By EBERVAL GADELHA FIGUEIREDO JÚNIOR*
The controversy surrounding Joker (2019) was more of an attempt to depoliticize a scathing critique of social inequalities than a genuine response to the film's content
1.
The film Joker (2019), directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, generated a heated debate in the media and among the public at the time, not only regarding its actual cinematic qualities, but mainly due to the controversy regarding its possible social implications. Even before its release, critics and commentators raised concerns that the film could become a catalyst for violent and destructive behavior by an audience “Incel”, that is, involuntary celibates (for the purposes of the debate in question, exclusively men) who, in online forums, frequently express resentments of a misogynistic and antisocial nature.[1]
With the film's release, however, it soon became clear that much of this backlash was completely out of proportion to the actual content of the work, and seemed motivated by other ideological concerns. A critical analysis reveals that this attempt to characterize Joker as a dangerous film for an audience of lonely and disturbed young people, it aimed to divert attention from its central component: the incisive criticism of social inequalities, urban isolation and class struggle. It would not be the first time that something like this had happened, much less the most ridiculous case.
Three years earlier, for example, the label of Bernie Bros as a scarecrow for supposedly male and sexist supporters of Bernie Sanders, used during the last two Democratic Party primaries to demonize the electorate of the candidate objectively more progressive than Hillary Clinton, a neoconservative whose only asset was being a woman.[2]
But the moral panic around Joker in 2019 it already seemed excessive from the start. Journalists and commentators pointed out that the film could incite individuals with a high profile Incel to commit acts of violence.[3] The narrative focused on the risks of a sympathetic portrayal of an isolated, resentful white man who loses control and turns into a killer. However, the central issue the film addresses is not involuntary celibacy, but rather social and economic despair, alienation and the collapse of support networks in a deeply unequal society.
Arthur Fleck does not become the Joker because he is rejected by women, but because he is crushed by a system that does not offer him dignity, a feeling that a large part of Gotham's population shares, according to the events at the end of the film.
The real threat that Joker represented to the status quo it was never the possibility of inciting “incels” violence, but rather the idea that marginalized and impoverished individuals can rise up against the powers that be. In the film, Arthur Fleck emerges as a symbol of a marginalized class reaching its breaking point. He may not be a conscious revolutionary, but his transformation and rise to iconic status are catalyzed by the collapse of the social institutions that were supposed to protect him. This is the true “dangerous message” of Todd Phillips’ film.
By murdering three yuppies of the financial elite on the subway, Arthur Fleck unwittingly triggers a popular uprising against socioeconomic inequality, represented primarily by the Wayne family. The image of a Gotham taken over by masked protesters is, in essence, a cinematic display of class struggle, a cry for help from a society that has reached the limit of its tolerance for social disparities.
Arthur Fleck's closest counterpart was never the incels, but rather figures like Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, whose act of setting himself on fire in 2011 catalyzed the Arab Spring. To avoid this kind of reading, which is much more appropriate, the moral panic of critics and journalists focused on the chimerical scarecrow of “Incel”, aiming to obscure the real criticism of the film.
2.
When conceiving Joker: Madness for Two (2024), Todd Phillips faced the dilemma of how to continue Arthur Fleck's story (something unnecessary, by the way) without once again fueling the moral panic that plagued the first film upon its release. The choice to turn the second film into a musical, focusing on the relationship between Arthur Fleck and Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga), seems to be an attempt to distance himself from this imaginary audience.Incel” that critics insisted on associating with the character.
The work abandons the focus on the class struggle and the social context that defined it Joker and takes a turn towards a less critical and more subjectivist approach. In his attempt to disown this audience, however, Phillips becomes, paradoxically, even more quixotic than his protagonist. In the end, the real delirium was not the characters', but the film's director's.
The very notion that it would be possible to define an “ideal audience” of Joker turns out to be a battle against windmills, as Arthur Fleck was never, in fact, the hero of the “incels” or any other specific ideological group. From the beginning, his figure has been appropriated by different readings, from a denunciation of Reaganite neoliberalism to a parable about mental health.
The character's impact on the iconography of social movements in 2019 was notable: on the streets of Chile, during protests against the government of then-president Sebastian Piñera, there were protesters dressed up as Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, raising the flag of the Mapuche nation, and similar instances were also recorded in Catalonia and Lebanon, for example;[4] In France, which saw some of the last demonstrations of the yellow vest movement a few months later, groups of firefighters dressed up like the Joker, set themselves on fire and confronted the police on the streets of Paris.[5]
When building Slide à deux as a film that revolves around Fleck and Quinzel's shared psychosis, Todd Phillips reinforces the idea that his work is merely a feverish fantasy of a disillusioned man. This is a creative decision that impoverishes the interpretative possibilities of the first film, making it almost devoid of any political or social meaning. This change in direction results in a pair of films that seem to be at war with each other.
