What’s up guys? Jared here to talk about the most buzzworthy cinematic contribution
of 2019. Just kidding, I obviously mean Joker. Now we expected that a film spotlighting comic
book lore’s most iconic supervillain would crush at the box office. What we didn’t
expect was that the director of The Hangover: Part II would be so central to the political
zeitgeist.
But one of the most interesting things about Joker is that, while it clearly resonated
strongly in 2019, so much of the film borrows from past cinematic traditions. And when you
parse the copious references from film history, you’ll find that they’re all drawing from
approximately the same time period - that is, the mid-1970s to early-’80s. That’s
not us being evil geniuses - Todd Phillips has said as much.
“It was really a group of movies and a time of movies, so I would almost argue that is,
those movies between 1973 to 1981, there’s a ton of movies that influence this film.”
Quick caveat - because saying the phrase “movies made from 1973 to 1981” a. takes forever
and b. is boring, we’re just going to broadly refer to this time period as ‘70s cinema.
So forgive us for the slight fudging.
Now the “70s” were an objectively cool and complex time for movies, and we’re constantly
repping the era in our videos. Still, we’ve been wondering - why is Joker so preoccupied
with this era of filmmaking? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on References
in Joker. And major spoilers ahead for a film that you and 100 million other people have
already seen. Also, older movies Taxi Driver and King of Comedy.
So let’s dive in. Phillips’ ‘70s vibe is evident in every frame of the film, from
the gritty establishing shots of Gotham to the impressionistic angles of Joaquin’s
interpretive dancing. But that inspiration also manifests pretty heavily in the movie’s
themes, which is what we’re going to be focusing on today. Now, Phillip’s vision
board is so crowded with themes from this era - ranging from class conflict to the cult
of celebrity - that we could be chatting until the inevitable Joker sequel arrives in theaters.
So in the interest of not missing Happy Hour, we picked the three we find most interesting.
PART 1: BAD GUYS?
In the 1970s, the antihero reigned supreme. An anithero is basically a morally-ambiguous
protagonist who would probably sell out their own mother for a decent Old Fashioned. Now,
the 70s were deep in the era of New Hollywood, a period that began in the mid 1960s and was
defined by bold auteur directors like Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick
. These guys and their cohorts made daring films like Medium Cool, Dog Day Afternoon,
Taxi Driver, 5 Easy Pieces, Harold and Maude, Annie Hall, American Graffiti, and so on.
According to scholar David Thomson, while films of the previous decade featured “naive
and liberal revolutionary notions” and harnessed the era’s optimistic energy, films of the
early 70s became “confounded by actual experiences” that showed “the moral bankruptcy of the
established order.”
Yes, you don’t have to be a film scholar to see why movies turned grimly cynical - This
time period was basically defined by post-Vietnam War despair and anger at the establishment.
In 1972, that cocktail of misery was coupled with outrage over Watergate and ensuing disillusionment
with the government. By 1974, just *36 percent* of Americans trusted the government. That
meant movies about flawed, broken worlds and deeply cynical characters.
Fittingly, that also meant the rise of the antihero, or that (almost always male) protagonist
who is complex and deeply flawed, sometimes beyond the point of redemption. These characters
make shocking, morally ambiguous choices, from Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, who commits
a heinously violent act to save a child victim of sex trafficking, to The King of Comedy’s
Rupert Pupkin, who takes a famous comedian hostage in order to score some decent airtime
for his own standup act, to Dog Day Afternoon’s Sonny Wortzik, who tries to rob a bank in
order to acquire money for his partner’s sex change. While none of these acts jive
with our general, collective morality, we’re still able to empathize with and understand
the reasons behind each character’s actions.
But from the mid 70s and on, largely due to one mechanical shark and a certain galaxy
far far away, Hollywood became increasingly reliant on surefire blockbusters, and with
some exceptions, has remained that way pretty much ever since. In recent years, that’s
meant an increasing supply of IP-driven content, specifically those reliably-successful comic
book movies. Most of those are inspired by superheroes from the golden era of comic books,
who typically represent moral rectitude. As a result, these stories are typically PRETTY
black and white about morality - you have a hero and you have a villain, they duke it
out, the hero wins, hooray. Sure, your Spiderman or Iron Man might make a mistake or learn
a lesson or overcome an unfortunate flaw - and Nolan’s trilogy certainly shows its protagonist
grappling with some moral issues. Still, for the most part, they’re unlikely to make
an uber-morally-questionable choice like Travis, Rupert or Sonny.
This brings us to Joker, the first Hollywood film to laser-focus on the supervillain. Phillips
takes this big budget opportunity and uses it as a vehicle to revive the ‘70s ethos
of a complex character in a doomed society, turning Arthur Fleck into a character that
obliterates our easy distinctions between good and evil. Like many of these 70s anti
heroes, Arthur is flawed, complex, and to varying degrees, sympathetic. But by subbing
this 70s archetype into the context of a comic book film, Phillips subverts the superhero
genre and challenges the typical simplicity of its morality. There’s another level of
subversion too: Phillips is ALSO using a mainstream Hollywood film as a sneaky vehicle for reviving
the 70s, that is, the last real golden era of independent filmmaking before Hollywood
became a pipeline for big-budget action films and Hangover sequels. He’s dropping mainstream
studio dollar bills to depict the challenging morality of these gritty independent films,
and to reflexively comment on and complicate the comic book film genre. Pretty cool.
