Chapo Trap House - 356 - Sympathy for the Joker (10/8/19)

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

The Chapo Group has assembled a roundtable of experts to answer the simple, yet essential question of our day: is there a Joker crisis in America? Featuring Jacobin's Jen Pan, Cum Town's Nick and Adam, and of course, a remote piece from our international film critic, Matt V. Brady.

Gentlemen and ladies, we convened here today to discuss what I think is the greatest social crisis facing our nation, and we are going to do it now, the first time ever, a chopo symposium on the issue, is there a Joker crisis in America? I will be doing the role of McLaughlin on the McLaughlin group to introduce this, you know, all-star cast here, let's be honest, we're playing with a full deck, Jokers are wild, and as such, we've got all aces bringing you this conversation here today, beginning with... Introduce yourself.

Felix Biedermann, I consider myself the Pap-U-Canon of this roundtable, asking why the Joker has gone to Israel so many times, and why those scars are scars from circumcision. I couldn't do the joke visually, Matt, it was a joke before everyone got here, before the McLaughlin group formed. Good joke. I mean, it was pretty good. I was just disappointed, because I didn't get to set it up by calling him the Joker. Oh, very funny.

No, I think I have a different opinion on this movie than most of the people here, but I think we can all agree on one thing, the music choice, especially for a key scene in the movie... Yet! Perfect! Absolutely perfect! We're very... We're going to...

Gary Glitter is very good. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Next on the panel. Hey, I'm Jen Pan. My qualifications for talking about this movie are that I've seen it, which apparently is more than most people who are writing about it, including some articles I saw today in Vogue and the Cut that were titled, Things Like Why I Won't Be Seeing Joker.

It's important to take a stand. You need to have your voice heard. This is true. Amber Lee Frost, you know, dedicated soldier and the glorious cause of the workers' movement, and PhD in Joker studies. Matt Crispin here. I am reviewing this film, A Changed Man, because of all of the ways I thought I could possibly respond to this movie, I do not think in a million years I could have predicted the way

that I actually did, and we'll talk more about it later. Will Minnaker host McLaughlin, Chapo Trapp House? Adam can introduce both of us. We got Nick from Come Town Podcast, Adam from Come Town Podcast, and I'm glad you guys invited us on to talk about our buddy Shane from the Matt and Shane podcast, who recently fired from SNL. Can you imagine if they tried to put him in that movie? Yeah, no, I'm just like pissed off all the fucking talk.

These fucking Chinese people won't let me say shit that I want to say. So yeah, so obviously he got a raw deal, and so thanks, I mean, we're going to show some thoughts on that. We're going to get into it, but leading off the symposium, we do have a special guest calling in from Australia, international film critic, Matt V Brady, will kick things off with his first thoughts on Joker. Matthew Brady, audio log. I'm recording this in the hopes that there's still someone out there to listen to it.

I think it's important that at least one person stands witness to these end days. I suppose, I suppose I should start at the beginning. I can only speak to what happened here in Australia, we lost contact with the rest of the world pretty quickly. On the 4th of October at 10.23am, the Australian Prime Minister ordered every fighter jet the Australian Air Force has into the air. That's right, all eight of them. Their target was simple, every cinema blacks and TV theatre in the country.

The resin, the Joker movie, unfortunately the bombs came too late. A few bold souls had tried to warn us beforehand. They told us this movie was dangerous, but we just didn't listen. And even that was an understatement. Joker, directed by Todd Phillips is like the black death and the Spanish flu combined. This movie has dropped more bodies than Hillary Clinton. Watching it is like staring at the opened Ark of the Covenant. Movie theatres just became charnel houses.

And the few that managed to survive, you could hardly call them lucky. You see the movie, it infected them somehow. It was like a virus or something. They'd walk out of the theatre, immediately get online and create a gimmick account like Joker Rates Dogs or At Got McJoker and just unleash havoc. It's still hard to believe how fast it all happened, how fast the world ended. I suppose I should attempt to describe the movie itself. Future generations, if there are any, deserve to know what happened in the before time.

You see, I did see the movie. I had to. I managed to find one of the few theatres that didn't get hit. I didn't even need to buy a ticket. There was no one at the register or the concession stand. There was no ushers. I don't even know if there was anyone in the projectionist booth. But that movie, it was playing, so I sat down to watch it.

Or I tried to at least. It was kind of hard to pay attention to the movie itself. I mean, I was constantly having to check the exits or scan the rest of the audience for potential threats. I got up and went to the bathroom seven times and searched it just to make sure no one had hidden a weapon in there, Michael Cooley owned style. And when I wasn't doing that, I couldn't even sit down. I had to spend the entire movie in a combat crouch with my weight evenly distributed between

both feet so that I was ready to launch myself in any direction at the first sign of danger. One thing I did notice though, for a movie called The Joker, it wasn't actually very funny. There was a pretty light on actual jokes. I feel like The Joker himself could have maybe done a few more bits, you know, like say he had a cane of Coke Zero, for instance, and he took a little sip and he went, huh, this Coke Zero tastes a little funny. Yeah, I guess there's a one in it.

