We're All Jokers

When I first heard they were making a new movie based on the Clown Prince of Crime, I was immediately repulsed. I thought that the well of Joker takes was dry, with the best vintages reserved by Ledger, Nicholson, and Hamill. It felt like another Spider-Man reboot circa Andrew Garfield.

As the release date approached, I saw the varied reservations from my fellow social justice class members, as well as a few comic purists, mental health advocates, and Jared Leto stans. They ranged from issues with the problematic centering of White male suffering to the breaking of DC canon. For my part, I tried to ignore them. I figured I would see the movie when I saw it and didn't really care for it otherwise.

Recently, a close friend invited me out to see the film. So, I went.

(Spoiler alert.)

What I saw was nothing less than a cinematic masterpiece that filled me with horror and dread. It was a great movie. It was a terrible movie. It was too real... It was way too fucking real.

Some background: once upon a time I used to flirt with certain spheres of the internet encompassed by the manosphere. I mean I was on a first name basis with leading voices in incel, MRA, MRM, PUA, MGTOW, proto-GamerGaters, and alt-right masculism. It was a difficult time in my life and I was more than a little lost, searching for friends, community, and yes, even love. The details are long, not really unique, and ultimately irrelevant.

However, if I'm being perfectly honest, if I hadn't been a Jew, I might've stayed there indefinitely. There's a very seductive atmosphere in those communities for young White men. (And even men who wish they were White.) But the constant cloud of antisemitism eventually drove me away and helped me realize just how wrong the people there are - in every sense of the word. By and large, those are broken people, twisted by conspiracy theories, bigotry, cycles of self-inflicted entitlement and victimization, as well as plenty of DARVO.

Still, in the time I associated with them, I learned their narratives intimately, as only an insider can. I learned to see the world from their point of view in a way that goes beyond empathy. Indeed, it's actually kind of a low-key problem for me that I need to constantly check myself to ensure the ease of their toxicity remains outside the boundaries of my real life.

Back to the topic at hand. The Joker was a film, intentionally or not, made for these men. It speaks to every trope and every grievance held by legions of angry young White men, culturally Christian, predominantly cishet, and overwhelmingly lower-class.

It was so good at depicting their perspective that I can hardly tell if the sympathy the film asks of us for Joaquin Phoenix's depiction of the Harlequin of Hate, the Ace of Knaves, and the Jester of Genocide, was intentional or not. The encapsulation of their world was seen even down to the smallest of interactions and set pieces - traces of white paint left on a face, facing strangers on a bus.

Certainly Phoenix did an amazing job of taking a character like Joker who has been played in so many ways by so many actors (both iconic and moronic) and making him not just real, not just creepy, but goddamn sympathetic! The changes between awkward crying fits to uncomfortable vaudeville dancing to earnest humility to deranged psychopathy were more than believable, they were accurate as fuck.

Phoenix's Joker could've easily been any random John Q. Public from the manosphere instead of a comic book character.

Yet, the movie was also cringe-worthy precisely because of how good it was. It's dangerous. I'm not sure the vast majority of people have the context, the nuance, and the ability to understand the movie without adopting the perspective of Joker, at least in part. I'm worried about copycats as much as I am about the further stigmatization of people with mental illness. (I count myself among the latter.) I was particularly disturbed by how true it is that plenty of People of Color lead lives as bad as or worse than Joker's, but never become mass-murdering domestic terrorist criminals. It's a frightening truth that the only thing unique about the Joker from every other person who could just as easily be him is that he's White.

Indeed, the film accurately follows the descent of White male rage to its delusional conclusion. The goal of every single manosphere misogynist is to be the Joker standing on top of the ruins of our society that they brought down to cheering adoration. They're filled with a putrid, congealed hate for women, from which stems a crank magnetism that eventually covers every aspect of their world until there's nothing left but a violent revenge fantasy in a Saran Wrap of subverted social justice gaslighting.

Joker represents a combination of myriad facets of these communities, distilled into a single life pitted against a society that is almost indistinguishable from our American reality. His history of mental illness, his history of abuse as a child, his relationship to his mother, his relationship to his father (real or perceived), his relationship to other people, his career, his failed aspirations, his absent love life supplanted by the manifestation of romantic delusions, and his pattern of maladaptive behaviors in unhealthy environments without any real support system. All of these are hallmarks of what pushes a person like Arthur Fleck into Joker. Like Elliot Rodger. Like Scott Paul Beierle. Like George Sodini.

So, I am torn. On the one hand, the film is an exemplary example of the craft of making movies, revealing complicated truths in understandable ways. On the other hand, that is also its weakness. Regardless of whether, if, or when I come to a decision on the film's merit (including its debated Oscar buzz) I will remain transfixed by what I saw.

Because if not for lucky chance, that sadly could've been someone just like me.