smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2020-01-28 11:32 am
smokingboot) wrote2020-01-28 11:32 am
Joker etcetera
Wow, this has got some strange reviews.
I really enjoyed it.
It's certainly an uncomfortable film to watch. Phoenix is so ugly-graceful with his knobbled spine and jutting ribs, his dancing, his terrible mirror-eyed rictus and all that pain. Gotham's been depicted in many ways but here it's just a brutally shit city. The poor are shit, the rich are shit, there are no nice people anywhere. It's the first time I have seen Thomas Wayne depicted so unsympathetically; the thug who killed him may have robbed Bruce Wayne of a father, but also saved the city from an arrogant potato-head of a mayor with neither empathy nor political nous nor anything beyond full pockets to recommend him. Every cloud and all that.
The whole Batman phenomenon is so strange. It's basically about cheering on some rich guy who is pretty much above the law, can buy anything at all, and likes to go out each night targeting people who have a lot less than he does. Whatever drives him, his actions are about maintaining the status quo. In The Dark Knight, Alfred says; 'Some men just want to watch the world burn.' Cue horrified faces. In Joker, you see the world and ask why shouldn't it burn?
The answer, presumably, is so that grown-up Bruce Wayne can run off with the Bolshoi ballet and hold charity galas.
But of course, Arthur Fleck is not political, and he makes that clear. His outrage is a personal madness. The world done him wrong, yes he is narcissistic, he does feel entitled. But it would be a damn sight easier to sort out the mess in his head if it wasn't fuelled by extreme poverty and neglect. This is one of the things about Gotham as the City Allegorical: Gothamites tend to be very rich or very poor, so it's no surprise that Gotham is forever on fire, constantly being rescued by its Dark Knight to exactly the way it was when circumstances provoked the inferno.
Metropolis was always much smarter than Gotham, Dream New York compared to Dream Chicago. Supes' great enemy Lex Luthor was quintessentially all about the brains. Strange to think of these superheroes as Jocks beating up on Geeks and being cheered for it. It's all so establishment.
Then again, they're both creations of the 1930s, when much of the western world world was caught up in some bizarre crush-search for the 'Strong Man', so may be there's something in that. It took Marvel, and Peter Parker, to reset heroes in terms of anything other than the guys who already had everything winning yet again. No surprises that Spiderman turned up in the 60s...Though of course, he had a few issues of his own.
https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/original/0/5586/1079528-me8.jpg
I really enjoyed it.
It's certainly an uncomfortable film to watch. Phoenix is so ugly-graceful with his knobbled spine and jutting ribs, his dancing, his terrible mirror-eyed rictus and all that pain. Gotham's been depicted in many ways but here it's just a brutally shit city. The poor are shit, the rich are shit, there are no nice people anywhere. It's the first time I have seen Thomas Wayne depicted so unsympathetically; the thug who killed him may have robbed Bruce Wayne of a father, but also saved the city from an arrogant potato-head of a mayor with neither empathy nor political nous nor anything beyond full pockets to recommend him. Every cloud and all that.
The whole Batman phenomenon is so strange. It's basically about cheering on some rich guy who is pretty much above the law, can buy anything at all, and likes to go out each night targeting people who have a lot less than he does. Whatever drives him, his actions are about maintaining the status quo. In The Dark Knight, Alfred says; 'Some men just want to watch the world burn.' Cue horrified faces. In Joker, you see the world and ask why shouldn't it burn?
The answer, presumably, is so that grown-up Bruce Wayne can run off with the Bolshoi ballet and hold charity galas.
But of course, Arthur Fleck is not political, and he makes that clear. His outrage is a personal madness. The world done him wrong, yes he is narcissistic, he does feel entitled. But it would be a damn sight easier to sort out the mess in his head if it wasn't fuelled by extreme poverty and neglect. This is one of the things about Gotham as the City Allegorical: Gothamites tend to be very rich or very poor, so it's no surprise that Gotham is forever on fire, constantly being rescued by its Dark Knight to exactly the way it was when circumstances provoked the inferno.
