Joker Sequel
Warner Bros. Pictures

Of the many fascinating cinematic offerings on display throughout 2019, perhaps none proved more provocative than Joker, director Todd Phillips’ grim take on the origin of the most famous comic book villain. In an age where movies are rarely seen as transgressive, Joker offered a lightning bolt of controversy, with audiences and critics sharply divided over how to interpret the film.

Is it a leftist screed about overthrowing the rich and powerful? An irresponsible endorsement of toxic male rage? A vapid exercise in nihilism with a fill-in-the-blank hole at the center?

These are questions we’re no doubt meant to be asking. But they also glide over a fact readily apparent on repeated viewings: Joker is a horror film, one where the monster not only wins but has been birthed by a grotesque confluence of factors. While it’s tempting to reduce the movie to simply being about X or Y, there’s no one reason why Arthur Fleck becomes what he becomes.

The character of Joker— here played by Joaquin Phoenix in a stunningly immersive performance— has always represented chaos, and it is the chaos that creates him. Childhood abuse. Mental illness. Lack of access to proper care. Societal decay. Delusions of grandeur. Loneliness. These all play a role in shaping Arthur. Internal and external. Nature and nurture.

For various reasons, we can be prone to dichotomous thinking with these types of stories. Either the monster is evil and needs to be destroyed, or the monster is misunderstood, and it’s the normal people who are the true villains. But in reality, we’ve seen plenty of tales pitched at the halfway point.

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, possibly one of the best examples of a sympathetic monster movie, still portrays the Breed as dangerous, some of them when provoked and some because they’re inherently vicious. The humans are absolutely just as threatening, if not more so, but Barker avoids painting a monochromatic picture of the monsters.

Yet possibly the most applicable comparison is Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s original novel employs a complex presentation of both the doctor and his creation, showing Frankenstein as a genuinely curious scientist whose negligence causes a chain of events that destroys his life and his creature, a tortured being in the throes of untold amounts of rage.

Indeed, both figures are tragic. Victor Frankenstein loses almost everyone he loves to the monster he created, left with nothing by the end, and the creature never finds love or connection. The book’s version of the monster is not the lumbering man-child we often picture but someone who grows from a scared animal into an intelligent, articulate, and unbearably lonely individual.

Much of the violence he commits is out of anger, but it’s also not off-the-cuff: the creature deliberately murders people to hurt Victor, sadistically toying with his creator. He kills Victor’s little brother William and frames the boy’s nanny (who is hanged), then murders Victor’s best friend, Henry, and frames Victor, and finally strangles Victor’s new wife, Elizabeth, on their wedding night.

The monster is sympathetic but also legitimately deadly, and he hurts and kills people who do not deserve it. None of this lets Victor Frankenstein off the hook for bringing something into this world and then avoiding responsibility, but it doesn’t suddenly make the monster innocent, either.

James Whale’s two Frankenstein movies for Universal significantly rewrite the character of the creature but ultimately arrive at a similar destination. The monster (Boris Karloff) is mistreated and misunderstood, and this causes him to reactively lash out. He also doesn’t understand life and death at first, resulting in the accidental drowning of a little girl. But as he grows in intelligence, he begins using violence similar to his literary counterpart, very purposefully making himself a threat to others and having no qualms about taking human lives. An aspect unique to the movies is that the monster is given the “abnormal” brain of a criminal, though it’s unclear exactly what that means or how much it impacts the creature’s behavior.

Both versions of this character are consumed with anger at their place in the world and by a love/hate relationship with their father-creator. (Robert De Niro, who plays talk show host Murray Franklin in Joker, has also portrayed the monster: he starred in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, largely faithful to the book in terms of its presentation of the character).

In the climax of Bride of Frankenstein, when the creature speaks his famous line, “We BELONG dead!” it reverberates on several levels. He’s not just coming from a place of rage or self-hatred or the realization that he won’t form a meaningful connection with his undead bride, but also from an understanding that maybe something like him should not exist.

Frankenstein didn’t create another human being… he created something for which there is no precedent, no template. Something with an immense capacity for destruction. That is the doctor’s grievous error, giving life to someone unlike anything else in existence. It’s a life sentence of lonesomeness for his creation and for himself as well.

So, what drives the creature? Anger. Despair. Abuse. Abandonment. Being what some would consider an abomination. And, most pointedly, the isolation caused by the fallout of his many acts of violence. Again, factors are both internal and external. Nature and nurture. A confluence of tragic events.

