My interest in Joker was, obvs, artistic. I’d finished a workshop on writing negative and positive character arcs and having seen adverts for the film around, it was the first solid example I could think of. This stunned Yates when I suggested we go as I’d never before shown the least interest in the whole Batman franchise, and he’s right; implausible, one dimensional, predictable superhero action movies hold utterly no appeal for me. However, dark retellings with alternative perspectives and reinterpretations, as my love of Angela Carter testifies, very much do.
Still reeling, Yates gave me a heads up on some of the reviews which my appropriately woke approach would find important. So I read some reviews about incel calls, shooter glorification, anti-feminism, racism and then the alternatives that call for robustness instead of humanity for a well loved villain. And here’s me throwing in my two pence.
For a start, it was great. I have no interest in superhero films with all their fecking explosions because the characters are boring. Joaquim Phoenix wasn’t boring. Nor was his development. You watched throughout, empathising uncomfortably, and wondering when he was going to crack. That is way more interesting to me than tense car chases and fights. And the music’s cool. And the dancing. Which unavoidably make a great film. A personal favourite moment is when Arthur Fleck, on a real downer, just gets in the fridge. Yup. Opens the door, pulls out all the food and shelves, and just gets in. You know those times when you’re feeling rough? Get in the fridge.
Flippancy aside, a lot of the articles you’ll have read will discuss how it glorifies the loner who goes on shooting sprees, revealing justifiable motivations. Pretty distasteful in the light of the (most) recent shootings in the U.S., and the rise of the crazy incel online movement where maladjusted blokes who don’t have girlfriends spew on about how they’re going to kill everyone who won’t have sex with them. So did I think it romanticised the lone wolf, helping the audience to understand that the world really is against him and totally deserve to be killed in the face?
I guess there was a bit of that. I don’t reckon those murderers genuinely do perceive the world is against them. Arthur Fleck is badly educated (as obvious from his appalling spelling in his journal, from which the audience get frequent half-obscured glimpses of sinister looking pictures), has a mental health disorder and a shit job. He’s a full-time carer for his crazy mother. This is all outside of his control to a degree. He also has a shit load of bad luck. Being beaten up by a load of people who are delinquent or drunk or just assholes is not his fault, or the bullshit get-the-audience-all-fired-up-about-the-unfairness disciplinary for losing a sign at work…because he was beaten up. Combine single carer with poverty, poor education, mental health issues and loneliness with a load of bad luck and you genuinely do have a lot of difficulties that few people have the resilience to overcome. Sounds like a regular description of any kid on a List in UK schools, or crime factors the world over.
Then come the bad choices, like taking a gun to a kid’s hospital, which actually was so farcical when it falls out his clown trousers while he’s dancing for the under tens leukaemia ward that it’s just hilarious. Here’s where we have to examine where systematic factors run out and personal responsibility comes in, sure, but also, I’m watching the Joker, and I know he’s a bad guy and I’m waiting to find out when he becomes the joker. Convenient for me I guess, to suspend belief at the point when the social issue gets complicated. 😉
So yeah, when he starts shooting drunk abusive rich kids and stabbing people with scissors, you do feel like he’s taking some control over his life and question yourself about why you think that’s acceptable. There’s a beautiful scene after shooting dudes on the subway when he locks himself in a toilet and dances. Not jolly clown dancing, but slow, euphoric waltzing to compelling cello music. Which, by all accounts, Hugh Grant found unpleasantly noisy. But it does challenge you to examine why, as he develops in self-assertiveness, and …joy, you’re rooting for him because it all sounds a bit stroppy. ‘Yeah, you’re all bastards so I’ve bloody shown you, now!’ Can I identify with that?
Some of this wilful teenager-ish behaviour is validated by very teenager-ish daddy issues – wishing Tom Wayne would accept him. The one time I couldn’t follow him all the way was his cringy outburst when invited to the Murray Franklin show where he whined about being abandoned by society and tipped over from frustration to blame. Seeing as it was all shot with a TV screen frame, it’s now showing us perhaps how the rest of the world sees the fantasy existence Fleck has built himself. Perhaps as his grip on reality loosens, his increasing madness is what is actually gives him the feeling of power and joy more than murder.
But it ultimately worked for me because he did seem justified striking out at an unfair society. I don’t know if I’m being duped here because I’m sure that’s what righteous film makers would also assert as justification for his actions, but sometimes the means of production must be seized by the workers in any way possible. Ok, I picked up on this because the social ills of a capitalist society is my background and may not be the overriding concern of other people’s human experience.
On which, I did notice the black thing straight away. Why were most of his early aggressors were black women? That’s a director’s choice! It’s a black woman who holds tight-lipped, disapproving ‘therapy’ sessions in a miserably cramped and messy office who looks like she just wanted to get him out the room, and totally fails to show any compassion or practical help. It’s a black woman who chastises him aggressively on a bus when he smiles at her little boy. Other reviews have pointed out that the murders of black women were invisible, hinted at offscreen as the women aren’t important enough to have their deaths made explicit.
But I’ve also read lots of articles that condemn the amount of screen time given to vicious acts of violence against women. The Fall was guilty of sexualising violence against women in its split screen shots, despite foregrounding the immense charisma of Gillian Anderson’s character who is surely a portrayal of female power and agency. So…what’s it gonna be? Have the makers of Joker decided to not join the long line of film makers depicting brutality against women? Or did they leave it out because black women have no voice even in death?
In my ignorance of the lived experience, I’m not sure. There are a couple of wonderfully sympathetic black characters. There are also a lot of arseholes who are white. And it seemed more to me that if you combine mental health issues with the poor education and humiliating poverty that is found in systematically unfair societies where power and wealth is in the hands of a select few who make no effort to understand the experience of the masses, nor use their wealth and power to alleviate it, then you will have …well, crime. And we do. We have it in the U.K. and Australia where we don’t have guns or the lone gunman figure.
Fleck makes the point to one ex co-worker clown, David that he was the only one who was ever nice to him. He doesn’t kill him. In the hilarious scene, he gets up from the corpse of another guy, covered in blood, to let David out of the locked apartment with a friendly kiss on the head. The audience, holding their breath, wait to see if he’ll flip out again and murder this guy too. But he doesn’t. He’s not completely mad. This guy was kind. Fleck repeats the sentiment throughout the film that ‘what’s wrong with a little human decency? And kindness?’
So who’d have thought? Compassion for each other, kindness, inclusion and a fair and just society are essential for a well-adjusted public? Maybe we should ask governments those questions before condemning directors for glamorising gunmen. And fucking ban guns.