THE JOKER'S ON YOU

When Joker, the movie, was initially being promoted, I had my suspicions about it because it was getting a lot of negative reactions and being greeted with a great deal of concern over its presumed message and possible influence.  Personally the one thing that made me feel apprehensive about it was a comment from the director regarding his motivation for making the film.  Todd Phillips, who had made his name with the "frat-boy" humor of his Hangover films, had stated that he felt "pushed" out of doing comedy because of "PC culture" (political correctness).  He felt that comedy had become too constrained by PC mania and that he was no longer able to produce the kinds of comedies he wanted to make. 

Now, people protesting about "PC" pearl clutching have been putting me on alert a lot lately.  As someone who enjoys an inappropriate laugh as much as any open minded individual should, I've also come to recognize that many of those who seem the most put out by PC criticisms are the ones least likely to be hurt by prejudice and bigotry.  For a long time, I was on-side with a lot of the concerns over people getting too uptight about everything and anything, but I've come to recognize the security of my own privilege in these areas and how that makes me often immune to their damage.  The main difference with me is being homosexual.  That personal perspective was key for me to begin to comprehend the fine line between humor and abuse.  

"Political Correctness" is something that is, fundamentally, applied to comedy in most instances where it occurs.  It is frequently a response to some level of humor which an individual finds offensive, disparaging and/or cruel towards some social group.  Most frequently, the people who complain about PC culture are heterosexual white males, who are feeling the pinch of a dying Caucasian patriarchy.  They're upset because they can't freely use the "N" word or belittle and disrespect women or fill their locker rooms with homophobic slurs with the kind of abandon they associate with "the good old days".  They're the guys who want to make things "great again".  So, whenever someone whines about PC culture, my first response is, what do you want to say that you don't feel free to say now?  

I still see a lot of great comedy being produced now, so I don't buy into Phillips' assertion that he can't make those kinds of movies anymore.  I see them being made all the time.  So this whole impetus for making the Joker movie set me into a defensive posture approaching the film because its premise is highly suspect to me.  What made me want to give it a viewing, however, was when I started to read some reviews from people I respect and their feeling that it did actually have something valid to say about what's going on in our world.

That said, after watching the film, I do feel that Joker is something of an examination of the nature of humor.  I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here, but be warned if you haven't seen the film that I may slip up on a couple of plot points necessary to illustrate my premises.  I will try to stay focused on the primary character setup, but read on at your own risk.

Inappropriate laughter is the foundation upon which this story rests.  It's integral to the character created by Joaquin Phoenix.  Arthur Fleck is an individual who has a completely askew relationship with humor.  He's a "professional" clown who is virtually devoid of any sense of humor, yet he is prone to fits of uncontrollable laughter to the point where he carries a laminated card around like a deaf person might to advise strangers of his affliction.  Yet everything about his life is a misery.  There isn't a single affirming relationship in it and every stranger he encounters offers nothing but abuse, humiliation and rejection.  It's an oppressively negative existence from top to bottom, especially if you're disenfranchised.  

If you're not a "have-not", like billionaire business mogul, Thomas Wayne, or late night TV host, Murray Franklin (Gotham's answer to Johnny Carson, played by Robert De Niro), you're likely indifferent to the suffering of those with nothing and view them as victims of their own weaknesses and inabilities.  In the case of Franklin, you see them only as fodder for ridicule in order to satisfy the sadistic leanings of your audience.  There's no empathy in this city.  It really isn't very pretty what this town without pity can do!  

All totaled, you have a picture painted, in grotesque, sloppy clown makeup, of a world which has lost its sense of compassion and caring and that is exactly the world we live in now.  This is the real message of the movie.  Personally, I don't think PC culture is what's stopping people like Phillips from making funny movies.  I think the crushing, crumbling world we live in is getting harder and harder to laugh at and that's why making mindless bro-comedies about drunken abandon is less satisfying these days.  It isn't that you're not allowed to laugh at anything.  It's that we're in such a desperate, deplorable state as a species and a civilization, the adage that, when faced with tragedy, the best remedy is to laugh, has become too disingenuous to bare.  This disaster of a time we live in simply isn't very funny when we're starring down the barrel of extinction as a real possibility. 

As far as film making goes, this is a damn good movie.  The look of it captures the time it aims for perfectly.  It's dirty and there are some lovely callbacks to classics from the past, especially of the Scorsese variety.  And it does a surprisingly good job of fitting itself into the established mythology of the character, or rather the landscape the character is meant to inhabit.  There's even some nice nods to previous incarnations of the character in popular film and TV, from the loose resemblance to Cesar Romero's color scheme to Jack Nicholson's snatched string of pearls to Heath Ledger's bloody slash across his mouth.  It manages to put Joker into a new perspective while acknowledging and respecting his past incarnations.  

