A superhero movie is an amusement park, as said by Martin Scorcesee. There is nothing wrong with theme parks, they give you the adrenaline rush and an instant ecstatic high. Remember the climax of Avengers: Endgame? But, the high you get from an amusement park lasts till the ride is on. It’s just a memory from that moment. There comes a rare movie that imprints an impact on your brains. And, that movie being a spinoff origin story of a superhero’s villain, would you have expected that?

Todd Phillips, who was known for the silly buddy comedies like Hangover trilogy, has made the dark and bleak DC movie that remains intact with the aesthetic style of DC cinemas. It was the winner of Golden Lion Award at the 76th Venice International Film Festival and it was the sixth highest-grossing film of 2019 with a mere budget of 55–70 million USD, which is considered as a fraction of budget spent for a standard superhero comic book-based film. It grossed over 1 billion USD, becoming the first R-rated film to do so. The latest to break this record was Deadpool Vs Wolverine (2024).

Joker: The Cultural Impact

Joker feels nothing like a story stripped from a comic book. Stereotypically, the superhero comics run away from the real world and they create a world of their own, a fantasy world. Joker is more of a social commentary through the psyche of Arthur Fleck than the “psycho” story of mentally ill Arthur Fleck set in our society.

Joker is set in 1980’s Gotham that feels like a dystopian (or real?) New York City. Joker is about a mentally ill joker who lives off through performing gags for kids and in the streets. He has a neurotic condition named Pseudobulbar affect which causes uncontrollable outbursts of hysterical laughter and crying. Arthur Fleck is neglected and ignored by everyone. Moreover, he is even bullied and assaulted. The society he lives in treats him like trash– just like the uncleaned rats-ridden trash accumulated in New York City due to the protests by sweepers and cleaning staff of the city.

The resemblance of New York City is not about just the aesthetic frames, it is also an impact of another character-driven movie made by Martin Scorcesse and the strand of idea– failed standup comedian– taken from another Scorcesse’s movie titled The King of Comedy. So, the assumptive nature of New-York-ness all over the movie is not just an bland interpretation of nonsensical analysis, the resemblance strikes brighter once we observe the commentary it throws.

Joker: The Cultural Danger.

Since its release, we have seen phenomenal Joaqulin Phoenix on our WhatsApp status and Instagram posts more than the number of times we have actually seen him in the real acts of the movie. Arthur Fleck has been instantly adopted by a certain set of people. The people who tend to look towards the city to blame for everything that is going wrong with their lives. The reasons might be right or wrong, but the emotion is true.

Todd Phillips’s Joker is positioned to be appreciated from the perspective of Arthur Fleck. We are made to empathise with Arthur. And, we should be. A few critics shrugged off Joker as a dangerous movie that can incite right-wing anger and lead to mob violence. They weren’t wrong either. There was a mass shooting that took place in 2012, Colorado, where a guy with a gun shot 12 people dead and injured more than 12 people. This crime happened in a theatre that was playing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

The critics were right. The characters like Joker are dangerous. But, the greatest aid that can deter a crime is empathy and love. This is not a preachy Gandhian philosophy I am throwing on your face through the digital screens. Just try to understand the agony of a mentally ill neurotic person suffering with chronic depression who has nothing but all negative thoughts. Try to understand. And, the attempt to try to understand whole heartedly is what empathy is. Arthur is a disturbed and delusion man-like child with a history of child abuse from the parents who is mocked and ridiculed everyday by almost everyone around him.

Joker: The Cultural Cult

Joker hasn’t achieved cult status not just in the movie but also from the real world. There is a hacktivist group of internet vigilantes who call themselves Anonymous. They go by the Joker as their display picture. You might have seen the Joker DP floating around the internet. It might not be a surprise for you. What had led to this cult-ism?

Joker as a cultural icon was explored in Joker (2019) as well. Arthur murders two in self-defence and another one in an attempt to rid off the evidence. They all were investment bankers who worked at Thomas Wayne’s company. The murders that happened in a metro rail were not seen as a safety threat by the general public in the movie. Instead, the joker– the man with a mask– was considered a hero for eliminating the ‘filthy’ rich at the most desperate times of economic depression and high unemployment.

Whole Gotham goes into a mad-mode in the climax. The Joker liberated the chaos into the world that was already chaotic due to economic issues. At the most cynical times of unemployment and inflation, who else is considered a hero except a cynical nihilist set to disrupt the world?