Do we really need a movie like Joker right now?
This question has divided critics in the weeks leading up to the release of the Joaquin Phoenix-led drama, centered around Batman’s clownish arch-nemesis, the Joker. Despite largely glowing reviews and the highest prize of the 2019 Venice Film Festival, Joker had a PR problem from the start. Culture warriors inside and out of the comic book world grew nauseous at the idea of a vaguely sympathetic depiction of an isolated white male turning his grievances into terror and becoming a monster.
Like with most quasi-political battles, this controversy was never grounded in good faith or an understanding of the Joker’s decades-long legacy of anarchy. It’s about advancing a narrative, and Joker just doesn’t fit.
Since appearing in the first Batman comic in 1940, the Joker has never left center stage in the Batman universe. Six different actors have portrayed him on screen, and dozens of writers have written his lines, yet his philosophy has remained remarkably consistent over eight decades. In a sense, that kind of longevity without a massive overhaul or reimagining by Hollywood is a testament to the enigma Joker represents, one neither Batman nor audiences can figure out. For instance, Heath Ledger’s Joker famously lit a mountain of money on fire in The Dark Knight, to the abject horror of his mobster counterpart, to “send a message” that everything burns.
The Joker is, of course, correct.
Everything does burn, everything worldly is temporary, and everyone is only as good as the world allows them to be at a given time. It’s in essence why Hobbes said we have government, since the alternative is nature, which is nasty, brutish, and short. The Joker has always subscribed to this idea that we’re all one push, or he puts it, “one bad day” away from being monsters. It’s a common thread from the comics to almost every on-screen iteration of the character, including this most recent debut.
Critics would have you believe Joker is the character’s first run-in with controversy. It isn’t.
Nor is Todd Phillips’ film the first to suggest the Joker could have a sympathetic origin story. The Killing Joke, a 1986 comic from Alan Moore, gave the villain his first possible backstory. The comic is considered iconic, but even for Batman loyalists, the Joker’s heinous crimes pushed the envelope. The wound of The Killing Joke was salted in 2015 when it was brought to the big screen for an animated adaptation which was equally brutal.
In it, the Joker was born from a single bad day, where he utterly failed as a comedian, lost his pregnant wife, and only then was disfigured by a vat of chemicals. Jack Nicholson’s Joker experienced the chemical treatment, but he was already a rotten mobster. Joaquin Phoenix’s spin on the character runs with his origins as a wannabe comedian, carrying with him an unspecified cocktail of mental illness and bad luck.
The latest film looks at how he’s pushed over the edge by delusion, shame, and violence. This Joker, Arthur Fleck, goes from viewing his existence as a tragedy to a twisted comedy with no purpose but to point out the absurdity of life itself. Fleck embraces nihilism, and he wants everyone to give it a try.
The political commentariat is aggravated that Fleck deals with mental illness, as it’s apparently stigmatizing. They’re mad that he throws a match on the powder keg of income inequality in Gotham because they don’t want the allure of class resentment tarnished by a murderous clown. They’re concerned that the Joker commits a handful of murders with a handgun because of our gun violence “epidemic.”
Are we supposed to take these complaints seriously? Frustration over this film is at its core a conflict with the Joker character himself. He exists to make a mockery of self-image, narrative, and the standards of polite society as to what is considered acceptable.
If you dare, search Google for the “most disturbing acts by the Joker,” and after reading through his fictional criminal record, try to explain why we haven’t been plagued by Joker-themed crimes for decades. Far, far worse Joker source material has existed for years now for reclusive comic book geeks to stew over — and yet, none of the critics’ nightmare predictions about fiction-fueled violence have come true for previous iterations.
Fearmongers peddle in pervasive mythology that surrounds killers and their alleged inspirations. Taxi Driver remains linked to the shooting of Ronald Reagan because John Hinckley Jr. was stalking Jodie Foster, who acted in the anarchic film, and he wanted to “impress her.” After Columbine, The Matrix was loosely tied to the killers despite the movie being a month old and the shooting being much more extensively planned. The Aurora movie theater shooter, James Holmes, was not inspired by the Joker, but his hair was dyed, and he murdered moviegoers at a Batman movie, so some people made the false connection. These things take on a life of their own.
Joker is an exemplary and bleak film, thus the accolades from objective film critics who don’t cave to political narratives. As for the question of “Do we need a movie like this right now?,” well, it doesn’t actually matter.
The big joke of Joker is that we attempt to offload responsibility for societal problems with loneliness, loss of purpose, depression, resentment, and violence onto films that dare to hold up a mirror. Fleck explicitly aims to litigate this passing of the buck when it comes to inequality and how we treat those on the fringes of society. No one needs to see this movie, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesman for Young Voices, host of the Beltway Banthas podcast, and an entertainment contributor for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
