What Makes “Joker” An Important Film For Our Times
I’ll admit that when trailers first emerged for 2019’s Joker, I was skeptical to say the least. I am neither a DC Comic fan, nor superhero movie fan. And I felt less than confident in Todd Phillips (director of deep and thought-provoking pictures such as Borat and The Hangover) that he’d successfully bring to life one of the most love-to-hate-them bad guys in all of media, in a way that was insightful to his past and explained his rise to Gotham City infamy.
Joaquin Phoenix being case gave me hope, but the real factor that prompted me to log onto Drafthouse.com and pick my seats for the week of its release, was all of the buzz I was hearing from the media and the public. Audiences loved it, and critics hated it. And that to me meant it had to be good. And I was right. Joker is a compelling and thought-provoking film that made me walk out of the theater with a new outlook on life. And no I’m not exaggerating. I haven’t used the term “must-see” to describe a film in so long, due to the fact that I rarely find that a movie has a message behind it that I think everyone could apply to their own lives. But Joker said something about society and the human experience that I think everyone could relate to and learn from. Something that those who control the media we consume don’t want us to think about too hard.
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
Critics vs. Audiences
The media frenzy surrounding Joker was intense to say the least. I saw publication after publication bashing it and high-profile critic after high-profile critic saying it was horrible and toxic, etc. It seemed like every esteemed critic and journalist out there was trying to convince me not to see it. However, every single YouTube film critic or small-time journalist I follow all seemed to praise it. And every friend of mine who saw it for themselves said it was a great film as well.
After years following movie reviews in general and following audience vs critics scores, I’ve learned that typically, when both critics and audiences agree a film is good, you can feel confident the film is good (of course taste is all subjective.) When a film has a low critic score and a low audience score, you can typically rest assured it’s something you can skip. When audiences and critics have mixed reviews, that means you’re usually in for a polarizing film that completely depends on personal taste. And when the audience score is wildly off from the critic’s scores, something is up.
The #MeToo movement, along with many other Hollywood scandals that have come to light have shown just how political decisions are in the industry and how much money and power can influence how people are viewed, what narratives are broadcasted to the public, and at the end of the day, who makes money and who doesn’t. And the world of media marketing is no exception. Many journalists, publications and websites are told or paid to promote certain film studios, directors, producers, actors etc. And these days, political-correctness and virtuousness are used as weapons in order to make people look bad. Film producers see how progressive and woke the country is getting, so they insert those values into their films whether they believe them or not (let’s be real, they many times don’t,) in order to be able to hit people over the head with said values later on if the movie turns out to be less than stellar in quality. Likewise, if there are people in the industry trying to gang up on competing studio, producer, actor, etc they will use the tactic of claiming their work is not politically correct, or is morally reprehensible, in order to get you to not spend you money with them. At the end of the day, it’s not usually about trying to do the right thing, it’s about making money.
Rotten Tomatoes has become a bit of a meme in the last few years, very obviously showcasing bias reviews based on the narrative they’ve wanted to push about certain movies, so I still like to use them as a prime example of the media’s bias. The reason why has never been officially proven - perhaps they’re just being bribed, or perhaps they have simply decided to insert their company’s values and stances into what they promote on their site.
But all we know for sure is that they’ve gained a reputation for being bias, as they’ve been known to have critic scores that wildly differ from the general consensus, they’ve not-so-stealthily removed reviews in the past, and recently they’ve created stricter guidelines for posting reviews. Something’s sus has been going on there for quite a while, and I’ve noticed that in recent times, that I’ve almost always agreed with the audience scores over the critic scores when they differ heavily. And Joker was no exception. Check out some of the audience scores for this movie vs the critic scores, as well as some of the hit-piece titles about this film.
The Tomatometer vs audience score - 10/11/2019
IMDB RATING - 10/11/2019
Check out how similar this IMDB rating is to the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, as opposed to the Tomatometer score.
Metacritic Scores - 10/11/2019
And again, how wildly Metacritic’s mixed/negative Metascore differs from its highly positive user score.
And of course, most of the major publications and film review sources are giving it heat for one reason or another.
ROGER EBERT RATING
THE NEW YORK times
The Guardian
THE PUBLIC SHAMING
During this period of time there were also many instances of Joaquin Phoenix being publicly shamed over the film by the press. The rumor was that the film was overly sympathetic to the evil Joker, making him a protagonist you could sympathize with. That it int turn would give a free pass to every mass-shooter, wife-beater or vengeance-seeker that felt they could take what they felt entitled to through force.