PART 2: FANTASY VS. REALITY
One of Joker’s defining features is how it bends the distinction between fantasy and
reality. This thematic tension also appears in some of our favorite 70s films - most notably
the film’s biggest inspirations- Martin Scorcese’s films Taxi Driver and The King
of Comedy. Many people have pointed this out - but Joker borrows copiously from both films.
For example, in Joker’s best homage to The King of Comedy, it casts Robert DeNiro as
a famous comedian, exactly like the one played by Jerry Lewis OPPOSITE a young DeNiro.
“How, how do you do it? I think it’s that I look at my whole life and I, I see the awful
terrible things in my life and turn it into something funny… It just happens. What about
the first few one liners, were they strong enough? I was a little - Strong enough? - No
- If they were any stronger you’d hurt yourself. They’re marvelous you daffy bastard.”
Like The King of Comedy’s Rupert, Arthur also has delusions of finding a father figure
in said-famous comedian, and, when rejected, lashes out violently. And in Joker’s best
homage to Taxi Driver, it depicts Arthur as sharing Travis’s inordinate fascination
with guns.
“ (Gun noises) Huh?”
In a delightfully-dark touch, Arthur and his neighbor even mimic Travis’s iconic finger-gun
to the head -
“(Mimics gun shot noise)”
Possibly as if to indicate that, like him, neither of them have anything to lose.
Both Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy feature outcast characters with pretty bleak lives
going through tough times - only to conclude with their greatest, wildest dreams realized.
Travis becomes a celebrated hero precisely because of his violent vigilantism (and he
gets hit on by his dream girl to boot) while Rupert becomes a world-famous comedian precisely
because he took another comedian hostage. These two outcomes are improbable at best,
and completely delusional at worst. That’s why both are also frequently interpreted as
being pure fantasy. In Taxi Driver, Travis kills multiple people with an illegally purchased
firearm and doesn’t go to jail, but rather, is valorized. The King of Comedy frequently
transitions into fantasy sequences, and the improbable ending could read like one of those.
So, despite Scorcese’s occasional protest, we too read each film’s conclusion as the
desperate imaginings of a troubled character with only the most tenuous grasp on reality.
But beyond the superficial plot or character references, Travis and Rupert each emerge
as a remarkably appropriate blueprint for a character like the Joker, who is notorious
for lacking any semblance of a stable, reliable past. We talk about the Joker’s ever shifting
origin story extensively in another Wisecrack Edition, but here’s the “too-long, didn’t
watch” of Joker’s inscrutable past. In Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, Joker is
portrayed as a failed comedian who had “one bad day” that turned him very bad. Later,
we learn that Joker isn’t even sure if that backstory is true, which would make crafting
his LinkedIn profile particularly difficult. In contrast, Christopher Nolan’s Joker is
a pathological liar who seems to ad lib the truth for his own amusement.
“You want to know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker. So I had a wife,
beautiful like you.”
Most intriguing, comic writer Scott Synder gave us a Joker who uses his mysterious origins
to manipulate those around him. Fittingly, this includes posing as a psychiatric “researcher”
working on his own report, which he fills with tragic tales of childhood abuse.
“I did my best to help come up with the story you wanted. The one you needed. The
grim and grimy tale of woe. The one a publisher would lay down six figures for.”
Viewed in this light, aligning Joker with the also unreliable perspectives of a Travis
Bickle or Rupert Pupkin makes a lot of sense: It actually underscores the fact that we COULD
take the *entire* movie with a grain of salt. In fact, Joker could *almost* be read as either
A. an imaginary, Synder-style sob-story cooked up by the Joker himself while in Arkham asylum
or B. an imaginary delusional tale of the Joker’s rise to folk hero, much as Travis’s
newspaper clippings or Rupert’s memoir were for them. Either way, it gives this lasagna
of a film a whole extra layer.
But there’s another interesting aspect of the fantasy/reality dichotomy. In all three
of these films, the deep isolation of the central character leads them to fervently
pursue the affection of a beautiful, inaccessible woman. In the two Scorsese films, the mens’
ensuing, short-lived courtships are painted as real, and painfully awkward.
In Joker, Arthur also harbors an unrequited love for his neighbor, Sophie. He takes her
out on a fun date and even *gets some* after committing his first murder. SIKE. Dude imagined
the whole thing, a fact he doesn’t realize until he shows up uninvited at an unsuspecting
Sophie’s apartment. A clarifying montage shows us that, unlike Travis or Rupert’s
fledgling relationships, Arthur’s budding romance existed only in his deeply troubled
mind.
