Joker (This Thread Made by Gang Weed)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Joker (This Thread Made by Gang Weed)

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

A Guy Fawkes mask, but with clown greasepaint smeared across its eyes and mouth.

Also the American flag stenciled over it in black and white with a blue line down the middle.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 04:53

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 09:51

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

In hindsight, it was pretty brave for them to show full frontal male nudity just for the sake of the clown wig merkin gag.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 05:52

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

# ¿ Oct 5, 2019 03:36

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Donovan Trip posted:

Parental guidance: talented actor elevates potentially average film

For real tho this was the scariest clown movie in years

# ¿ Oct 5, 2019 08:53

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Terror Sweat posted:

It�s cool how everyone is worried that a movie where the rich are murdered is dangerous for society

How rich could those guys be if they were taking the subway?

# ¿ Oct 9, 2019 02:11

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Joker, 2019 d. Phillips

# ¿ Oct 9, 2019 06:02

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Did Thomas Wayne ever run for for political office in the comics or did they add that in this to get the :smugdon:

heat?

# ¿ Oct 9, 2019 21:55

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

I took it as just another clumsy redressing of the gun scene in Taxi Driver, except skewed to fit the movie�s narrative, much like the fictitious gangs of young day traders who prowl on unsuspecting citizens on the public transit which was a clumsy redressing of the train scene from Death Wish.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2019 00:10

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

I wonder how many times �Joker takes a slow drag from his cigarette� was written in the screenplay. Dude was smoking so much I almost expected to see him puffing away while sitting on the toilet.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2019 19:43

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

punk rebel ecks posted:

It's kind of sad that some people didn't guess that Joker's girlfriend was fake delusion being that is how movies often treat the chemistry of the male protagonist's love interest.

It�s kinda laughable that it�s supposed to be a twist the way she says his name without ever hearing it made me think she was either spying on him or it was all a delusion. The delusion is backed up by how much her daughter disappears whenever they were together.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 21:32

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

gary oldmans diary posted:

Why assume they've never met before the movie?

I forgot the elevator scene that established them as friends who have conversations and pass compliments to each other.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 22:14

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

gary oldmans diary posted:

That's not nearly the same as not being acquainted. Particularly for 2 people who live near each other with relative anchors that would suggest they've lived near each other for a long time.
But I guess you did forget the scene a few minutes prior to that when a parent acted harshly to Arthur for interacting with her child instead of being quiet.

Why would the previous scene have anything to do with the elevator scene if they were already acquainted? It�s to show he�s stunted when it comes to interacting with strangers. He breaks into hysterics when confronted on the bus. He�s speechless when Zazie acknowledges his presence on the elevator. His only �joke� with her up to that point was pretending to blow his brains out. I don�t know how you can go from that to �you�re so funny ARTHUR!� And not think something�s up.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 23:33

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

They should�ve replaced deniro with svengoolie.

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Oct 13, 2019

# ¿ Oct 13, 2019 05:02

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Desperado Bones posted:

I was thinking the same as Eararaldor (who might have posted a spoiler so I don't wanna quote), how was possible that she, a woman who was considered mentally ill, with a probable history of allowing her partner to abuse her son, and a huge media poo poo storm around her case, was allowed to keep her adopted son?

I dunno if poo poo was different in the 80's, but even in my country the kid would be taken away and put in an orphanage until someone adopts -I think we don't have foster homes- I'm gonna stick to the theory that Thomas was an absolute rich rear end and was going puppet master over everything just to hide their relationship.

The movie takes place in the 80s (Excalibur is on the theater marquee in one shot and that was released in 81) and Arthur is said to be in his 30s so he would�ve been a child during the 60s/70s.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2019 21:14

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Speaking of plagiarists, Shia LaBeouf would make a pretty good Joker.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2019 22:01

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Bogus Adventure posted:

I almost started laughing when I saw that. To be fair to "Zorro, the Gay Blade," though, it's probably the best Zorro movie not starring Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone.

You didn�t like the Banderas ones?

# ¿ Oct 14, 2019 00:33

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Alfred was talking out of his rear end with that watch the world burn garbage, he couldn't see past his own imperialist ideology.