THE TELEGRAPH INCIDENT
When asked about the repercussions of the film, such as people potentially being inspired to act violently from watching it, Phoenix notably walked out of an interview with the Telegraph. It ended up stirring up a controversy that got more and more publications to want to confont him on the same matter.
THE PREMIERE PRESS BAN
The public was when stunned when the press was banned from the Joker premiere red carpet.
The press continued to try and interrogate and taunt Phoenix for his role in the film and the film’s potential impact. One of the most notable instances of this was on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
JIMMY KIMMEL ATTEMpTING TO EMBARASS JOAQUIN PHOENIX
I find this interview particularly baffling, as Kimmel himself has a past of toxic behavior. Back in the early 2000s, he and the oh-so-gentlemanly Adam Corolla hosted a show called “The Man Show,” which is just as toxic as it sounds - even by early 2000s standards. Each episode was just as tasteless as the last with Kimmel and Corolla frequently talking down to and objectifying women. Check out the clip below, where they joke around that women aren’t smart enough to vote. They even take advantage of someone who barely speaks English not knowing the difference between “suffering” and “suffrage.”
And just like how he latched onto toxic 2000s culture in order to make money and maintain relevancy, he is doing just the same in adapting to the wokeness of today. And he has the nerve to try to publicly humiliate Joaquin Phoenix live on air for throwing a temper tantrum on set, telling him he needs to apologize. Based on the like to dislike ratio in the interview and the comments below, most people saw right through the phoniness. And even compare it to the Murray Franklin show scene from the film where Franklin invites the Joker onto his show just to profit off of humiliating him.
KIMMEL BEING A NUISANCE TO SOCIETY ON THE MAN SHOW
After hearing from the entire media peanut gallery telling me this movie was the most morally reprehensible piece of garbage ever concocted, and my friends, family and favorite trusted small-time critics telling me it was a great movie that didn’t live up to the claimed toxicity, I decided to see it for myself.
was the film actually toxic?
Whether the film is harmful or disturbing is honestly up to personal preference. I don’t think there’s a definitive right or wrong answer, as everyone has their own degree or personal experience with a Joker-type person and the toxicity that comes from them, and everyone has varying opinions on whether media from film, to television to video games can directly inspire someone to enact violence. But I personally believe it wasn’t trying to enable dangerous people, and that it was compelling and eye-opening.
Something that I mentioned earlier this year in my critique of The Shape Of Water was the one-dimensionality of Michael Shannon’s villain character. How boring and pathetic he was, and how little I felt when he was ultimately thwarted. And how I believe that that stemmed from him being just an all-around bad guy who had no redeeming traits to him, and no motivation to being bad other greed and the script telling him he was pure evil. The best villains out there have compelling reasons why their bad. They don’t always have to be complex, they don’t even always have to make sense. They just have to be human emotions we all know well. And have you ever noticed that whenever a writer can’t come up with a compelling reason as to why a villain is bad, they just write them in as greedy?
Take Disney villains for example. They’re not super complex; they’re in movies meant for children. Which villains do you find most memorable? Emotion-based villains such as Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty and Scar from The Lion King who felt slighted in life, The Evil Queen who felt envy at Snow White’s beauty, and Frollo who let lust get the best of him? Or greedy for the sake of being greedy villains such as Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, Clayton from Tarzan, or Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke who I’m sure you already forgot about from Atlantis: The Lost Empire?
The same logic works for films geared towards adults. We are more compelled to enjoy a storyline when the villain has a motivation we can relate to. In fact, many of the most popular franchises of our day feature villains you get to know the backstory of and sort of sympathize with to an extent from Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise to Loki from the Avengers films. It doesn’t mean people necessarily root for them over the hero, it just means people will be able to enjoy the story more because it’s happening for reasons that seem less contrived. In my Shape of Water review I use the example of Christoph Waltz’ character Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards for this same argument. He was written as a likable and funny character that audiences really enjoyed. But no one felt bad for him when he got punished at the end with a knife to the head, because he was a freakin’ Nazi. In fact, I personally think that made it more fun to see him suffer because we spent so much time getting to know how ruthless he was and how casual he was in hurting others. The audience gets to enjoy the scenes with him instead of being bored to tears by a one-note baddy, and they get to enjoy his demise because they know his character better.
