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 magazines 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 violencethat lonely and alienated young men would, like the riotous mobs in the films 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 whats 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 cant 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 doesnt get. Instead, he suffers a series of setbacks and humiliations and gradually slips into a violent psychosis.
By the films 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, hes 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 isnt really all that political. To the extent theres a political analogy at work, its an indictment of the coarseness of civic life. Theres 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 isnt quite a Trumpian figure, but he is an unapologetic elite whos entirely correct when he says theres something wrong with Gotham and that the city needs help. Hes also telling the truth about Arthurs 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 Jokers 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 anyonenot least the government social worker whos supposed to be helping him. Its 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 weve torn down the institutions and traditions that used to support these things. Maybe the radical atomization and isolation and autonomy of modern life doesnt 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 thats the real reason woke media hate Joker.
That’s right......it’s just a make believe Movie. The media always ‘rides the backs of lead films’ to make political points one way or another.
People can and do judge whatever they want of any movie...Joker appears to have a great script, great acting and a host of other greats from all the reviews.
::Sigh:: I miss Cesar Romero.
There’s been enough reviews of the Joker so people know what they are stepping into when they go. Those crying out about it just want an excuse to flap their jaws.
I find serial murderers a fasinating study...like the Canadian Col. Russell Williams.... His interrogation was stunning and worth the listen..... of course some are just outright nutjobs and of little interest. BTK was another of interest. Bundy and a few others.
First, I’m the guy who as a kid...consumed comics with a passion...more so DC than Marvel. So I have a different prospective on this.
To your question....”In other words, in this story arc, Joker is the Moriarty to Bruce Waynes Sherlock. Will either liberals or conservatives both be able to identify with the good guys in this film?”
There are three answers to this. First, for the people who read the comics before the 1990s (before all of this deep-thought came into storylines of comics)...we will always identify the good and bad guys, putting them into their rightful place. Politics won’t matter.
Second, to the non-comic reader who watched all the Batman movies up until the Christian Bale ‘period’...I think most people will identify the good and bad guys, and just watch for pure entertainment. Again, politics won’t matter.
Third, but then along came the 2005 reboot, and we were introduced to a complicated Batman, with complicated background characters. Batman got the job done, but he wasn’t pure of heart anymore. As the second of the Bale Batman movies is delivered, with Dark Knight...we finally get introduced to the new Joker vision...with Heath Ledger delivering a one of a kind performance. Scene by scene, this Joker is no longer a plain criminal or nutcase...he’s a revolutionary. He wants to bring society to chaos, to reshape it. Batman is going down his traditional path....simply to catch the bad guy. Joker’s intent is more sinister, but ultimately to make everyone a loser...to restart the system.
In the third case, liberals and conservatives probably have a problem in identifying the good and bad guys. Some liberals might even say that the Joker as a revolutionary is doing work that Bruce Wayne and Batman should have been doing...resetting the capitalistic society.
Adding to this, along came Suicide Squad where you were pulling for the bad guys to win against the super-bad guys.
Some of the DC material can go this way...other material (Wonder Woman and Aquaman) can’t be bent too far. Although I admit that the new version of Aquaman isn’t anything compared against the early comic version.
Birds of Prey is slated for 2020, and promises to be another ‘bad guys aren’t that bad’ experience.
All of this brings me to this last point...comics are unique. They can’t compare against the story-line of A Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe, or the Last of the Mohicans. Bad guys are bad guys, and things are two-dimensional. A liberal and conservative can both read a novel by Upton Sinclair and each reach generally the same conclusion on good versus evil. Modern comics can suggest something that is radically different.
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