In his latest film, director Todd Phillips looks at us with a new face that we didn't know for the Joker. That mysterious man who emanates from nowhere with his distorted face, his psychopathic laughter and his unequaled desire to spread chaos and destruction was once a must, and as Batman has repeatedly told, Paying him a "bad day" for crime and insanity. In Joker, that day spans a whole life, in one of many changes Phillips made to the familiar story of the crowned king of chaos. Unlike his colleagues on the other side of the camp, the Joker has no clear origins. We do not know exactly what is behind the scars that cover his face, and who was before he wore the clown jacket and dreaded the city's inhabitants.
This background space left ample space and freedom for authors across media, between comics and cinema, to reinvent the Joker and its past. The outline of the character remains sufficiently stable to prevent its disintegration as it moves from one author to another in different periods of time, but the details are reworded each time, making the Joker the closest thing to a unique echo that leaves freedom for those who play it to improvise and forge Each time has its own rhythm.
The author Grant Morrison in the novel "Arkham Asylum Mental Clinic" (Arkham Asylum) written by the late eighties to create a psychological explanation from within the event of the diversity and different backgrounds Joker, writes by the psychiatrist responsible for his condition in her dialogue with Batman: "Perhaps we are now about a kind Supernatural intelligence, a new type of superhuman perception more suitable to live in a city in the late twentieth century.On the reverse and reverse, the Joker does not seem to have any kind of control over the information he receives from the outside world, and therefore can only cope with the chaos of his senses Walk in the direction of the current, and for this, he finds himself some Ay M Maharaja Aabtha, and other fatal days Sikobataa. Valjokr without a specific character, re-invent itself in every day and sees himself as king of the insurgency and the world, its theater of the absurd. "[1]
In this intense liquidity of identity, the Joker in its many representations is an explicit reflection and a clear product of the time and society that inhabit them. Critic Dan Brooks went on to analyze the Joker movie versions, the 1989 Joker performed by Jack Nicholson, and the Joker in 2008 played by Heath Ledger: "Every Joker embodies the chaos that his audience fears. Thirty years ago, in an age of fear of brutality, Crime of adolescents and minors, Jack Nicholson led his city residents to the Gotham Art Museum, ordering them to paint and paint graffiti on artistic classics. In the last year of George W. Bush's reign, Joker Heath Ledger was a terrorist who led Batman to build a state based on the surveillance of its citizens. [2] This year, another Joker looks a lot different from all of his predecessors, but he remains like all of them on at least one point: it is a reflection of his time, society and city.
Arthur Flick: From dreaming of lights to resorting to crime
From the opening scenes of Joker to the end, we see Gotham in its most nightmarish manifestation. This famous city in the world of DC comics where Batman fights crime is nowhere to be saved. At the time of the story, Batman is still a spoiled child named Bruce Wayne living in a vast palace with his parents, while the city is plunged into poverty and ugliness out of chaos.
Gotham director Todd Phillips, whose skies are not broken by the bat and does not have a team of superheroes and villains, is the closest thing to our reality, and the great symmetry between her and many of our cities today makes her more terrifying than the paranormal Gotham in the stories of other authors. Gotham here is a resurgence of the 1970s New York, whose streets marked Travis Beckle in Martin Scorsese's masterpiece: "Taxi Driver," whose alleys are crowded with "scum, prostitutes, dogs, filth and shit."
This time, the hero of the story is not a lonely driver in a metal box separating him from around him and giving him the luxury of meditation from afar. The hero of the story stands in the first roadside scene in the heart of the scum and dirt between rats. It is Arthur Flick, Arthur who, in the first scene, turns away from Travis Beckle's sullen face with a wide smile; Arthur is a clown who dreams of becoming a comedian. Arthur is not the first version of the Joker to have the same dream.
He shares the Joker dream on the pages of Alan Moore's "Killing Joke," one of the most important and most influential stories of Joker in the filmmakers, but while the Joker's old career as a clown and his hobby of comedy passages came in the stories of Joker's creation. To establish the devastating irony of the criminal Joker, this profession and other hobby performs other functions in Philips.
Arthur has no real sense of humor, and his jokes do not make anyone laugh.He is obviously afflicted with Pseudobulbar affect, which makes him burst into hysterical laughter without any introductions that will make it impossible for him to stand up and perform on stage. But Arthur seems completely blind to seeing this; he sees himself gifted only in need to find the opportunity; when this happens, he will become a shining star in front of which fans line up and appear on television along with his favorite humorist Murray Franklin, in that line we are impressed Clearly in Scorsese's film "The King of Comedy".
