August 31st, 2019. Mass rioting and looting are projected onto a screen in Venice. Gotham City is burning. It is the premiere of the film The Joker. The main character, who suffers from a medical disorder that forces him to laugh hysterically at inappropriate times, laughs no more as the rioters set the city on fire. The Joker enjoys a smile: all those ignored by the system are finally taking the stage.
Late May 2020. Mass rioting and looting are on TV and smartphones screens from all over the world. Minneapolis and many other US cities are burning. All those ignored by the system are finally taking the stage. However, liberal mainstream media and commentators are telling us not to smile. They claim that mass rioting and looting are morally unjustified and politically counterproductive. Was the Joker a mere fool, then?
There is plenty of academic and journalistic material successfully challenging the liberal bourgeois hypocrisy of non-violent moralism and political moderatism. None of them refers to the Joker movie though. Instead of taking the liberal arguments and criticizing them, I will simply show the commonalities between the film Joker and current events in order to see if and how the movie can help us smile today. Firstly, I will expose and analyze some basic elements of the movie. Secondly, I will reflect on the sociological and historic-political sense of these elements. Finally, I will link the Joker to current riots.
The elements of the story I want to evaluate are: (1) the protagonist’s main metaphoric feature, (2) the stage, (3) the plot’s nodal points of articulation, (4) the plot twists, (5) the overarching moral.
- Arthur’s main feature is his hysterical bursts of laughter. What can they stand for? Psychological studies show that most laughter is fake, much of which is unhealthy and some of which can be symptoms of real illness. Faced with emotional stress, anxiety, and discomfort many of us often respond with laughter. This is what systemically happens to Arthur. He is the metaphor of today’s most common social type: the anxious.
- The plot is set in Gotham City. The latter’s most striking feature is its inequality. The city is clearly divided between the rich and the poor. Its classism is not only visual but also discursive. Indeed, Thomas Wayne displays arrogance and contempt towards the poor, both in public and private speech.
- Two of the main nodal points of the story are Arthur’s loss of social benefits and employment. His mental downfall is induced by some forms of social exclusion, from public and private hands. At the beginning of the story he somehow manages his mental illness thanks to a state-provided psychiatric service, and he preserves some sense of social inclusion by keeping a job. Welfare cuts and lack of unionism at the workplace lead him to a sense of helplessness and full social exclusion.
- Two of the main plot twists are the loss of certainty about his family story and the realization that he never had a relationship with his neighbor. His mother’s clinical archive at Arkham State Hospital says that she is not his biological mother and that she is delusional about Wayne’s paternity. However, she claims that Wayne used his power and influence to hide their affair and fake her hospital archive. Shattered, he shows up at Sophie’s apartment in search of support, but she gets frightened and tells him to leave. He finally realizes that their relationship had never taken place. It was just a product of his imagination.
- The movie’s goal is to show the origin of the Joker. It does so by taking an initial innocent Arthur and making him a victim of a series of unjust violence until he turns into Gotham’s worst villain. The movie structure invites the thought that violence comes from violence. Arthur is far from being the Joker at the beginning of the movie. Societal omnipresent and permanent violence towards his character transforms him into the Joker – the face, the leader, and the moral heart of the final mass violence.
What sociological and historic-political context does the movie depict?
- Western liberal democracies were born out of bourgeois revolts against absolutism. Democratic revolutions sparked as social antagonism between the rising bourgeoisie and the nobility and clergy could not be solved in any nonviolent confrontation (i.e.: Estates-General). After decades of social turmoil and political struggle, society changed: instead of having a monarch ruling unaccountably, intermediate social bodies like parties and associations progressively took care of self-rule and representation of the people. The second half of the 20th century showed how parties and intermediate bodies are a successful way of channeling social antagonism in a nonviolent and constructive way so as to maintain social order without cutting off justice. The hollowing of political parties and their failure to represent a real alternative to different social interests is leaving individuals and social groups unable to face social antagonism and political issues. And what is it that humans often do when they lack immediate tools to handle confrontations, social stress, and uncomfortable events? They laugh. Intermediate bodies are failing to metabolize antagonism and manage it, hence the hysterical laughter. Here we find a meaning to Arthur’s fits of laugher.
- There has never been so much inequality as today. Researchers have shown that the United States is the most unequal society in the records of human history. Gotham City is no piece of fantasy. The divide between the rich and the poor is the highest ever and it can be found in every aspect of our societies, from urban design to political influence.
- The golden period of modern liberal democracy can be traced in the first three decades of postwar social democratic consensus. It is the period where roughly most welfare states strengthened, and employment was mostly guaranteed. As neo-liberalism rose to prominence, western democracies suffered welfare cuts and a rise of unemployment. They set the stage for inequality and the hollowing of intermediate bodies (even though it is a matter of debate whether one caused the other or vice versa). The state lost power and interest in providing welfare support and unions weakened. People lost benefits and jobs. A general sense of helplessness and social exclusion is spreading.
- ‘There is no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher’s motto, or rather program, has progressively taken the form of reality as society is atomizing. The family is the basic social unit and relationships are a means of reproducing the former. However, the family went from being the iconographic pillar of postwar social democratic consensus to a past ruin as contemporary society sees the individual as the main social unit. We can be morally neutral in observing this shift to be sociologically crucial. In the movie, Arthur is epistemologically unable to know whether Penny is actually his mother and what her story is. The family becomes an ontological ghost that haunts and forces him to acknowledge his bare individuality. As Sophie rejects him, individuality turns into loneliness.
- Arthur reaches a sense of community only at the end of the movie, during the riots. At the beginning of the story, he relies on a fragile social web to embrace and make him float. As the movie unfolds, he loses everything. Each event violently strips him of any social support and moral consolation. Finally, when the uprisings spark and all the violence is redeemed, he drowns with pleasure in a dionysian unity within the rebelling masses. And what exactly caused mass violence? The suggestion of the movie is that Arthur’s personal story is emblematic and representative of all the individuals that form the rioting mass. Indeed, one of the main questions of critics is whether Arthur is the actual Joker or just one of the many jokers, standing amongst whom is the future, famous Joker. The ambiguity of the question strikes the core of the matter: the system structurally produces its own ‘evils’. Gotham’s society, just like ours, ignores the many, thus perpetrates all kinds of violence on them. Until they turn violent too. It seems like violence is unavoidable in this picture. Therefore, one should wonder which kind of violence should make us smile and which not. Of course, if you are part of the many who are ignored by the system, like Arthur/Joker, you should smile. Note that the smile takes the place of the hysterical and fake laughter as mass unity and the channelling of violence towards the system offer a sense of relief and a management of the issue.
In the film, the killing of an innocent sparks the riots. Today, the killing of George Floyd sparked the uprisings. Where does this violence come from? An extremely unequal society; the failure of the public and private sector to support and include the many; decline of parties and unions leaving society with no functional way of managing antagonism and issues; progressive atomisation of society. Joker seems to have anticipated history. All those ignored by the system are finally taking the stage. Is anyone smiling yet?