Posted on 10/07/2019 8:29:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What does woke media have against “Joker”?
When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month, Time magazine’s Stephanie Zacharek slammed the film for a supposedly sympathetic portrayal of its protagonist, who could “easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels.” A flood of similar comments followed from critics who worried its morally ambiguous depiction of a psychotic mass murderer would incite real-world violence—that lonely and alienated young men would, like the riotous mobs in the film’s closing scene, see the Joker as a hero. As if to validate these overwrought concerns, the New York Police Department even deployed undercover police officers to opening-night screenings.
None of it has stopped “Joker” from a projected weekend debut of $90 million-plus. Part of what’s made it a box-office success is doubtless that we were all warned it was a dangerous and problematic film that some people might take the wrong way, and we can’t have that.
The film, as most everyone knows by now, is about Arthur Fleck, a mentally ill clown who lives with his mentally ill mother and dreams of becoming a standup comic. Played by a rail-thin (and very disconcerting) Joaquin Phoenix, Fleck has serious problems and is very much in need of real help, which he doesn’t get. Instead, he suffers a series of setbacks and humiliations and gradually slips into a violent psychosis.
By the film’s end, amid a violent city-wide riot, he has become a folk hero to the disgruntled rabble of Gotham. Amid random mob violence and societal breakdown, the Joker is born.
What critics have objected to above all is that Fleck is not portrayed as pure evil. He has actual reasons behind his violence. Simply put, he’s taking revenge on an unjust world that showed him too little kindness and no love at all.
In recent interviews director Todd Phillips has expressed his disgust with liberal Hollywood and “far-left” woke culture. But the objections of these woke critics notwithstanding, “Joker” isn’t really all that political. To the extent there’s a political analogy at work, it’s an indictment of the coarseness of civic life. There’s even a subtle anti-Antifa feeling to the masked Gothamites holding up signs that read “Wayne = Facist” and “Kill the Rich.”
The character of billionaire industrialist Thomas Wayne isn’t quite a Trumpian figure, but he is an unapologetic elite who’s entirely correct when he says there’s “something wrong with Gotham” and that the city needs help. He’s also telling the truth about Arthur’s mother, Penny, and her disturbing history of mental illness and abuse. In the end, he and his wife are killed not directly by the Joker, but by a random rioter inspired by the Joker’s psychotic violence.
At the risk of reading too much into what is, at bottom, a comic-book supervillain origin story movie, “Joker” is on some level an indictment. But not quite in the way liberals critics suppose. What “Joker” indicts is moral relativism.
Consciously or not, the film makes some implicit arguments, including an argument for compassion and community and against moral relativism and indifference. Here we have a profile of a disturbed man sliding into psychosis who gets no help from anyone—not least the government social worker who’s supposed to be helping him. It’s set in a city simmering with hatred and violence, where basic government services like trash collection have broken down.
A pop culture professor told the Washington Post that all the talk about potential real-world violence around the film is distracting from a great opportunity “to use the movie for a dialogue about questions like alienation, toxic masculinity and the fragility of whiteness.”
But “Joker” is really an opportunity for an altogether different dialogue about the role of families, about what people need most in life, about what makes for civic comity and solidarity. What it suggests, however unintentionally, is that maybe the best way to fend off the kind alienation and frustration that beset Arthur Fleck is with an intact family, a loving mother and a father.
Maybe the thing people need most in life is friendship and love and community. Maybe we need to rethink the way we’ve torn down the institutions and traditions that used to support these things. Maybe the radical atomization and isolation and autonomy of modern life doesn’t foster prosperity and happiness. Maybe we need to start taking these things seriously.
If we do, that will mean rethinking a half-century of progressive thought, and questioning whether it has all been a pack of lies. And maybe that’s the real reason woke media hate “Joker.”
That was Cesar Romero.
Pumaman.
It’s a MOVIE!!!!! It’s MAKE BELIEVE!!!! but the left has this sickening agenda to tie this into mass shootings and white male toxicity.