Mad Matt. Mad Matt now wandering the loam of the outback. A harrowing report from Australia. I couldn't understand anything he was saying. On how the Joker madness is spreading. But we've all now exposed ourselves to it. And I want to begin this roundtable discussion with Felix, your article in Deadspin, I think is a great jumping off point, could you talk a little bit about the history of the Joker

in American culture, how this Joker fits into our current moment, and some of what you make of the reaction to the movie itself. From there, you wrote a great review, nothing in it is wrong, but I think we're going to widen anything that I write. Right in the aperture of this discussion because we have some very, very enthusiastic takes on this movie. Well, so the Joker, you know, Joker is a lens you can see certain periods of American history through like the the Caesar Romero Joker who I mistakenly refer to as the Oscar Romero

Joker in the initial draft of the article that somehow went to publication initially. That's actually it was a good comparison because the military and those death hoontas were basically were the Batman of the 80s. Yeah, no, United Fruit Company Wayne Industries, but he represented a whimsical time where you know we tried to kill Castro with poison dental dams and things like that. Of course Castro, he was part of the anti condom movement, so he was he was safe forever. But you know, in the 90s, you had like an ad buster style Joker and Jack Nicholson, who had no real like nothing really beyond like, you know, taking an art gallery and

making it crazy. And then when we became very self serious and gritty after 9 11, because we had lost a war, we had Heath Ledger. And now we have the perfect Joker because it creates a for this time, because there's a bunch of sound and fury and reaction and counter reaction about this thing that this movie isn't actually about. And journalists alternating between telling themselves the same 30 jokes they've told since like late 2016 against an army of people who are radicalized, not radicalized, but

just pay attention to guys on YouTube named like the snarky logician arguing with each other forever about this thing that's just like it would have just been like a slightly above average movie in 2006. Jen Pan, your thoughts. So we I'm sure we'll talk about all the political stuff and I do want to dive into that. But I think I really like the movie just on the basis of it being kind of like a movie about psychological disintegration, which is like the sort of best movie genre that there is.

And I mean, I think that, you know, one particular part in that in the movie where that comes through is kind of when there's that sort of reveal near the end, where it turns out that he's kind of hallucinated this relationship with his neighbor who lives down the hall. And that was sort of the, you know, point that people I think got a little upset or uncomfortable about. They were like, this is the kind of like incel part or whatever. But I, you know, I really didn't think it was like a condemnation of her. He didn't seem to be particularly angry at her.

She seemed like a good mom and a good neighbor. But you know, there was that kind of reveal where it was like, oh, he is completely batshit. But I thought that was pretty cool, even if that kind of moment was a little bit fight clubby or, you know, a bit, um, I don't know, a bit tired at this point. And we, I, there's promises that we'll talk about Gary Glitter. So I'll hold off on that, but that's like, yeah. We need to treat Nisheed Thread and Gary Glitter. Amber.

Okay. So I actually went into this, like knowing that it was going to be like a series of homages and I had like a major like criticism, it would be that it was like a little too packed with homages. But I thought that actually in many ways it was the inverse of like a, like a death wish or, um, you know, a taxi driver because those are, um, movies, uh, that are high art and highly reactionary. And this is a movie that's not really high art, but it has perfect politics.

It is a class war movie, but the kind of like liberal punditry class wouldn't know class war if it bit them in the ass. Like, like they would watch like, you know, the execution of the Roman offs and be like, racism much. Like it's actually insane. And I think the most interesting thing about the movie is that like it has proven that like the Trump administration has turned every like liberal into like a 1970s Wisconsin housewife, just like listening to her son's heavy metal records backwards, looking for secret satanic

messages. It's completely insane. I think it's amazing. Watch this about the central park five minutes about insults and when it's just so clearly about class war, if anything, this movie has exposed the psychosis of the kind of like, you know, cultural media liberal. And it's not even like subtly about that. There are points in the movie.

That's the biggest complaint is that it's like two on the nose about class war. There are points in the movie where you just see like newspaper headlines that just say kill the rich. Uh, we'll get to that, but, uh, next up, Matt Christman. All right, I went into this movie expecting myself to have basically Felix's opinion of all this ridiculous mess and cultural Misha gosh over this, what a perfectly moment. We have this garbage and just this stupid sterile argumentation about garbage. That's so perfect.

And that's what I was expecting to think. And I was of course also resentful of just the idea that now every film has to just be a superhero movie for it to get funding. So you just make good movies and turn them into superhero garbage, but I sat down to watch it and I now believe that it is, I think honestly, almost accidentally and not really through an effort of any of the filmmakers just lightning in a bottle, a work of surpassing brilliance and a master case. I think it is genius.

I think it is brilliant. Michael Moore agrees with you. I think that there are two levels of analysis here that are incredibly sharp and illuminating and like felt made me like feel like I had taken an intellectual fucking, uh, enema. They just like made so many things that felt kind of right outside the tip of my tongue to make sense. Like it just by, by exemplifying two phenomenon, one is it distillates the last 20 years of cultural conversation about what the Joker means as a cultural character, right?

Because the Joker has been around forever, but only since like dark night, uh, the Joker has become a focal point in culture. He's a shibboleth for white male alienation, right? Like you know, uh, the twisted idea, the idea, you know, why should I apologize for the monster? I've become nobody apologized for making me one, right? That's what the Joker represents. And this movie is about how that, what that means. It has to be a movie about the Joker.

It has to be a Joker origin story because it's the origin of the Joker, not as a character in the marble DC universe. But as a cultural phenomenon, what the Joker comes from. And then on the level, on the level of the text itself, you have the pro, the whole movie is about the polar process. Where bicultural, capitalist cultural hegemony takes white male alienation and directs it away from class consciousness towards individual nihilism. And that is the process of the movie.

That is the movie is his class alienation that all people feel being directed by culture down to this nihilistic path and away from a real revolutionary spirit. And that's why it had to be a 70s period piece because that is one, because the Joker now is a gritty character. Like that's the whole joke is that it's comic book stuff, but he's serious. And the 70s is when we invented gritty cinema. It was the first new Hollywood 70s is when gritty cinema existed. And it has to be a superhero movie because that's the current coin of the cultural realm.

And it's like people who grow up with these cultural references and experience class based alienation are then channeled because of the culture that they consume towards nihilism and away from class consciousness. And the dream at the end where he gets held up, spoiler alert and embrace that isn't real is that like that thing that could actually be good, the suppressed desire for community and solidarity. And then he snaps back to being literally in the asylum and separated and unable to connect to others and committed to a life of meaningless violence.