Arthur Fleck may not be a creature who shouldn’t exist— he is, after all, just a man— but the parallels with the Frankenstein story are many. Like the monster, he is shunned by the world. His dream in life is to make others laugh, but when people laugh at him it is not from a place of joy but derision. Their smiles are hateful. Fleck is bullied and tormented frequently, resulting in him feeling powerless, which only fuels his resentment.

Arthur also has some form of mental illness, as well as a neurological condition that makes him spontaneously laugh at inappropriate moments. (We eventually learn he received this from childhood brain damage caused by his mother’s abusive boyfriend, an event he doesn’t remember). Gotham’s already broken system of social services is failing even further, as the city’s rich residents like Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) suck more and more of the resources like leeches, causing programs to be cut. Arthur loses access to the medication and counseling he desperately needs.

But again, it would be reductive to say that Joker is about a man forced by circumstance to become this clown prince of madness. These are merely certain pieces in a larger puzzle.

As much as Arthur is guided into the abyss by these events, he also chooses to go there. It’s absurd to say he has no choice to do what he does. He chooses to shoot those men on the subway who assault him (particularly the final victim, injured and begging to be spared and no longer any type of threat). He chooses to smother his mom (Frances Conroy) with a pillow. He chooses to murder Murray Franklin on live television. He chooses to do this because it gives him a sense of power.

Like Frankenstein’s monster, Arthur feels emboldened to react violently against a world he believes has wronged him, and these actions are deliberate and voluntary. They are also entirely selfish. Though he’s regarded by others as some revolutionary leftwing pariah rising up against the entrenched corruption of Gotham, Arthur has no beliefs or greater goals, something he freely admits. The tidal wave of violence he kickstarts means nothing to him apart from more chaos in which to bask.

None of this is to say that Gotham doesn’t, in some sense, have this coming. We’re watching the natural fallout of a rigged game that forces those in the bottom half of a stratified society to fend for themselves. However, the film does not present this reckoning in a glorified light.

If anything, Arthur has made the world worse. This is where the film truly becomes a tragedy a la Frankenstein. This man is so desperate for human connection, and what he ultimately finds is anything but. The protestors wearing clown masks like some kind of mutant parody of Anonymous or Antifa don’t care about Arthur Fleck; they glom onto Joker as a figurehead without any regard for the person underneath the makeup.

In the scene where they pull Arthur from the wreckage of a cop car, the masked mob handles his body with an almost religious reverence. As Arthur stands up triumphantly amongst the protestors who worship him, he’s not connected to them in any meaningful, human way. It’s a delusion. These aren’t his friends. They feel more like Arthur’s own inner demons, summoned and then loosed on the streets of Gotham. Being Joker might allow him to escape Arthur Fleck, but it also permanently cuts him off from humanity.

Moments before this, we witness the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, an event we know will one day drive Bruce to adopt the Batman persona. This is a direct illustration of how Arthur has continued the cycle of violent trauma which has haunted him. He feels deformed by the world and is deforming the world further.

The film not only avoids excusing or endorsing any of his behavior, but it also shows every single act of violence as horrific. The rioters mimicking his appearance is, if anything, an undermining of how the Joker character is often fetishized and glamorized by certain fans, most recently Heath Ledger’s portrayal in The Dark Knight. (Note that this observation is meant neither as a criticism of Ledger’s performance nor Christopher Nolan’s film as a whole). Phillips’ movie serves as a counter to all of that.

Joker is a horror film. The character of Arthur Fleck becomes downright terrifying as he devolves into a monster. For instance, in the scene where he murders the brutish Randall— who originally gave Arthur the gun that triggered this chain of events— and then sits there, covered in blood, scaring the shit out of Gary (Arthur’s only friend from his former job) is rendered deeply disturbing. Arthur thanks Gary for always being kind, but it also feels like the tide could turn at any moment, and Arthur might kill him. There’s no moment in this scene where Gary isn’t afraid. And he’s right to be afraid.

Arthur’s now iconic jaunt down the steps to the sports anthem “Rock n Roll Part 2” is not meant to be celebratory. It’s ridiculous, this deranged man parading around painted in garish makeup, pumped up on his ego and completely lost in his own mind. The monster has hold of him now, its claws dug deep.

Even from the beginning, Arthur is framed in a way that conveys the monstrous, such as in an early shot of his gaunt body contorted at strange angles. His sense of reality, too, is contorted: in retrospect, a handful of moments in the film clearly take place only in Arthur’s head, most specifically his imagined relationship with neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz), leading to a denouement where he wanders into her apartment and frightens her.

