Stories of Jared Leto's process in becoming the Joker have been circulating dashboards, mine included, for a solid year. It was inevitable. The Joker is arguably the most beloved comic book villain, and with Heath Ledger delivering the now archetypal performance of the character in 2008's The Dark Knight, all eyes were on Jared.

'Daunting' seems an appropriate word to describe the task at hand for him. You have the previous incarnation of the character played by an incredible actor, who locked himself in a hotel room for six weeks to develop his persona, then delivered a balls-to-the-wall performance, then died, THEN be the first person to win an Oscar for a comic book character, from the grave no less (you are missed, Mr. Ledger).

Jared Leto had his work cut out for him.

And yet he seemed to go even further. In spirit of the character, he "gifted" to his castmates bullets, playing cards, a very dead pig, a very much alive rat and used condoms. He reportedly never broke character while on set; he even watched videos of actual violent acts being committed and then delivered a performance that gave the chills to Suicide Squad's director, David Ayer.

But would we have accepted Jared Leto's joker had he not constructed such a mythos around his role?

I don't think most audience members would have.

We certainly haven't all accepted it anyhow; there's a fantastic article by Angelica Jade Bastién published by The Atlantic detailing her gripes with this glorification of actor's process that Hollywood produces over its actors (specifically male actors). She points out numerous actors who achieve very stunning performances without resorting to being 'method' (a very bastardized term). Or if they are method acting they do so in much more moderate ways and still, according to her, deliver just as good performances. And while I agree with her on most points she makes, namely that Jared Leto's antics seem more a stunt that an exploration of expression, and that male actors in Hollywood are much more valued than their female counterparts (a value system that ends up hurting everybody), there's an underlying assumption that I can't seem to wrap my head around.

Should the artistic process be marketed?

Let's start with some good ol' philosophy.

Aesthetic Formalism: the practice of judging artwork solely on its qualitative properties, dismissing of iconography (identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images) or the historical and social context.

Which sounds good, this is the 'I don't care if it took three days or three years I like it' mindset, but...

Art is not created in a vacuum.

I'm reminded of a production of Young Frankenstein that I had worked on my college my freshman year, a Mel Brook's musical about the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein inheriting his grandfather's giant, hilariously spooky castle and after discovering his grandfather's laboratory. After literally being contacted by his dead relatives, he decides upon making his own monster to terrorize the townsfolk. Wacky hijinks ensue.

I hated this musical.

It was too campy, comical subtlety was thrown out the window for big set pieces, every character was an archetype of an archetype and the songs especially were about as pleasant as a land mine tasting convention.

Well, that is until I learned that the reason Mel Brooks wrote the musical was to get over the death of his wife.

It started making sense then, I mean, about as much sense as a Mel Brooks work will make. Reconnecting with dead family members, finding solace in appreciating your own creations (artistic or...otherwise)... etc. I still didn't like the music, but the whole thing, songs and all I could appreciate because it now had more depth, more substance.

I'm frankly against Aesthetic Formalism.

At least most versions of what that theory entails. There's a whole world of art becomes much more enjoyable when someone understands the way it was made. Jackson Pollock paintings come to mind. They seem like random dots on a canvas. And then one day someone tells you that Pollock let his mind go blank and his brush where it may and isn't that the coolest thing? The process of creation informs it's product and to say otherwise is to claim that art happens in a vacuum.

Note: This doesn't mean that you should suffer for your art.

Nor is that an excuse for Jared's... odd... behavior. Just because you're the Joker doesn't give you the right to mail a dead pig to someone. Just because Apocalypse Now's nightmare of filming breathes into the horrors it portrays, it doesn't mean artistic obsession trumps things like safety, or wellness, or sanity for that matter.

I do think, however, that artistic process is a thing that can be used to give weight to its artistic products.

Especially now with our obsession with darker, grittier more realistic movies (maybe not Suicide Squad on that last adjective), it becomes more important to showcase your research and process. I love knowing about practical effects, that films were filmed at the location of where they're taking place, that actors spent copious amounts of time trying to accurately portray characteristics of disability, endurance or ways of speaking. And to only look at the final product is to deny yourself the weight that comes with making good art?

Something would seem missing.