Downton Abbey would have been 100% better without the utterly gratuitous, plot-irrelevant faggotry.
Hey! That is what I thought!
My take is that Arthur Fleck isn’t supposed to be “The Joker” that is Batman’s nemesis, but just some prototype that later on inspires that guy. Fleck probably stays locked up in Arkham forever, but 15-20 years down the road some kid who remembers seeing what he did on that talk show will take up the identity.
Yep, the Latino Cesar Romeo. It was basically a number of jokes, some make-up and a lot of laughing.
This kid on Gotham (the series), Cameron Monaghan, did a really good job on his version of Joker.
Maybe one day...the same reworking of Catwoman will occur, and you’d get a fresh new prospective on her.
Saw it last night...i was struck that joker and his supporters were exactly like the far left. They operate on pure emotion and the law means nothing. It was like antifa. They wore masks and rioted.
It wasn’t necessary. I guess they wanted everyone to find love. Would have rathered they spend they spend more time on Tom branson
Downton Abbey would have been 100% better without the utterly gratuitous, plot-irrelevant faggotry.
Well put. I was dragged to the movie by my wife. I shuddered as the scenes of the two men and others fondling each other came on. I am inclined to think the lobby for the homosexuals has pervaded many areas. Any objection countered with cries of "homophobia". In the era depicted, the penalty for public indecency(homosexual fondling) was 30 days to two years jail.
Couldn’t agree more!
Thanks for commenting! You seem like the right guy for my question:
Ever since the writers’ strike of 2007, I am very, very interested in the mechanics of screenwriting and show-running. As I understand dramatic writing and also even deadpan acting such as by Clint Eastwood, etc. the art must seem to have some deeper meaning, yet it must have enough vagueness about it to allow the audience to project their own emotions and meanings onto it.
If Eastwood shows too much facial expression then it will interfere with what the viewer wants the scene to mean. If the writers avoid controversy, nobody buys a ticket. If the writers take a clear position, then they alienate half the audience, which is what is now happening most often as they cannot bear to not “make a difference.” The social engineering is obvious to me in most of these situations.
Stay with me, I will have a question...
The perfect example of the phenomenon I describe is “The Hunger Games” trilogy, novels by Suzanne Collins, and the movies, screenplay by her and others like Billy Ray, and directors Ross and Lawrence. These movies were hugely successful because of this. Of course, there are a hundred factors in making a hit movie, this is not the most important one, but given that other dramatic factors are present, this moral projection thing I describe moves it up to the next level. Both sides, of our cultural divide could imagine themselves as Katniss fighting the evil capital.
Hold for the question:
Now I have no doubt about the projection phenomenon in writing and directing. My question for you is whether you think this film allows for that kind of projection. I accept your premise that “the modern Joker is the equivalent of Batman...” In other words, in this story arc, Joker is the Moriarty to Bruce Wayne’s Sherlock. Will either liberals or conservatives both be able to identify with the good guys in this film? The posted article seems to be saying no.
The writers and show-runners working now seem to be preoccupied with amorality and moral relativism, which I describe as “the good guys are the bad guys, the bad guys are the good guys, but wait no! they are really good/bad guys after all.” I expect that is all that is going on with this movie. These things are done so poorly that they do not take enough time to even establish the “goodness” of the good guy, before they try to show his badness, and vice versa.
If the movie is actually attacking moral relativism, that would be very interesting. If the movie is allowing us to interpret it as an attack on moral relativism, that is interesting. Thanks in advance for your answer. If you do not accept the premise of my question that would be interesting. If you are not gonna watch the film, then please comment on the phenomenon from any vantage you like such as batman comics.
Wait, wut?
“Incel” = involuntary celibate, i.e. emasculated male= bad.
But “toxic masculinity” = also bad.
So which is it?
“Happiness all ‘round!”