Asked this earlier but never got an answer, has Thomas Wayne run for office before in the comics, or was that something made up for the movie?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2019 19:56

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Do you also stand awkwardly quiet in elevators while staring at the ground with those neighbors who you are on a first name basis with? I�m glad I don�t live in your building.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2019 09:38

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Like, I get that the movie�s trying to give the same hypothetical (they could�ve known each other!), I�m just saying it was badly written in a �they were dead the whole time� kinda way, much like all the rest of the �OR IS IT?� poo poo in this movie.

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Oct 16, 2019

# ¿ Oct 16, 2019 09:46

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

I�m really disappointed they showed Modern Times but then didn�t have Arthur do anything really Chaplinesque.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2019 04:33

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

im depressed lol posted:

the closest thing was Chaplin roller skating blindfolded super close to an edge and Joker closing his eyes dancing down the stairs.

I didn�t even catch his eyes were closed while dancing. I was hoping he�d cartoon splat into a pole while running from the train or fall off the stage during his set (an homage to real life!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sizx2j7Vc6Y

# ¿ Oct 17, 2019 09:28

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Did you guys miss the end credits scene where she became Harley?

# ¿ Oct 19, 2019 04:34

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

I would�ve had so much more respect for the movie if Arthur would�ve walked out onto Murray�s set with a raging hard-on.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2019 01:34

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

He's too narcissistic to commit suicide. This is a joker who needs to see his audience's reaction, which is kinda why he stands around impotently and awkwardly after he kills Murray and the audience flees. He's looking for a reaction and doesn't get any from the cameras, so continues to shoot the dead body and flounders a bit before going into his dance routine.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 18:55

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

# ¿ Oct 25, 2019 06:16

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

https://twitter.com/cenayangfilm/status/1189084284839067648?s=21

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 23:26

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

https://twitter.com/mexicansoflate/status/1190761084539547648?s=21

# ¿ Nov 3, 2019 03:37

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

The only concrete thing to come out of Joker is Todd Phillips has clearly never taken the subway.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 01:16

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

quote:

Critics weren�t sure how to categorize Joker: is it just a piece of entertainment (like other Batman films), an in-depth study of the genesis of pathological violence, or an exercise in cultural theory? From his radical leftist standpoint, Michael Moore called it �a timely piece of social criticism and a perfect illustration of the consequences of America�s current social ills�, pointing out that it explores the protagonist�s origin story, examines the role of bankers, the collapse of healthcare and the divide between rich and poor. However, Joker does not only depict this America, it also raises a �discomfiting question� in Moore�s mind: what if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back?

Before Joker was released, the media and the FBI warned us it may incite violence from incels, though in the event there were no such reports. Rather than feeling inspired to commit acts of violence, viewers �will thank this movie for connecting you to a new desire � not to run to the nearest exit to save your own rear end but rather to stand and fight and focus your attention on the nonviolent power you hold in your hands every single day,� as Moore puts it.

But does it really work like that? The �new desire� he mentions is not Joker�s desire � at the film�s end, the anti-hero is powerless, and his violent outbursts are just impotent explosions of rage, expressions of his basic powerlessness. The paradox is that you become truly violent (in the sense of posing a threat to the existing system) only when you renounce physical violence. This does not mean that Joker�s actions are futile � the lesson of the film is that we have to go through this zero-point to liberate ourselves from the illusions that pertain to the existing order.

Among other things, our immersion into the dark world of Joker cures us of politically correct illusions and simplifications, like sexual consent for example. In this world, you cannot take seriously the idea that consent to sexual relations makes them truly consensual. The �consent discourse� is itself a huge sham. It is a naive effort to overlay a neat-and-tidy intelligible egalitarian language of social justice over the dark, discomforting, relentlessly cruel, traumatic realm of sexuality. People do not know what they want, they are disturbed by what they desire, they desire things that they hate, they hate their mothers but want to gently caress their mothers, and so on, for eternity. We can easily imagine Joker reacting with wild laughter to the claim that �it was consensual, so it was OK�, since that�s how his mother ruined his life.

