Don't watch Joker
“It is in love that all resurrection, all salvation from ruin of whatever sort, and all regeneration consist, nor can it reveal itself in anything else but this”
Don’t watch Joker.
Joker wants to be the type of story that I like. An outsider, usually a loner male, diagnosing what they see as the ills of society and either taking action or deliberate inaction to treat those ills. Movies like Taxi Driver and First Reformed. Books like Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Nose by Nikolai Gogol, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and basically anything Dostoevsky has ever written (Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, Notes from Underground). As a person who constantly feels bad ideology is behind everything wrong with the world, I like that these works take ideas seriously, anticipate their implications for the world, and declaim harmful ideologies. They’re firey and paranoid and I love them.
I think, and hope, that that’s the type of movie Joker wants to be. That said, that isn’t the type of film Joker turned out to be. Joker doesn’t work as a social critique because it’s not clear what it’s critiquing and how the issues that Arthur Fleck (who becomes Joker) has relate to those societal shortcomings. To have a clear narrative criticism, the object of scrutiny must be incredibly clear and and there needs to be a clear link between the character and what is being scrutinized.
While the connection between Arthur and Gotham is vague, Notes from Underground starts with a footnote explicitly linking the character and their society:
“Both the author of the notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as the writer of such notes not only may but certainly must exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed.”
Dostoevsky critiques the ‘over consciousness’ of his milieu and the prevailing acceptance of determinism, and so the author of the Notes is sick from over consciousness. First Reformed, a film written and directed by Paul Schrader, also succeeds where Joker does not. The movie criticizes the inaction of Christian churches on climate change as its main character, Rev. Ernst Toller, becomes consumed with the devastating effects of that inaction. Both Notes from Underground and First Reformed confront clear ideologies through the attitudes and behaviors of the central characters.
Joker, on the other hand, is not clear. It’s not clear what is being criticized, and it’s not clear how Arthur Fleck represents that critique. To adequately examine society, the actions that Arthur takes should be a result of the societal ill being criticized. The first decision that Arthur makes is to shoot and kill three Wall Street bros. This action is taken up by the public as a statement of class warfare: the rich see the poor as clowns, so kill the rich (people literally hold up signs that say kill the rich in this movie). It almost recalls Crime and Punishment, with Raskolnikov, acting out of a utilitarian ‘Great Man’ morality, kills a pawnbroker who is taking advantage of the poor. However, while Arthur’s action is perceived as statement decrying inequality, Arthur isn’t ideologically driven. Arthur is just trying to not be beaten to death.
Joker is maybe clearer (and definitely more troubling) as a criticism of the treatment of the mentally ill. Arthur is vaguely portrayed having a mental illness that causes him to laugh at times inconsistent with his internal emotional state. Later, this is implied to be due to the head trauma and abuse inflicted on him by his mentally ill mother and her various boyfriends. At the climax of the movie, Arthur is on a late night comedy show where he admits to killing the three Wall Street guys. The host pushes back, and eventually Arthur breaks and says, “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that him like trash? You get what you deserve!” Then he shoots the host in the head. So the criticism goes: His mother is abusive because she’s mentally ill and is treated like trash; Arthur’s mental illness is due to the abuse he faced from his mother; Arthur, now also mentally ill is treated like trash; Because society treats mentally ill people like trash, they deserve to be killed; Arthur kills the late night host. While there is a clearer line between Arthur’s character and his actions when the movie isn’t viewed as a critique of wealth inequality, but as a critique of care for people with mental illness, I also hate it more.
In Notes from Underground and First Reform the characters teeter between despair and hope. They see the problems with the world and they oscillate between giving into them and overcoming them. In both works, there is a counterpoint to the main characters that shine as a beacon of hope: Mary in First Reform, and Liza in Notes from Underground. The unnamed author of the Notes gives into despair: “I’d been humiliated, so I, too, wanted to humiliate; they’d ground me down like a rag, so I, too, wanted to show my power.” Liza, a prostitute consumed by poverty, is also humiliated, ground down, and powerless but she responds with hope: “She had come…to love me, because for a woman it is in love that all resurrection, all salvation from ruin of whatever sort, and all regeneration consist, nor can it reveal itself in anything else but this.” Similarly in First Reformed, Mary is the surviving wife of an environmental activist who commits suicide, despairing at the condition of the planet. As Rev. Tollard gets further pulled into the reality of climate change, Mary is the anchor that holds him back from the despair that claimed her husband, and embraces him when all hope seems lost. In these works, despair is always present. In their rage and their perceptiveness, the main characters of First Reform and Notes from Underground gaze into the abyss, and it gazes back. But I love them, because despite the pull of despair, hope and love burn with a warmth that brings resurrection, salvation, and regeneration. Joker has no love or anchor, it gleefully dives into the abyss.
Don’t even watch Joker as a good nihilist critique. I love Ecclesiastes, the weirdest book of the Bible. Alone among the books of the Bible, it takes a nihilist view. As a sad, angsty kid, Ecclesiastes was probably the most important book I’ve read. “Meaningless! meaningless! says the teacher, Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” The Hebrew word is havel, the vapor we exhale. Everything is havel: fleeting, ethereal, and absurd. For me, it was incredibly reassuring to read this. When I felt that everything was meaningless, and that death makes all of life pointless, here was the Bible saying the same thing! I felt seen and known. The desire to be known is palpable in Arthur Fleck, and people should be seen and known in their feelings of absurdity, pain, and isolation. The message of Ecclesiastes is that everything is pointless, so might as well enjoy the small, simple pleasures of life, while the Joker says everything is pointless so kill whoever you want. Joker could function as a movie that tries to see broken people where they are, but it doesn’t go far enough to rebut the Joker’s extremism.
There is no hope in the Joker. There are no small pleasures. There is no counterpoint to Arthur’s despair. There is, maybe, a glimmer of hope; Arthur lets his former manager live because he was one of the only people that was ever kind to him. The answer of Joker’s critique might have been ‘be kind to the downtrodden and disadvantaged’ in that singular moment. If the citizens of Gotham had rejected the Joker to the degree that Nolan’s Joker is rejected by Gotham, it would have been a much better movie about how someone could be driven to such deplorable deeds. But as the movie is, that glint of light is washed out by the waves of blood Arthur spills, and the adulation that he receives from the people of Gotham. Broken, Arthur turns to murder, and he is exaluted in the streets as a hero. All that remains is active nihilism. The rich are terrible, the poor are terrible, Arthur is terrible. The movie hints that we are terrible too, by showing the iconic image of Bruce Wyane standing over his slain parents. Arthur says this shot of the young Batman is a joke his therapist won’t get. The joke is on us, implicating us in the violence and hatred of Joker: we like Batman, but Batman is no different than Joker, a crazy guy awash in violence. We’re terrible, too. And because everyone is terrible, Arthur acts righteously. Everyone deserves the terrible things that happen to them. When Arthur smothers his mother with a pillow, she deserves it. When Arthur kills the late night host, he deserves it. People killed in mass shootings deserve it.
So, don’t watch Joker.
