Joker

I went and saw it, mainly because the media was bashing it so badly. I hadn't read too much about it (other than the headlines and the initial posts in this thread). I think the media targeted it because it was simply an excuse to play the 'loser incel kills' propaganda record and likely some denial about the underlying messages.

The movie begins with Arthur mentally ill, but not psychopathic. He his very empathetic and isn't manipulative, cares deeply for his ill mother obviously out of care and not a desire for personal gain. Despite his debilitating condition, he doesn't play victim, keeps trying to be responsible, to work, to do therapy, keep a journal, take medications, etc. He's trying, he's human and worn down.

Spoilers

Ah! I think Arthur manipulated you! I agree he wasn't portrayed as a psychopath, but he does fit the description of the criminal mind very well. The young-sounding, timid voice screamed 'victim' to me. He was a victim when he talked with his case worker, a victim among his co-workers, a victim when he confronts Thomas Wayne and same with Murray Franklin. Underneath that 'good little boy' mask (worn by a grown man) was chaos. He suppressed this in favor of the syrupy desire to 'just make everyone happy'. This is actually what his mother wanted to see him as, maybe as a means of buttressing her own denial and delusions. I think one of the central quotes in the movie is,

"My mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She told me I had a purpose to bring joy to the world."

Contrast that with the details we learn about how he was tortured as a boy. He was taught to deny his own emotions, perhaps because his mother found the past too ugly. This basically led to him not knowing his very existence, only knowing his disconnected and inept self image. He had very little autonomy, which in the beginning of the movie is can only expressed in his uncontrollable laughter. He tries to fight it but can't. His false self image, driven in part by the incestuous relationship with his mother, creates this twisted and chaotic 'true self'. Then he comes to discover autonomy through violence, power and control. And then the media claims him as a hero. The end result: the unleashing of chaos in society, which is the spirit of the Joker.

This is very much what the left are doing with the 'Resist', antifa, etc. nonsense. They have become so hysterisized that they have come to embrace war, violence, and pathological control as good.

The movie was bleak and uncomfortable, but I think that's because it's underlying message reflects some of the more disturbing elements of our reality. It's not entertainment in the usual sense, but I think it was a pretty layered movie that had pretty hard-hitting messaging. It's conveyed using the modern myths of comic books, but actually adds some substance for people to chew on.
 
Excellent synopsis, Renaissance. I just saw it and thought you really hit the nail on the head with the character and the movie. What I also found interesting was how many of the scenes or situations are also products of his imagination and the illusions he's under. Like with his neighbour. Spoiler alert: You are really led to believe that they do form some kind of relationship with one another and that there is some humanity in him that might be salvaged, but that he took the the initial scene in the elevator where she points a gun to her head and made the entire thing up to such a degree that the boundaries between reality and fantasy just dissolved in his mind. It was very reminiscent of Waite's description of Hitler in Psychopathic God and Ressler's Whoever Fights Monsters.

My research convinced me that the key was not early trauma but the development of perverse thought patterns. These men were motivated to murder by their fantasies.
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They are obsessed with fantasy, and they have what we must call nonfulfilled experiences that become part of the fantasy and push them on toward the next killing.
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Faced with a difficult happenstance such as the loss of a job, they turn inward and focus on their own problems to the exclusion of all else, and on fantasies as the solution to the problems.
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The fantasies are substitutes for more positive human encounters, and as the adolescent becomes more dependent on them, he loses touch with acceptable social values.
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His thinking patterns are all turned inward, designed only to stimulate himself.
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I had long argued that the aberrant behavior of killers is in some ways only an extension of normal behavior.
 
Ha ha!

Look at everybody discussing a film with no clear idea of what it was but all certain it means something.

That's a clear indication that Art has happened. Ugly art, but art nonetheless.

I had and in fact have no plans to see Joker; it looks dark and dreary and I have enough of that in the news. I'm not a Batman fan; I still haven't seen the Keith Ledger version of the Joker, and really don't want to. That much punching and mental illness on screen makes me feel like I'm getting the flu. (I did spool up "Taxi Driver" however, another film I'd never seen before, to get an idea of what was going on, figuring it was distant enough away in time that it would have less effect on me.)

