I read so many scathing — forgive me long and thorough and scathing — reviews of this one that I figured something had to be up. And indeed there is. However unpleasant and disturbing this movie may be, it is excellent along all major dimensions of cinematic quality, including drama, script, characterization, performances, cinematography, color, music, and more, not to mention embedded cinematic references. But here is the catch: it is the most anti-Leftist movie I have seen, ever. It quite explicitly portrays the egalitarian instinct as a kind of barbaric violent atavism, and it is pointedly critical of Antifa and related movements, showing them as representing a literal end of civilization. Only the wealthy are genteel and urbane and proper. On crime and law and order, it is right-wing in a 1970s “Death Wish” sort of way, though anti-gun too.
I really respect Tyler Cowen’s views, so I might give this a look. I suspect I am going to see this on my own because my wife probably will hate it. It’t not a date night film, if that does not sound patronising (although the missus loves thrillers).
If people want to comment, please no spoilers, merci!
If you want a comic book movie suitable for dates, go with Deadpool. It’s a love story!
I think there’s a kickback starting. There are younger people leaning towards conservatism and rebelling against the progressive policies of their parents’ generation. This probably taps into that. Twas ever thus.
I saw it last night. I think you can look at it two ways:
1. It’s about what happens when bad rich people are mean to nice poor people.
2. It’s about how you can rile everyone up by convincing them that all their problems are caused by bad rich people.
If you assume the protagonist is the hero it’s a terrible movie, but I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that at all. There aren’t any goodies in this movie. There is a cartoon-like rich bad guy, but I can sort of forgive that in a comic book movie: cartoon villains are the point. And later we get Batman who is a rich good guy.
It’s quite a gloomy film, but it’s very beautifully filmed squalor and degradation. I liked it in the way I like looking at pictures of long-abandoned buildings taken by urban explorers. A guilty pleasure: I’m totally all in for Randian celebration of the glorious achievements of Man most of the time, honest!
Joaquin Phoenix does play unhinged evil very well. His Commodus was similarly entertaining.
Worth noting: Bruce Wayne takes matters into his own hands, uses his wealth and connections to train himself into the ultimate expression of humanity, and takes the fight personally to the criminals.
He never used his money to lobby politicians – instead he sets up various private charities, the most well known being the Wayne Foundation, but he has several anonymous ones as well.
Sure, he’s famously anti-gun, which many people use to paint him as a (US-definition) liberal, but come on, he saw his parents killed by a gun-wielding mugger at age 8. Is not exactly surprising that he’s not fond of guns.
I can see that would make one disapprove quite strongly of mugging. The only thing wrong with guns was that his parents clearly didn’t have any.
Sure.
Which Thomas would not have been able to draw before the mugger (Joe Chill, random nobody, Jack Napier, whatever – random nobody being the clear better narrative choice) pulled the trigger on the already drawn and pointed gun.
Had Thomas had a gun, it would have made no difference in the eyes of the 8 year old boy seeing his parents gunned down in front of him. Bruce still would have hated guns. It’s not an excuse to claim that he’s a (US-definition) liberal.
Johnathan, thanks for the review. First reaction: Sounds hopeful. If your wife doesn’t want to be your date, you can swing by here and pick me up. :))
[Despite the fact that personally, I wasn’t a fan of Batman (comic books) even in my kiddiehood, much preferring Superboy and Superman, though of course, like everything else, I’d read it whenever, wherever I found it. (Hated Spiderman to the point that I read about 3 whole stories within the comic books.) I did see the first Batman movie, yawn, though of course Nicholson — whom for some reason I can’t stand — was perfect as the Joker.]
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Very interesting string of comments after Mr. Cowen’s review. Greatly varying views on whether the movie is properly seen as pro-right-wing or pro-left-wing, with some arguing that either segment of the audience can plausibly (I take it) seeing as illustrating its POV.
Discussion of various “Rotten Tomato” ratings.
One commenter recommends, as do I, the piece in The Federalist, at
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/05/why-liberal-media-hates-the-joker/ ,
though commenter “mulp” replies:
.
And in particular: SNOPES. Completely O/T, and I may post this in an earlier discussion, but one commenter — “The Lunatic” on October 7, 2019 at 9:50 pm — brings up a “total fabrication” about President G.H.W. Bush that the NYT published in 1992 and (per the commenter anyway) never retracted.