And then you have the fact that the liberals decided to tell people this movie is too scary. It's too bad. You're all going to become in cell shooters. If you see it, don't see it. So of course, all these guys go and see it because that's enticing. And now they can't analyze it about class consciousness because they've already been told it's actually about how you're an entitled white male who wants to be in charge and you hate women in minorities.

And then you see the movie and you're like, well, I relate to a lot of this, but I guess it's about being a Nazi and I'm a Nazi now because they're they're brainwashing. They're literally washing it and poisoning it in by saying that shit and they hope you'll take that message away. You've been talking for an hour. I'm sorry. I'm done. Like I said, I'm just going to say a few things and that was one of them.

I probably won't talk again for like 20 minutes. It's not true. Nick. Oh, yeah. I just thought it was tight. So, I mean, yeah, I guess everybody projects their own. I mean, literally everybody projects everything they're feeling onto this fucking movie for some reason.

But the only important thing to me was that Todd Phillips could make a funny movie when he needed to. And the moments that are supposed to be funny in that movie are fucking hilarious. So I mean, that alone did it for me. Other than that. Yeah, it's great performance. Fucking fun to watch. Best actor in the world.

Yeah. It's just it was it was fun. It's a fucking fun movie. I don't know how you go see that movie. You don't walk away like not feeling like you had a good time. Adam. I think I guess I depart from what everyone's been saying. I think the movie was about anti-Semitism.

A lot of people scoff at us because we're failed stand up comedians and we bathe our mothers and we get into bed with our mothers and watch late night television with them. And, you know, I think, you know, one day we could we could maybe snap, you know, one day we could maybe like, you know, kill the president or something like that, you know. So I think, well, no, I mean, I agree, dude, you guys are way smarter than me. Well, I guess the movie does culminate with, I guess we should talk a little bit about like, you know, Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, his take on the Joker. Felix, you described how previous incantations of the Joker have fit into American culture.

Two questions. A, where does Jared Leto Joker fit into your equation? And where does Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck Joker? Well, Jared Leto was perfect for like the pre-Trump hyper consumer of media period because it was like this fucking idiot doing something stupid and then people running it into the ground and this thing becoming financially viable despite what, you know, a few odd hundred thousand people who consume every bit of media said. So it was the perfect pre-Trump thing.

But this one, like, just in and of itself, like, removed from what I think of the movie as a whole, he does, like, Joaquin Phoenix's, he's the greatest, he does a fucking amazing job playing a deeply disturbed, like, sort of sympathetic, isolated man. Yeah, no, he's twisted his fuck. Also, just amazing dancer. I have to say, like, I know there were like five, like, weird, like, interpretive dances, but he's like clearly taken some Martha Graham glasses. Absolutely.

He's got loose hips. He's wonderful. Yeah, he's in his body. And then the fact that he gave himself computer neck for the movie, to appeal to those who when there's no reason, he doesn't work at a desk, there's no reason for his posture to look like that. Right. He looked like the Hanway unboxing kid, like, it's fucking amazing.

He's, he's, he's the king. Jen, like, as Phil's alluded to, like Joaquin Phoenix, his, his portrayal of the Joker, Arthur Fleck, a struggling comedian, but to me, what the movie was really about is a guy, a fairly harrowing and affecting because of Joaquin Phoenix's performance, portrayal of a guy suffering from mental illness and the lack of social resources to help him or his family. Like, do you think that, like, the portrayal of, like, sort of civil service and social good in the movie says that it's like, it's a lack of that, that's killing Arthur or is

it like, are they as indifferent as the Thomas Wayne, you know, sort of charitable billionaire character? Yeah. I mean, you know, as Amber said, like, I too thought that the movie had perfect politics such that when we walked out of the theater, we went to see it together, and when we walked out, I said, I'm going to call the movie Woker. Um, I mean, I think that, you know, obviously, like, he is psychologically disintegrating and the backdrop is, you know, one of extreme economic inequality, the retrenchment of the

welfare state, uh, and, you know, labor unrest, um, did everybody catch that whole, like, garbage strike? Right. The garbage strike. Which also means that the trash is piling up. Yeah. Like, literally chained to a radiator and beaten in to break the image of his child. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, he had a lot of shit going on. Um, but I also think about that part in the movie where he is talking to his social worker and at first, he, you know, he's kind of like, oh, you're not listening to me and it sort of seems like she's not that invested. Um, but then she's like, the money is gone.

They don't give a shit about you, but they also don't give a shit about me. So, you know, I think that, um, overall, his kind of like, own turmoil was very, very much set in this, you know, larger context of societal disintegration. Um, and I mean, I have more to say about just like American mainstream American movies and class conflict, uh, but, you know, let's, we'll come back. Yeah. I think that that element of, uh, of him, of him being alienated from the social welfare state, but then at the end of the thing about that we don't have any money, it's, it's,

it's very perceptive about failed and haul intentionally because the idea is these aren't, these institutions aren't alienating in themselves. They are a hail, they are hollowed out by the like neoliberal state. Like they are intentionally deprived of resources so that they don't function. And but what the function of that is, is that someone who interacts with those institutions in a way that is alienating is then alienated from the state as a concept and it further atomizes them and takes their rage and makes it more personal and makes them hard. It makes it harder for them to see things as like the product of, you know, capitalism.

So I thought like also like it was the thing that annoyed me is that like, I realized like, oh, this is a, we live in a society movie and I don't like that they're using comic books to tell like Ken Loach stories, but nonetheless, I will say that I do think everyone who is not like the wealthy people there are portrayed relatively like sympathetically, um, or at least like opaquely enough to leave room. Like really the only true enemies in it are one, like Wall Street guys and two, like these lofty allegedly benevolent liberal, you know, billionaires. Yeah.

