The Problem With “Joker” (2019)

There is something at once understandable yet disappointing and frustrating about how the character of the Joker is written in the 2019 movie with Joaquin Phoenix. Reviews have commented and disparaged the toxic nihilism of the movie. But more on that later.

Visually the movie and Joaquin Phoenix’s acting and portrayal of the unraveling of a mentally ill man alienated and disrespected and disregarded is dark and sinister with moments of fear, bloody revenge, nihilism, destruction made beautiful in its own dark and twisted way. Though the beauty of some of the moments where Joaquin’s acting is basically the only redeeming feature doesn’t really make up for the disappointment. It looks nice but, like a hot guy or girl with a terrible or vapid personality, is a let down. The Joker emerges out of the emaciated husk of Arthur Fleck after getting assaulted twice, losing his job, crushing rejections from both father figures (Thomas Wayne and Murray Franklin), and finding out the woman he thought was his mother had adopted him and stood by while he was abused and ignored and painted a smile over his pain and pathologized his laughter. That’s more than enough pain to break anyone. Arthur is right to desire power and control over his own life. He was right in the denunciations of Gotham, of the disgusting rich scum on the train that was harassing a woman and tried to beat him up and how the lives and grievances of the rich are valued more highly than those of the poor. All of that is right. You can’t even help but feel a sense of satisfaction and cathartic release of pain, resentment and justified rage with him when he kills the assholes on the train. They won’t be missed but something new was born in Arthur. Despite himself, he inadvertently starts an uprising of the poor against the entitled, self-important rich. Thomas Wayne, in his derision of the grievances and resentment of the poor against the rich which are more or less justified and in which he calls them clowns, turns the killer clown into a vigilante, almost a Spartacus-like figure. But the problem is he is not. He is not Spartacus or a vigilante and what’s more is he is not interested in being such a figure or in fighting for anything either. The problem with this Joker and the movie overall is that the character of Arthur Fleck, the man Arthur Fleck can’t live up to the alter ego of the Joker. The problem is he is actually a failure. He is not a criminal mastermind. He starts a ‘movement’ of sorts despite himself and even when he is offered that political cause and to bear that mantle by Murray Franklin, which even that would give him some sort of purpose or credence and point, he refuses it. At first, this seems like a disappointment both in terms of the movie and the character. But then, I guess it could be that the nihilism and disappointment is the point since the Joker is supposed to be a supervillain not an anti-hero. The moment that captures this feeling of lost potential and disappointment or contradiction is in the elevator when Joaquin is in the red suit and the full makeup of the Joker. His dance on the stairs which looks sharp, dark, stunning, mesmerizing in slow motion but then he returns to the fumbling man who runs away like a scared rat when reality (i.e. the police officers) interrupts his dance number. There are many moments like this in movie that look nice and visually striking but feel empty. On the Murray Franklin show, he is actually self-pitying and child-like in how hurt he was that his hero turned him into a punchline. He is a Joker who can’t take a joke. He is a Joker who isn’t funny and who isn’t political and doesn’t believe in anything either. He needed a talent or a cause to fight for and he lacked the former and refused the latter. That might have saved him, ennobled him somehow. Instead he went the narcissistic and sadistic route killing not just people who had hurt him but anyone and everyone who ever rejected him. He became the embodiment of the proverb “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”. Anyone who has known what it feels like to have depression grip your psyche and righteous anger and pain grab and shake you by the throat, who has cried so much they started laughing, laughing at the absurdity and pointlessness of it all, that diabolical laughter echoing from the pits of despair like your body’s emotional immune response to the pain, the cackle of the Shadow, knows where Arthur Fleck has been, has lived. He is also a cautionary tale. Not all who suffer become heroes. Not all who suffer are made stronger, better, and wiser by it. Not all those who suffer can find meaning in it or find their way out of the darkness. In some, the pain and darkness metastasizes, wants to infect and inflict itself on others, to destroy anything good, innocent, successful, that which it cannot be or have. Nazis and school shooters come to mind.

Batman is said to be the mirror image of the Joker. Someone who experienced tragedy and pain and suffering as everyone does and triumphed over it, learned from it, made meaning and purpose, something good out of it. Could Joker have done the same? Worked harder to become a better comedian? Taken up the political cause to speak for the dispossessed in a less self-pitying way? Is there always a choice? Are some people just better equipped within their character to make that choice than others? There are those who get hurt and hurt others. There are those who get hurt and decide they will never do that or let that happen to others. Shadows, the anger, the demons, the resentment, despair, nihilism exist in both types of people. Both types of people are faced with the reality of senseless and random cruelty, pain, suffering. It is both interesting and frustrating to contrast the Joker with the theme of laughter and humor as a remedy or salve against the pain of life, the archetype of the fool, the jester, the trickster, as a useful and necessary agent of chaos, the fine line between madman and genius, the wise fool à la the fool in King Lear who is the only one who has license to speak the truth and call out the king/society’s stupidity and hypocrisies or of comedians and satirists who harness the underestimated power of comedy (though there is nothing laughable about it) and speak truth to power à la Jon Stewart. Laughter at absurdity, at hypocrisy, at creative destruction, at the arbitrariness of social roles and rules, at people who take themselves too seriously is life-giving, helpful, useful, cathartic and alleviates suffering. Sadistic laughter at pain of others and destruction for the sake of destruction is the laugh of evil. Evil has a really shitty sense of humor. And it’s not funny.