“The Lunatic’s” whole comment is worth reading (not very long); scroll past the next few shorties for his or her further comment.
Commenters have more to say about the Grey Rag, e.g. that it’s almost in Vox’s and the Daily Beast’s territory of prevarication, but what I thought was really interesting was the link to Snopes’ 2001 examination and finding on the claim that the then-President was “Amazed by a Grocery Scanner.” The headline was followed by this:
The discussion was lengthy and interesting, and Snopes called the story: FALSE.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bush-scanner-demonstration/
. . .
ETA: I think neon has a good point there. I don’t think all 8-year-olds would become gunshy because of it, and certainly not those who’ve been around responsible gun-toters all their lives (like most country people when I was a kid), especially if they themselves were learning to shoot.
But I do believe that some, and perhaps many, would.
I’m still a bit confused by the common interpretation that Joker is going to rile up violence from the “incel” movement – mostly because I have no idea what that movement entails besides lots of guys being caught up in a transitory period of strained relations between the sexes that causes them to be involuntarily celibate. (How many people are ever voluntarily celibate? All else being equal, I think most people would rather be . . . you know.)
Is “incel” supposed to be a right-wing movement? A left-wing one? Ecumenical? I see many polls conclusively proving that each side is characterized by a better sex life than the other side, so I have no idea what an incel is. I’ve seen two incidents of shooters claiming some membership (or at least being ascribed some membership by others), but I cannot imagine that any of the other people doing mass shootings can claim healthy emotional/physical relationships – are they ALL incels? Or is that just one symptom of a disintegrating personality?
I’m assuming that the Joker character isn’t getting any, but how many people falling off of the edge of mental illness are?
Indeed. Rob Fisher notes that Batman is a “rich good guy” – I’ve seen people try to claim Batman as a left-liberal, when literally the only thing that is liberal about him is his dislike of guns. He’s very much a conservative in all other ways – and the given, in-universe reason for his hatred of guns is that a gun caused him the trauma that turned him into Batman.
Typically, alt-right (as I’ve used the term). As well as insane levels of misogyny, there’s a huge cross-over with racial purity (mixed race dating being verboten, and blamed for why these guys aren’t getting any).
The whole ‘anti-gun’ thing is somewhat tacked on. Early Batman was frequently portrayed using guns and even killing villains. I don’t know when the character was rewritten to be anti-gun. Perhaps in the post-war, white hat cowboy, comics code era.
I wouldn’t say there is no such thing as an “Incel” (Involuntarily Celibate), since the 2014 Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger was a well documented example of the type. He was nothing more than a random loner whose off-putting personality meant that he couldn’t get laid despite being from a wealthy family and reasonably good looks. The Christchurch mosque shooter has similarly been described as an Incel.
Is there some vast army of Incel’s attempting to bring down society and watch the world burn? Not really. It’s little more than a left-wing boogeyman to support legally mandated censorship and gun confiscation.
The biggest crime that most NEET’s (Not in Employment, Education or Training) commit is video game piracy (since poor hygiene and bad diet are not yet criminal offences). Sure, they can’t get laid because they are (as a general rule) asocial, unattractive and have poor prospects. Who needs that?
These types have not just suddenly appeared, they have always been there, societies drunks, alcoholics, jobless low-lifes. The fact that they now prefer to live in their parents basement and shitpost on 4Chan instead of behaving as their predecessors in earlier generations doesn’t change the fact that they are not a new phenomena.
Neonsnake:
I imagine if the young Joker to be had seen his father defend himself against muggers he might have grown up into a decent well rounded individual, and we’d have had no film.
It doesn’t matter to me. I can’t stand comic books and superheroes, so my money is staying firmly in my pocket. Sorry Hollywood liberals.
I expect this is yet another film that can be portrayed as either right-wing or left-wing depending on how you want to interpret it.
Certainly there are aspects of this, such as the scene where instead of having his medication increased he is told that the whole program is being cut and he won’t be getting his medication at all. This could be portrayed as a left-wing attack on right-wing the closure of mental health services in the US (or even just poor crazy people not having access to medical services).