And like I thought that was pretty good. I thought like even like, you know, the kids that knocked him around like later on, he was just like, yeah, I should have chased them because also his Jewish coworker who plants the gun on him. Yeah. It causes all the problems. I don't know. No, that was the dwarf.

But yeah. The Jewish man. I thought it was weird when, uh, Phoenix looked directly into the camera and told the viewer to Google the U.S. Liberty. Okay. So like, I, I agree with what you're guys saying about like the politics of the movie, but that's still like, it doesn't make like the actual movie that great for me.

Well, it's really heavy-handed because it's a fucking comic book. Right. Exactly. It's, it's like, if you zoom way into it and just look at it as like, this is a stupid movie about the Joker. It's fucking great. It's not a clown. It's a fucking mad at Batman.

Yeah. It's like, the only thing Todd Phillips said about the movie, the only thing Todd Phillips said about the movie is like, yeah, you can't really make jokes anymore. And that's it. That I've been heard like him way, like weighed into these conversations at all. And that's like what I've heard from the filmmakers. I think he said at one point, he's like, you know, you're not like, he's like, he's not like a hero.

He's just like a subject. And I feel like people don't understand. The people who made the movie. Everyone's baby brain out. Don't give a shit about that. Everybody, everybody who's in a movie has to be a good guy that you root for because it teaches you good lessons and how to be a good person because you have breaking bad is where that fucking started the final season of breaking bad people are like, well, shouldn't

he be in jail? Yeah. What? No, it's haste code idiocy. Right. That's that's a level, the third level of analysis that this is all very depressing because we're having these in depth meditations, my myself included. I need that $300 from dead spin for more gaming mouses, but about this thing that like it's

an impossible thing to verify, right? But if you took this movie, remove the Joker from it, remove the context that we're in from it, put it in fucking 2007 where we all watch it. How would you feel about it? I don't know. And it's depressing because yeah, not only is this movie beat you over the head, very unsubtle to the point where we're unsure of like when we delve deeper into it, we're unsure of how good it actually is.

The main criticism from it is adults who seem to have had some sort of like brain degeneration where just every piece of media has to be about friends being nice to each other. Protagonist means good guy. Protagonist means you like them. Protagonist means you are them. It's psychotic. Well, did anyone see the Florida project? Yeah.

That was just poverty porn though. No. It's I think it's the most I think it's the most beautiful movie about the American working class that I've seen. That and American honey. We're both. We're both middle class cunts, so I'm going to like fight back. But no, but who was a movie made by a beautiful movie and it is something about who made

that movie. The the guys are people for sure. Yeah, but bourgeois people do make good art. Nonetheless, it is like, I don't even know what that word is. Is this another Joker movie? Yes. In many ways. So it there's a there's a protagonist that is like a shitty person who's like a very

shitty person and it's like you don't feel like compelled to say, oh, this is a good person and this is a bad person specifically because it doesn't carry with it the baggage of the Joker is that people aren't looking at it being like, oh, is this supposed to represent like Pepe or something like people can watch that and this is also a terrible person and still like feel sympathy and feelings for them and and it's just like literally people are become it's like Hillary being obsessed with Pepe like they've lost their fucking minds. See, but that's just the thing and that's why I must fixate in my extolling of this

film is that the level that it is most powerful for me at and the one that I think justifies everything that I think you might have a narrow point about in terms of why has it got to be a Joker movie, you know, all this dumb stuff and how it's obvious to hit you over the head. In my opinion, all those things connect to to raise the movie to its highest level, which is where it is a it is a movie about how the Joker started, but not the character in the fucking comics, the phenomenon of because he represents alienated white male pathology. Yeah, right.

That is what the Joker is. That's the guys who wear it. They embrace that idea and the liberal scolds who are terrified of white men since Trump. That's where they that's what they think it is too. And this movie is about how that came into being the process of alienation and then fragmentation that turns someone and makes them identify with that instead of something more broad, well, the word something more pathological. And that's where the movie, I think, shines.

The most dangerous example of that is James Holmes or whatever. And then that's like this like Bernstein Bears thing that people think that it had more weight than it did. And it's like, yeah, again, it's like, he's it's, you know, it's funny in the movie where Joker says, no, I don't believe in it, I don't fucking pay. Yeah, no. I love that. So we wrote something about it.

Similarly, it's like, you know, he's just somebody that's severely fucking mentally ill. And it's already been written about multiple times is like the myth that won't die that he was inspired by this movie. But it's also like, dude, people got shot up at a fucking Ariana Grande concert or like, you know, what was the Stephen Paddock thing? Like Jason Alden. Yeah.

Jason Alden. It's completely deranged. It's literally because people just kind of fear these alienated young men and the things that they like. Well, well, I think I think it's also like it is, I talked about this a bit in the review. And this is obviously like a pre-Trump phenomenon is annoying to put everything through his lens, but it's because this has been going on since the 80s and before that, where people feel they have lost all power politically.

And the one place where you feel like consuming everything and reacting to everything does produce some effect is doing that with the culture. Vulgar Gromshainism. Yeah. Right. It's all entirely outsourced. There's nobody that experiences anything internally anymore. You consume it and react to it immediately in real time externally.

And they expect it to reflect it like morals that are also sort of external. But also like we've yet to like, like, I don't know how we drive home to like these insane paranoid, like liberals and conservatives that like, that's not how art works. Like it's gone past Gromshainism and it's moved into like basically superstition and history. Like no Comtown listener has actually had sex with their dad. I'm sorry. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that.

Yeah. I mean, I have evidence to the comfort. You're not a listener. But like this is like the thing, like the idea that they think that a movie is like, or any kind of art is some kind of like spell that like directs people's actions. That's not how fucking art works. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead.

