The Joke's on You: A review of the Joker
The Joker isn’t about incels and copycats. It’s about us.
This piece has spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie and care about spoilers click here.
Arthur Fleck’s descent into madness might be a character study but it’s also a warning. His killings inspire a movement of enraged, abandoned and marginalized citizens of Gotham to reach up and throttle the elite. They’re not all insane.
The movie’s slow (too slow) buildup is frustrating. It’s long and drawn out. The cinematic shots reminded me of an over the top angsty song written by a teenage boy. Joaquin Pheonix’s performance was a work of art in itself though and his ego dystonic laugh was masterful.
Fleck is clearly insane and his battle with mental illness is evident throughout the movie. He`s on medications until his services get cut and he no longer has access to his social services after which he becomes more violent.
I would argue though that his mental illness is just one part of the picture. He is also a guy who can’t catch a break. His job sucks, his dream of being a comedian will never come true, he’s beat up by street toughs and rich kids, his rich (probable) father disowns him, his mother didn’t care about him, the city cut his services and finally his childhood hero makes fun of him on live TV. He is alone.
Once he snaps his laughter, which is supposed to be inappropriate and which he himself doesn’t understand, starts to make sense. It’s finally his. He has embraced the strange thing within him and become it. He’s accepted the twisted evil power within him and he’s using it. And to him, it feels great. It feels great for the audience as well after seeing this guy get beat down time and again.
Maybe it’s my own mind but I couldn’t help but tie this movie to America 2019. Thomas Wayne can’t understand the anger on the streets dismissing it as coming from people who could never make it, clowns. Robert DeNiro playing a late night TV host idolizes Wayne, barely paying attention to the protests going on across the city until he himself is shot. Things are getting tougher in the States.
Disparity is growing, the middle class is shrinking, people are pissed. They already voted for a fascist. The Joker isn’t political. He doesn’t care about the protests, but he uses them to feed his madness. It’s just convenient that the kids he kills are rich. It’s a perfect storm.
He’s a batshit crazy Guy Fawkes; the Catholic fascist terrorist who is now the face of Anonymous, something he would probably not care about either. When Hilary Clinton calls Trump voters ‘deplorables’ and every late night host is anti-Republican and the political corporate elites think they know better than the average Joe, the world has laid a foundation that’s pretty close to Gotham City.
The poetry of the thing is that the system embodied in Thomas Wayne gives birth to both the problem and its opposite. The Joker and Batman. The desire for anarchy and the need for order. Neither one can understand or sympathize with the other.
Therein lies the trouble. As the gap between anarchy and order, rich and poor, elite and non, politics and everyday life grows there will be a potential for unrest. Whether that unrest is sparked by a political challenge to the status quo or some alienated incel doesn’t really matter.
In the final scene, a committed Arthur Fleck starts laughing uncontrollably and the unfortunate psychiatrist asks him what about. He replies that she wouldn’t get it.
He’s finally getting the care he needs but by then it’s too late. He’s too far gone and he’s going to hurt the society that hurt him. We can’t get it, because the joke is on us.
Alex Byron is a writer whose work is featured at lowercase magazine.