Equally, the Antifa-style antics of the anarchists of which Joker is an emblem (but not a member) can be seen as a right-wing attack on the left.
The truth is though that it is a pretty realistic portrayal of things that have happened in the recent past (e.g. Charlottesville, Portland, Berkeley, etc.)
If you view “Joker” through your own political lens, you will see what you want to see and interpret it however you want to interpret it.
Good question.
The good news is that there in no evidence at all that reviewers can make a bad film bust blocks or a good film bomb, so enjoy.
That is the mark of great fiction: you need to think about it, learn to argue for your interpretation, and look at it also from other points of view.
This is a bit like asking when you stopped beating your wife. The first question to ask is, is there an incel “movement” in the real world, or only in the morbid imagination of SJWs?
—- As for why Batman does not use guns, the reason seems obvious to me: if he did, he’d be a vigilante like the Punisher, not a superhero; and back then, parents would have been reluctant to let their children read Batman stories.
—- Julie, weren’t you supposed to read Wonder Woman, or at least Supergirl, instead of Superman??
@Snorri Godhi – Bit sexist isn’t it? 😉
On the contrary, JG: the sexist attitude is that girls should read stories of heroes that they can never be (banning sex change), instead of stories of heroines that they can be (with a lot of imagination).
Yep. Comics Code Authority, 1954, wouldn’t let you use their stamp if you showed excessive violence including guns.
That’s the real-life reason, with the secondary reason being that they want to bring back characters like Joker, which ye cannae do if he’s dead. Early Batman indeed used guns, and actually killed Joker in the first issue he appeared in. When they decided he wasn’t to use guns, they needed a narrative reason, and childhood trauma was plausible enough to go with.
Julie…
I did see the first Batman movie, yawn, though of course Nicholson —
*eh-HEM!*
The First Batman movie…Nicholson? Um, NO!(But the point is not lost.)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060153/
There’s even a few B&W “shorts” predating Adam West. (Can’t find em)
The one with Nicholson lacked the Bat Shark-Repellent. It wasn’t the same. I think Nicholson was pretty good as the Joker, though.
Captain: always glad to get new input! Thanks.
Snorri: How could I forget Wonder Woman! I hang my head in shame. 😥
Supergirl, way past my time. And besides, it looked kinda dumb to me. Now the original Lana Lang was, whatever else, not dumb, at least not when I was still reading comic books. By the ’70s, I wasn’t up for anything but Archie (et cie) and Donald Duck, but they’d gotten away from the innovation and charm they had in the ’50s … and, mostly, the humour. Also the drawing and even the storylines seemed dumbed-down by then.
(Compare the styling in Disney’s 1994 The Lion King with that in Pinocchio, Cinderella, the Donald Duck TV cartoons of the ’50s, so forth. But NOTE: First, this was hard to find on imdb, but it is there; and second, the commentariat is wild about it. There’s talk to the effect that it’s the best of the Disney cartoon movies, and the last of the hand-drawn ones. If it didn’t cost the Hope Diamond, I’d watch it again; maybe I’m remembering wrong, or was feeling dyspeptic at the time. ??? Any opinions here are surely welcome.
(Still, the drawing at Imdb also lacks sophistication and the sense of vitality in the classics.)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110357/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2
neon: Never heard of the CCA, yet in 1954 I was deep into the fantasyland of the comics. Actually, I think that by 1954 I was mostly out of the horror-comics (!) phase. The last one I remember had a story in it that really turned my stomach. I think I was 9. The deal was that the Evil One had the ability to wipe a person’s face off. To a 9-year-old, the effect was pretty realistic. It took me a while to work out why it didn’t make sense. (Never fear, 67 years later I understand perfectly. 😆 )
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Back to Guns:
But, jeepers! When I was 6 or 7 I got a complete cowgirl outfit for my birthday present (I think it was). The dress, the cowboy hat with the drawstring so it could be cinched up under the chin, the “leather” vest, everything but the cowgirl boots — AND, of course, the toy pistol and holster. Wore it to school occasionally. Some of the other kids also had some of the “cowboy” accoutrements, and they also turned up at school. –This was still at one-room country school, remember. I can’t recall for sure, but I don’t think we wore the outfits to Town School, starting in 4th grade.