It's like, it's the easiest form of like criticism of art is to just like try to identify either theory or morals and line it up with like a checklist. And it's like a shortcut to actually thinking about anything because it's much harder to describe what your feelings are, to have something to react to a piece of art and explain, this is how it made me feel rather than these are the rules it followed or did not follow. But it's gotten worse since Trump, right? Like every piece of like film, I don't know if it's turned into a Goofus and Gallant Conquest.

I think it's, I think it's the evolution of like media where, you know, you could point to a lot of things. I think a lot of it too is you have plenty of people that have like a post high school education now and then they work at fucking like Radio Shack. So they have nothing to do but like continue doing homework online. So they'll go see the Joker movie and they're like, well, I guess this has to be worth more than the $20 I spent on it. Let me like write a screed about why the Joker is a bad guy.

Like the economic incentive certainly to like see fucking like shadows and like see monsters. Yeah. They give your life more worth than it has. I don't, right. I don't even, but yeah, I don't even think it's like, it's like what Nick says, it's not even necessarily economic. It is like the two things that give your life that make you keep you from killing yourself

or novelty and meaning. This is false meaning. There's no novelty left. There is a project and I honestly don't know how conscious it is, but the outcome of this project at the elite media level of condemning the Joker and people who like it is psychos. The end result of this, regardless of whatever the conscious intent of it is, the end result of this is to take is to brand white male alienation as pathological and reactionary inherently. And that is why you condemn the Joker movie.

And then the, but the real result of that is of course the people you're talking about, they're not going to be warned away from it. They're going to be intrigued by it. And when they encounter it, they're going to encounter it on the terms you've created that say that it's pathological and they're going to then be reinforced in the idea that, oh yeah, the problem isn't economic. It's all the things you want it to be about because then you have annihilated the possibility of solidarity.

We can't have solidarity with all these white males. Oh, they're racist and they're sexist. Meanwhile, they could easily be appealed to on the root basis of their alienation, but no, you're poising the well for everybody else with these evil when. And that's, that's the actual end result of all of this demonizing the Joker. It is to reinforce this persistent cultural hegemonic agenda. It's a strategy. It's a, it's a, it's a rhetorical strategy for, for disallowing solidarity.

I don't know if, I think for like a lot of the people that just react to it, I don't know if it's a conscious strategy, but the effect certainly is like taking people who would otherwise not give a shit about this and making them identify with it. If you just point at something and say, this is bad. This is dangerous. This is going to make you specifically kill me specifically. What the fuck do you think is going to happen? Evidence of that being this movie is now obliterated most box office records for an

October release. Well, also for an already movie. This is why Eileen Jones's. The Suicide Squad Joker is interesting to look at because like, I remember thinking Suicide Squad was coming out in like 2001 because I feel like that's when the coverage of that movie began. Yes. It's sort of like fucking, you know, Jared Leto took a dump in real Smith's sleeping

bag, you know, and like every single fucking month there was like a Hollywood reporter or Vanity Fair article or something about his fucking antics. He sent them used condoms. Used condoms. He put a bullet in his mailbox, all this dumb bullshit. And I didn't even, I didn't even end up seeing Suicide Squad, but I know we got like cut down to like 10 minutes or whatever. Going back, what's the point about that?

I mean, well, I'm just saying, like, if you look at the, because you look at the media run up to this Joker coming out, you think, well, how much of this is contravence? How much control do they actually have over the way people are talking about this movie? You know, say like, okay, is all this outrage, is that like manufactured? Is it possible for them to do that? And it's like, well, if you look at Suicide Squad, they tried to do that. They tried to do, they tried to like get people like, wow, this is gonna be such a fucking twist.

They tried to do that with Lady Ghostbusters. Yes. Yeah, but the thing about, about the General Leto Joker is the reason they couldn't get it to catch fire and get people to really panic is because Trump hadn't won yet. It was, it's Trump that made the contract for the current Joker because the Trump winning is what sent everyone to a panic because they lost all control of the government, all that, but they have the readouts of culture and they're going to use them. They're going to use culture as just a vulgar brick to hit you in the head until you become

one of them. And one of the ways they're going to do that is by demonizing anything that they think is an expression of this awful male patriarchal identity that led to Trump winning because gamer Gators are why Trump won because the Pepe's are the ones who made Trump win, which is absurd. He won because Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. He got less votes to Mitt Romney. It was purely a depression of Democratic turnout because of the awful Clinton campaign.

That is the only reason he won. But now because the only explanations are cultural, it's got to be this awful trend and these awful men. And so that's why the Joker now is a problem. He was a joke when Leto was doing that stuff. And on another level. Well, Leto is also a shit of your act. Yeah.

He has an awful shit. Yeah. He's mostly good at dying. Yeah. It's like they, you know, I mean, it was a very much like trying to be into like a hot topic. But you know, it's like, ironically, the actual like fucking poor people that probably would have more in common with that character have the same taste as the Suicide Squad.

Absolutely. They're like, yeah, I want Mountain Dew Joker. You know, they don't want. Yeah. They don't really gritty 1980s like Instagram like Cartel guy, yeah, which apparently was the Leto inspiration was Instagram Cartel guys with like engraved pistols and shit like Lame suits. Yeah.

Also, it was just a way for a studio to make a superhero movie for sixty million dollars which is like unheard of and like now all these movies cost like two hundred million dollars and they're breaking box office records based off of this panic that's like associated yeah, it's like it's a perfect storm in terms of like the motivations of the character. There's like there's very little in terms of like literal exposition in the in the film with the exception of that one scene before he kills Robert De Niro or whatever and it just boils down to something about like jokes are subjective and so are morals and that's the whole point.

That's all they like really give you. Well, let's talk about the film itself. You know, it really focuses on Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, the like his portrayal of Joker. The first thing we see of him is he is like a sort of street sign clown and sort of Carnival Barker on what is it clearly a stand in for CD 42nd Street dressing up like a clown for you know at rented being at rented out to advertising purposes sort of a subway Jared type. That segway to Gary Glitter he lives at home with his mom.