Metropolis was always much smarter than Gotham, Dream New York compared to Dream Chicago. Supes' great enemy Lex Luthor was quintessentially all about the brains. Strange to think of these superheroes as Jocks beating up on Geeks and being cheered for it. It's all so establishment.
Then again, they're both creations of the 1930s, when much of the western world world was caught up in some bizarre crush-search for the 'Strong Man', so may be there's something in that. It took Marvel, and Peter Parker, to reset heroes in terms of anything other than the guys who already had everything winning yet again. No surprises that Spiderman turned up in the 60s...Though of course, he had a few issues of his own.
https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/original/0/5586/1079528-me8.jpg
no subject
But it would be a damn sight easier to sort out the mess in his head if it wasn't fuelled by extreme poverty
Here's the deal, though: Arthur Fleck’s Bronx apartment is pretty big! No junkies to trip over in the lobby! (Unlike the apartment building in which I grew up.) I didn’t see any cockroaches! (Again, unlike the apartment building in which I grew up.) And the elevator might be bumpy, but it worked. Plus, Arthur and his Mom have a lot of electronics—a VCR—that were pretty pricey back in 1981.
So, you know: We're told "extreme poverty," but the status details don't add up.
I did like Joker, though. The imagery has stayed with me—especially that staircase! I had friends in the Bronx growing up and have been up and down staircases like that one hundreds of times.
no subject
I don't see Joker as the Incel creation myth, though the idea makes me laugh.! My visions of the Joker are of asexual chaos. He might use sex to disgust, terrify or mock, but I don't think much is happening in his trouser department out of desire. No amount of glorious fornication will help this guy... Can you imagine that laugh at just the wrong moment?😃
Good point about the apartment! I have no means of comparison. Maybe Gotham real estate is damn cheap when you get away from the Wayne end of town. After all, without millions, who would buy there? it's bad enough with Batman looming over it!
To my eyes, poverty is also implied by outer conditions; it all seems very grungy...The sewage left on the streets being eaten by super rats, the health programme Arthur attends being closed down across the city. He asks 'where will I get my medication?' and there's no answer. He seems to be his mother's sole carer; how can this be when she has been so dangerously mentally ill? This stuff was in the papers, she was at serious risk. How did these two slip through the safety net? One gets the impression that there is no such provision in Gotham.
The electrics, well, I blink at it because it's a needed plot device. But yes, now that I think about it, they must have had some money once upon a time...
no subject
Do you think most Incels have a lot going on in the trouser department? That's a serious question by the way, because to me Incels seem like they're cruising for a target to blame for their mental illness or deeply suppressed homoerotic urges.
NYC was a very gritty city when I was growing up there, which was 20 years before the NYC of Joker. I mean, obviously recognizable from the landmarks, but it was a working class city, poor by the standards of today, and absolutely filthy though a lot more interesting in many ways. Also more dangerous, of course. I remember the garbage strike! And yes, the city was perpetually teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, so they did shut down all the community clinics.
no subject
NYC as you describe casts another light on Arthur's life; if he and his mother are comparatively OK, what the hell was the bottom of the pile like?
Sounds to me as though you had to be very strong to grow up there when you did.
no subject
There were many, many reasons why my childhood was suboptimal, but oddly enough, NYC was not one of them. I took the filth and the junkies and the wankers in stride, I guess—I just didn't see anything out of the ordinary about them; in fact, they struck me as kind of humorous.
They still do, in fact. Although today, it's horribly politically incorrect to find them humorous.
My best friend—a child actress—and I spent every Saturday walking from our homes on the Upper West Side—which was nothing like the Upper West Side of today!—down to the Village. We'd wander through Central Park and make up these long, involved, enchanted stories about the strangers we saw who inevitably we named "Allegra," "Dominica," "Roderick," or "Maximillian."
Then on Sundays, I would spend all day either at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the American Museum of Natural History. Admission was free in those days.
And I went to a very good school, which I loved.
True, my mother was a complete madwoman, but she ignored me most of the time. I was self-reliant enough to thrive in that neglect. In many respects, filthy, gritty NYC was the scene of a quite enchanted childhood.