Of course, Joker was lambasted by the entertainment press! I can understand how folks in the real world with real things to do other than obsess over sci-fi and fantasy stories may not have realized, but There's a Culture War going on! A CULTURE War! What could be more culturally wired to the hindebrain of the West than Pop Culture? And since it's being fought largely on social media, and since sci-fi/fantasy geeks live on-line...

Syria and the Mexican border and Ukraine may be the physical battle fronts, but the psychological/spiritual battle front has Spiderman and Ice Princess Elsa presiding.

And people are picking sides! It's the Feminists, LGBTQ+ and Social Marxists versus the whole goddamned world! -And the whole world doesn't have any power in Hollywood or entertainment media, or in the case of Joker, the Good Guys don't have any power in the larger news media where the conflict has spilled to.

The communist weirdo Leftists have been on a war path, trying to turn cultural mythological archetypes into gays, women, non-whites and disabled people. Every G.I. Joe emasculated and every female Thor is a victory flag planted on the mountain of Post Modernism. Did you know the latest Batman TV show features a lesbian woman as the titular character? For real! This is actually happening.

And of course it is! -I realized ever since the ground-breaking PBS interview first aired (back in 1988) between Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers as they discussed "The Power of Myth", that the stories we tell each other are no laughing matter. (No 'Joke'..?) -That they both drive and are driven by the soul of a culture. Mess with your world's mythological archetypes, and you mess with the soul matrix of everybody in that culture. It's why Nietzsche warned that when we killed god, we doomed ourselves.

THIS is why the Culture War is being fought, and its participants have even begun to somewhat realize why and how important it is; they're not just flailing around on automatic.

"Does Spiderman swing both ways?" That's a real question with mythological stakes in the answer. People privy to the conflict are accutly aware that Sony Pictures owns the copyright to Spiderman and that Disney, with its decidedly "Progressive" Agenda and destructive track record of Frozen-style propaganda, (and killing Star Wars) wants the character under its control. Japan isn't giving up so easily, and interestingly, Japan has also shown some muscle in resisting the Far Leftist ideology. Can Sony Japan save Spiderman? People are genuinely concerned about this! And unlike the people who snicker and groan from the sidelines, I think they have every reason to be concerned.

In this war, the Leftist media has been seen to repeatedly lie, cheat and defame. It hysterically calls everybody a Nazi, attacks the established fan base for being "Toxic, White and Male". Negative user reviews which affect public perception by bringing down aggregate popularity scores on movie review sites are broadly labeled, "Review Bombing Campaigns by on line Misogynist and Homophobic Trolls!"

James Cameron's "Alita, Battle Angel" was smashed by critics because it was a story about an empowered girl who happened to be a little too feminine, who didn't hold fast to the Leftist feminist dogma. She needed a white man in her life? She had breasts? Bah! A betrayal to the cause! The "toxic" fanbase (the so-called "Alita Army") in response rushed to see the film multiple times, chewed their fingernails over box office receipts being misreported, and to buy many copies of the DVD in an effort to "Win" the fight; so see a sequel produced. (Wow!) Meanwhile the SJW ultra-feminist "Captain Marvel" saw the opposite action; flipped review score ratios, and endless hours of conservative geek YouTube commenters following the hype in excruciating detail. There is even compelling evidence that Disney was buying up thousands of seats in movie theaters across the nation to boost sales figures. How crazy is that?

Tony Stark is a woman now. The Hulk is no longer an angry male. Luke Skywalker is a bitter white man and Rey is a Mary Sue. This has been going on for several years now. The tribes were primed.

So the instant Joker gave a whiff of being slightly conservative, of giving air to the victim story of the underdog White Male, they went into virulant attack mode. (As Jeep noted with that detailed article). -And this was before anybody in the American public had had a chance to even see the thing.

The psychopath, (in this case the Nihilist Left), always tries to stop its victims from telling, keeping them isolated. The Joker film looked like it might be a cry for help as their go-to prey (the straight white male), might be about to tell Mommy and Daddy that the freaky library lady/soccer coach/bully down the lane is hurting him. They could not allow that, and set about trying to destroy the film, dissuade potential viewers from viewing, demonizing it before it even came out. THAT is what was really going on. Whether the film is actually about that isn't the point. The bad press erupted because the Leftist media THOUGHT that's what it was going to be! These people are in fight-mode and playing for keeps.)