In all this, Arthur is the creator of a culture obsessed with fame and light, and sees who has an ideal. Arthur is utterly delusional, but maintaining this illusion is of existential importance to him in order to maintain a minimal meaning and purpose in the life of all its miserable. He then clings to his delusion, seeking salvation from his sense of inferiority and insignificance. He dreams that he will one day find his chance and his turn comes to stand under the spotlight, where his voice will be heard, the dream that is dissipated later and then Arthur finds no better alternative than borrowing the sound of bullets that no one can deaf ears in front of him.
In a sequence of a few bright sequences in the film, Arthur imagines himself sharing the stage with his idol Murray Franklin. It is one of the few times that we see Arthur throughout the film really happy; amid the cheers and applause, Franklin bows and whispers to Arthur: "I would do anything in my life to have a son like you," which shows us another knot that controls Flake's character: Finding The absent father.
Arthur does not know who his father, who lived his entire life with his mother does not know the man who gave birth to him, even his nickname taken from her nickname, Benny Flake. In the previous scene, this is the deep vacuum left by the absence of the father in the spirit of Arthur; a vacuum that tries to fill it and compensate him with personalities he sees as a model like Murray Franklin. But almost in the middle of the film, Arthur discovers, or thinks, that he discovers who his real father is.
Joker: A new hero of the city
Since the beginning of the film, we notice a general deterioration in all state institutions, which is most reflected in its buildings and facilities. Everything is steeped in chaos and garbage, cracked walls and shaky lighting most of the time. Police appear weak, angry crowds are able to devour their members, and the social security of Gotham's residents does not exist, the poor live in menial buildings and work in menial jobs and when they fall ill they do not find decent health care.
Arthur lives this reality and knows that there is no real salvation from him. His mother, Benny, has another opinion. The old Penny sits in front of the TV screen for most of the day, cheering her records when the billionaire and businessman Thomas Wayne appears. Penny insists that Thomas "if he knows the dire situation we live in, he will save us." Over his possession and management of tremendous wealth, Thomas also ran for the mayor of Gotham. Benny writes long letters invoking him, but, as expected, she never finds a response. She goes to sleep one night and recommends her son to put her letter to Wayne in the mailbox. Arthur is very curious about the letter and gives the envelope to read, and here's the surprise: Thomas Wayne is his real father. Any fan of superhero movies will know who the son of Thomas Wayne II is.
In the Phillips verse on the Joker story here, which makes him an illegitimate son of Thomas Wayne and a half-brother of Bruce Wayne, Phillips puts his own interpretation of the reasons for the extreme hatred that Joker empowers Batman; but above that, an important theme of the film emerges and a key driver of its events: Class gap.
The situation of the Gotham City community is like that of the two brothers - assuming that Penny's novel is true - Arthur and Bruce; one lives a menial life away from a father who does not recognize his existence, and the other lives spoiled in a fleeing mansion with impregnable gates that prevent Arthur and his ilk from approaching. This gap here, in the case of Arthur and Bruce as a special case and of the people of Gotham in general, is Thomas Wayne, and many like him. Thomas is an example of modern-day capitalism and its neoliberal policies, where absolute power and unlimited capital come together in the hands of one person - or a handful of people - giving the controller unlimited possibilities and powers, with which any real and effective role of the state diminishes so that that person becomes The real writer of the unwritten laws of how things will be managed on the ground, laws designed solely to serve his own interests and let others go to hell.
We do not see all these details of Thomas through events, but we see quite enough to conclude; we see this in the decay of state institutions on the one hand, and the growing influence of Thomas on the other, the businessman would like to become mayor, to formally combine money and power. In a society whose social pyramid dominates everything, it is not surprising to see its disadvantaged classes living a life that is not the same as the rich while enjoying unparalleled luxury.
In such a society, there are hundreds of thousands of Arthur Flicks, unable to find a decent job, constantly humiliated and humiliated, to whom everyone above them has no respect. Flake is beaten in the first scenes by a group of affluent teens.This is repeated again in the metro, but this time by young people working for Thomas Wayne, and makes the rich and successful broadcaster Franklin Murray ridicule in his program and summoned him above to appear with him to reflect on that irony.