The anachronistic obsession with disproving criticism from half a decade ago, while avoiding the subversive content that marked the first film, means that Joker: Madness for Two lacks the coherence and strength of its predecessor. If Joker it was a cry of frustration against a system that ignores the most vulnerable, Slide à deux seems more interested in following an ideological playbook blasé and less compromising than in saying anything relevant.
One of the most common misconceptions in the interpretation of Joker is the idea that Arthur Fleck could or should become the “real” Joker, Batman’s most infamous arch-nemesis. In the comics, however, the Joker is a notoriously fluid figure. In fact, there has never been just one Joker, but rather several, and his secret identity has never been important. In recent arcs, such as Three Jokers, by Geoff Johns,[6] the idea of multiple Jokers is canonized, cementing the character as an archetype of chaos in Gotham. The Joker's true role is to be an avatar of civilizational entropy in Gotham, the distorted reflection of urban decay, political corruption, and social insanity.
The intriguing suggestion of the comics (as well as, to some extent, of Todd Phillips' first film) is that any of us would be just one particularly bad day away from becoming like the Joker: the verb “joker” did not become part of the vocabulary of contemporary youth by chance.[7]
In this sense, the rise of Arthur Fleck as a kind of “proto-Joker”, or as an “unwitting icon”, in the words of Todd Phillips,[8] changes nothing substantially. Gotham will always find new Jokers, because the Joker is not an individual but a symptom, the inevitable product of the social tensions that the first film explores. So, in fact, Arthur Fleck's specific identity hardly matters. He may even be killed in Arkham Asylum and completely forgotten as an individual distinct from his person, that is, of the Joker, because what really persists is what he represents: the “Joker-Form”, so to speak, as a rupture of the social contract and the consequent threat of widespread anomie.
Joker e Joker: Madness for Two prove to be fascinating case studies of how narratives of moral panic and critical reception can shape a film's direction and public perception of its meaning. The controversy surrounding Joker (2019) was more of an attempt to depoliticize a scathing critique of social inequalities than a genuine response to the film's content. In trying to respond to it with Joker: Madness for Two, Todd Phillips created a work that, under the pretext of denying an audience that never existed as a real threat, ends up becoming innocuous.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether Arthur Fleck is the "real" Joker or not. The chaos he unleashes will continue to emerge in Gotham, in new faces, with new masks, a constant reminder that the social order of status quo is always more fragile than it appears.
*Eberval Gadelha Figueiredo Jr. He holds a bachelor's degree in law from USP.
Notes
[1] On these controversies involving the film, see: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/9/18/20860890/joker-movie-controversy-incel-sjw; https://www.cbr.com/joker-movie-backlash-explained/; https://time.com/5684823/joker-movie-controversy/.
[2I] About the supposed Bernie Bros, see: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-bros-who-online-harassment-abuse-a9368066.html; https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/the-overblown-bernie-bros-phenomenon-says-more-about-social-media-than-bernie-sanders/; https://www.dailydot.com/debug/bernie-bros-2016-2020-women-supporters/.
[3] Such fears were motivated in part by the occurrence of an attack years earlier during the screening of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people died and dozens were injured. Ironically, nothing like this happened at a film screening. Joker (2019), but at the time there was an incident during a screening of Frozen 2 (2019), in which around a hundred teenagers carrying machetes started a mass brawl in Birmingham, England. About the 2012 attack, see: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/12-dead-50-wounded-in-colorado-theater-shooting. About the machete fight, see: https://www.metropoles.com/entretenimento/cinema/frozen-2-adolescentes-sao-presos-apos-briga-com-facoes-em-sessao.
[4] Regarding this, see: https://www.wired.com/story/joker-masks-protests/; https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/03/world/joker-global-protests-trnd/index.html&lang=es.
[5] Regarding this, see: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7938937/Firefighters-police-battle-streets-Paris.html?ito=social-facebook&fbclid=IwAR0cDMWBS99OaNOp9j-SosG3ImI_j3f3d5U-WWzow8n1r9OhvmXskAeyikk;
[6I] For an interview with the author of the work, see: https://www.cbr.com/geoff-johns-jason-fabok-batman-three-jokers-interview/.
[7] Regarding the use of the term “joker”, used as an approximate synonym for “going crazy”, see: https://diariodonordeste.verdesmares.com.br/verso/tankar-coringar-shitpost-do-twitter-aos-games-o-que-significa-a-linguagem-da-geracao-z-1.3325224#:~:text=Coringar%2C%20por%20sua%20vez%2C%20%C3%A9,pessoa%20enlouqueceu%20por%20algum%20motivo. [8] Phillips' commentary can be found at: https://br.ign.com/coringa-2/130945/news/ninguem-liga-mais-para-o-arthur-todd-phillips-explica-grande-final-de-coringa-delirio-a-dois-e-desmo
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