Though some have interpreted this scene to be placing guilt on the character of Sophie for not reacting with more compassion, she reads as genuinely concerned for him, just guarded (since this person appeared in her living room out of nowhere, and her child is sleeping in the next room). Arthur has no intention of hurting her, but Sophie doesn’t know that. Like Gary, she’s right to be afraid. She wants Arthur to be okay, but a threatening veil hangs over the proceedings.

It’s also no coincidence that we’re watching a white man harassing a black woman here, as much as we understand how lost Arthur is. Far from indulging white male revenge fantasies, Joker takes apart and criticizes that concept, showing the appeal of such a fantasy but also the damage it can cause.

Arthur may have ended up in this place because others lacked compassion for him, but he chooses to let his sense of compassion whither and die, just as Frankenstein’s monster chooses to be violent.

And like the creature, Arthur hates his father figure, in this case, Thomas Wayne. Fleck has been led to believe that Wayne is his biological father, a fact later revealed to possibly be a lie or delusion on behalf of Arthur’s mother Penny. (A certain level of ambiguity remains as to whether Penny really adopted Arthur or Wayne used his influence to manufacture the adoption story and hide his own paternity). Arthur’s anger is not solely rooted in the fact that Wayne is a corporate fat cat nosing his way into politics to ensure the rich stay rich but out of resentment for Wayne not helping their family.

Arthur Fleck needs someone to blame, someone to hate, and Thomas Wayne’s murder is that fury coming to fruition, an act not committed by Arthur but nonetheless set in motion by him. And the fact that Arthur personally kills his own mother— who, it should be noted, is herself a victim of abuse— for her supposed lies and her role in his childhood trauma essentially cuts the cord for his freefall into madness. Likewise, the shooting of erstwhile father figure and role model Murray Franklin provides yet another example of Arthur destroying his creator.

Joker carries with it a strong legacy of influence. The character of Arthur recalls Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the main antagonist from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Another variation in the Frankenstein story, Roy is an artificial being engineered by a super-rich geneticist. Roy eventually kills his ostensible father, along with several other people, some of them innocent. As a replicant, he does not regard the suffering of others, and in a reflection of Frankenstein’s Monster, is both sympathetic while also deadly.

More recently, we’ve seen a similar approach in the form of David 8 (Michael Fassbender), the android from Scott’s Prometheus/Alien: Covenant. Created by Ubermensch-wannabe Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), David and Peter both admire and resent each other in equal measure, David having inherited his father’s narcissism and cold-heartedness.

However, it’s also Weyland’s casual cruelty and manipulative condescension toward David which contributes to his son going over the edge. And in this case, the creation actually becomes the mad scientist, adopting the role as he murders, rapes, and commits genocide on behalf of his experiments. Scott films Covenant in particular, like a Hammer-era Frankenstein film, Fassbender’s performance at times redolent of Peter Cushing.

Though Joker is more of a self-contained riff on the titular character and therefore rather loosely connected to the larger Batman universe— and while it’s much more directly a horror tale— the legacy of Batman has frequently found itself with one foot in the horror genre. (Perhaps not surprising, considering this is a story about a guy who spends his evenings dressed like a bat, a Jekyll & Hide scenario if there ever was one).

The 1980s saw the publication of two comics, The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: The Killing Joke, which offered a grittier take on the Batman mythos, placing Batman in noir-inspired landscapes which could veer into the nightmarish. (There are also examples, such as Red Rain, which literally pits Batman against Dracula). Killing Joke stands as a precursor to Todd Phillips’ movie, establishing Joker’s backstory as a failed standup comedian but also making it clear he’s not a reliable source of his own biography. The comic creates a dark psychological portrait of the Joker where we come to understand that his life is tragic, but without dismissing the brutality of his actions.

Tim Burton brought his own horror influence to his two Batman movies, injecting German Expressionism into the set design and lighting, most notably with Batman Returns. That film is nothing if not a carnivalesque horror show, the Penguin is presented as a straight-up monster, but with (yet again) a sad origin.

The tale of Frankenstein has been a frequent reference point for Burton, as has German Expressionism, one of the biggest influences on the early Universal monster films. This touch bled over into Batman: The Animated Series. The Gotham City of that show is steeped in influence from Expressionism and (of course, given the name) Gothic horror; some of the settings, drawn to be claustrophobic and shadowy and angular, could easily fit into James Whale’s classic.

Joker also contains within it a fair dose of Hubert Selby Jr, the author most famous for his books Last Exit To Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream. He, too, wrote monster stories about people consumed by their delusions until there’s almost nothing left of their humanity.

