Thoughts on Joker
I saw Joker the other day and have to offer some scattered thoughts on it. The bottom line: I loved it and think it is probably the best DC movie ever-but many have a very different view, which I want to haphazardly unpack.
Context: I'm not really a DC fan, not a Batman fan, not a fan of the Joker as a character, and not acquainted with the Scorsese films Joker draws on. This probably contributes to my loving this movie because I had no serious cultural touchstones to be wounded by it. On a basic level, I thought this film took a pretty boring villain and made him fascinating and human, and it did so in the context of trenchant social commentary.
Spoilers may follow:
The film's basic argument is that when the mega-rich disdain everyone else and disinvest in the social good, society breaks down. This is true. We've been living in it consistently in America since Reaganism. In a different mode, Octavia Butler illustrated it in Parable of the Sower in 1993: if it's not checked, increasing income inequality will inevitably lead to the rich being hounded and hunted in their gated communities and everyone else living and dying in desperate squalor.
In her thought-provoking and earnest initial reaction video on Joker, Jessie Gender argues that it raises political questions but doesn't take a stand. I'd argue this stand is sledgehammer clear (though some other issues she mentions are less so). Lack of social support (community, career, therapeutic, medical) drives Arthur to become the Joker. He knows it; he articulates it. And though he does say near the end he's not political, in broad terms, his awareness that all of this is bullshit is certainly a political stance. And though his descent into murderousness is clearly coded as horrific, he's not wrong about the bullshit.
However, one area I concede is problematic is that the film shows the mentally ill protagonist becoming a murderous villain, and that can be read as stoking our current scapegoating of the mentally ill as dangerous, murderous, etc. I guess the question, then, is should the film have been made at all? Because if you're going to tell the origin story of the Joker, you will be telling a story about a mentally ill person becoming a murderous villain; there's no way around that. I'd argue that project is legitimate-worth interrogating, but legitimate.
Let's consider the very basic comic-bookish baseline: a superhero battles supervillains, who are generally extremely over-the-top, cackling, world-threatening, mass murdering, barely human weirdos who only exist (narratively) for the superhero to try his might against. They are outside of us, fundamentally unlike us, totally detestable and unmotivated, an excuse not to look at our own dark sides. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of this mode. Indeed, I spent some time, prior to Joker, pondering why a Batman villain in a kids' comic I read my daughter wanted to destroy the world so much, and I was frustrated by the text's total lack of concern for that question.
Joker is concerned with that question, and that's valid. In fact, one might say it's about time. Its fundamental project is to humanize, and that's a good project. Lord knows in a world where poor people, people on social services, people who can't socialize normally routinely get scapegoated as the lazy, morally bankrupt destroyers of society, we desperately need that humanization.
Those are my major thoughts, but I want to respond to a couple of the other concerns Jessie Gender raises in her video reaction. She cites a concern about Arthur's mother being blamed in the narrative for "allowing" his childhood abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. She notes, rightly, that it illustrates a narrative that abused women are more responsible for their children being abused than the abusers are. She argues this narrative is unfair and destructive, and I agree. But I think that Joker is aware of this narrative and critiquing it. I'd note that the newspaper articles that lay this blame on her come from the 1950s or early 60s. And they are weird by current standards. Though this misogynistic narrative does still exist, it would be odd today to see a big newspaper splash centered on a mother "allowing" abuse. If reported at all, the abuse itself would be the main story. This move in Joker, I think, calls out the greater misogyny of the past. I think it's meant to be read historically, as, perhaps, is Arthur's buying into this narrative as readily as he does.
Jessie also expresses concern about the implication that Arthur murderers his African American neighbor and her child, arguing that this replicates the very real social problem of white people invading black people's homes and killing them but doesn't address this in any useful way. Here, I'd say we read the film in different ways. I don't think it's implied he kills them. I do think the film should have put in one more shot to make this clearer. But here's the basis of my reading: there's no blood, no overt sign of violence, and throughout most of the film, Arthur does not kill people he feels aren't guilty. He's spares a coworker who was decent to him. He kills his mother only after several instances of feeling betrayed by her. He kills TV show host Murray, who mocked him on TV, but spares the other people on the stage. His neighbor and her daughter have only been nice to him, and at that stage in his descent, I'm inclined to think he just walks out of her apartment without hurting them. But it could have been clearer.
To sum up, I'll say this: this film disturbed me. It's meant to. Oddly, it also uplifted me. Call me strange, but it left me with a sense of gratitude for all I have in my own life. It left me with a heightened sense of compassion, with a sense of being taken outside my own preoccupations and opened up to greater care for others. It encouraged me to see us all as human beings. And it encouraged me to see the problems of our times being called out in a major movie.