So why don’t people want to apply this logic of writing bad guys to the Joker? It’s definitely because this film is from his point of view, rather than the point of the view who suffer because of him, and explains why he is the way he is. But I personally don’t think this movie is trying to excuse his actions or make it seem like at the end of the day he’s the good guy. For example, back in high school, there were times I’d be late to class and would get detention. I never once asked my teacher to excuse me from serving detention. I always accepted my fate, as those were the rules. But sometimes I’d say “I’m sorry, I overslept.” and they’d respond like “That is no excuse!” To that I was always stunned because it wasn’t like I was trying to say “A fairy must have flown into my room and shut off my alarm clock. Can I please be excused from detention?” I was trying to say “I made an error this morning. I can’t go back in time to fix it, but I’d like to explain what happened. ” But they took me telling them why I was late, as a reason why I should be forgiven and no longer punished. And that’s the same confusion I felt about the warnings and reviews around this film after actually seeing it for myself.
The film never painted Arthur Fleck as a really nice guy deep down who just needed some sympathy to be a valued member of society. They just showed what happened along the way in his life to bring him to wanting to become the Joker. The film doesn’t paint him smothering his mom or stalking a woman or killing his old co-worker as him just doing the right thing. In fact it depicts the mother as a nice lady who just made some mistakes in the past, it paints him as a creep for stalking and fantasizing about his neighbor, and it shows his old co-worker trying to make amends with him before getting brutally murdered. Arthur is never painted as a guy with a heart of gold that just needs a drop of kindness to shine. He is painted as an unstable person who has been at times unfairly tormented in the past, and has thus feels the only way he can defend himself is through violence. This idea is cemented when he gets teased for his condition and physically assaulted by a bunch of bullies on the train, and the only way he can defend himself from them at that point is through violence. This thought process occurs all the time in real life and is a thing that we as a society must nip in the bud so that violence and acts of vengeance can be stopped before it’s too late.
I know some people believe humans are inherently good, and some believe humans are inherently evil. I am of the opinion that humans are inherently human. And that based on their upbringing and experiences, they are molded into individuals that have a combination of positive and negative traits. I think the meaning behind this movie was not that we need to excuse people who do wrong because they had a rough childhood or something of the sort, but instead that we need to understand where they’re coming from and why they feel the need to do what they do so that we can put less of that out there in the world.
Every time I look back at the past of people who commit evil acts, i always see backgrounds of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional torment, mental illness, indoctrination into toxic values and attitudes etc. And that doesn’t mean I think they should be given a pass, released from prison, or given a hug. But it does make me realize how much harder society needs to work to help those with mental illness seek treatment, to police sexual abuse, physical abuse, child abuse and emotional torment, and put a stop to many toxic behaviors that make people think it’s ok later on to take out there hate on those around them. I think movies like this shine a light on what we could be doing better as a society to keep the world as safe and healthy as possible.
But there is a huge culture right now of other-izing those who don’t share the same experience as us. Of pointing a finger at someone and proclaiming they’ve done something wrong in the past and therefore should simply be rejected by society. For example I’ve heard people saying they don’t believe Michael Jackson was human because of all of the awful crimes he committed in the past. And while I wish that Jackson had served time and the appropriate punishments for what he had done while he was still alive (and not gotten away with anything just because of celebrity status or wealth,) I feel that these disguising acts are part of being human. Humans are inherently flawed and can be corrupted. Those who stamp a big “Not-a-human” sign on that kind of person’s forehead and cast them out of society never look back to see why they do what they do. Most people who sexually abuse others are the sexual abuse victims of the past. And the more we cast these individuals aside and just label them as evil monsters who don’t deserve to be heard, the more abuse we let fester in the dark. Just because we don’t have to look at the root of the problem doesn’t mean it’s not actually there.
I did not leave this movie feeling like I wanted to be friends with Arthur Fleck and pat him on the back and tell him he was good deep down. I left feeling like I understood the Joker’s motives and reason behind the mayhem in Gotham City more than I did before. And it actually made me think even more about how poorly we are handle mental illness and child abuse in this country. It provoked thoughts. It didn’t make excuses.
What makes all of this Important
I felt compelled to go on and on about why I and much of this film’s audience felt different from the critics of this film, because I think it shines a light on what’s going in the media and in this country: The media wants to profit from us other-izing each other. The media and all who profit from it love when the public chooses teams, takes sides or points a finger at one another, because it sensationalizes their stories and makes them money.
I can’t tell you how many articles I see every day telling me that if I care about women’s rights, I need to see a certain movie, subscribe to this publication, follow this actress… Or that if I like a certain, this celebrity or this publication, I’m somehow chauvinist male or a white-supremacist (which is always hilarious to me because I’m not a male, nor a white person.) Whether the company sells tiki torches or #GirlBoss mugs, it’s just business people trying to get you to be on one side or another based on your values, so they can collect more money from us all. They don’t care about us as individuals and they certainly don’t care about society as a whole, so why not pit us all against each other by telling us to turn on people who like this product, company or person, or don’t like this product, company or person, in order to gain clicks, likes, shares, follows and ad revenue?