Arthur feels that he is nothing but a doormat for all those above him, and makes his situation worse and makes the sickness of laughter that plague him and make others avoid him at best, and give him punches and kicks at worst. The weak, meager Arthur is completely incapable of defending himself; but when a coworker lends him a gun, everything changes.
In these contexts, Arthur's recourse to the violence he has suffered throughout his life is well understood. Like all the other manifestations of the Joker, Arthur is a reflection of his society: a society living in a state of crude class that makes him not need an "evil" from outside his world to threaten him; If Arthur had not shot the three young men that night, another person would have another day and in a similar context would do the same, and find the same sympathy from him.
In the sympathy of Gotham's marginalized population with Arthur, we find a reflection of replacing the "rich / poor" dualism in the film world - and increasingly in our world too - with the traditional "evil / good" duet. In that dualism no one really cares about the concepts of good and evil; Arthur's killing of the three youths in the metro is an indisputably evil act, but no one really cares about this, each group sympathizes with its members. The poor and the marginalized encourage Arthur's act because he is one of them, and the rich with their media machine and official power denounce him for harming three of their boys.
Here, the usual pattern is reversed: Bruce Wayne will no longer be a hero to the masses. In the rich / poor dualism, Bruce stands out clearly because of his class affiliation with the wealthy minority. The agitated masses in the streets are searching for those who will save them, a salvation they want, violent and bloody, to bring the oppressive regime to their roots. In the trance of violence and blood, Arthur Flake / Joker emerges, the powder like them and the first to fire the bullet at the "enemies", a messenger of salvation that will come only over the ruins of the unjust city.
Batman and the Joker: The Class History of the Dark Knight's Clash and the King of Chaos
If Todd Phillips was the first to shed such light on the class difference between Batman and the Joker and his role in the conflict between them, he is not the first to signal that difference. Alan Moore preceded him in the story of "The Deadly Joke" in which he drew nuggets from the Joker past and set contexts and reasons for his transformation from a peaceful citizen to a psychopathic killer.
In that story, we see the Joker for the first time before the transition: a married man, a pregnant woman about to give birth, lives in a narrow house in a despicable neighborhood, does not find a job most of the time, and even when he does so in humble occupations that do not provide him with enough to pay Rent. His wife comes to the story at the end of another day in which he did not find a job as a comedian. To find another house in a better neighborhood ”before their son came to exist three months later.
Because all roads were blocked in his face, he turned to crime. His first crimes are completely innocent compared to the crimes that he will commit later, but her tragic failure with the death of his wife and her fetus in an absurd accident will forever rob him of his identity and his former life, and henceforth chart his way as a crowned king on the throne of chaos and crime.
The Joker collaborates with a gang to steal a chemical plant where he once worked, and makes a naive plan with them based mainly on Joker's past information that the factory is not well insured. But minutes after the plan was put in place, the city's knight waving Batman from afar, fleeing the gang for fear of him and the Joker. However, the latter noticed badly.When Batman chased him, he slipped from the top of the fence, located in a large basin full of toxic chemical, which covered his body with burns, and pushed his mind on the path of insanity.
Commenting on the story of Alan Moore, Richard Hindfield writes in the Joker as a Marxist: "While the existing social system - particularly in its dependence on capital for the basics of life - lavished Bruce Wayne with wealth and favor, the Joker left nothing but drought and misery." The Joker to the latter's transformation, showing us how Bruce Wayne / Batman and his class were the cause of Joker's indignation. ”[3] This is reflected in the pattern of criminal Joker. Unlike any ordinary criminal, the Joker does not aspire for his crimes to make money, and we can often not see the goal behind his destructive tendencies at all, far from being chaos for chaos. But in Hindfield's reading of the Joker crimes, he finds them primarily directed against the symbols of power and wealth. The Joker crimes, in his view, are not entirely absurd, but are aimed at destroying the existing unjust regime of many.
"The enmity between Batman and the Joker is not only because one is a criminal and the other is fighting crime, but behind it is a much deeper conflict, in which Batman represents the ruling class against the Joker, who is constantly trying to destroy the class system," writes Hindfield. Even if Batman is killed or his identity is known, the forces that he represents will remain in power, and if the Joker dies, the crowds he represents will still exist. Therefore, the real goal of the Joker is not to eliminate Batman, but to destroy the regime he protects. " . [4]