Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 41 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/10/19

What's Joker's Joke?

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   20 comments
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Edward Curtin
Become a Fan
  (26 fans)

Joaquin Pheonix's Joker Look + Set Photos Officially Revealed!
Joaquin Pheonix's Joker Look + Set Photos Officially Revealed!
(Image by AntMan3001)
  Details   DMCA

"Cause how many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers?"

Rodriguez, "Cause"

It's not funny, that's for sure.

When I went to see Joker, the new Todd Philips' film, there were five other people in the theater in the liberal, up-scale tourist town populated by wealthy second-home owners, exiles for the most part from Gotham City (NYC). When the cave's wall lit up, there was a string of shadows projected onto it, advertisements looping repetitively for the town's "advantages," specifically "living and working in the same community," something next to impossible in the town except for the affluent people who didn't want to see Joker, the story of a guy in New York City whose penurious and fragile existence belies the false innocence of the wealthy elites who deny succor to the suffering poor, as the obscene gap between them grows apace.

It occurred to me that Joker, with his keen eye for the ironic hypocrisies of all that surrounds him, would get a laugh out of these preliminary promotions, for he himself has a bit of a problem and no advantages living and working in NYC. And he would understand why the rich would shun his story, having no doubt heard that it was violent, since they are squeamish about violence directed toward their kind, but great supporters of violence directed toward the poor around the world by the American military and at home by the police, both of whom work for them. Such official violence, of course, is something that they never have to see because they live in doll houses constructed out of a vast tapestry of lies and illusions, where the windows don't open out onto the wider suffering world but reflect inward their self-absorbed lives where people like Joker are invisible.

The repetitive shadows on the wall in the theater were advertising local services. Real estate, landscaping, high-end jewelry and furniture, life style companies, architects all the amenities of the rich and famous. Like those who absented themselves from the theater so as to avoid a painful confrontation with truth, I knew violence was on the horizon and had to laugh at the services being offered before Joker made his first appearance. It was my last laugh. I imagined him laughing also.

Then he was there, big as life, Joker, a man emaciated like a Giacometti sculpture portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, who from the moment he appears, brilliantly makes you realize that a poor and suffering thin man exists and attention must be paid. The viewer is mesmerized from the start as Joker, aka Arthur Fleck fleck: a small particle, a stain tells us that "I just don't want to feel so bad anymore," despite the seven medications he takes to ease his pain. This "stain" on the social illusion of fairness and decency is a guy with no money or jewels to believe in, no real estate, no amenities, a guy who has no grass to be cut or beautiful plants to be tended to in his sad concrete apartment where he barely exists with his ill and deeply depressed mother whom he cares for.

"I don't believe in anything," he tells us, ironically echoing the unacknowledged nihilism of the upper classes. But he has good reasons, while theirs are rooted in their worship of power and money that undergirds the capitalist system of exploitation that creates suffering souls like Arthur, whose mental illness reflects a social system that is insane and violent to its core. It is no joke.

As I watched his story unfold, I recalled the time frame of the movie, the late 1970s or early 1980s, when my wife and I lived in NYC, subletting various apartments. When we first arrived in our old car, friends put us up at their apartment. We had little money, and the first night when we stayed with our friends, we parked on the street and left most of our suitcases with all our belongings in the car overnight. In the morning, all the suitcases had been stolen. Welcome to Gotham City. While it felt like a liberation to me, as if now I could start a new life, my wife felt otherwise, as might you. But it was our introduction to NYC.

And while we were young and educated and had the wherewithal to get jobs to pay the rent and live reasonably well, unlike Arthur Fleck, our time there was a wearing one. The city seemed dirty, unsafe, depressed, depressing, and teetering on the edge of some sort of death. Hope seemed to have died along with the radical dreams of the 1960s when I lived there. After moving from one apartment to another all around Manhattan and Brooklyn, we had our sublet on West 103rd street broken into in broad daylight. We were worn down by it all, and when we took a walk one day along the Hudson River in Riverside Park, we saw ahead of us three very large cats cross the walkway and a woman scream in terror at the sight.

As we got closer, we realized the cats were rats, and we took it as a sign to make our exit, as if Camus' plague were encroaching. So we did so shortly thereafter, borrowing a tent and heading to the country, never to return.

Poor Joker had no such option. He was trapped. Fired from his day job as a clown at children's parties and store closings, ridiculed and bullied by co-workers, friendless, he continues to dream of being a stand-up celebrity comic as he and his mother laugh at a late-night television talk show they are addicted to. They revere the host, and Arthur dreams of appearing on his show and making his breakthrough in comedy. Laugh or cringe as we may, their reverence for the host, played by Robert DeNiro, reflects American's dirty open secret: the adoration of celebrities and the wealthy.

Life goes from bad to worse for the two of them, becoming a total nightmare, and the viewer is drawn into its dream-like confusion, never being sure what is real and what are Arthur's hallucinations. Fact and fiction meld in a transmogrification that is film's specialty. Like life today in a screen culture, one's mind vacillates and one wanders through it or is it Arthur's mind wondering if what is happening in society is actual or virtual. The viewer feels like he is Arthur/Joker while observing him, a perfect experience of the schizophrenic state of American life today.

The suffering Arthur Fleck is abandoned by a cruel American society whose political order cares not a whit for its regular people, and in a penultimate scene when Arthur is appearing on a late-night television show where the snide and condescending host mocks him and his attempt at comedy, Joker says to the host:

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Must Read 5   Well Said 4   Valuable 4  
Rate It | View Ratings

Edward Curtin Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter Page       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Edward Curtin is a widely published author. His new book is Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies - https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/ His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Remembering Albert Camus' "The Plague": It is US

Prof. Noam Chomsky, Anarchist, Lectures Leftists on Why They Should Vote for Neo-Liberal, War Hawk Hillary Clinton

The Coming Wars to End All Wars

The "Deep State" Then and Now

Happy Fifth Anniversary, Hillary, You've Destroyed Libya

The Fakest Fake News: The U.S. Government's 9/11 Conspiracy Theory - A Review of 9/11Unmasked: An International Review

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend