The Making of Monsters.

Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. 

‘Whatever does not kill you simply makes you stranger,’  said Heath Ledger’s  Joker in The Dark Knight .    Now we have another and very strange Joker to consider.   

I saw the new movie Joker as soon as it came out and I have been thinking about it ever since.   Meanwhile the movie has taken $1 billion  (£750 million) world wide.   Whatever else it might be Joker is a runaway, record breaking, Box Office success.    It won the Golden Globe at the 2019 Venice film Festival but critically it has proved to be a deeply divisive film. 

I guess that most people who wanted to see this movie have already done so,  and therefor this is not so much a review addressing the question ‘should you go and see it?’  as a response to share with those who have already done so,  a response to some of the questions it raises.    I am, if it is relevant, an ordained minister in the Anglican Church, and trained counsellor and psycho-therapist,  a Child Protection and Safeguarding professional, and of course a film fan and blogger .   I write about movies for my own non-commercial benefit.  Writing helps me think, to seek answers, to ask ‘what does this movie, any movie,  mean to me, and why?’ 

‘Why’ is important, especially when a film such as Joker evokes such visceral responses in so many people.  It has not just been negatively criticised but actually condemned by many.  Some professional critics have said that they ‘hated’ it.    That’s pretty visceral.     

Peter Bradshaw’s judgement in The Guardian is at the less severe end of the critical spectrum.   He simply called it ‘the  year’s biggest disappointment.... solemn but shallow’.    But others  have cut more deeply, some believing that the movie makers did not understand mental illnesses at all, and therefor misrepresented and insulted those who actually suffer from them.    Two British doctors wrote that  ‘Whether intentionally or not, Arthur comes across as a hysterically laughing super-villain, stereotypically “mad” to the untrained eye; a murderous clown laughing alone on a bus.’   (Annabel Driscoll and Mina Husain in The Guardian, 31/10/19).     

At least one senior American Police Officer  feared it would incite ‘copy-cat violence’, promptingWarner Bros  to release a statement pointing out that ‘neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind’.       Jeff Yang at CNN  worried that Joker provides ‘an insidious validation of the white-male resentment that helped bring President Donald Trump to power’, and also accused it of racism.   There was also the suggestion that the movie somehow validated not only ‘Trumpism’  but also possible ‘incel’ violence.   Joaquin Phoenix’s performance has been called  showy and self-indulgent.    

So is it shallow, stereotyping, ignorant, dangerous, racist and indulgent? 

I said that Joker’s  effect was sometimes visceral, and it seems that some critics have cast around to find  ‘objective’ justifications for their ‘subjective’ negative gut feelings.     In response to those already mentioned I want to point out that when Arthur is ‘laughing on a bus’  he is neither alone nor yet a killer; he has simply been trying to amuse a child on the crowded bus until the boy’s mother turns on him, triggering the laughter that is Arthur’s stress response.    I also seem to be looking through a different lens to Jess Yang.   I see  Joker as a condemnation of Trumpism rather than an appeal to it.   Nor do I think Yang’s  examples of negative racist portrayals stand up.    The people of colour in the film include Arthur’s Mental Health Worker,  a prison Psychiatrist and an Arkham Asylum clerk, all of whom want to help him, and his single-parent neighbor who - in fact or fantasy - offers him sympathy when his mother is ill.   

On the plus critical side another of the Guardian’s  film critics, Christina Newland,  saw Joker as a cautionary tale showing how  ‘society's ignorance of those who are less fortunate will create a person like the Joker,’ and that  ‘Phoenix is astonishing as a mentally ill geek who becomes the killer-clown Joker’   in a ‘rare comic-book movie that expresses what's happening in the real world.’   

I think this is certainly a film that deserves a second viewing, and when I did go to see it again I paid attention to the soundtrack.   It has often been said that nothing we see on the screen is there by accident, and that is also true of the sound track.    Some of the Joker’s music is an ironic comment on Arthur Fleck’s miserable condition, and some of it is not ironic, but illustrative. 

We start with the jolly Temptation Rag (Claude Bolling), and then Here comes the King, he is second to none  (Steve Karmen),  followed by If You’re Happy and You Know it, Jimmy Durante’sSmile, and the perky Spanish Flea.    The turn comes, perhaps with The Main Ingredient singing  Ok, so your heart is broken, you sit around moping ,cryin’ and cryin’. You say you’re even thinkin’ about dyin’. 

 And then we hear - though not in this precise order; 

I started a joke which started the whole world crying
But I didn't see that the joke was on me oh no
I started to cry which started the whole world laughing
Oh If I'd only seen that the joke was on me.   (The Bee Gees)

People are strange.  (The Doors.)

