Rise of anti-hero entertainment
Donald Trump and his family and friends saw the hit movie “Joker” last weekend in the White House’s private screening room.
The U.S. president joins the many people worldwide who have flocked to Todd Phillips’ dark portrait of a clownish villain — played by Joaquin Phoenix and drawn from Batman lore — who is driven to homicide and mayhem by mental illness, poverty and social scorn.
“Joker” just struck the $1-billion (U.S.) gong for global box office receipts, a rare achievement and the first “R”-rated movie to do so. Awards speculation is in full throttle and a sequel is now planned.
Trump reportedly loved the film, but on what basis? He didn’t tweet or otherwise utter a reaction.
Was he drawn to the drama of Phoenix’s searing performance ? Or was he just revelling in a form of poverty porn, munching popcorn as an entitled member of the 1 per cent minority, as he gawked at the lowest member of the other 99 per cent?
It’s a question we could also ask of ourselves. After “Joker” debuted at the Venice Film Festival in August, where it won the fest’s Golden Lion for best film, it was followed by mixed reviews that included much critical hand-wringing about how it might inspire copycat killings.
“Does ‘Joker’ Have a Problematic Punchline?” read a story in trade journal the Hollywood Reporter. There were also reports of theatres beefing up security, fearing a repeat of the 2012 slaughter of Colorado moviegoers by a lone gunman at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
“Joker” opened without incident, and it has left behind its pre-release controversy as it has motored on to make movie history and fatten the bank accounts of director Phillips and studio Warner Bros.
There’s still a question about the film’s message, however — and it’s not the one about copycat gun violence that everybody assumed.
The question is this: Do we really care about the desperate state of the poor and mentally unwell, or do we just like to gawk at them?
Joker poses the question himself, in a bloody scene in the film where he’s doing a standup routine on the TV talk show of Murray Franklin, played by Robert De Niro. “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a system that abandons him and treats him like trash?” he asks.
“I’ll tell you what you get. You get what you f-king deserve!”
Joker is the alter ego of Arthur Fleck, who dons the killerclown disguise to express his anger at being shunned by society and kicked to the curb by Gotham City, which has just cut funding for the medication and counselling he needs to control his outbursts. The city is in thrall to Thomas Wayne, a Trump-like billionaire running for mayor.
The anti-social theme of “Joker,” and also its popular appeal, has been mirrored in another film, Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” a bleak South Korean class satire which similarly won major film-festival laurels before arriving in theatres. It took the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has since taken in $14.5 million (U.S.) at the North American box office, making it the most successful foreign-language Palme winner ever to hit these shores.
It’s also deemed to be an Oscar contender.
“Parasite” tells the story of an impoverished family, led by a man named Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), whose four members live as grifters in a big city. They conspire to infiltrate the lives of a wealthy family led by tech czar Mr. Park (Lee Sunkyun), by getting hired on as tutors, a driver and a maid, but their scheme has explosively unforeseen complications.
The disparity between rich and poor is keenly felt, especially in a scene where Mr. Park, unaware that Ki-taek is hiding nearby, wrinkles his nose in disgust at the acrid smell of poverty he’s noticed on the rare occasion when he deigns to use the subway.
“For people of different circumstances to live together in the same space is not easy,” director Bong says in his notes on the film.
“It is increasingly the case in this sad world that humane relationships based on coexistence or symbiosis cannot hold, and one group is pushed into a parasitic relationship with another. In the midst of such a world, who can point their finger at a struggling family, locked in a fight for survival, and call them parasites?”
Who, indeed? But do we instinctively do this when we rush to see films like “Joker” and “Parasite,” eager to watch underclass misery?
I put this question to Kwame McKenzie, the CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of health equity at the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health. He’s an internationally recognized expert on the social causes of illness and suicide and has also advised the Ontario and federal governments on poverty reduction.
He sees parallels between “Joker” and “Parasite,” but also differences.
“In both ways, I think, it is possible to say they are trying to have a deeper understanding of marginalised people and their motivations,” McKenzie said via email.
“However, whereas ‘Parasite’ seems truly transformational — the film seems to normalise the lying and cheating of the protagonists within their subcultural context — ‘Joker’ is in some ways trying to explain why he became a ‘bad guy’ (with a hint of blaming society).”
McKenzie speculates that we are drawn to watch such films — and also such TV shows as “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones” and “Mindhunter” — because “we are becoming more fascinated with the psychology of the anti-hero.
“It is possible for me to imagine that people will be interested by revenge fantasy and alter egos that succeed by playing to their own rules because for many life is becoming harder, jobs more precarious, social justice seems difficult to come by and governments peddle a diet of fear to divide us and ease their chances of re-election.”
The desperate characters of “Joker” and “Parasite” would surely agree. But should the rest of us, including Donald Trump, just continue to munch our popcorn and enjoy their misery?