To quote Arthur from the film: �I�ve got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy.� This zero-point is today�s version of what was once called a proletarian position, the experience of those who have nothing to lose. This is where the idea that Trump is a kind of Joker in power finds its limit: Trump definitely did not go through this zero-point. He may be an obscene clown in his own way, but he is not a Joker figure � it�s an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump.

Trump is obscene in acting the way he acts, but in this way he merely brings out the obscenity that is the obverse of the law itself. There is nothing suicidal about Trump�s boasting of how he breaks the rules, it is simply part of his message that he is a tough guy beset by corrupt elites, and that his transgressions are necessary because only a rule breaker can crush the power of the Washington swamp. To read this well-planned and very rational strategy in terms of death-drive is yet another example of how it is the left-liberals who are really on a suicidal mission, giving rise to the impression that they are engaged in bureaucratic-legal nagging while the president is doing a good job for the country.

In Christopher Nolan�s The Dark Knight, the Joker is the only figure of truth: the goal of his terrorist attacks on Gotham City is made clear. They will stop when Batman takes off his mask and reveals his true identity. What, then, is Joker who wants to disclose the truth beneath the mask, convinced that this disclosure will destroy the social order? He is not a man without a mask, but, on the contrary, a man fully identified with his mask, a man who IS his mask � there is nothing, no �ordinary guy�, beneath it. Nolan�s Joker has no back-story and lacks any clear motivation: he tells different people different stories about his scars, mocking the idea that he should have some deep-rooted trauma that drives him.

Joker becomes Joker at a precise moment in the film, when he says: �You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy. But now I realize, it�s a loving comedy.� Because of this act, Joker may not be moral, but he is ethical. We should take note of the exact moment when Arthur says this: while, standing by the side of his mother�s bed, he takes her pillow and uses it to smother her to death. Who, then, is his mother? �She always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter.� Is this not maternal superego at its purest? No wonder she calls him Happy, not Arthur. He gets rid of his mother�s hold on him (by killing her) through fully identifying with her command to laugh. His propensity to compulsive and uncontrollable outbursts of laughter is paradoxical: it is quite literally extimate (to use Lacan�s neologism), intimate and external. Arthur insists that it forms the very core of his subjectivity: �Remember you used to tell me that my laugh was a condition, that there was something wrong with me? It isn�t. That�s the real me.� But it is external to him, to his personality, experienced by him as an automated partial object that he cannot control and that he ends up fully identifying with. The paradox here is that in the standard Oedipal scenario, it is the Name-of-the-Father which enables an individual to escape the clutches of maternal desire; with Joker, paternal function is nowhere to be seen, so that the subject can outdo mother only by over-identifying with her superego command.

At the film�s end, Joker is a new tribal leader with no political program, just an explosion of negativity � in his conversation with Murray, Arthur insists twice that his act is not political. Referring to his clown makeup, Murray asks him: �What�s with the face? I mean, are you part of the protest?� Arthur replies: �No, I don�t believe any of that. I don�t believe in anything. I just thought it�d be good for my act.� And, again, later: �I�m not political. I�m just trying to make people laugh.�

There is no militant left in the film�s universe, it�s just a flat world of globalized violence and corruption. Charity events are depicted as what they are: if a mother Theresa figure were there she would participate in the charity event organized by Wayne, a humanitarian amusement of the privileged rich. However, it�s difficult to imagine a more stupid critique of Joker than the reproach that it doesn�t portray a positive alternative to the Joker revolt. Just imagine a film shot along these lines: an edifying story about how the poor, unemployed, with no health coverage, the victims of street gangs and police brutality, etc, organize non-violent protests and strikes to mobilize public opinion � a new non-racial version of Martin Luther King. It would be an extremely boring film, lacking the crazy excesses that makes Joker such an attractive film for viewers.

Here we get to the crux of the matter: since it seems obvious to a leftist that such non-violent protests and strikes are the only way to proceed to exert efficient pressure on those in power, are we dealing here with a simple gap between political logic and narrative efficiency? To put it bluntly, brutal outbursts like those of Joker are as damaging as they are effective, but they make for an interesting story. My hypothesis is that you have to go through the self-destructive zero-level for which Joker stands � not actually, but you have to experience it as a threat, as a possibility. Only in this way can you break out of the coordinates of the existing system and envisage something truly new.