Now, personally, I still have no desire to sit through another bleak and ugly film, but then I also couldn't stand Game of Thrones and Battlestar Galactica for the same reasons. However, word to the wise: one should still take a moment to recognize when something important is going on, or risk missing, (sorry), the punchline.
 
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theexhaustive film needs an exam ... and that is not enough, for us here in the forum the guy seems to suffer from the condition of characteropathy mentioned for Łobaczewski in his book rather than being a psychopath himself ... people do not know this obviously and arthur remains as a victim of society.
the movie which does not leave the elite at the end of the day in a good position,which is not bad at all knowing the ponological process (although the main agenda of the movie does not seem to be this if not Arthur's victim) , although their behavior is not justifiable and it seems someone who lets himself be defeated and he takes revenge on the perpetuators of his condition and misery so It is not surprising that they believed that there would be gun shots , there are also the usual inclusive movements that they did not like for various reasons ... I will add something else, the movie is as it is, it would be so because if they are overlooking it,is the joker! and the character is much more twisted and bloodthirsty in the comics than in this version that is rather a "realistic" origin where society is the main cause and most ugly for everyone to identify themselves (because in the movie the joker is a HERO!). .. surely there are more dangerous things that I am not noticing.but, apparently despite seeing said at the beginning that the film needed an exhaustive examination and knowing that there are probably several agendas, the main idea of leaving this madman as a hero and victim of the powerful is the oldest revolutionary idea and that gets more money .
 
Japan isn't giving up so easily, and interestingly, Japan has also shown some muscle in resisting the Far Leftist ideology. Can Sony Japan save Spiderman? People are genuinely concerned about this! And unlike the people who snicker and groan from the sidelines, I think they have every reason to be concerned.

I wish it were the case, but judging from Sony's track record, probably not.

 
Wow ...your comments..I don't thinks is dangerous ..I don't think is unrealistic...and if somebody is abused since very very young ..and their parents where mental sick..where this person can see other positive things usually this people atract bad situations because they are always on depresión and don't know how to aliviate that..and the mental therapist just serves to load him with drugs... very interesting to see it ..if you don't think that you are to good to see it......
 
I watched the movie last night before reading the replies here and looking at the news so I didn't really have any preconceived ideas. Overall I thought it was a dark movie, delving into the mind of a mentally ill, character disturbed guy, it wasn't pleasant to watch, but certainly thought provoking. The main actor Joaquin Pheonix did a fantastic job of portraying Joker imo. That being said, I don't think it's an unmissable film, and similar information could be taken from the reccommended Criminal mind books and reading SOTT. Just to add, it wasn't even THAT violent imo, yes there were 1-2 brutal scenes which I closed my eyes for😅 but I have seen much worse in horror movies and John Wick!!

This morning I read the replies here and agree with Ren's comments. The movie centred on Arthur's victim mentality and mental illness. I didn't get the impression that the director was blaming society for his actions, I think they showed how the seeds were planted by a variety of factors, but ultimately it was Arthur that made the choices to kill for power and revenge and become Joker, rather than chugging along and working hard and trying to improve his situation. It's interesting to me that the people saw Joker as a symbol for their revolution and interpreted his actions through their own warped lenses, in actuality I don't think he gave a crap about any of the political stuff, he just wanted to carry out his personal vendettas.

Initially, it was a surprise to me when I found out that the left was going crazy about this movie in the news. I thought they would be into the whole "people's revolution" and "smashing the patriarchy" thing, but then I realized that the movie was actually highlighting the faults in this type of thinking and how easily people are swept away by the hysteria and follow a "leader".

What I was also surprised by was the ridiculous notion that Arthur Fleck/Joker was actually demonstrating his white prividge throughout the movie as the Telegraph reported :headbash: (my bold)

Before Joker opened last weekend, much was being made of how its tale of a murderous villain echoed news stories of mass shooters and incel threats, and how the film might encourage unbalanced viewers to commit acts of violence. As it turned out, it mainly inspired audiences to open their wallets for the biggest October opening ever.
After watching the film, I could understand the concerns: Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the deranged clown Arthur Fleck, the title character, Joker is simultaneously a well-made film in its own right and a blatant mashup of The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver. It nods at classism and winks at the Bruce Wayne family mythos, but at its core the movie is about a mentally ill loner.

