The Joker of 1993 was Michael Douglas’ William Foster in the film Falling Down. The protagonist Foster did not wear a mask though. He in fact, took off the masks of civility, politeness, political correctness, self-control and compassion to fall into a vortex of a toxic sense of personal persecution. His litany of woes? Read on.
He is recently divorced with a restraining order against him. He has been laid off from his job. His air conditioning fails while he is sweating in clogged streams of traffic. Then begins a long walk to a meltdown during which he destroys a Korean owner’s convenience store with a baseball bat just in case we forget that we are dealing with an angry, white American male here. Then he wins a brief but righteous fight to save his briefcase from two thugs and later shoots a gang member and walks away with a bag of weapons. The symbolism being that every time a man is hurt or threatened, he acquires a stockpile of pain, anger and potential violence.
More “woes” stalk him. Like a switched menu at a favourite burger joint. Someone bothering him at a phone booth so of course the booth has to be blown up. The film tries to make amends by showing fleetingly that Foster is neither a white supremacist nor homophobic but his rage is contextualised and validated along with his story. The fact that in the end, Foster changes into army fatigues and even destroys a construction site with a rocket launcher, blurs the line between personal narrative and national identity. And tells you everything there is to know about just who drives multi-million dollar narratives in politics and entertainment and media. Those who have the the most power but pretend they don’t have any so must destroy in order to rebuild society.
The fact that sometimes the protagonists of such stories destroy themselves in the process is depicted as a matter of tragedy rather than comeuppance. Is it a coincidence that most ‘tragic’ figures in such narratives do not come from truly marginalised communities that have historically been wronged, enslaved, put in metaphorical and literal cages, targetted and hounded? A black or Hispanic or a female or a transgender Joker anyone with a story of pain so vast and so rooted in systematic persecution that a two hour long film cannot contain it?
Whoever gets to define and appropriate the Zeitgeist is never the underdog, is a point we need to remember. Also note how the argument of mental sickness is never offered to those who really deserve it. Disenfranchised refugees. Minorities who constantly live in fear. Women who get angry with the world. Greta Thunberg just being a small example of how little or no empathy is offered to even a little girl diagnosed with Aspergers if she does not smile, talk or say the things expected of someone her age. She challenges leaders who have obvious entitlement with record breaking rallies and speaks in everyone’s interest when she talks of the future of the planet but only her angry face is fixated upon and mocked along with the emotional delivery of her message.
To put in a context, the space that male rage, mostly white is accorded in pop culture, refer to Hannah Gadsby: Nanette, a live comedy performance written and performed by the Australian comedian herself for Netflix. Gadsby has been diagnosed with ADHD and autism and dealt with her “queerness” during a time when same sex relationships were stigmatised in Australia.
She grew up, not hurting anybody else except herself. Steeped in shame that she received from others, she somehow managed to steer her pain towards comedy, always making sure that her story never took up too much space and she did not make her audience uncomfortable. Once, when she talked about mental health issues, she was told by a man to take her condition as a “gift” because without pain and madness, Van Gogh would not have had painted sunflowers for us all to enjoy!
She also points out in her unsettling, cathartic piece how post Me Too, there is a push back on female stories with the argument (also made by some male comics) that men’s reputations have more value than the violations suffered by women and children. She is right. Just refer to Dave Chappelle’s mockery of ‘cancel culture’ and the men who recently spoke about being abused by Michael Jackson in HBO’s polarising documentary Leaving Neverland.
Gadsby then chooses to show just what remains unspoken when we don’t allow certain stories to take up any space. Like the fact that Gadsby was brutally beaten by a man who thought she was hitting on his girl-friend. But how she never went to the police because that’s all she thought she was worth. Because , she says, that’s what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate. Or that she was raped by two men in her teens for being “different.” Or that she was abused as a young, vulnerable girl. Her message? She won’t anymore erase herself or her story into comedic sets of self-deprecating humor because self-deprecation from somebody who already exists in the margins, does not mean humility but humiliation.
But the most important thing she says in her set is this. “To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength. I have a right to be angry, but not to spread it.” What she wants for herself and all those who exist on the margins is this. The right to tell a story. And a space to tell it in. Not to hurt anyone but to heal from the hurts that have gone unaddressed in a society that seldom if ever introspects. That allows those with privilege to act out their anger but laughs and trolls those who are different and have no power.
Joker may make for great cinema but it says nothing new about the world we live in. It is a world where content is predominated by wounded men wounding others. Be it a hit show like You, or The Fall or even Manhunt: Unabomber, the huge human cost and ruined lives strewn around by the protagonists are contextualised in the hurt and abuse they have suffered. And they are all straight, white men. Almost as if hurt and abuse does not exist for any other demographic.
Yes, mental health is an issue but to romanticise it and use it to contextualise violence does nothing to challenge the ongoing narrative where white mass shooters are held up as examples of unaddressed mental issues while their victims are forgotten. As the director of Joker, Todd Phillips said in an interview, he is tired of tiptoeing around “woke culture” where it is even hard to crack jokes. So we presume , he made a brilliant film about a killing spree.
What writer Tasha Robinson said about Falling Down in 2012, may not totally sum up the premise of Joker but it is close.
“The film treats virtually everyone around him [the protagonist] as worthless, and presents his violence as the comedic payoff, turns it into a tone-deaf, self-pitying lament about the terrible persecution facing the oppressed majority in an era of political correctness and increasing multiculturalism.”
We are now living in a world where real life jokers are running amok . And majoritarian leaders are literally setting the world on fire because they can. And in the face of this reality, this film does nothing brave. It simply acts out its privilege. Because it can.
**Reema is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US . She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.