), it was common for the artist of the cards to include one extra card that was a self-portrait. A popular artist in Holland was Johann Emmanuel Juker (yoo-ker). Juker’s cards became so widespread, that his style was imitated and the extra card in the deck came to be known as the “Juker” card. It was mispronounced as “joo-ker” by English speakers, and was finally just called the “Joker” card. Since it was called a Joker, card-makers naturally put a Joker on that card. By the late 1800s in the United States, it was common practice for Mississippi gamblers to have and extra “Joker” card in their decks."
(Bart King, "The Big Book of Boy Stuff" (Gibbs Smith, 2004), page 188)
http://books.google.fr/books?id=TnM...ker++emmanuel&sig=n_dvtsLh_VL6NOTw8s_cxTmfFmE

The folkloric elements about the plague and the black cap seem gratuitous; Jokers only exist as such beginning in the 19th century in the US. Of course wild cards in varying numbers exist in German games as well, but as far as I can tell, they are all "Bauern".

Ross

Teheuti said:

Later, as the plague began to spread through Europe, card makers began producing jokers wearing a black cap, thus renewing the association of the joker with death and Thoth, the god of death."

from “The Playing Card's Progress: A Brief History of Cards and Card Games“ by Joyce Goggin http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/goggin.shtml
Original source: Curtis Slepian, "The Joker is Wild" in Game (1994) 12-14.

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Calling Thoth "the god of death" took me aback a bit, but I found where Goggin might have picked it up (if not in Slepian).

There was a medieval dictionary nicknamed "Dante's Latin dictionary" because it is the only one he mentions and so much of his Latin vocabularly apparently came from it. The dictionary was called "Magnae Derivationes", and was written between 1192 and 1201. Over 200 manuscript copies are known, most from the 13th century, showing how popular it was. It is unedited, but published in facsimile as Magnae Derivationes of Uguccione da Pisa: a reproduction of the MS Laud 626 from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Collection of photographic facsimiles, no. 30, 1925 (I've been looking for a copy for years).

In any case, on this site -
http://www.chronarchy.com/esus/lucan-commentaries.html
(scroll down a bit)
there are two excerpts from the dictionary, and one is fortunately about Thoth. Here's what Hugutio says -

"Theutates, tis, the god of death so named is Mercury, because being sacrificed to with human blood, or composed of "theos" and "athanatos", that is "immortal god", whence Theutonus, a, um, a certain people, (so named) because they are savage."

The "Theutonus" are the "Teutonic" peoples, and this etymology would continue to be pursued into the late 17th century at least.

Ross

Hi, Ross,

Ross G Caldwell said:

... from German "Bauer" the Jack

Of course wild cards in varying numbers exist in German games as well, but as far as I can tell, they are all "Bauern".

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So... Jack Bauer in the TV series 24 is the wildcard, the Joker in the deck?

Makes sense.

Best regards,
Michael

mjhurst said:

Hi, Ross,


So... Jack Bauer in the TV series 24 is the wildcard, the Joker in the deck?

Makes sense.

Best regards,
Michael

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I'd be laughing - if I got the Joke.

Ross

Hi, Ross,

Ross G Caldwell said:

I'd be laughing - if I got the Joke.

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It's a popular crypto-fascist TV program in the U.S. Jack Bauer is the hard-nosed, 21st-century, James Bond guy, fighting terrorism and such. He "plays outside the rules" much of the time.

Jack Bauer is the fictional protagonist of the American television series 24, in which he has trained and worked in various capacities as a government agent, including US Army Delta Force, LAPD SWAT, and finally the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) Los Angeles. Within the 24 storyline, he is a key member of the latter and is often noted as the best agent CTU has. Jack's job usually involves him helping prevent major terrorist attacks on the United States, saving both civilians and government leaders. On many occasions Jack does so at great personal expense, as those he thwarts subsequently target him and his loved ones.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Bauer

mjh

mjhurst said:

It's a popular crypto-fascist TV program in the U.S. Jack Bauer is the hard-nosed, 21st-century, James Bond guy, fighting terrorism and such. He "plays outside the rules" much of the time.

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ahhhh... now I can LOL

Nice coincidence though.

Maybe we don't need to assume that the missing link is the "Juker", but instead the name Joker comes from Jack (since he was the Best Bower/Bauer, a wild Jack - can we propose a "Best Jack(-er)?"

I can hear the giggles from here.

Ross

Although the Joker and the Fool are not related historically, they are often compared to each other.
It would be interesting to speculate on whether the Fool would today be considered as part of the Major Arcana, if the Joker had existed in standard playing cards in 18th century France.

It does seem a little odd to include it as part of an 'arcana' though. After all, while a simultaneous innovation to the trumps, the Fool was not included among them, having a very different role in the games. As with the trumps, it does feature the image of a figure - but then so do the courts. It seems to have been a long time before other countries began to treat it as trump and that change has not been universal - and where it has been adopted, the cards' design has been distinct from trumps.

Like the Joker, the Fool was a stand alone card from the other suits, plain or trumps. To me, this make the whole 56/22 division a little odd. Surely it should be 56/21/1.

philebus said:

It does seem a little odd to include it as part of an 'arcana' though. After all, while a simultaneous innovation to the trumps, the Fool was not included among them, having a very different role in the games. As with the trumps, it does feature the image of a figure - but then so do the courts. It seems to have been a long time before other countries began to treat it as trump and that change has not been universal - and where it has been adopted, the cards' design has been distinct from trumps.

Like the Joker, the Fool was a stand alone card from the other suits, plain or trumps. To me, this make the whole 56/22 division a little odd. Surely it should be 56/21/1.

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Dummett even found it a little hard to think of the Fool having been invented with the trumps, on the principle that innovations (in games) are usually one at a time - e.g. the concept of bidding, the concept of trumps, the concept of permanent trumps, the concept of an "excuse", the concept of a wild card - not all at once.

But there is no evidence that it was otherwise - the Fool seems to a part of the extra cards that make the trump sequence, not a precursor or an afterthought.

In the southern games, Bologna and Florence, the Fool and the Bagatella serve as wildards in forming sequences of trumps as well, and the evidence for this use goes back to the mid-16th century. I believe that was part of the original intention of both, and their mutual iconographic/ideological relationship is clear. But to ask the "why", is to ask the unknowable, at this point.

Ross