Still, what struck me most is that what the film wants to say — about mental illness or class divisions in American society — is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about whiteness. For it is essentially a depiction of what happens when white supremacy is left unchecked. It shows the delusions that many white men have about their place in society and the brutality that can result when that place is denied.

The fact that the Joker is a white man is central to the film’s plot.
A black man in Gotham City (really, New York) in 1981 suffering from the same mysterious mental illnesses as Fleck would be homeless and invisible. He wouldn’t be turned into a public figure who could incite an entire city to rise up against the wealthy. Black men dealing with Fleck’s conditions are often cast aside by society, ending up on the streets or in jail, as studies have shown.

And though Fleck says he often feels invisible, had he been black, he truly would have been — except, of course, when he came into contact with the police. They would be sure to see him.

Though Fleck is pursued and investigated by Gotham’s finest, his whiteness acts as a force field, protecting him as he engages in the violent acts of the latter half of the film. Consider his appearance on the live talk show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). A black man acting as strangely as Fleck does would not have been allowed to go on the air. But the white Fleck is given access, and bloodshed soon follows.

Or look at how Fleck interacts with others. He is frequently in conversation with people who occupy a lower rung in society than he does: a state-appointed therapist he sees early on; a protective mother who chastises him for playing peekaboo with her son on the bus; his possible love interest, a neighbour who lives in the same building; and the psychiatrist he sees in Arkham Asylum. Every one of these characters is a black woman with whom he eventually has confrontations. Phillips consistently places Fleck in an oppositional or antagonistic position to these women.I don’t know if this is intentional on Phillips’ part, but it is significant. When we learn that his relationship with the neighbour (played with artful restraint by Zazie Beetz) was merely a figment of his troubled imagination, the way he leaves the apartment implies that this realisation has led Fleck to kill her and perhaps her child. After his final conversation with the Arkham doctor, his bloody footsteps suggest that he kills her as well.Fleck kills white men because he cannot access their status and is ostracised by them, but his black female victims are so invisible that the film does not bother to show their deaths. We as viewers can and should take note of them.There are other ways that whiteness informs Fleck’s character. He anticipates he’ll be treated as a son by the Wayne family, and assumes he’ll be given medical records just by asking the hospital orderly (played by the great Brian Tyree Henry). The privileges that come with Fleck’s race set him up for these unrealistic expectations. When they’re not met, the consequences are deadly.Whiteness may not have been on the filmmakers’ minds when they made Joker, but it is the hidden accomplice that fosters the violence on screen.

This garbage is just unreal. Rather than trying to take something valuable from the movie, they play the race card, victim status, ironic eh? I guess the saying "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will start treating all your problems like a nail” may apply here? I wonder if they are SO critical of this movie because if they actually acknowledge it and discuss the real issues it brings up, they risk questioning their own victim mind-set and fear losing everything they have built their internal and external landscapes upon? So instead they just focus on non-existant racism/sexism/whatever-ism to avoid having to look deeper.
 
Those are good points Jenn, a message that could be taken from the film is that: sure, there’s injustice and inequality... and a lot of victims, but some people that claim victimhood are just plain crazy, beware of who you follow down the path of revolution.

And that slaps the entire narrative the left has been pushing for years square in the face. It hardly needs to be mentioned but the same people supposedly fighting against racial discrimination, immediately turned the conversation about race. That ought to tell you enough.
 

12-16 minute Read:
The U.S. Army has warned its soldiers away from screenings of the new movie The Joker, citing “disturbing and very specific chatter in the dark web” about a mass shooting planned for a movie theater—seemingly validating the concerns of the media establishment’s film critics, who have been shrieking for weeks that the film will inspire real-life gun violence. But if the Pentagon is truly concerned about the cause of mass shootings, it would do well to look in the mirror.

The Joker, the latest Batman spinoff, has been the subject of endless pearl-clutching think-pieces decrying its “glorification” of vigilante violence. Actor Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the titular character, has been forced to defend it from sanctimonious reporters insisting he has a duty not to lead viewers morally astray.