He dotes on her and takes care of her. She's not quite all there. Yeah. And you know he has aspirations to you know have a stand up comedy career and generally be noticed by people and like the the dawning of his Joker personality is about like coming out of his complete and total social isolation as someone basically the person on the bus that makes you uncomfortable. Jen, like how did you feel about the development of Joaquin Phoenix's portrayal of this character

and as it relates to the politics of the movie? I mean I don't know. I think that well okay maybe I'm skipping a little ahead to Gary Glitter but I feel like maybe it's time for talking about the content of the movie so I thought that scene was awesome where he has basically it's sort of the analog of like Travis Bickel in Taxi Driver showing up at the political rally with like his head with like his new mohawk right. So like he's basically. Everyone loves the makeover scene.

Everybody. Oh my god it was totally a makeover scene. Everyone loves the makeover scene he like puts on his face paint kills a few people including his mom spoiler sorry and then is dancing on the steps to Gary Glitter and I you know I was in a Cambodian prison for pedophilia. Yeah, does everybody know who Gary Glitter is by the way or like hey but this is the word confirmed by a lot of people didn't know right. So just as like just as like a little refresher so Gary Glitter was this like British glam

rocker in the 70s and in the 90s he was convicted in the UK for possessing child pornography went to jail for a few years got out like immediately went to Southeast Asia and began molesting children twisted and you know what I found out today is he actually served his time there got out went to the UK but he's in jail again because he was like immediately convicted in 2015 he was convicted again of like multiple rape so he's in jail in the UK now so I mean for the best for the best of course yeah I'm not clearly can't keep his hands off yeah it's so like so the film critic Anthony Lane in the New Yorker and like I also read an article in the cut talking about the kind of like dancing to Gary Glitter

scene and both reviews were sort of like scandalized like oh we can't be giving royalties to a pedophile like this movie clearly did this every movie made by Hollywood but I mean what struck me about that scene is it's obviously a moment of such dysfunction that of course they had to use a jock jam by a pedophile who's in Thai jail yeah and they left it it's like I feel almost deliberately left out of the trailer that's not the music that it's paired with in the trailer and it gives you a much different idea of what's happening in that scene when you see the trailer versus the actual film well and like like on top of that like I was sort of shocked by like how many people were like did you know Gary

Glitter was and it's like yeah how do you not know about this song like honestly it seems like the media class like you have to be so simultaneously unpunct and unjocked to not expose those yeah one of the articles I read yeah yeah one of the articles I read was like this song has been plucked from musical obscurity and it's like every sporting event ever every sporting event in America ever even after it was revealed he was a pedophile they played in wars was it rock and roll number two yeah the name of the song yeah it is like any like a jock chance I was talking about this to somebody today where it was like it like they had to they'd like whoever picked it like I don't know everything about how movies are

made but I assume things go through multiple layers like don't there's no like back line for people I assume like there's a guy who's fucking awesome and imagining and they just go from there but like do you think it was music supervisor I got right right songs yeah do you think this was deliberate like there's a good chance that there's yeah it's funny but there's also a good chance that like a not insignificant number of people in that decision-making room we're just like oh yeah tight yeah just I don't know if this is knocking things off course but a brief anecdote was that there was a lady sitting in front of us and Matt was laughing the entire movie including the scene where he kills his mother

and it's a hilarious movie the lady really picks its spots but when it does do a joke it lands that's what that's what was so great about it for me is that fucking that scene where he does the joke and that little woman I guess she's supposed to be Dr. Ruth yeah she's like that's not funny to have like this old woman who talks about her pussy on TV tells him what he can't say reading out of his joke no he goes knock knock who's there it's the police your wife just died which is like which is funny because like you could you could have fucking Zach Alfinakis do that bit and it's like you know it's like Norm McDonald anti-comedy it's fucking hilarious and then that like quick cut to just the two

shot of like you can't joke about that and Bobby's like it's not funny there's certain things you can't joke about it's very it's like a fucking hilarious very good very good like comedy director and the very few people have like the ability to edit a shot was funnier than hangover three by far yeah for sure that my mom just died I'm celebrating I mean there's that is so funny just really fucking deeply funny moment anyway now was peeing his pants the whole movie and then a lady in front of us would just kept turning around and looking at him to be fair I would be worried if based on the profile yeah based on the profile she was like oh is it one of those guys sorry lady I twist it that's all there is to it

friend man it looked like Matt was Cape Fear hysterically I might be worried even if it was like a Pixar there were multiple there were multiple black women at the movie theater seeing the movie by themselves like we should talk about the the theater experience well we saw it at Alamo Draft House you guys you guys with Alamo are fucking the Trump Diet Coke you guys really we got to stop I honestly this is one thing I actually agree with the audience on they absolutely hate it when we complain about the Alamo Draft House yeah and I understand why do you listen to the audience I know I shouldn't but it's one thing I agree with them on I don't know it's an awful fucking theater but you guys see every

movie there it's insane I know it's fucking insane I like my treats okay to be fair the Fandango app doesn't work with the Regal and Union Square okay I've gotten bed bugs there numerous times and ringworm yeah ringworm what I mean it could be my fault I don't want to put it entirely yeah it's probably a poor life choices and living in a windowless tenement in Chinatown yeah but you know it must have been the most put it this way I had bed bugs and I used to go there all the time or opening day for the 420 showing literally hell yeah they were frisked yeah there was like a security security at the door bags were searched I was saying they ran the metal detector over me I want to get like full Muslim outfit you

know full garb and go to one of the theaters that searching people and be like why because I'm Muslim is that why is that why you're searching me at the joke they're like no it's the other one actually deranged and then we got in and like the theater it was an Alamo draft house like 420 showing it was like half mostly like women that just want to drink a watered down apperel spritz in the dark I saw I saw it in Williamsburg I didn't get frisked and it's like was there like a security line with metal detectors and stuff and metals like so that was just like a special Alamo thing yeah they're giant babies again they start okay we started the Alamo on Monday and because we had like a ton of people on