The thing about all three of these women is that they are the unlucky objects of these
three men’s fantasies, projections of their desires to find love, beauty and a merciful
end to their tragic isolation. Except in Joker, this romance is LITERALLY imaginary - as if,
well, *literalizing* the extent of these three mens’ delusional projections. In this way,
the film seems to argue that no idealized love story could save Arthur or Travis or
Rupert from their own rage, pathology, and, above all, intolerable loneliness.
PART 3 - MEDIA SENSATIONALISM
This brings us to another important theme that Joker shares with many 70s films: that
of media sensationalism. Now, we delve deeply into the influence the 1976 film Network had
on Joker in our Quicktake on “Joker and the Politics of Recognition”. But Network
also reflects, rather presciently, on the way sensationalized media can completely transform
public perception.
In Network, news anchor Howard Beale goes off the rails and decries what he sees as
a deeply sick and broken society.
“We know things are bad, worse than bad - they’re crazy! It’s like everything
everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore!
Then, he threatens to commit suicide on the air. His crazed rants resonate deeply all
across America, as people take to their windows to scream at nobody in particular
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Greedy news executives, seeing the power of Beale’s anger, continue to spotlight him,
and plan even more sensational media. The film argues that people who are emotionally
and spiritually disillusioned with a broken system can be very easily swayed by the forces
of mass media, which direct our attention to whatever story is currently sexiest (or
in our day, clickiest.) The ease with which Howard attracts a fervent following suggests
that our desperation to find truth and meaning can lead us dangerously astray, particularly
when it’s in the monetary interests of tv executives.
What’s more, Network shows the shrewd way the simple act of widespread media coverage
effectively turns a very unstable Howard into a martyr -- reframing his objectively-concerning
suicide oath as a positive act of courage. We see the same effect at the ending of both
Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy -- whether you read them as imaginary or real. Travis’s
celebrated status as a hero suggests the power of media to reframe a society’s moral outlook,
while Rupert’s post-crime rise to celebrity suggests that a media spectacle can, as with
Howard, turn any audacious act into something worth celebrating. Similarly, Dog Day Afternoon
shows the way an opportunistic media will gladly transform someone like Sonny, an addled
bank robber, into a folk hero for a compliant, thrill-seeking public.
“Attica! Attica! Attica!”
Joker similarly features no shortage of commentary on media sensationalism. After Arthur kills
three wealthy Wayne employees, the media transforms the anonymous clown into a figurehead for
Gotham’s impoverished masses, a natural opponent of the revered Thomas Wayne. Excessive
and sensational media attention bloats the importance of Arthur’s act, turning him,
like Sonny and Travis and Rupert and Howard, from mere criminal or madman into a folk hero.
As in the other films, the masses comply, and Arthur becomes the unwitting leader of
a political movement he doesn’t care about. Arthur’s political apathy underscores the
arbitrary nature of mob mentality - and just how beholden we all are to the choices the
media makes about its coverage.
Though the film is literally set in a Gotham akin to an early 80s NYC, Joker shrewdly adapts
the themes of these films for the intensified media climate of our day. Today’s internet
hive mind can conjure literal mobs to storm top secret government facilties or dunk on
children or mourn the passing of the world’s most dignified gorilla. Similarly, the fervor
with which Arthur’s actions are covered by the media effectively makes him, like Harambe,
a folk hero. The violent mob that coalesces around him projects their own rage onto his
violent act, and view it as a call to arms. Media spectacle, the film tells us, distorts
the truth and misdirects our emotions.
There are those who would argue that, just as media attention valorizes Arthur Fleck’s
actions for the people of Gotham, it does the very same thing for real-world audiences,
uniting them behind a violent, dangerous symbol of the mocked and disenfranchised. That’s
why no discussion of Joker is complete without mentioning the requisite media controversy
that surrounded its release. Accusations that the film would encourage violence or validate
dark audience impulses were widespread. Perhaps fittingly, both of its two main inspirations
- Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, also experienced their own varying degrees of backlash.
Taxi Driver had to make some edits to its climactic scene in order to skate by with
an R rating, and was partially blamed for motivating an assassination attempt on President
Reagan. The King of Comedy also had its share of naysayers with comedian Johnny Carson turning
down the role of Jerry Langford out of fear of life imitating art and a healthy supply
of negative reviews reiterated his point. This isn’t surprising - films that basically
force us to empathize with characters like Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin or Arthur Fleck,
characters who make us grapple with morality, reality, and probably some other -ality’s
that we don’t have time to get into, are always going to be a lightning rod for controversy.
Ultimately though, we think the way Joker thematically incorporated its own controversial
cinematic forefathers is worth mentioning and pretty cool.
But what do you guys think? Is Joker an effective callback to 70s greatness, or a blatant ripoff
wearing a clown mask? Let us know in the comments. Thanks again to our incredible patrons for
supporting our podcasts and the channel. Go ahead and click that subscribe button, and
as always, thanks for watching. Peace.