[Aside: HEH! But I do remember that I once put on some of Mom’s lipstick and wore it to school. Mrs. Rambo, our 4th-grade teacher whom I’d known forever — she went to our church and was a friend of my folks’ — had a cow, told me NEVER AGAIN!, and reported me to Mother. Mom did not have a cow, but did tell me not to wear makeup to school, nor in public at all. In fact I was forbidden to wear my long hair loose until high school, and forbidden to dress up my low white heels with artificial geraniums on Easter (I suppose I was 15 or 16). Too dramatic for church, let alone Easter, I was told. *smile* At the time I had the usual “But Mom, this is the ’50s!” reaction, but in hindsight I can’t say that any of this was dreadfully restrictive, let alone abusive.]
Almost all of us had cap guns and I think all of us had water pistols (squirt guns). With which we all played avidly pretty much throughout the grade-school years, though not at school. There, we made do with imitation pistols consisting of the hand. Of course by the time we were 9 or so, we’d become a bit too sophisticated for cap guns only, so if we had a source of cement nearby (my dad had laid a sidewalk), we exploded the caps with a hammer. This really did worry the parents, because once in awhile there would be enough of a kickback to send the hammer upward toward the kid’s face.
Let me say also that we all played “cowboys & Indians” from first grade right on up until … whenever. Also cops’n’robbers.
Pretend this is all caps: *I don’t know of a single instance where a kid thought it was okay to shoot a real person.* (In fact my folks and a lot of others made a point of teaching us never to point even our toy guns or cap-guns or squirt guns at real people). Nobody thought it was okay to shoot an Indian (which is just one variety of Real Person, after all.)
End of reminiscence….
Spoiler alert – if you do not wish to know anything about the plot……
STOP READING NOW
For those of you still reading……..
There are some nods to leftist doctrine in the film – for example the character who becomes the Joker is beaten up by three well off executives (sorry – they are not the sort of people who hassle women on public transport, and they are not the sort of people who beat up someone who tries to come to the rescue) – but mainly the film is truthful.
The father of the person who becomes the Joker is NOT Mr Wayne – the mother of the lunatic is herself crazy and has made up a fantasy of an affair with Mr Wayne resulting in a child.
Mr and Mrs Wayne do not have some guilt secret justifying their deaths – the mobs of scumbags inspired by the Joker (he does not personally kill Mr and Mrs Wayne) are just mobs of scumbags – Mr Wayne had done nothing to them to justify his murder or the murder of his wife.
I think the above is why the left hates this film. They want “the rich” to be presented as people who DESERVE to be murdered – and they want the people who overturn society to be presented as wonderful hero types (like the absurd Matt Damon character in the science fiction film about how even rich people who have left-the-planet are still responsible for everything bad and must be destroyed). The Joker is not a hero – he smashes society (which, yes, was in decline already) because he is crazy and violent, he has no plan for a “Better World”.
No better world will result from the actions of “The Joker” – just piles of rotting human corpses, which is why a “Batman” is needed to stop the Joker and people like the Joker.
The trouble is that the modern rich contain too many people who think (because they have been taught to think – at school and university) that Batman is an evil reactionary and that people like the Joker are wonderful heroes.
The man who becomes the Joker shown for what he is (a man going insane and murdering people) is not what the left wants social revolutionaries to be shown as.
Yes we can pity the horrible life (starting in childhood) that helped make the Joker what he is – but, in the end, he is a rabid dog. And the correct way to deal with a rabid dog is not to hold him up as a hero. as the crowd of scumbags does at the end of the film.
There can be no peace with the Joker – or with that crowd of his supporters at the end of the film. Everyone in that crowd knows the Joker is a murderer (they watched him murder a man on live television – not a nice man, but he did not deserve to be murdered) – so everyone in that celebrating crowd is an evil person, there can be no peace with them.
Hopefully i won’t forget to read Paul Marks’ comment after i watch the movie.
Awful, awful film.
It’s a shallow copy of Taxi Driver, or King Of Comedy, or even Clockwork Orange or Fight Club.
The 15 certificate is appropriate. The only people I can imagine coming out of the cinema thinking that this piece of crap is in any way saying anything worth listening to are adolescent young (virgin) men.