While writing this up, I notice that there's a Joker 2 movie announced, so I am hoping they don't mess up the purity of this one by overworking the concept.  This current film is a bitter pill that our culture needs to swallow, not because we've lost our sense of humor under the burden of political correctness, but because we're all sitting, dull eyed and dim witted, as our ship sails off the edge of the world and nobody seems to be too bothered about trying to stop it. 

LIKE A ROLLING THUNDER

I think there's a case to be made that Bob Dylan created the "toxic fan".  I say this after having seen an interview with Martin Scorsese regarding his new Rolling Thunder Revue "documentary" on Netflix.  In the interview, he's discussing his reasons for making this film and he comments that Dylan always seemed to be pissing people off and something about that caught my attention, especially after watching the film.  

Who could forget his pivotal transition from acoustic troubadour to electric rocker?  His so-called "fans" were absolutely livid!  We're getting used to this sort of revolt now, what with the likes of Star Wars fans bemoaning any attempt to move their precious franchise into new territory, but back then, it wasn't so common for fans to react so harshly against an object of their affections.  Sure, the Beatles had spurned some by making an unfortunate comparison of themselves to Jesus, but with Dylan, it was purely a revolt triggered by the artist's decision to evolve into something new.  

Dylan's willingness to let people be confused and even irritated with him is a big part of what makes this film so compelling.  It's also something of a horse of a different color in the sense that it doesn't fit neatly into either slot of "fiction" or "documentary".  Here, both musician and film maker collude to blur the lines between truth and fallacy and create something thoroughly dishonest, yet paradoxically sincere in a single turn.  It's the kind of thing that would leave a Star Trek android grasping for logical validation as its circuits shorted out while struggling to sort through fact and fabrication.  Watching the film, one gets the sense that one is dealing with some big truths while we're being buried in deceptions.

What we're presented with here is a willful act of misdirection.  I went into it knowing that it was partly fictionalized, though the big question for me was why they would want to do this.  What would be the point of mythologizing this story and introducing deliberate fallacies into the product?  I think a big clue to the answer comes from the opening sequence showing old film of the great Georges Méliès performing one of his early film "special FX" magic tricks.   Scorsese sets his intentions on the table up front.  He's going to use the medium of film to play some tricks on us, but within that process, he's going to reveal something deeper and more meaningful.

Let me backtrack a bit here and state that I'm not an actual "fan" of Bob Dylan in any significant regard.  I don't have any of his recordings in my personal music library, but I do have a passing respect for his legacy and have at least some familiarity with his more famous songs, mostly thanks to other artists' renditions of them.  As such, the thought of watching this movie was a bit daunting, especially given its over 2 hour run time.  But my respect for Scorsese piqued my curiosity and I finally made the effort to give it a go.  I have no regrets about that now as I was engrossed by it from beginning to end.

Why it had this ability to hold my attention is something that I'm continuing to grapple with as I try to pull this apart and understand its appeal.  This project could easily have settled on mere nostalgia and reminiscing on times gone by, but it manages to do more than that by showing us the creative process in action in a way that is stripped of preconceptions and pretenses.  Whether you're a fan of Dylan or not, you can't look at these performances and the processes leading to them without marveling at the creative spirit driving it all.  Ultimately, this film is a celebration of that unbridled creativity, even in the license taken with the truth in its creation.  

I think that, perhaps, the introduction of fictional elements into this story is part of the magic which makes it more than just a document of the past and gives it a life in the present.  That unhinging is a means of making it live in the now.  Watching it, you don't feel like it's just old history, but something alive and responsive.  Even in the transitions from contemporary interviews to the archival film of the performances, there's a dynamic tension that wrestles with the viewer and pushes you to engage in a more active way.  You can't simply accept anything at face value and that demands you question everything you're watching.

You kinda need to go into this with one foot in the world of fact and one in the world of fiction, looking at it as a story, but also a history come to life.  As a fiction, it needs good characters to work and there are no shortage of them here, whether they were real or not.  Dylan himself is both ethereal and down to earth, depending on where you find him.  His present day interviews offer a character who is matter of fact and plain spoken, but his archival character seems more enigmatic and obtuse and then his on stage persona becomes something else altogether.