“I think that, for most of us, you’re able to tell the difference between right and wrong. And those that aren’t are capable of interpreting anything in the way they may want to,” he told Digital Spy, hitting back against scolds like the Time Magazine writer who slammed the film as “aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy” and the famously humorless crew at Vox, which dismissed it as “not edgy” while accusing it of “playing with fire”—all in a single review.

Phoenix reportedly walked out of an interview after a Telegraph writer asked him if the film would “perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results.” Basing one’s creative decisions on the possibility that someone, somewhere, won’t “get it” is an artistic dead end, yet these self-styled cultural commissars want to impose it on Hollywood—without a hint of awareness that while violent films are screened worldwide, they never seem to inspire mass shootings outside U.S. borders.

The AI algorithms governing speech on social media don’t have a sense of humor and can’t recognize sarcasm or irony. Now humans—those writing for the establishment press, at least— seem determined to emulate them. Like the internet platforms that censor anything remotely controversial as “hate speech,” film critics denouncing The Joker claim to speak out of concern for those who aren’t in on the “joke.”

They insist the “angry young men” who might see themselves in Phoenix’s character will take the film the wrong way—essentially claiming that they’re too stupid to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, or too amoral to care. Patronizing in the extreme, this motive indicates the critics don’t actually care about the group they’re supposedly trying to protect from artistic predators so much as fear it. Like anti-war commentators on social media, alienated young men are a foreign species to the critics who feel threatened by that which they do not understand.

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The common thread running through the negative reviews is the fear that people will be inspired by The Joker to commit real-life violence. But as Vox unwittingly admits, “you can find much scarier, more shocking stuff by…reading the news.” Angry young men, too, can and do find inspiration by reading the news. Time Magazine sardonically dubbed the Joker “the patron saint of incels,” forgetting mainstream society only knows what an “incel” is because Alek Minassian mowed down 10 people with a van in Toronto. No cinematic inspiration required. Indeed, Minassian was inspired by Elliot Rodger, another young mass murderer, who stabbed and shot six people to death in 2014 because he was frustrated that he couldn’t get laid.

The cathartic value of violent art has been recognized since ancient Greece, and the vigilante violence of The Joker would seem an ideal conduit for the revenge fantasies and other bloodthirsty impulses of society’s disaffected to dissipate harmlessly. But just as shutting down the notorious anonymous message board 8chan forces the angry young men (and women) who retreat there to vent their “extremist” fantasies after being censored on social media to find other, less benign outlets for their frustrations, banning or censoring cathartic films forces individuals frustrated with their place in society to find an outlet for that frustration in real life.

Do the cultural commissars truly believe it is better to be dead than offended?

The notion that filmgoers will go from sympathizing with Phoenix’s character to shooting up their local Wal-Mart is in itself a fantasy, one much more far-fetched than the film, rooted in a popular misunderstanding of mass shootings. These tragedies are blamed on everything from guns to video games, yet few who discuss them are willing to address the militarism that permeates all aspects of American society.

Military recruiters set up shop near high schools and colleges, while TV and internet ads attempt to seduce the young and impressionable to join up and kill people for Uncle Sam. Popular video games like Call of Duty acclimate players to fighting a war, even as the increasing popularity of drones turns actual war into a (deadly) video game. Heavily armed “law enforcement” officers pose forbiddingly at airports and train stations, outfitted to look like battle-ready soldiers, while surplus military equipment filters down to the police from a Pentagon so glutted with taxpayer dollars it can’t even use all its weapons (despite occupying most of the world’s countries).

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Even teens who are not belligerently inclined are seduced by the promise the military will pay for their college—an offer many can’t refuse, with college costing more than twice what it did 30 years ago and even the least sophisticated professions now requiring some kind of degree. Promised that just four years of service will get their schooling fully paid for, kids are turning over their bodies and minds to a Pentagon that has no problem sending them into whatever Middle Eastern meat grinder is currently raging, to die not just for their country but also for Israel—which USAF Third Air Force commander Lt.-Gen. Richard Clark admitted in a spasm of honesty last year—and for Saudi Arabia. Recruiters don’t tell them that the experience will warp their minds and potentially destroy their future.