It’s so stupidly and pathetically cynical, specifically but not limited to the demonization of the Waynes, to the sympathy portrayed towards Arthur Fleck, that I cannot conceive of how anyone liked it.
It’s like Game Of Thrones. It’s written for pathetic children or teenagers, pretending to be “mature” and “adult” and missing the point of being a grown-up by a million miles.
Grant Morrison, Flex Mentallo.
Ummm . . . you DO know that the Waynes, and their story, are fake, right? Made up? ‘Cuz, it seems as though you’re arguing that the Joker’s version of events is wrong, or dishonest, or unfair.
😉
(Maybe the Waynes just had better publicists? Sometimes the scumminess of the character doesn’t alter the truth of what they’re saying? I thought that the pure value of the movie was in showing that accepted versions of events can be wrong, even when we want them to be right. Two sides to every story, and all of that . . .)
Why would you tell such horrible lies, bobby b??
😛
HERE BE SPOILERS!
I’m generally fairly blase about remakes, reinterpretations, and the like, but this one left a really sour taste in my mouth.
The myth of Batman is pretty simple and pure; wealthy philanthropist, doctor and all round good egg Thomas Wayne and his wife gunned down by anonymous mugger in a city plagued by organised crime and corrupt politicians. Son grows up, and well, you know the rest.
I think it takes a pretty nasty and cynical, “edgy” little mind to decide to recast Thomas Wayne as a stereotypically evil, selfish, elitist 1%er.
The film strongly implies that Arthur’s mother was not delusional, that Thomas Wayne (with Alfred’s knowledge) actually IS Arthur’s mother, and that it is he who had her committed to Arkham (the photo with “Love your smile – TW”) to cover up the (presumed) affair.
Whilst the film is muddied in it’s politics (more due to its shallowness than anything cleverly ambiguous), I’m surprised that anyone is seeing it as anti-egalitarian. Its portrayal of the rich and famous is anything but sympathetic, and it treats scenes like the one where the two coppers get beaten up as something to celebrate (even though they were completely correct to be chasing Arthur).
Its a shame, since Joaquin Phoenix was excellent, the cinematography was fantastic, and so on. It just rang very hollow, and edgy for the sake of edginess.
But wasn’t that a necessary precondition in order to recast the story’s bad guy(s) into something less pure evil and more fallen-human?
I’ve always been a bit fascinated by the progression of Jokers since I got to stay up later than usual to watch the original Batman series back in 1966. (“Pow! Boof!”) Cesar Romero’s version started it, as a very one-dimensional goof, and (as far as I was concerned until recently) Heath Ledger ended it when he brought humanity and a reason for pity into the character.
My legal career went through some strange meanderings, but early on I did quite a bit of contract overflow work for the Public Defender’s Office, and dealt with many miscreants and criminals, from thieves to rapists to murderers. Out of the hundreds I met, none struck me as “evil”. They all seemed, instead, to simply be warped and damaged chemically-altered people who mostly had had what I would consider to be horrible lives from the time they were kids, and their hostile, antisocial, combatative, selfish ways could be understood on that basis. I came out of that period with a lot of pity – these had all been somebodies cute little kids at some point, and had been basically beaten down to where they were – but also the belief that we ought to be imprisoning them far more than we do now because of the harm they cause.
Phoenix’s Joker is the first Joker to raise those memories for me, by telling a story that explains how someone gets to that place. Hardly anyone is born evil – we get beaten into it – and you can tire of the good/bad morality plays that we usually see when you know that life isn’t like that.
But to present such a story with balance – to add humanity to Arthur – you need to take some of it away from Wayne.
I disagree. That’s how they chose to do it but I think chose is very much the operative word. You can choose to tell Hitler’s story in a way that “explains how someone gets to that place” but it would be very much a choice, not a necessity, to do so in a way that takes something from Churchill, or the German Jewish community, or whoever.
Or, I guess, in fictional terms, if the upcoming Amazon Lord Of The Rings series chose to humanise Sauron at the expense of the Hobbits (I’m not a huge Tolkien-head, so better examples probably exist!)
