posted on 10/8/2019 by
the Salt City Sinner
I’ve been a fan of Batman and the rogue’s gallery of
villains that regularly menace Gotham City for more than thirty years. Comic
books, cartoons, the 1966 live-action version with Adam West, the current
live-action show (Gotham), ten live
action movies (if you count Bats’ cameo in 2016’s Suicide Squad): I’ve consumed them all voraciously, even the ones
that were directed by Joel Schumacher. While there are plenty of Batman fans
out there older and/or more well-versed than me, that’s still quite some time
to be devoted to a franchise. My relationship with Batman has been going even
longer than I’ve been reading Stephen King, which is saying something. I’ve had
a lot of time to think about this over the years, and have come to a few
conclusions.
First among these is that Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubling
– and deeply troubled – character. To paraphrase Michael Caine’s Alfred
Pennyworth in The Dark Knight, he’s one of the richest and most powerful men in
the world, yet he spends his evenings beating the bejesus out of “the scum of
Gotham’s underbelly” with his bare hands. That puts it into pretty stark
Marxist relief, but hey, Alfred said it, not me. Bruce is haunted by the murder
of his parents and driven by a noble impulse, but as I’ve grown older, read
about and experience the world, and have given the matter a little objective
thought, I have to be honest: Bruce and his parents seem like the kind of
assholes who have ruined countless individual lives (not to mention Gotham City
and possibly America) with their greed and sociopathic disregard for the “scum”
of Gotham.
I’m hardly alone in this realization. There have been
countless attempts to rehabilitate the Wayne family’s image: Thomas and Martha
Wayne were transformed through retconning from a pretty standard-issue pair of
plutocrats to limousine liberals with hearts of gold, noble reformers who were
only trying to help the scum of Gotham when their lives were tragically cut
short. Other stories, including the film Batman
Begins and the comic arc Batman
R.I.P. (in particular the chapter “The Batman of Zurr-en-arrh”), have taken
Bruce on voyages of poverty tourism in an attempt to prove that despite his
wealth he can tough it out on the mean streets with the worst of them. 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises took a different
and particularly disturbing tack; its plot leans enthusiastically into the idea
of Batman-as-plutocrat, and in doing so sets up the character Bane (one of
Batman’s more lethal and crafty opponents) as a legitimate mouthpiece for the
poor and downtrodden in Gotham… and the
film’s despicable villain!
What, then, is my attraction to this wealthy psychopath,
this tough-on-crime rich boy who feels that the corrupt and brutal GCPD isn’t hard enough on society’s detritus? Bruce
is a person I would detest in real life, frankly. So why my enduring
fascination? The answer is simple and twofold. First, Batman is the dark
counterpart to Superman, the Dionysus to his Apollo, and I dig that. Second,
Batman has the best rogue’s gallery of villains – and central among them is the
character I love even more than Batman: the Joker.
Over at Madness Heart Press, I’ve a rough two-part taxonomy
of evil clowns (you can read part
one here and part
two here), in which Mr. J features heavily. There’s something about the
evil clown that I’ve always found intensely fascinating: from Pennywise to
Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope (a jovial “whoop whoop!” to my Juggalo homies), I
think they are important. Evil clowns are, essentially, malign tricksters, and
we live in an age defined by malign trickery. The Joker in particular brings an
anarchic, agent-of-chaos energy to this archetype that I’ve always loved, one
that serves as a violent, vibrant foil to Batman’s dark, moody brooding. Taken
alone, Batman is appealing enough, I suppose: paired with the Joker and locked
in a terrible yin-yang love-hate obsession, he is downright fascinating.
But does the Joker need Batman? An interesting question. The
latest actor to step into the role is Joaquin Phoenix, who stars in Joker, which is in theaters now. From
the moment that the film begins, it is impossible to take your eyes off of
Phoenix as he pours every fiber of his body and every ounce of his considerable
acting chops into his portrayal of Arthur Fleck, damaged soul, aspiring
comedian, and victim of both predation by mean-spirited Gothamites and neglect
by the mental health infrastructure of a society collapsing into chaos. This is
not Gotham as seen from the lofty heights of Wayne Manor, a story of judgement
and moral rectitude. This is a gutter story, a story that you can almost smell as it unfolds, a bouquet of
greasepaint, rotting trash, and madness. In Joker,
Gotham is in the midst of a sanitation workers strike, and practically every
exterior shot in the film (with the exception, notably, of Wayne Manor) is
characterized by refuse: piled in alleys, lining streets, blowing in the wind.
Arthur Fleck chain-smokes incessantly, and it’s not a glamorous portrayal of
the habit. Instead, Fleck marinates in smoke – stews in it with a bitter misery
you can practically taste.
Atop this version of Gotham, perched like a proud king, is
Thomas Wayne, young Bruce’s father. In this telling, Wayne is hardly the noble,
philanthropic figure of his previous fictional incarnations. He’s arrogant.
He’s out of touch. While his race for mayor is ostensibly to “save the city”
(which, in fairness, does look like it needs saving), he refers to slum-dwellers
as “clowns” during a televised interview, with a perhaps predictably ironic
outcome. Fleck and his ailing mother Penny, meanwhile, live in squalor. City
social services, we are told, are being slashed; as public mental health care
is the one thin thread keeping Arthur tethered to reality, I don’t need to tell
you that this pursuit of austerity – probably the matter of so little money to
Thomas Wayne that he wouldn’t even notice a tax increase – has terrible,
devastating consequences in Arthur’s life.
There have been critics who are, shall we say, unimpressed
by Joker, and that’s fine. Art is
subjective, and differences of opinion make for good and interesting conversation
and shouldn’t be taken personally. With that said, I’ve heard a few people
(including the Pop
Culture Happy Hour’s Glenn Weldon) assert that Joker doesn’t have much to say. That is, not to put too fine a
point on it, bullshit, and Weldon in particular ought to know better, having written
an entire book about Batman (with more than one chapter about the Joker).
To call Joker bleak or pretentious
wouldn’t be entirely off the mark, but to say that the film isn’t relevant or
meaningful in 2019 is to betray the fact that one’s life is probably lived
closer to the Thomas Wayne side of town than the Arthur Fleck side of town.
Joker is the story of a man – and a city – gone mad, driven mad by poverty, inequality, and
the corrosion of norms of empathy. In that way, this is the perfect counterpart
to Heath Ledger’s Joker. That Joker arrived on the scene fully formed, a
nightmare reaction to the vigilante order represented by Batman, a figure
without a past or an identity other than as brilliant anarchist tactician.
Phoenix’s Joker is much more physical, more visceral: he’s all skin and twisted
bones, contorting himself like a dancing vaudeville clown from hell, wound so
tight that he vibrates. It’s a brilliant portrayal – and Phoenix has now
replaced Ledger as my favorite Joker, and Joker
is now my favorite film from the DC universe so far (unseating 2008’s Dark Knight for that honor).
I’ve been waiting my entire life for this specific perspective on life in Gotham, for a film that sees
the Wayne dynasty this way.
And 2019 is the perfect year for this story.
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