More than a third of U.S. mass shooters since 1966 have been vets, even though they only comprised at most 13 percent of the population at any given time. Those who don’t kill others often inflict violence on themselves. They’re 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population, 10 times more likely to abuse opioids, and almost twice as likely to abuse alcohol. And they’re 50 percent more likely than civilians to become homeless. The military chews up American youth and spits them out much the worse for wear, and even those who never don the uniform are affected by the militarism pervading American society.

Other countries where civilians have access to guns—Switzerland, for example, or Canada—don’t have mass shooting epidemics. Violent video games are played by kids worldwide. Even anti-depressants are not exclusively American, though the U.S. does consume the lion’s share of those drugs and they do play a role in triggering mass shootings, with multiple studies confirming they increase both homicidal and suicidal behavior in patients.

But only one country spends more money on its military than the next eight countries combined, deeming itself the world’s policeman and occupying over 70 percent of the world’s countries, some for decades at a time. War is in the air Americans breathe, and this pathology expresses itself in mass shootings. Wiping violent films off the face of the earth won’t help in eradicating the scourge of gun violence any more than barring citizens from legally owning guns will stop those determined to commit an illegal act—murder—with them.

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It’s not the violence, it’s who’s directing the violence that counts.

“Woke” critics taking aim at The Joker are motivated by the same impulses that saw them attack The Hunt, the now-shelved horror-satire in which liberal elites kidnap and hunt red-state “deplorables.” That film skewered the cultural and political divide that has yawned ever wider since the election of 2016 (a gap the film’s dead-on satire could have helped to bridge—the script, released after its release was cancelled, has the audience sympathizing with the conservatives who’d been plucked from Middle America to be hunted down by the painfully rich for nothing more than posting anti-abortion comments or racist tweets). The Joker sees the “evil” title character become a folk hero of sorts for a revolution where where “the rich are taken down, the poor get everything they need and deserve” (a happy ending Time Magazine felt compelled to mock).


Both films are dangerous for the ruling class—and not dangerous in the same way as a mass shooting, which can be reliably manipulated into a call for more surveillance, more gun control, and more thought control. Art that contradicts the ruling class’ divide-and-conquer programming, that pillories the threadbare fallacy of a meritocratic American Dream, and—worst of all—that suggests there’s something the average American can do to take back their country, is anathema to establishment scribes, from the heights of the New York Times op-ed page to the bowels of the arts section.

The woke brigades are curiously silent about violence when films glorifying war hit the screen, choosing instead to focus on the “toxic masculinity” and/or racism depicted therein. Presumably if the troops depicted storming the beaches of Normandy in “Dunkirk” were all non-binary people of color, the violence shown on screen would be fine. Even non-war films that depict “good guys” on killing sprees don’t inspire the backlash The Joker is getting.

Batman, the Joker’s nemesis in the “Dark Knight” films, is another extralegal vigilante, but an absurdly wealthy one, so his killings are acceptable—to both the audience and even onscreen law enforcement. Quentin Tarantino’s films have been getting slammed for racism and misogyny, but the violent revenge fantasies at their core—integral to the stories, unlike racism and misogyny which live in the eye of the beholder—are hardly mentioned at all.

Nor is it just easily-caricatured liberal “social justice warriors” who have turned out in force to criticize The Joker. Four family members of victims of 2012’s Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, which took place during a screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, wrote to Warner Bros. to request the studio advocate for gun safety amid screenings of the film. One wonders why they didn’t do the same for the studios behind any of the dozens of films and TV shows the Pentagon has “consulted” on since the shooting—films that unabashedly promote war (“Lone Survivor”), torture (“Zero Dark Thirty”), and intel-agency “wetwork”—otherwise known as murder (“Homeland”).

Even 2016’s “Suicide Squad”, which saw a younger, prettier Joker plus half a dozen other stylish villains engaged in the usual kill-crazy rampages and firearms porn, somehow avoided arousing their ire; was it because the bad guys in that film were controlled by the military, the film’s director himself a military veteran, and all the violence thus officially consecrated to God And Country? Or was it that this Joker had a girlfriend?

Theaters in Los Angeles have banned dressing up for screenings of the film out of concern that, like Aurora gunman James Holmes, some Joker wannabe will shoot the place up in costume. A memo from Oklahoma’s Travis County Sheriff’s Office suggests a “credible potential mass shooting” will occur at an “unknown movie theater” when the film is released on October 4.

