Joker, Why So Serious? — The Lexington Line

Late Friday night I made the trek from the Upper East Side to Port Authority to catch my bus back home, and as I reluctantly arose from the Q onto 42nd Street Times Square, I was faced with a line of blue-uniformed officers nonchalantly positioned along the curb. Within a moment I realized why the police presence was amped up on this particular night: it was opening night of the Joker.

Joker, Todd Phillips’ super-villain origin story, has been swarmed with a cacophony of criticism and controversy. Worries arose that in our current culture that is plagued with violence and mass killings, a story of nihilism and anarchy and destruction is detrimental.

While the film is by no means the most graphically violent in history—think Kill Bill—it celebrates violence in a way most others do not. Maybe that’s the reason for its accompanying FBI warnings of potential related gun threats; or maybe it’s the not-so distant memory of the Aurora, CO theater mass shooting.

The New York Times suggests that instead of critiquing how society has failed and given rise to the mass shooting epidemic in America, “the film legitimizes such atrocities and could provoke more of them.” Indiewire calls it “a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels.” Vulture expressed, “it exalts its protagonist and gives him the origin story of his dreams, in which killing is a just—and artful—response to a malevolently indifferent society.”

The same concerns were echoed by the families of the victims from the Colorado shooting in 2012. The families, in a letter to Warner Bros., expressed their disdain for the empathetic portrayal of such a disturbing character and his potential to inspire real-life violence.

On my Friday night walk past police-patrolled theaters, I heard one passerby concernedly exclaim, “Be careful tonight,” to those stationed outside. But is the film as harmful as people express?

In the standalone origin story, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck—the man who becomes the deranged murderous Joker—is a loner with a mental illness that causes uncontrollable laughter and delusional fits. Fleck has been chastised by most in a gritty, politically-corrupt Gotham City where the poor hate the rich. He is a for-hire clown and wannabe stand-up comedian who lives at home with his mom and is obsessed with a Carson-esque late night host, Murray Franklin, played by Robert De Niro. Donning a full face of clown makeup and tired of the constant taunting from the well-off, he kills three Wall Street-type frat boys and comes to represent a call-to-arms for the poor class in the city.

So what is the film saying? Is it suggesting that the rise of mass violence is due to societal issues and not the deranged delusions of those who commit it? Is this why Arthur Fleck becomes a folk hero for the disenfranchised?

In this reincarnation, Joker, the Clown Prince of Chaos, is celebrated rather than feared, and that's where the controversy seems to lie. Turning a villain into a hero, and one so reminiscent of real-world violence, comes across as irresponsible and dangerous. And after viewing the film, the increased security and police presence outside of theaters opening weekend seems fitting to me.