JOKER (2019): NO JOKE OF A MOVIE

A Film Too Close to Home

Recently, I visited a homeless shelter. I won’t go into too many details, but after my brief foray into such an underworld, once I’d been buzzed through the sturdy security door (the building deliberately made to look derelict, maybe to avoid unwanted attention), I saw something that reminded me of Joaquin Phoenix from the 2019 film Joker.

Sitting with the staff, as they told me about their inability to control the copious drug usage that went on around the building, a disturbing sight leered at me through the window. It was the grinning face of a resident; high, mentally troubled, or possibly both. After leaving, the horror story of the overburdened social care system I had just heard about playing over between my ears, I decided to give myself an hour of wondering about town; a mix of thoughts and emotions resonating uncomfortably through my body. After a brief but satisfying coffee and a nice photo-gallery, I decided I needed to write this article.

The Joker/Trickster is an archetypal character that appears in all times and cultures. Whether it’s the fool card in the tarot deck (represented by the joker playing card), or the Devil himself from Christian theology, it seems that this archetype appears in one way or another everywhere. But it has different shades, hues, and manifestations. One could say it is the uncomfortable reflection of the society back at itself, in absurd personification; cackling with laughter no matter how awful the situation.

One such character is the trickster-divinity Edshu, from West Africa. As Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces put it: “One day, this odd god came walking along a path between two fields. ‘He beheld in either field a farmer at work and proposed to play the two a turn. He donned a hat that was on the one side red but on the other white, green before and black behind…so that when the two friendly farmers had gone home to their village and the one had said to the other, ‘Did you see that old fellow go by today in the white hat?’ the other replied, ‘Why, the hat was red.’…And so an argument developed and the two came to blows. When they began to knife each other, they were brought by neighbors [sic] before the headman for judgment. Edshu was among the crowd at the trial, and when the headman sat at a loss to know where justice lay, the old trickster revealed himself, made known his prank, and showed the hat. ‘The two could not help but quarrel,’ he said. ‘I wanted it that way. Spreading strife is my greatest joy.’”

Something similar happens in Joker, after Arthur Fleck has finally flipped completely into the super-villain. Two detectives chase him onto a train filled with protesters wearing clown masks. He takes the mask of a man, who in return shoves him into another. That man then punches the other man and before you know it, a brawl has broken out on the train; the Joker dancing away untouched. The detectives try to restore order, but in the chaos a protester is shot. The mob then turns on the two policemen; the Joker dancing and laughing with glee.

Later, when he talks with the chat show host, Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), on live television, he asks him: “Have you actually seen what it’s like out there, Murraaaay? Do you actually ever leave the studio?” Murray is simply dismissive and condescending throughout, so by the end of the scene he lies dead; Joker having shot him in the face.

But a malevolent Joker, like the Devil, won’t appear unless he has something to work with in human nature. I suspect, with those West African farmers, there had been some resentments brewing for a while, or maybe they had just had a bad harvest. The argument about the colour of the hat was an excuse to spitefully vent their wounded pride, vanity, and unresolved difficulties.

The last time Arthur Fleck visits his social worker, he is told that, due to funding cuts, he won’t have any more treatment. He says: “You never really listen, you just ask me the same old questions.” to which he repeats the same answers. She replies: “They don’t give a shit about people like you, Arthur, and they really don’t give a shit about people like me, either!” Perhaps the only way for such a nihilistic situation to be resolved is for a Joker/Devil to give it a good going over.

In Devil’s Advocate (1997)¹, Al Pacino brilliantly plays the Lord of Darkness incarnate (interestingly as a top-shot lawyer). In the final confrontation with the lead character, Kevin (Keanu Reeves), he begins by saying: “I’m no puppeteer, Kevin. I don’t make things happen… I only set the stage, you pull your own strings.” Kevin blames him for ‘setting him up’ and playing him. The Devil then comments on how everything started going wrong for him after he chose not to give his wife the care and attention she deserved; something the Devil had actually recommended him to do in an earlier scene.

All the major religions teach some version of love, restraint, modesty, and caution against excesses like greed and selfishness. Arthur Fleck, like Kevin’s wife, never wanted riches or fame, they just craved for a modicum of human dignity and affection; something no one, even family members, could be bothered with.

Perhaps that’s what I glimpsed in that troubled face through the glass at the men’s shelter. But that wasn’t the really ugly part. What was worse was the removed callousness of the staff to the human beings they were paid to help, whose job it was to ‘deal’ with such people; shuffling them along as soon as possible so they become somebody else’s problem; lost in a system that ‘doesn’t give a shit’ about them. But I haven’t just seen it there before, I see it all over nowadays, in the rich and poor alike. On top might be a thin veneer of respectability and coolness, but don’t kid yourself; the Joker is always there and more than willing to teach us a lesson, a lesson we now sorely deserve.

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