comic class

Some of the criticism of the film’s over-the-top cinematic homage is fair. It is nihilistic. It does seem to suggest violence between the classes is inevitable, but I’ll point out that history itself also makes a compelling case for this idea. Phoenix’s performance is over the top, jarring, and often uncomfortable. But the heart of this film lies somewhere else, and I’m surprised the conversation is being stifled, subverted, and actively ignored. There are a few spoilers ahead. It seems to me many of the critics of the film tell us more about how inactively they watched the film then about the core of the Joker’s philosophy. This movie is a #metoo film. It is the story of Arthur’s mother. A woman who worked for a powerful white man. A woman we presume had consensual sex with Thomas Wayne and upon becoming pregnant was ousted from her position. Her job taken because this man of great wealth couldn’t live up to his “greatness”. Some years later, broke and without hope, this woman writes to Thomas Wayne looking for emotional and financial support. She is denied. She is gaslighted. Thomas Wayne has her committed to Arkham under false pretenses; he leverages his wealth to forge adoption documents giving his lies provenance and authority. He is willing to imprison a woman to maintain his “image”. 20 years later she is left with nothing but the hollow promises of a now rising political figure. Thomas Wayne ignores her until her dying day. When her son becomes aware of the truth he confronts Wayne and is physically assaulted, and emotionally battered as Wayne tells Arthur he was “adopted” that his mother was abusive, and that his own struggles are the fault of her parenting. When Arthur stops taking his medication, the result of insufficient medical coverage for the neediest people, he becomes the Joker. He becomes the inspiration for the murder of Thomas Wayne. Thomas Wayne is a but an impression of the real savagery of these wealthy and abusive men. Joker is a reminder that we don’t forget. Just because critics don’t see the story doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The same way that just because news has stopped investigating the Jeffery Epstein story doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about the wealthy white men who have abused, raped, and destroyed women simply because their privilege allows them too. We haven’t forgotten that either. See the Joker. Then see it again. Thomas Wayne’s abuse was so subtly constructed that the critics bought his lie too. They told us the story was too much of this, and propaganda for that, a sad attempt to worship 1970’s grit cinema, contrived, and nihilistic, but really it is the story of abuse, and two generations of suffering at the hands of a sociopath.