In very, very broad terms, I’ve found myself tending in the other direction over the years, myself becoming tired of grim’n’gritty – particularly in genre fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero/comic books/films. Only because, most of the time, it seems like a very forced attempt to appear more “grown-up” 🙂
That being said, when it’s done well, I really enjoy it. Something like Watchmen or V For Vendetta, for example, or Joe Abercrombie in the realms of fantasy. But it really has to earn it.
Joker, in my oh so humble ( 😉 ), was too shallow in its themes to earn the grim’n’gritty.
Taxi Driver, on the other hand (and its been twenty years since I’ve watched it, mind) did earn it, in my memory of the film at least.
Rereading your post, and this hit me hard:
That’s a very striking statement, bobby b.
There’s many, many jobs I’ve always felt that I don’t have the mental cajones to do, and yours would be one of them. Respect to you for doing it.
Thieves and rapists and murderers…gods below. My worst days at work consist of “we didn’t sell enough of X, neon! What are you doing about it??”
Remember back (if you ever saw it) to the original Adam West Batman series. It was completely caricatured – Good versus Evil, with no shading.
As Batman progressed through its various iterations, the stories backed off from those caricatures a bit, on both sides. My point was that, to keep a story workable, you need to maintain a similar level of caricaturization on each side. You counter a semi-sympathetic Heath Ledger with a semi-warped Christian Bale. You can’t make a believable story with Pure Good fighting pitiably-warped-humanity.
So, with the new Joker, the addition of more empathy for Arthur needs to be balanced out with more realism in Wayne. (I do agree that this doesn’t work when dealing with historical figures, with actual factual information – but in fiction, you can make plot serve device.)
It all sounds worse than it was. It sounds like I was sitting in interview cells with pure evil.
Ever watch any of the many cop shows where the cops go from incident to incident to incident and deal over and over with numbingly drunk, stumbling, incoherent brutes bellowing at everyone and then crying and sobbing and banging their heads on the glass?
It never comes off in real life as evil. It’s just sad and pathetic. And drunk. Always drunk.
bobby b (October 29, 2019 at 11:02 pm), though I have no quarrel with
it does not address my point. All the 80s/90s films gave Batman angst (sometimes they even hinted at angst over PC attitudes to him 🙂 ) but insofar as this film gives the joker’s grudge against the Waynes any actual content, that is an artistic choice, not an artistic necessity – and so open to e.g. neonsnake’s moral critique.
It would be no problem if it had historical content. My analogy-point was that pretty well nothing (that they deserved censure for) done by the Jews, or any of them, was related to why they became Hitler’s pet hate. Thus a Hitler-focussed story is not obliged to take something from them to analyse how he got there – is indeed obliged not to for historical accuracy. That does not apply to fiction but my artistic choice point does. I once saw a film about a fictional American nazi that included a negative teenage interaction with a Jewish family as part of his radicalisation story. I felt critical of that artistic choice – but it wasn’t a great film anyway.
There are people and groups that have moral involvement in the catastrophes that befall them, both in reality and in e.g. the tragic flaw theory of Shakespearean tragedy, but in fiction it is very much an artistic choice whether the tale you choose to write is of that form.
The comics gave him angst from, I think the mid-80s, with Frank Miller (of 300 fame) writing Year One and Dark Knight Returns.
Joker (the film) is partly based on a comic called The Killing Joke, by a chap called Alan Moore (amongst others, he wrote Watchmen and V For Vendetta that I mentioned above). It makes an effort (for the first time that I know of) to portray him as a sympathetic character – a failed standup comedian, who performs a small time robbery to support his pregnant wife.
Pregnant wife dies of a tragic accident at home, meanwhile the robbery goes wrong, he falls into a vat of acid, he loses his mind, and you know the rest. It elicits sympathy without denigrating the Wayne’s (or anyone else, as far as I can remember).
Batman was always my favourite super hero, I’ve read most of the comics, so I’m a little precious about screwing with the origin story (I felt the same about the more recent Superman films when his father hints that Superman should have let a busload of kids die) – especially in a way that I interpret to be “anti-rich”. I’m not particularly tied to a viewpoint that thinks rich=good, mind, just equally that the kneejerk of rich=bad offends me a little.