I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves

(Cream)

Just wait until they hate it

But I ain’t even tripping

I’m pushing when I’m kicking. (Ubansteps)

It’s my life and I’ll do what I want.

It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want. (The Animals)

Worn like a mask of self-hate
Confronts and then dies
Don’t walk away. (Joy Division).

You took me by surprise
I didn't realize that you were laughing

'cause you're doin' it to me
(Laughing) it ain't the way it should be
You took away everything I had, you put the hurt on me.

(The Guess Who). 

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. (Pink Floyd) 

And perhaps most acutely; 

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

No one knows what its like
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes.   (The Who). 

The film playing on the TV in Arthur’s apartment 1937  Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers’ “Shall We Dance”.   The musical number playing is called “Slap That Bass” and contains the words “The world is in a mess,  with politics and taxes and people grinding axes, there’s no happiness.”   Arthur dances to it.   He has the gun he has been given in his hand.  He does not know it is loaded until it goes off. 

I think the film is, to a great extent,   a ‘song and dance’ act.   Six, seven or eight times Arthur dances, and each dance expresses something different and pushes the story or the mood onwards. 

The dance critic of The New York Times,  Gia Kourlas, wrote that Joker, ‘seems less a linear tale than a sequence of dances knitted together with dialogue.  In the end, Arthur, though handcuffed, has a song in his head and a spring to his step.  As he disappears down a pristine white hallway, he uses what mobility he has -  his shoulders, which creep up and down to Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.”   In any case, the last dance is one of liberation.   As long as he can move, he’s free. And Mr. Phoenix knows how to move. His dancing is no joke.’ 

When Arthur the Clown dances in celebration  on a steep flight of steps to “Rock ’n’ Roll Part 2,”we may remember  how dangerous the persona of Gary Glitter was, and I remind myself that most abusers were themselves abused a children.  That is a thought we might want to push away, but should not.   It is not an excuse for abuse, but it may offer an explanation. 

 I also noticed that the colour scheme of the movie is  purple, barn red,  orange, dirty browns and bluey greens.   This reflects that of The Dark Knight, especially in the scenes involving Heath Ledger’s Joker.    I am  great admirer of The Dark Knight,  (see A Ray of Light in The Dark Knight on my blog) and see Joker as an entirely appropriate companion piece to it.   It is not a ‘prequel’, but  an ‘origins’ story suggesting how someone like the Joker from A Killing Joke and/or The Dark Knight could have become what he was.    

 It is worth recalling that  The Dark Knight’s Joker could not, would not, explain his scars.  He offered two explanations,  both of them terrible, but maybe the truth was even more terrible.  Working as a priest and counselor I learnt that some of those who most need our care and compassion cannot tell us the truth about the causes of their pain, anger or despair.    They cannot bring themselves to say it,  to  remember, to re-member it,  and to describe what actually happened to them.   Victims of abuse are therefor often the least reliable witnesses to their own abuse.    We sometimes think they are lying, making it up.  And sometimes they are.  Their lies are easier for them to share than their truth.  

  

And sometimes (too often)their behavior makes them unappealing.   They can be withdrawn, aggressive, even violent, unpredictable, unreliable,  suspicious and of course utterly ungrateful for any attempts we might make to help them.   How could we possibly help them when we really have no idea what they have suffered?  And they are not going to tell us.   How could they trust us when their trust has already been destroyed.   The worst abuse is always the abuse of trust.    So we never learn how Heath’s Joker got his scars.  

He did, however,  seem to be a figure of disconcerting charisma,  intelligent and sly,  somehow glamorous and  fascinating.  Even his laugh seemed somehow a kind of joie de vivre.   We  might say that there was a kind of tragic, nihilistic heroism about that Joker.   

The Joker in The Dark Knight says he is there to ‘introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!’  Nothing that happens to Arthur Fleck is fair.  So why not relish chaos?   

Some critics, its seems,  wanted  Arthur Fleck’s Joker to be heroic, but there is nothing heroic about Arthur.   He may start off  as a sympathetic character, but as the co-writer and Director Todd Phillips has said   “You want to root for this guy until you can’t root for him any longer.”   Arthur fleck does some terrible things.   There are no excuses.    This is not a movie about redemption.   It is about damnation.   It is about the ‘banality of evil.’

Arthur tells his Social Worker, you don’t listen, do you?  I don’t think you ever really listened to me. You just ask the same questions every week. “How’s your job? Are you having any negative thoughts?” All I have are negative thoughts. But you don’t listen. Anyway, I said, for my whole life, I didn’t know if I even really existed. But I do, and people are starting to notice.