I think part of what makes the media hate this movie is that this movie has so many gray areas to it.
This movie can’t be called the most progressive thing ever, because it is sympathetic to a gun-toting murderer who reminds many of the real-life villains that plague our country today with violence and toxic entitlement.
But you also can’t call this movie pro-conservative, because it mocks a fictional Donald Trump-like conservative politician, Thomas Wayne, who makes no attempt to understand the working class, which causes a “kill the rich” narrative in the city. In fact, in one scene, the Wayne family goes to the theater to see Modern Times, a 1936 Charlie Chaplin film that comments on the mass unemployment and financial devastation of the Great Depression. It mirrors the plight of the people of Gotham City at the time of the film, and in many ways, the struggles from corruption and greed in the real world.
So if this film isn’t progressive, and isn’t conservative, why does the media hate it so much?
Because the media at the end of the day is controlled by super rich and powerful people who want to maintain their power and wealth, and will do so any way that they can. No matter how that is going to affect you and me. The media - just like Jimmy Kimmel is willing to put on a conservative mask and make fun of women’s intelligence when it’s the year 2001, and then sell feminism and girl power in 2019. Because they are not doing what they’re doing to make the world a better place, they are doing it to make money off of all of us. They do not care if we are happy, fulfilled, empowered, safe etc. They care that we give them attention so that they can keep profiting off of it for the rest of our lives.
And Joker is all about no longer cow-towing to what the rich and powerful want. Whether that’s a powerful politician like Thomas Wayne, or a powerful media influencer like Murray Franklin. Arthur Fleck and those who follow his lead in the film decide that instead of them accepting defeat (like the everyman of Gotham city withering away from the corruption of Wayne, or Fleck shooting himself after all the torment from people like Franklin,) they will fight back against the forces that keep them down (hence the deaths of Wayne and Franklin. The Joker even states before shooting his former idol, that “The people decide what’s right and wrong, what’s funny and what’s not.” The message of the movie is not that we need to be sympathetic to every gunman we hear about on TV, or that we need to enact violence to get what we want in this world. The metaphorical message of the movie is that the public need to realize how much power they actually have in themselves that they shouldn’t let the big guys on top take away from them.
Arthur Fleck shows that even though he is suffers from mental illness, and had been mistreated by everyone in his life, he could still be successful, impactful and powerful. It made me think to myself about how often I let people around me tell me I’m nothing and how I need to just prove them wrong and stop letting them belittle me or decide how powerful or successful I’m going to be. I think we all do to some extent, when we come across people more powerful or successful than us. We give them more credit than they deserve, and give our own selves less credit than we deserve.
Every woke corporate movie that is woke for the sake of being woke is always saying to me “You know how you’re powerless as a woman? Well if you watch our movie about girl empowerment and buy our #GirlBoss mug, you won’t feel that way anymore” and like statements. Joker just straight up tells me “Stop calling yourself powerless. Stop downplaying all of the impact and power you have over yourself and silence the inner and outer saboteurs.”
So now that I’ve seen the film and I’ve let it sink in for a few days, I’ve realized that all the fear-mongering around it was just powerful people in the media starting a frenzy in order to get me to not hear a message about inner-strength, so that I can continue to spend money with them while they can feed me a brand of strength and courage that serves someone at the top, instead of myself.
The world is full of corruption, nepotism, propaganda, and fake news that is all meant to keep the rich and powerful, rich and powerful. And the more power you ascribe to them, the more you are helping them maintain their position, and the less you are helping yourself to rise up. I I think it’s so appropriate that Fred Astaire’s song “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” is in the film. Once you have sheer confidence in yourself that isn’t contingent on how others view you, no one - not even the richest and most powerful people - can take that away from you.
The Wizard of Oz came to mind several times as I thought about how I experienced both the hype about this film, and the film itself. Watching the media frenzy unfold and the audience and small critic reviews praise the film, it felt like Toto pulling the curtain to reveal that the wizard was just a man, and everyone had been giving him way more credit than he deserved. And seeing the film itself and discovering the meaning behind it, reminded me of when Glenda tells Dorothy she had the power to leave the entire time, and didn’t even need the help of the Wizard to begin with.
And pay no attention to him I shall.