If it does, we can expect blame to be placed everywhere except where it belongs. Angry young men will keep killing innocent people, abroad and at home, until the country wakes up to the reality that endless war leaves the aggressor nation in ruins.
 
Adrian Raine saw it and was very impressed:


"[The film] was a surprisingly accurate prediction of the kind of background and circumstances which, when combined together, make a murderer," said Raine, who was already considering integrating Joker into a forthcoming course at the University of Pennsylvania. "For 42 years, I've studied the cause of crime and violence. And while watching this film, I thought, Wow, what a revelation this was. I need to buy this movie down the road, make excerpt clips of it to illustrate [...] It is a great educational tool about the making of the murderer. That threw me," confessed Raine, still surprised by how much he appreciated the film. "I talk about all of these factors in the class, and honestly, it's really hard to get a true-life story that fits all of these pieces together, let alone a very dramatic and stylized movie that illustrates these factors quite strongly. That was really a revelation."

I saw it too. For now, I'll just say I thought it was great. We'll be discussing all the details on the next MindMatters!
 
The way Pageau sees it, the film is constanting building up, then tearing down assumptions about the way the world is, and the way it should be - making it extremely psychologically uncomfortable for pretty much anyone, but especially leftists with very particular views that are directly challenged by the narrative of the film. So you want to "kill the rich"? Well, here's what that looks like. So you think victims should always be believed? Well, what about when they're crazy? You want a revolution? Well, here's your revolution, inspired by a non-racist white 'incel'. Arthur Fleck (possible allusions to King Arthur, and 'fleck' being a speck of something worthless and insignificant) becomes a king of chaos, and like a true joker, tears down and exposes your unexamined assumptions. Or something like that!

This was basically my interpretation of the film. Alejo mentioned people laughing, which was the case when I saw it as well - it seemed to be more of a response to the discomfort people felt having to confront a character like this rather than actually finding the things they saw to be "funny" - these were awkward laughs. Even I laughed a few times, cringed a lot, and immediately felt bad afterwards - yet you realize it's because what you're seeing is just so uncomfortable that you're thinking "How can this guy's life possibly suck more?" and then something worse obviously happens to him, and it almost becomes funny when you realize what the writers are doing and why.

I thought the way they made his laughing an uncontrollable condition was brilliant. Just think about taking something like laughter, which is supposed to make us feel better when we're down, and turning it into something you can't even control anymore. It's like taking a remedy for the hardships of life and turning it into a poison, a curse. The movie sort of does that to its viewers, playing with the role of laughter, making it unclear when and where it's even appropriate to laugh (in a film called Joker!).

What makes the film so brilliant is that in the end, although you sympathize with Joker - you really do feel bad for him and even understand why he does what he does - you still remember that he's the villain. You see that the path he took did not heal society, it just opened up a pit of chaos that consumed all of them, adding fuel to the fire. I wouldn't say the film glorifies the path he took - if anything, it felt more like a big warning to anarchists, political ideologues, and revolutionaries (that vengeance only leads to nihilism and chaos, and a power vacuum that will be filled by something worse) while simultaneously being a warning/reminder to the super-rich about what happens when the poor feel so desperate and backed into a corner that they choose uproar over order.
 
I watched it and oh boy, it was intense... it’s a movie you ought not watch without some knowledge of the criminal mind and related work. If you know a bit about it, it may come across as a good depiction of it, which is sick so beware.

The most shocking moment was hearing so many people laughing at the movie theater in the most intense moments, that made me nervous.

I felt like saying out loud, guys this isn’t funny, it’s terrifying, which is what I think they were going for, but people just laughed... crazy!

***MILD SPOILERS***






I don’t think they were going for “society made him this way” I think they showed that as his excuse for doing something he always wanted to. The history of mental illness is clear and I believe at the end it’s clearly shown, society made me this way was his excuse, but the criminal aspect was always present.


Alejo, what you point out makes a lot of sense tome in relation to the chaos that is happening here in Chile. It's no accident that this movie here has a box office record never seen in chilean movie theaters, and coincides with the behavior that people are having... the whole people here comments on how "extraordinary" the movie is!
 
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