this episode Chris is like we have any extra XLR cables bring to the theater and I did but I brought it in this like sort of perfectly rectangular leather pouch it's actually a shout outs Jack Wagner it was the thing you left at my house when you came over to record and I brought it to the theater and I was not checked but I swear to God it looked like the perfect case for a well that's how will would do a mass shooting he would take like a he would take like a Luger that he got from his grandfather's estate out of a nice leather case yeah it wouldn't be just some vulgar AR 15 I would have like a bespoke like leather satchel okay so Arthur Fleck it's a movie is portrayal of his yeah like you know mental

disintegration but it really does you know grind down his shitty day-to-day existence and like the the catalyst for all of the the horrible things that happened in the movie in the streak of you know murders that he does is both him being given a gun by his co-worker and eventually losing his job and access to social by his more reactionary co-worker yes because when he got like yeah because he's like other just kids and then his co-worker actually like coerced him and we've already established that he was on like seven medications and then eventually he because of the social services got cut he didn't get them anymore yeah he's also the only other co-worker that's not marginalized in any way other than by

being bald but that's this is so like where do you have to what how did he end up there his his condition is material and it's like yeah culture buffets him in one direction it gives him the idea of a power fantasy with a firearm instead of solidarity and it gives him like someone to blame without it like pushes him in that direction I'm just adding that is like something else to throw in the pile as arguments against any commentary that the movie is like reactionary in any way with regards to race because I don't know you said that that somebody was saying that it's like the Central Park five was opening scene of like Italians and they were very multiracial colors of Benetton gang yeah like moreover like I'm

sorry but the focal point of the Central Park five was a rape in a park yeah rape of a rich white lady yeah like this had nothing to do with the opening scene the movie is him you know out on the street hawking his sign and then like yeah a gang of teenagers steals his sign runs away he chases after them because you know he's going to get his pay docked if he loses the sign of the store that he's doing his clown chilling for they run down an alley the teens hit him with the sign and beat the shit out of him in an alley and then it's like you know you know title credit joker over the screen is like the the first scene is of him being you know beaten and humiliated in the street by a group of rowdy teens but the

real like the the real violent turn to the movie is after losing his job and having this gun he murders three sort of like they're coated as like wall street stock bros but it's going to reveal that they work for Wayne Industries and their frat brother bros and he does like drunken they assault him yeah what is Wayne Industries does that deserve what is that it's yeah they manufacture items yeah part of the business it's one of those things where it's anything yeah no in the in the Batman universe Wayne Industries just seems like they produce smokestacks like that's their main act and you know and also the pollution factories and the racism fact also in this movie Thomas Wayne is running for mayor and we see him as

sort of a fake philanthropic Michael Bloomberg style self-styled benevolent billionaire he's the only one that can save Gotham and there's even a moment on TV where he goes on the news responding to the Arthur's murder of these three finance guys on the subway that you know there's like an anti-rich attitude and people who are jealous of success are you know striking out at their betters their clowns and it's important to point out that Thomas Wayne because we say what does Wayne Industries do it's always very very vague but and it's often just what's convenient terminal it's convenient it's what's convenient for the plot but I think that the modern understanding if you ask somebody what are you in your head think that Wayne Industries

does it is definitely a manufacturer or something right it's not like a brand or like pharmaceutical company or something it's a manufacturer which means that there is zero chance that around the time of this movie is exactly when a Wayne Industries industries starts massively relocating their facilities out of the United States like they are in the process of moving to Mexico and then later China all of that shit is being done in foreign countries it would be cool if they stayed in this universe and did another like 1981 period piece for Bain but he's an Italian bodybuilder from Bensonhurst and his dad's like greasing him up before he's like Ben you look so beautiful like such a beautiful baby boy Ben he's just never seen the light because dad's cheap makes him look in

the basement dad Wayne's company they do in a banquet hall at where we were gonna do the body building competition so they canceled it and that's his backstory is that he lost to Arnold because when he was in his top shape they had to cancel the bodybuilding competition that would that would be cool if Wayne Industries their actual business was club promotion yeah we came up with ladies night for that reason and many others Thomas Wayne is definitely the closest thing to a antagonist or villain because also the movie sort of introduces the idea into the Batman universe that the Joker is the bastard son and half-brother of Thomas Wayne that's not clear it brings it very frightening the movie brings it back and like implies it like his mother who he

like uncovers a letter which would imply that he is Thomas Wayne's bastard child and that's why he's lived a hellish deprived existence as his father's sort of primordial denial of his existence and responsibility for fatherhood but then it sort of brings it back and implies that maybe his mother is just crazy as well and also the real source of his abuse and trauma in his life but it was supposed to be Alec Baldwin also and so they got a guy that looked like Alec Baldwin to play Thomas Wayne yeah and he would have played it like Trump it would have been amazing you're loser Arthur buh-bye you're cloud you're cloud you get the cloud out of here he's like the inflection he used with like the greedy little pig message on the like yeah no I mean like that

that was like you know again like but the biggest complaint you can have about this movie is like it's a bit on the nose but the like you know you abandoned me kind of thing and like you know you whatever exploited my mother either like literally or whatever like it's again it's a little on the nose but like you know you the you paternalistic wealthy people have abandoned your children yeah let's see that's the thing I think it has I think it has a allegorical sort of symbolic valence and that is that even if he isn't technically his half-brother in his mind he sees himself as a half-brother of Bruce Wayne yeah and Bruce Wayne and Arthur represent socio economically the great divergence in like white at the destruction of the white middle class after