Ok, more than a little 😉
Go on? I’m curious as to what you mean.
neonsnake (October 30, 2019 at 1:35 pm), I don’t mean much.
From memory (distant memory – some 30 years ago 🙂 ) the 1989 film has Vicky Vale, on her first rather alarming and alarmed drive with Batman, mention that ‘some people’ (the suggestion seems to be: some of her media/chattering-class friends) see him as just another criminal, needing to be caught, arrested and tried as much as the joker. Batman replies “What kind of people?” in a particularly gravelly voice. 🙂
This echoed a general very vague impression I had of Batman as being seen as the most (or more) right-wing of the classic superheroes, with the dark knight series as continuing this. Larry Niven’s joke in ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’ about “Batman would refuse to be seen with him” (i.e. with Superman while the latter was hosting his unborn child in his own body, as the essay concludes would be the only way the infant could be carried to term) seemed to me to suggest the idea was general. 🙂
However I defer to your greater knowledge.
Astute, and agreed – to a certain type of person, Batman is a (very) rich white trust fundee, who spends his evenings dressing up in leather/rubber, visiting the poorer areas of the city and beating up poor people who are just trying to steal enough to eat before hanging them by the feet from lampposts outside the local police office.
It’s…one perspective, I suppose!
But, yes, there’s a certain segment of fandom that sees it that way, as opposed to Superman’s wholesome Boy Scout, and Wonder Woman’s feminism.
Most (by no means all)of the stuff from the comics that made it into the Batman films was written by very conservative writers, so I guess that’s another angle.
I suspect I’m being obtuse, but I’m struggling to figure out where we’re at odds here.
Is it the fact that I said that “you NEED TO . . . ” equalize levels of caricature in opposing story-figures?
Should I have said that it is my opinion that you should not have one level of caricature/reality on one side of a morality-play fiction and a different level on the other to tell a buyable story? That it worked in the early days to fashion a simplistic Good Batman fighting a simplistic Evil Joker, but that, in my opinion, if you are going to develop that Joker into a more human character, the story does better if you also fashion the Waynes into more human characters as well?
IRL, people fall onto a bell curve that lies on the continuum between Good and Evil, and the trailing ends at either end never reach the absolutes. In the old Batman series, of course, they did reach those absolute ends – humanity in a cartoon series isn’t so much a bell curve as a straight line from one absolute to the other. You can make either work in a story, but I am jarred by stories that have one end of the bell curve starting halfway up the ordinate and the other naturally trailing off. Either craft your fake absolutes consistently, or don’t.
And, of course it’s all open to neonsnake’s moral critique, just as it is to mine and yours.
No, that’s precisely what I said I had no general quarrel with.
I then went on to say what I did disagree with. If you recall, my original dissent was to your sentence:
and you wrote that to defend the film against neonsnake’s criticism that
from which it appeared that your ‘it’ that had to be taken from Wayne is a (family) past that was guiltless with respect to the joker. In the 1989 Batman film, the joker’s justification turns on the fact that it was Batman who dropped him in acid (by accident, while trying to pull him up) so the joker thinks he has a grudge but in fact does not. Neonsnake criticised the latest film for changing Batman’s backstory by giving the joker a grudge against the Waynes that has a degree of actual moral content. I got involved merely to note that any such choice was an artistic choice, not a necessity of the film’s focus on the joker.
HTH. If that is still unclear, I am very happy to let things rest.
Wow. That would be awesome!
Yes, fuck-up of hilarious proportions on my part. Still, though…I feel an Elseworlds story coming on…
My stance is nothing more than this: Batman has an origin story that is pure. His Dad was a good guy (but rich!), and gave his child some ideals that he carried throughout his life.
Yeah, sure, dressing up as a bat might not be an entirely rational reaction, but in the grand scheme of superhero origins…I don’t really want that taken away by overly “Anti-rich” types.
(I always had Batman as a conservative, even when I wasn’t, myself, and he was still my favourite superhero)
Niall, have you read Watchmen? You mentioned the Comedian some time ago, I think, but. I’m curious as to whether you meant the film or the comic.
Now I get it. Thanks. In the statement “your ‘it’ that had to be taken from Wayne is a (family) past that was guiltless with respect to the joker . . . “, I did mean it all, except for the bolded part. I just meant the Waynes couldn’t be perfect.