Visually, he was into wearing white face paint, crudely applied, for these performances.  At one point, he comments that someone wearing a mask is "always going to tell you the truth".  It's a line that stuck out for me as it touches on the heart of this film; the interplay between "fact" and "fiction".  The fiction of the mask enables the fact of the words to come through as the distortion of the ego is negated by the mask.  Then there's the hilarious confession that he got the idea for the makeup after seeing KISS perform in New York (he didn't).  Topped off with his flowered hat and hobo vest, the look is perfectly contrived, but also perfectly natural.  RuPaul says that "we're all born naked and everything after that is drag" and Dylan's "drag" on this tour works brilliantly to create the traveling carnival ring master.

It all works to manifest an iconic persona which makes you want to pay close attention to what he has to say.  Often, lyrics in music can lose much of their meaning and impact as the melody and rhythm of the song turns them into an abstraction, but here, I found myself paying particular attention to them and feeling myself drawn into their stories.  Dylan's timing, phrasing and cadence all conspire to hook your attention into what he's saying even if he might be caterwauling somewhat off key, though that never seems to matter.  The force of his convictions makes the sound of his voice seem like an incantation, conjuring up the events and people he's written about.  

Beyond Dylan, there are many other notable characters.   Scarlet Rivera is magical as the so-called "Queen of Swords".  She is quintessential in defining the musical idiosyncrasy which is core to the band and the sound they make.  Her violin lifts these performances into something more metaphysical that simple "folk" music.  And her presence on and off stage offers a perfect example of how Dylan put this band together and then let them all shine as individuals within that setting.  This ties back into the idea of thwarting expectations as this "revue" deftly avoids playing into what the audience may have wanted in terms of "the hits" and offers them the "now" instead.  

The other key figure here is Allen Ginsberg, who, in his "old man of the mountains" role, doesn't demand his disciples climb up to him, but rather brings his mountain on the road and offers it to the people.  It is Ginsberg who provides the philosophical foundation upon which this endeavor is built.  His exhortation at the end of the picture is profound and inspiring as he pleads with the viewer to go out and try to create something for themselves, to set their own "traveling circus" in motion.  Earlier in the film, Dylan says that life is not about "finding yourself" or anything, but rather "creating" yourself and creating things.  The entire film is an example of this process, a reflection of it and a product of it. 

With this exploration of creativity comes a sort of "lament" for something which seems to be in danger of extinction as humanity swirls around the drain, preparing for its final flush.  There's a melancholy about the transience of the creative process and how it can leave only "ashes" in its wake.  Scorsese seems to be desperately trying to rekindle the kind of creative spark this film celebrates as we get a glimpse of an American spirit which has largely vanished.  This film appears at a time when the country is in a state of crisis like it has never seen before.  It's an existential watershed moment where what humanity does in the next few years will have profound effects on whether or not we can even survive as a species. 

Yet, within that big picture, the kernel of truth is best found in the smallest of moments.  The finest example of this is the scene where Joni Mitchell is performing at Gordon Lightfoot's house along with the rest of the band.  It's a moment of pure intimacy and raw creativity as she does what she does best.  And I have to say I was struck by how much it reminded me of what Laurie Anderson does, though without the technological trappings.  But I could see a clear line of connection between the mannerisms and narrative techniques of the two which I'd never seen before.  Regardless, the moment is precious and personal and clearly illuminates the essence of what is being celebrated and cultivated. 

These moments are all wrapped up in this crazy story about a group of artists flying in the face of practicality to produce something that can reach into the human heart.  The fictional film makers, managers and hangers on woven into this tapestry serve a purpose in underscoring the mammoth impracticality of this whole concept while highlighting the magic that it creates.  The concept of the Rolling Thunder Revue was to set a group of creative souls on the road and have them go to places where regular people rarely get to see artists of this caliber in a setting where they were able to present a performance free from  expectations.  While the general critical consensus at the time was decidedly mixed and the economics of it were a disaster, the emotional impact of it is profound when you catch it.  This becomes crystal clear in one shot of a woman after a performance who, at first, appears to be stunned and then breaks down into tears as the impact of what has just happened sinks in.  It's a perfect portrait of the interplay between artist and audience when that connection reaches its full potential.

I'm still trying to understand why this film connected with me as much as it did.  I wasn't expecting it and wasn't prepared for it, which is why I've felt compelled to spew so much verbiage.  I suspect I'll be delving into aspects of this for some time, which is a wonderful thing for any creative product to inspire.  It's not just something you watch and then forget and I think that's a pretty significant achievement for everyone involved.