That is what you call the writing approach of the Downton Abbey movie. This is not a movie but instead a two hour long commercial free series finale. A good series finale is hard. If you end it all deliberately, Breaking Bad style, you can make a very satisfying end that puts all your friends out of work. If you just end it without tying up the loose ends, The Sopranos style, you make the fans mad. Most show runners have a season finale that sort of ties it up but then leaves it open for a new season if they get picked up. We all see this happening when it happens.
Downtown Abbey as literature ended with Mr.Carson’s retirement. To make this movie, Julian Fellowes had to put him back in the house. At some level Mr. Carson IS Downton Abbey! The hero of the series is the house/estate/all it represents and Mr Carson is the connection between the two worlds upstairs/downstairs if you will. You have to undo the previous series finale to make the movie. That means taking out Thomas, the gay butler.
To write the script, the task was to get Mr. Carson back in the house and still provide “Happiness all ‘round” for the Thomas Barrow character. This was so poorly done that it ruined the movie for me. How could he be happy and thrown over as butler? Well he finds other gays and learns to keep being secret about it. “Happiness” if one day the stupid Bobbies will change their homophobe ways!
Even if you do not care about the anti-Biblical scolding, it is still NOT literature or art in any sense, because it was so poorly done. I understand the decision though because moving Carson back into the house in an artistically valuable way would have been an entirely different movie. You could not just move Barrow out casually because he’s gay. You’ve got to give Barrow his “Happiness all ‘round” and if you are gonna make the gay community happy, he can only be happy by fully fulfilling his gayness. So there it is. Every other writing decision flows from that.
Please correct me. I do appreciate your thoughts.
FWIW, I REALLY liked their handling of Tom Branson's character. Having the Irish Republican save the King AND the princess … just because he's a decent and honest man loyal to his family … was brilliant. He can't stand the aristocracy, yet he can't help being part of it.
A movie about a mass murderer is not my kind of movie.
Carson was essential to the house. I would love to see an annual Christmas special on masterpiece.
You said, “I would love to see an annual Christmas special on masterpiece.” -—
I am sure it won’t happen. Maggie Smith was even against making the movie, “Well, maybe if you kill me off. That might do it,” she said. Julian Fellowes has ruled out making any more. His original artistic decision was to stop in the twenties. He could not “take the house into the thirties” because that idea has been overdone. He could not go into the war because he said he likes stories with “moral ambiguity” where “you don’t know who you are for.” “There’s nobody that is ‘sort of’ for the Nazis,” he said.
I agree with him about the forties, but I can see a story about Mary managing the crash, the Great Depression. Tom losing his motor shop, Lord Grantham losing on stocks just as the Dowager dies. Lady Edith offering come in with money to bail it all out and Mary chafing under the humiliation. Mary making a mistake that threatens the house and deciding to give up and quit. An angel appears showing her the future and what the world becomes without her at the head of Downton Abbey. Then at the end all the members of the community come by with pounds and shillings to rescue her at the last moment...We could call it “Downton Abbey - It’s a Wonderful Life!”
We’ll have to wait for the fan fiction I guess.
There was a very important conversation between Lady Mary and the Dowager you remember. Now some writers would never just come out and do an exposition like that because a truth like that has to be kept below the surface. The idea is that Downton Abbey is not really Carson, certainly not Lord Grantham. Mary thought it was Carson, but really it was the Dowager who now has passed it on to her because she is worthy!
From a literature perspective the story is finished because her character is now fully developed. She has been guided all along by the Dowager who has in various subtle but powerful ways “saved” the house by shaping Mary. You see? That has been the story all along, and now Fellowes has come right out with it like that. He’s done I think
Margaret Mitchell refused all her life to permit a sequel to “Gone With the Wind.” She was right because Rhett leaving symbolized the whole message of the story. As the end of her life approached she relented. How could she deny such a payout to leave to to her children, a wise and right decision.
It was awful!
Excellent thoughts on both the Barrow and Branson characters. My compliments to you and thanks!
There’s some validity to the criticism. There are already too many movies about serial killers. The liberal reviewers, though, would have forgiven a lot if the movie had a liberal message.
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