I have the 12 Watchmen comics. I have also seen the film.
At Oxford, one of my overlapping groups of friends were considerably into comics and I was friends with the proprietor of the major comic shop of the town. Watchmen I bought, but through visiting her shop and her house socially, I also got to read various things I might never have spent my stingy-Scot-conserved cash on. 🙂
One of my personal-political memories is of a student at my college – a hardened lefty from the US who did not like me for personal and political reasons – walking into her shop to find me sitting on the floor, chatting away and leafing though some comic. His obvious and unconcealed shock at finding “a person like me” being made welcome in this venue (which he’d assumed was, like all ‘decent’ venues, hard-left) in which he was just a customer, was an interesting example of student attitudes that had power in the 60s and 70s, went through a low in the 80s and 90s to the point where comics like Bloom County ran joke strips over regret for their absence, and then (as we too well know) found ways to enforce themselves again.
Indeed. Reinterpretating an origin story for one’s own ends being one of them…
(I think I’d actually feel similarly if I were to watch the Arrow TV series and discover that they’d made the titular character a conservative, given that he’s strongly socialist in the comics. I hope I would feel the same, anyway)
Did you know that Rorschach is a critique of Objectivism? He’s based on an older character called The Question, created by Steve Ditko (he also created Spiderman and many others), who himself was an out and out Objectivist. He created The Question to be his mouthpiece for Randian ideals.
Rorschach is Alan Moore’s (unsympathetic) riposte.
Finally, i got around to watching it.
I must disagree with both Tyler Cowen and Paul Marks on one meta-issue: I do not believe that the movie takes a political position, either “egalitarian” or “elitist”, “leftist” or “rightist”, “progressive” or “conservative”, collectivist or individualist, and so on ad libitum.
To me, real art should make people think, as distinct from making people jump to conclusions. In this sense, Joker is real art.
That is not to say that i enjoyed watching it; but i do feel enriched by the experience (and i am not just trying to be funny here) because it helped me see things from the point of view of the underclass, or borderline-underclass.
(NB: I am talking about intellectual empathy, not emotional empathy: seeing things from their point of view, not necessarily feeling their pain.)
There are some other movies that helped me see things from the point of view of the borderline-underclass, to some extent.
In chronological order:
Taxi Driver (1976)
Rocky (1976)
Raging Bull (1980)
Crush Proof (1998): seriously flawed as a story, in my opinion.
Winter’s Bone (2010)
Warrior (2011): by far my favorite
(To be continued.)
WRT the list of movies in the above comment:
Rocky and Winter’s Bone are of particular interest because they represent 2 crucial US demographics: Italian-Americans and Scot-Irish. These were the 2 groups who voted most heavily for Trump in the 2016 primaries. (I have this from an article by Michael Barone.)
Which leads me to a possible interpretation of the Joker. Not the ONLY possible interpretation, see my 2nd paragraph in the previous comment.
My interpretation is that Joker is both conservative and anti-elitist. The implication being that Trump is the only solution in sight to the problems of the undeserving poor.
It is anti-egalitarian because, while the “elites” in the movie generally behave properly, they show little concern for the problems of the undeserving poor.
Does that remind you of anything in real life?
British “elites” unconcerned about grooming gangs, perhaps?
The disdain of American “elites” for Rednecks, and their patronizing attitudes to Blacks and Hispanics?
For some reason, Thomas Wayne brought to mind Michael Bloomberg; and Murray Franklin (De Niro) brought to mind the talk-show hosts that regularly sneer at Trump. (Or so i am told: i have never watched a talk show, and probably never will.)
And yet, in this case the enemy of my enemy is not my friend: if Thomas Wayne and Murray Franklin are the disease, then Arthur Fleck is a cure that is worse than the disease. (See also: Occupy Wall Street.)
In conclusion, i basically agree with Tyler Cowen and Paul Marks, that the movie is anti-“”leftist””; but not just the “far-left” of the Joker: it is also against the “center-left” of Thomas Wayne and Murray Franklin.
PS: what i meant by ‘undeserving poor’ was: the poor who do not deserve to be poor.
It seems that the correct term for this social class is: the deserving poor.
I apologize for the mix-up.