Context: I'm not really a DC fan, not a Batman fan, not a fan of the Joker as a character, and not acquainted with the Scorsese films Joker draws on. This probably contributes to my loving this movie because I had no serious cultural touchstones to be wounded by it. On a basic level, I thought this film took a pretty boring villain and made him fascinating and human, and it did so in the context of trenchant social commentary.
Spoilers may follow:
The film's basic argument is that when the mega-rich disdain everyone else and disinvest in the social good, society breaks down. This is true. We've been living in it consistently in America since Reaganism. In a different mode, Octavia Butler illustrated it in Parable of the Sower in 1993: if it's not checked, increasing income inequality will inevitably lead to the rich being hounded and hunted in their gated communities and everyone else living and dying in desperate squalor.
In her thought-provoking and earnest initial reaction video on Joker, Jessie Gender argues that it raises political questions but doesn't take a stand. I'd argue this stand is sledgehammer clear (though some other issues she mentions are less so). Lack of social support (community, career, therapeutic, medical) drives Arthur to become the Joker. He knows it; he articulates it. And though he does say near the end he's not political, in broad terms, his awareness that all of this is bullshit is certainly a political stance. And though his descent into murderousness is clearly coded as horrific, he's not wrong about the bullshit.
However, one area I concede is problematic is that the film shows the mentally ill protagonist becoming a murderous villain, and that can be read as stoking our current scapegoating of the mentally ill as dangerous, murderous, etc. I guess the question, then, is should the film have been made at all? Because if you're going to tell the origin story of the Joker, you will be telling a story about a mentally ill person becoming a murderous villain; there's no way around that. I'd argue that project is legitimate-worth interrogating, but legitimate.
Let's consider the very basic comic-bookish baseline: a superhero battles supervillains, who are generally extremely over-the-top, cackling, world-threatening, mass murdering, barely human weirdos who only exist (narratively) for the superhero to try his might against. They are outside of us, fundamentally unlike us, totally detestable and unmotivated, an excuse not to look at our own dark sides. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of this mode. Indeed, I spent some time, prior to Joker, pondering why a Batman villain in a kids' comic I read my daughter wanted to destroy the world so much, and I was frustrated by the text's total lack of concern for that question.
Joker is concerned with that question, and that's valid. In fact, one might say it's about time. Its fundamental project is to humanize, and that's a good project. Lord knows in a world where poor people, people on social services, people who can't socialize normally routinely get scapegoated as the lazy, morally bankrupt destroyers of society, we desperately need that humanization.
Those are my major thoughts, but I want to respond to a couple of the other concerns Jessie Gender raises in her video reaction. She cites a concern about Arthur's mother being blamed in the narrative for "allowing" his childhood abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. She notes, rightly, that it illustrates a narrative that abused women are more responsible for their children being abused than the abusers are. She argues this narrative is unfair and destructive, and I agree. But I think that Joker is aware of this narrative and critiquing it. I'd note that the newspaper articles that lay this blame on her come from the 1950s or early 60s. And they are weird by current standards. Though this misogynistic narrative does still exist, it would be odd today to see a big newspaper splash centered on a mother "allowing" abuse. If reported at all, the abuse itself would be the main story. This move in Joker, I think, calls out the greater misogyny of the past. I think it's meant to be read historically, as, perhaps, is Arthur's buying into this narrative as readily as he does.
Jessie also expresses concern about the implication that Arthur murderers his African American neighbor and her child, arguing that this replicates the very real social problem of white people invading black people's homes and killing them but doesn't address this in any useful way. Here, I'd say we read the film in different ways. I don't think it's implied he kills them. I do think the film should have put in one more shot to make this clearer. But here's the basis of my reading: there's no blood, no overt sign of violence, and throughout most of the film, Arthur does not kill people he feels aren't guilty. He's spares a coworker who was decent to him. He kills his mother only after several instances of feeling betrayed by her. He kills TV show host Murray, who mocked him on TV, but spares the other people on the stage. His neighbor and her daughter have only been nice to him, and at that stage in his descent, I'm inclined to think he just walks out of her apartment without hurting them. But it could have been clearer.
To sum up, I'll say this: this film disturbed me. It's meant to. Oddly, it also uplifted me. Call me strange, but it left me with a sense of gratitude for all I have in my own life. It left me with a heightened sense of compassion, with a sense of being taken outside my own preoccupations and opened up to greater care for others. It encouraged me to see us all as human beings. And it encouraged me to see the problems of our times being called out in a major movie.