And when he does actually get invited onto The Murray Franklin Show Murray asks  Do you have a problem with Thomas Wayne?
Arthur says Yes, I do. Have you seen what it’s like out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody’s civil anymore! Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it’s like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don’t. They think that we’ll just sit down and take it like good little boys! That we won’t werewolf and go wild!   

At the end, when, far far too late,  he might actually get real help the Arkham Psychiatrist asks: What’s so funny?
Arthur: I was just thinking of a joke.

Psychiatrist: Do you want to tell it to me?
[pause]
Arthur: You wouldn’t get it.

I think some critics didn’t get it either.   For me this is a film about the making of monsters through carelessness.  In Child Protection and Safeguarding circles it is called abusive neglect.    I see this movie showing  what happens when individuals, and the societies we form together,  simply do not care about the most vulnerable in our societies.    We neglect them, and ignore the consequences.   Carelessness can be evil.    Evil and banal. 

Arthur is prone to burst into uncontrollable laughter  at inappropriate moments, particularly when under stress or in pain.    He is often under stress or in pain.  He is on seven kinds of medication.  He is profoundly vulnerable - woundable.  And  he is wounded; stomped on physically in the alleyways and on the Subway,  abused by the neglect of the system that is meant to protect him.  When his mental health worker tells him that the City of Gotham is closing down the support system that provides him with counseling and his prescribed drugs she tells him  ‘Those in charge don’t give a shit about people like you.   And the truth is they don’t give a shit about people like me either.’    Neither the cared for nor the carers.   I see that truth. 

Arthur has tried;  caring for his mother,  clowning in a children’s hospital.  He wants to be a Stand-up Comic,  to get people laughing,  to make them happy.  He dreams (literally dreams) of being on Murray’s late night chat show.    But  ‘madness, as you know, is like gravity.  All it takes is a little push’ said Heath Ledger’s Joker to Batman.   Arthur is pushed and pushed and pushed.   It seems he always has been.     “I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life,” he tells his mother.  Gradually, and sometimes abruptly, his dreams and hopes have been ground down or dashed.  As well as being abused on the streets, at work and on television, he was, he learns, abused during his unremembered childhood.    I thought my life was a tragedy,  he tells his mother, and maybe he had tried to redeem it, to rescue it, to use it to help others, but now I realize it is a comedy.   

Another clown lent him a gun, ‘for safety’s sake’, but when it drops out of Arthur’s costume while he’s entertaining children in a hospital ward as he sings ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It, ’   Arthur loses his job.   Maybe giving people guns is not the best way to keep them safe.   Maybe ignoring the vulnerable is not the best way to keep them, or any of us,  safe.   

Is this movie  dangerous?   Yes it is, as Keith Mayer said in The Times.   ‘It is profoundly and acutely dangerous in the same way that any film that kicks so conspicuously against orthodoxies is dangerous’.  

As for Phoenix’s  ‘showy and indulgent’ performance, I have to say that at times he moved me to tears, especially when his eyes filled with pain or fear as he laughed or forced a smile.   I might add that losing 52 pounds for a movie role is not ‘indulgent’.    Arthur’s gaunt body is part of the performance of art.   You might compare it with his portrayal of Joe in Lynne Ramsay’s recent ‘You Were Never Really Here’.

I am moved by the movie.    I think it speaks to it’s time, and repeating a warning that so often, too often,  needs repeating.   Back in the early 90’s Josephine Hart was succinct when she wrote  ‘Damaged people damage people,’  in her novel Damage.  If we damage people, or do not look after those who are already damaged, then they (we) are indeed likely to end up damaging other people.    Some  of these victims may even become symbolic figures, or  populist political leaders,  appealing to other damaged, disenfranchised and despairing folk.    Arthur Fleck’s tragic descent into madness and violence is not excused by the  treatment he has received, but it is a reflection on it, and one I think we need to take seriously.    

Chauncey K. Robinson wrote in The People’s World, that this is  ‘ultimately an in-your-face examination of a broken system that creates its own monsters.’    I am not surprised that it has provoked powerful and diverse responses.    

I believe that ‘the least, the last, and the lost’ are - or should - be the true focus of our compassion.    The scriptures tell me  clearly that God is on their side.   So as a counselor, psycho-therapist and priest I think Joker is a truthful, brave, passionate, compassionate and compelling movie,  centred around a performance that maybe only Joaquin Phoenix could craft and deliver.   That is my ‘visceral and thoughtful’ response.