In his interpretation of the fall of East European Communism, Habermas proved to be the ultimate left Fukuyamaist, silently accepting that the existing liberal-democratic is the best possible, and that, while we should strive to make it more just, et cetera, we should not challenge its basic premises. This is why he welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-Communist protests in Eastern Europe: the fact that this protests were not motivated by any new visions of the post-Communist future � as he put it, the central and eastern European revolutions were just what he called �rectifying� or �catch-up� revolutions: their aim was to enable central and eastern European societies to gain what the western Europeans already possessed, i.e., to rejoin the Western normality. However, the ongoing wave of protests in different parts of the world tends to question this very frame � and this is why figures like �jokers� accompany them.

When a movement questions the fundamentals of the existing order, its very foundations, it is almost impossible to get just peaceful protests without violent excesses. The elegance of Joker resides in how the move from self-destructive drive to a �new desire� for an emancipatory political project is absent from the film�s storyline: we, the spectators, are solicited to fill in this absence.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 01:34

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Chuds love this movie and consider it the answer to the �forced diversity� of the MCU (their words).

# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 06:37

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

https://twitter.com/culturecrave/status/1191200277677801473?s=21

# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 22:36

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Roman posted:

Philips confirmed that Arthur didn't kill Sophie. It wasn't really supposed to be ambiguous like the other stuff in the movie.

This feels like Stephen King not realizing Jack Torrance was always an abusive alcoholic.

Arthur may believe he left her alone but the movie shows time and again he�s someone who acts on snap impulses. In his memory, he was chivalrous to her and left her alone when asked. In reality, he stalked and terrorized her and his clear pattern of reactionary violence leads to only one conclusion. He may have spared the daughter in the way he �spared� his coworker.

In essence, his coworkers were stand-ins to Arthur�s violence against his neighbor in the same way the subway yuppies were stand-ins for the kids who stomped him out in the opening credits. The movie in every way is a play on the obfuscated origins presented in Dark Knight but there�s no doubt on the opening motivations for Arthur�s path since they�re visually shown to us in the first moments of the movie.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2019 11:00

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

How did Murray betray him?

# ¿ Nov 15, 2019 04:03

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Murray never mocks Arthur and even tho he showed the clip of Arthur bombing, he never says anything outright nasty or malicious while presenting it, and makes a conscious effort to fight the producers into turning Arthur�s presence into a geek show. The only time he becomes aggressive is when he finds out Arthur is a murderer and demands him to own up to the killing rather than let Arthur keep making excuses on why he did it.

Arthur of course is oblivious to this since his whole m.o. throughout the movie is projection and transference, backed up by the parallel juxtapositions Arthur faces but never confronts except through proxies (the street kids and the yuppies, the mother and child on the bus and his neighbor, his father and his mother, etc.)

# ¿ Nov 15, 2019 04:33

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

What Murray did was no different than what his neighbor did when she exposed him to the horrors of his reality. My question is why are people expecting two different outcomes when Arthur�s clearly established a pattern of reactionary violence when confronted with the truth.

When the �reveal� happened with the neighbor, I was kinda hoping it would just keep going, and we learn that the single mother on the bus also wasn�t real, he doesn�t have a job and has no coworkers, he never confronted Wayne and just yelled at the gate, he really did just lose his sign in the beginning, etc. Just make it completely farcical.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2019 04:50

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Because Joker�s revelation that some of the movie�s turn of events is mostly made up is still considered a spoiler? Or is it not anymore? People are still spoiling events in the movie are Arthur�s figment of imagination on the previous page, my wish was built upon that spoiler.

�Residual decency� implies that Arthur was shown to be decent in the movie, but the revelation that he�s living in an imaginary world where he�s the �decent� guy means the examples shown were more than likely imaginary as well.