His portraits of the downtrodden, the poor, and the outcast bring to mind Arthur’s lowly social position, but Selby also wrote about the successful and their own struggles with a spiritual void. The novel The Demon tells of a businessman who becomes so enthralled by his material obsessions that he completely loses his mind, deciding to stab a Gandhi-esque Cardinal during an Easter Mass broadcast on live TV. This almost directly forecasts Arthur killing Murray Franklin in a similar setting, yet another narcissistic plea for attention.

Selby’s final published work, Waiting Room, details the mindset of a suicidal man who finds a new purpose in life by killing those he deems too evil to live. A black comedy, the book takes us into the thoughts of the main character, laying out his histrionic anger and increasingly pathetic mental gymnastics of self-justification. Reminiscent of both Arthur Fleck and Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle—one of De Niro’s signature roles and an obvious inspiration for Joker—the narrator thinks he’s found his calling when he’s really just spreading more misery.

Another touchstone for Joker is the film adaptation of Selby’s drug nightmare Requiem for a Dream. Director Darren Aronofsky added a subplot about Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald), a snake-oil salesman hawking self-help advice on his ludicrous combination infomercial/game show. The main character Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), obsessively imagines herself appearing on Tappy’s program, the fantasy sequences escalating in their sad detachment from reality. Arthur’s own fantasy about appearing on The Murray Franklin Show strikes a similar note, especially in contrast to what actually occurs later in the film.

(Aronofsky also mentioned at the time that he approached Requiem as a monster movie, where the monster, in this case, is addiction).

Joker begins and ends with two interviews that echo each other, the first by a social worker and the final by an Arkham psychiatrist. (The climax also involves an interview, this one with Murray). These bookends highlight Arthur’s fall from grace and his descent into a monstrosity.

The fact that Arthur finishes the story committed to Arkham Asylum might come across as the film laying the blame for his behavior solely on mental illness— similar to the 1931 Frankenstein’s glib use of the “abnormal” brain— yet that doesn’t really jibe with the rest of the movie.

First of all, most people with mental problems, even untreated, don’t become a figure like the Joker. (Though, of course, this is fiction, and therefore, a certain amount of creative license is to be expected). Secondly, an institutionalized Arthur would almost definitely be medicated, and yet he’s still Joker at the end, despite him mentioning earlier that his behavior has changed because he stopped taking his meds. There are simply way too many other factors at play to boil it down to this one element.

The only time Arthur discusses his mental struggles directly in relation to becoming Joker is on Murray’s talk show, where he proceeds to rant about society’s neglect of those with psychological problems. Yet, this scene is less a moralistic tirade than it is Arthur trying to stage his “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” moment, a performance he can control in a world falling apart. His breakdown is genuine, but he came to put on a show, and that’s exactly what he does.

Finally, he achieves his lifelong dream of captivating an audience.

This is not to say the film lacks a compassionate stance towards mental illness, whether or not Arthur is criminally insane. But the whole concept of mental illness is a complex subject— as this author is very well-aware from personal experience— and we’re never even told the specifics of Arthur’s issues apart from his brain injury, so it’s almost impossible to gauge how much of a role they play. (A detail left purposefully vague, mostly likely to sidestep the movie being interpreted through the lens of depicting a specific medical condition).

It’s also not 100% clear if Arthur is THE Joker or someone who inspired the person that we later know by that name. Since Gotham is swarmed by Joker copycats, that would very much fit with the movie’s larger theme of Arthur being turned into a product . . . a symbol to be replicated and copied, but hollow on the inside, allowing people to project whatever meaning they want onto that symbol.

This is, ironically, an oft-repeated criticism of Joker, but one can argue that it’s not the movie itself that is empty, but Arthur. The film reflects his internal state, up to and including him being an unreliable narrator, but also shows us enough to put him in context. Arthur began as misunderstood. Now he’ll never be understood because there isn’t much left to understand.

He insists his life is a comedy, not a tragedy, but that’s really only another way of saying his life is tragic. Arthur Fleck had the capacity to spread joy in a cruel world. Yes, that world was unkind to him, but he chose to give away his light and rend himself over to the darkness in his soul… to dwell in the headspace of a nihilistic egomaniac. To become a monster.

Like Victor Frankenstein, Arthur creates something he cannot control, an offspring that ultimately devours him.

The Joker persona is his prison. The makeup, his bars. His is the painted face not of a mad revolutionary but a sad fool, lost in darkness and in distance.

That’s the real joke.

 

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