The Joker: Validation of “White-Male Resentments” or Critical Epiphany?

Actor Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips have created an incarnation of the Joker that is unprecedented. It stands not just as batman’s traditional inverse, but rather as a dramaturgically self-sufficient, complex character. Its reception has been accordingly controversial. Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson compares the character to Donald Trump and claims that “most chilling of all is Arthur Fleck’s ability to inspire and embolden a legion of copycats” (Robinson). Writing for CNN, Jeff Yang goes even further, accusing the movie as a whole to be an “insidious validation of white-male resentment that helped bring President Donald Trump to power” (Yang).

Yes, the Joker is vulgar and violent, and yes, he claims to fight the establishment, but do these analogies to Donald Trump and other resentful white men really hold true? As much as Donald Trump tries to deny it, as President, he is an integral part of the established institutions—contrary to the Joker. And as much as resentful white men try to deny it, they affirm existing power structures— contrary to the Joker.

It seems like Robinson and Yang are not following this dismissal and complication of the traditional hero-and-villain story line. To them, the Joker, like Donald Trump, presents a threat to the flowery times preceding President Trump and must be judged accordingly. This does not leave room for any perpetual systemic injustices preceding Trump’s presidency. If we dismiss the over-simplistic idea of good-old times before Trump and the inept analogy of the Joker and Donald Trump, how can we evaluate this far more complex character?

At least since Heath Ledger’s incarnation, the Joker is one of cinema’s paragons of irrationality. He poses provocative questions. In trying to make sense of his actions, we may ask: what motivates the Joker? Can he see something that we cannot see? What if we have so deeply internalized the prevalent power structures, adopted them as our modes of thinking, that conformity is laid upon us not by coercion but by our own conviction? What if from within our social epistemic constitution we cannot see— and even less critique— the malicious aspects of how we organize and synchronize our lives? And, in turn, is there a chance that— beyond the conceivable— there lies a better way to organize our society? Of course, we can never see beyond our acquired modes of perception, we rely on them as necessary conditions of truth. Thus, qua employer of reason, we can never understand the Joker— we could relate only through our own equally radical detachment from society. Of course, this is an extreme measure. The Joker poses an unattainable challenge while at the same time making a fleeting promise: Put on the mask, and you will be able to see the invisible and think the unthinkable.

Often times, humor and laughing serve as coping mechanisms, ways to ease social discomfort or as reactions to the unexpected. Could it be that the Joker’s admittedly strange jokes serve a different purpose? Might his idiosyncratic humor be his instrument of self-dissociation from society’s cohesion— providing him the required distance to see what he sees? Once the alienation succeeds, there is no return. Once the Joker commits the highly symbolical parricide, therefore breaking with his origins (personified by his mother), and once he is reborn out of the smashed car, delivered by his disciples, there is no turning back to his old life. The Joker serves as a hyperbolic challenge and reminder to question seemingly unquestionable cultural and political certainties.

Works Cited

Robinson, Joanna. “This Is the Joker the Trump Era Deserves— But Not the One We Need Right Now.” Vanity Fair / HWD, Vanity Fair, 4 Oct. 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/joker-joaquin-phoenix-trump-era.

Yang, Jeff. “‘Joker’ -- a Political Parable for Our Times.” CNN Opinion, CNN, 6 Oct. 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/06/opinions/joker-political-parable-donald-trump-presidency-yang/index.html.

Photo Citation: https://observer.com