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Nov 15, 2019

# ¿ Nov 15, 2019 19:01

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Awaiting the incoming James Cameron congratulatory poster.

https://twitter.com/bdisgusting/status/1195434628141723649?s=21

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Nov 15, 2019

# ¿ Nov 15, 2019 23:38

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

https://twitter.com/discussingfilm/status/1195157137162412032?s=21

Can�t wait to see Joker loving ladyboys in Thailand.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2019 00:17

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Sleeveless posted:

I think I'll take the interpetation of an actual leftist film maker about whether Joker is actually leftist or just a dumb comic book movie trying so hard to be Real Cinema.

What do you think of Zizek�s read of the movie?

quote:

Critics weren�t sure how to categorize Joker: is it just a piece of entertainment (like other Batman films), an in-depth study of the genesis of pathological violence, or an exercise in cultural theory? From his radical leftist standpoint, Michael Moore called it �a timely piece of social criticism and a perfect illustration of the consequences of America�s current social ills�, pointing out that it explores the protagonist�s origin story, examines the role of bankers, the collapse of healthcare and the divide between rich and poor. However, Joker does not only depict this America, it also raises a �discomfiting question� in Moore�s mind: what if one day the dispossessed decide to fight back?

Before Joker was released, the media and the FBI warned us it may incite violence from incels, though in the event there were no such reports. Rather than feeling inspired to commit acts of violence, viewers �will thank this movie for connecting you to a new desire � not to run to the nearest exit to save your own rear end but rather to stand and fight and focus your attention on the nonviolent power you hold in your hands every single day,� as Moore puts it.

But does it really work like that? The �new desire� he mentions is not Joker�s desire � at the film�s end, the anti-hero is powerless, and his violent outbursts are just impotent explosions of rage, expressions of his basic powerlessness. The paradox is that you become truly violent (in the sense of posing a threat to the existing system) only when you renounce physical violence. This does not mean that Joker�s actions are futile � the lesson of the film is that we have to go through this zero-point to liberate ourselves from the illusions that pertain to the existing order.

Among other things, our immersion into the dark world of Joker cures us of politically correct illusions and simplifications, like sexual consent for example. In this world, you cannot take seriously the idea that consent to sexual relations makes them truly consensual. The �consent discourse� is itself a huge sham. It is a naive effort to overlay a neat-and-tidy intelligible egalitarian language of social justice over the dark, discomforting, relentlessly cruel, traumatic realm of sexuality. People do not know what they want, they are disturbed by what they desire, they desire things that they hate, they hate their mothers but want to gently caress their mothers, and so on, for eternity. We can easily imagine Joker reacting with wild laughter to the claim that �it was consensual, so it was OK�, since that�s how his mother ruined his life.

To quote Arthur from the film: �I�ve got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy.� This zero-point is today�s version of what was once called a proletarian position, the experience of those who have nothing to lose. This is where the idea that Trump is a kind of Joker in power finds its limit: Trump definitely did not go through this zero-point. He may be an obscene clown in his own way, but he is not a Joker figure � it�s an insult to Joker to compare him with Trump.

Trump is obscene in acting the way he acts, but in this way he merely brings out the obscenity that is the obverse of the law itself. There is nothing suicidal about Trump�s boasting of how he breaks the rules, it is simply part of his message that he is a tough guy beset by corrupt elites, and that his transgressions are necessary because only a rule breaker can crush the power of the Washington swamp. To read this well-planned and very rational strategy in terms of death-drive is yet another example of how it is the left-liberals who are really on a suicidal mission, giving rise to the impression that they are engaged in bureaucratic-legal nagging while the president is doing a good job for the country.

In Christopher Nolan�s The Dark Knight, the Joker is the only figure of truth: the goal of his terrorist attacks on Gotham City is made clear. They will stop when Batman takes off his mask and reveals his true identity. What, then, is Joker who wants to disclose the truth beneath the mask, convinced that this disclosure will destroy the social order? He is not a man without a mask, but, on the contrary, a man fully identified with his mask, a man who IS his mask � there is nothing, no �ordinary guy�, beneath it. Nolan�s Joker has no back-story and lacks any clear motivation: he tells different people different stories about his scars, mocking the idea that he should have some deep-rooted trauma that drives him.

Joker becomes Joker at a precise moment in the film, when he says: �You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy. But now I realize, it�s a loving comedy.� Because of this act, Joker may not be moral, but he is ethical. We should take note of the exact moment when Arthur says this: while, standing by the side of his mother�s bed, he takes her pillow and uses it to smother her to death. Who, then, is his mother? �She always tells me to smile and put on a happy face. She says I was put here to spread joy and laughter.� Is this not maternal superego at its purest? No wonder she calls him Happy, not Arthur. He gets rid of his mother�s hold on him (by killing her) through fully identifying with her command to laugh. His propensity to compulsive and uncontrollable outbursts of laughter is paradoxical: it is quite literally extimate (to use Lacan�s neologism), intimate and external. Arthur insists that it forms the very core of his subjectivity: �Remember you used to tell me that my laugh was a condition, that there was something wrong with me? It isn�t. That�s the real me.� But it is external to him, to his personality, experienced by him as an automated partial object that he cannot control and that he ends up fully identifying with. The paradox here is that in the standard Oedipal scenario, it is the Name-of-the-Father which enables an individual to escape the clutches of maternal desire; with Joker, paternal function is nowhere to be seen, so that the subject can outdo mother only by over-identifying with her superego command.

At the film�s end, Joker is a new tribal leader with no political program, just an explosion of negativity � in his conversation with Murray, Arthur insists twice that his act is not political. Referring to his clown makeup, Murray asks him: �What�s with the face? I mean, are you part of the protest?� Arthur replies: �No, I don�t believe any of that. I don�t believe in anything. I just thought it�d be good for my act.� And, again, later: �I�m not political. I�m just trying to make people laugh.�

There is no militant left in the film�s universe, it�s just a flat world of globalized violence and corruption. Charity events are depicted as what they are: if a mother Theresa figure were there she would participate in the charity event organized by Wayne, a humanitarian amusement of the privileged rich. However, it�s difficult to imagine a more stupid critique of Joker than the reproach that it doesn�t portray a positive alternative to the Joker revolt. Just imagine a film shot along these lines: an edifying story about how the poor, unemployed, with no health coverage, the victims of street gangs and police brutality, etc, organize non-violent protests and strikes to mobilize public opinion � a new non-racial version of Martin Luther King. It would be an extremely boring film, lacking the crazy excesses that makes Joker such an attractive film for viewers.

Here we get to the crux of the matter: since it seems obvious to a leftist that such non-violent protests and strikes are the only way to proceed to exert efficient pressure on those in power, are we dealing here with a simple gap between political logic and narrative efficiency? To put it bluntly, brutal outbursts like those of Joker are as damaging as they are effective, but they make for an interesting story. My hypothesis is that you have to go through the self-destructive zero-level for which Joker stands � not actually, but you have to experience it as a threat, as a possibility. Only in this way can you break out of the coordinates of the existing system and envisage something truly new.

In his interpretation of the fall of East European Communism, Habermas proved to be the ultimate left Fukuyamaist, silently accepting that the existing liberal-democratic is the best possible, and that, while we should strive to make it more just, et cetera, we should not challenge its basic premises. This is why he welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-Communist protests in Eastern Europe: the fact that this protests were not motivated by any new visions of the post-Communist future � as he put it, the central and eastern European revolutions were just what he called �rectifying� or �catch-up� revolutions: their aim was to enable central and eastern European societies to gain what the western Europeans already possessed, i.e., to rejoin the Western normality. However, the ongoing wave of protests in different parts of the world tends to question this very frame � and this is why figures like �jokers� accompany them.

When a movement questions the fundamentals of the existing order, its very foundations, it is almost impossible to get just peaceful protests without violent excesses. The elegance of Joker resides in how the move from self-destructive drive to a �new desire� for an emancipatory political project is absent from the film�s storyline: we, the spectators, are solicited to fill in this absence.

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Dec 24, 2019

# ¿ Dec 24, 2019 02:28

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 09:51

ruddiger: Jun 3, 2004

Todd Phillips put the script online in case anyone wants to count how many times he wrote Joker taking a drag from his cigarette.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/joker-script-final.pdf

# ¿ Dec 27, 2019 08:52

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Joker (This Thread Made by Gang Weed)

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