yeah the industrialization what what what I hate to quote him but what Charles Murray crawls the great divergence right where the mass of what of like the non-skilled class collapsed in their standard of living and the knowledge economy whites and urban areas and suburbs they went off no but and there's Bruce Wayne and then there's also greatly negatively affected black Americans too no that's what I'm saying is that it's not a unique phenomenon it's just it was experienced specifically by this group this way he's not a good it is a universal phenomenon it's just that he doesn't experience it universally he experiences it through these cultural baffles to take him away from recognizing that it is a universal phenomenon and towards the specific and the alienated he's

not a good father to Bruce Wayne in the movie either essentially banning him and leaves his son to wander around the edges of his property and be molested by seriously yeah and then when he meets the man who sexually assaulted his son the day before he's like oh you're that guy that came to my house yeah he's like that's weird oh yeah you're that guy that came to my house you gave my son flowers listen you do that again pal I'm gonna be pretty fucking mad he also stuck his fingers in his son's mouth yes to make him do the smile and thankfully Ricky Gervais says Alfred saved us yeah they made Alfred cool yeah did anyone read the Eileen Jones thing this isn't a review but it was like a kind of like like historical retrospective on like moral panics

around film it's really good it's incredibly good like last like which ones there's just one I mean like obviously do the right thing and do the right things a big one and on shanandalu which was like such a limp dick where because he was like I'm going to incite riots and people were just like golf clapping at it remember and natural born killers yeah cuz a huge fight and in fact they alverstone ended up getting sued by John Grisham did you guys remember this really there was a copy what the media called there was a there was a boyfriend and girlfriend teens who went on a crime spree in like Alabama Mississippi and the media and they killed a like grocery store clerk or something in a robbery and the media said oh they were inspired by a natural

born killers and John Grisham was like family friends with the guy who died and he initiated a lawsuit of Oliver Stone like he led to the death of his friend was the greatest lawyer in America oh it's terribly stupid that's the first I mean that's that's where you take it to the furthest extreme the article is just called Joker in the long history of movie moral panics and she said moral panics about provocative films like Joker's oldest cinema itself but more often than not their proof of the film's merit and of a deeply anxious middle class which is like the perfect the thing that I know the Edison movie Reverend thought the train was going to run it but I mean it was very threatening speaking of anxiety of like the middle class and specifically

the media class who made this into a story the palpable disappointment that there was not some sort of shooting this weekend they wanted so bad for somebody to shoot so that they could confirm everything they ever thought about trash dick male boys and it didn't happen and they're fucking pissed I just want to read this one paragraph because it like really zeros in on like white people around and this is before the movie and came out the furor surrounding new Joker movie movie started not from a disastrous screening but from an ultra successful one it got an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and subsequently won the film's prestigious Golden Lion Award just for context Golden Lion has gone to Rashomon, Ivan's Childhood,

Battle of Algiers, Vagabond, Orpholes Enfants, the story of Chijoux, Vera Drake, Brokeback Mountain and Roma. Just hoping someone's having a good time somewhere I like to think that Europartiers at the Venice Film Festival did that voting were trolling us anticipating the moral and aesthetic freak out among American guardians of culture at the elevation of Joker to significant art film standards. I picture them hooting so hard wine spews out their nose. You know what? She's a million percent right that it was one it was absolutely trolling yeah but it was also true. Good. They got to troll America and also honor a film that I think is fucking brilliant. It's of its time certainly. It's like if movies now are supposed to be these

cultural reflectors if that's the idea well then do you have to love this movie because this movie actually is culturally relevant and insightful. I wish we had most of the movies that get plaudits for like yeah this movie really takes it to toxic masculinity. Horseshit it's all fucking pandering garbage that just it exists to elicit a head pat for people who can easily deconstruct its baby brain ideology. This is a fucking challenging movie that's willing to do the Verhoeven thing of embodying certain malignancies and even bad filmmaking tropes to make a greater point. I agree. You're talking about love guru. That was hilarious. Is that yeah. He's like I'm an Indian guy baby.

Yeah. Okay so on the subject of Ken Loach. Sorry you should have invited us on this. Y'all are so smart. Love guru and Ken Loach. No just Ken Loach. Okay on the subject of Ken Loach though I mean when we're talking about like I don't know American like mainstream American movies and like class conflict or whatever like I mean Joker in terms of like art as you were saying is kind of bad right but but as Matt you were saying is kind of in a different tradition which is that I don't know we don't have a Ken Loach in America you know so our like Hollywood blockbusters about class conflict are basically the purge franchise yeah Batman movies the purge franchise that recent movie ready or not yeah I don't know I like all those movies but there

they are also all like oh the rich are literally hunting the poor with crossbows will no one do anything it's a little on the house well yeah it has to be because we don't have a yes we say we don't have a class term tradition we can only like put it in an exploitative box which is why I like ready or not a lot which is why I love the purge franchise which I think this might be the apotheosis of that approach the last purge one was pretty kind of a little problematic it rule they try to they try to make a black black purge it was great that one oh I saw the theaters I really saw the first grabber joke in it yeah no that would be that was the first purge I think the first purge confusingly the third purge is called the first purge is the best of the series it is

like is that the last one it's like a black exploitation social realist like propaganda movie it's right I saw the first one and it's like okay there's one day where you can kill anybody and I watch it it was fun it was fun and then the second one is like okay purge too so there's one day where you can kill anyone they like add more exciting elements out of like the premise yeah so at first it's like oh the state's not here you can kill everybody by the second one it's like the state is secretly engineering the killing what happens in the third one I can't the third that's the first one it's like a housing project right yeah well no it's about because a woman is running for president to end the purge and the evil nazis who run the government hire a bunch of

like like literal like racist mercenaries led by Phil there's false flags you think Anthony michael hall to kill her assassinate her on purge and I because they lift the restriction on political figures so the killer and it's all about how this revolution army wants to just kill all the evil nazis who run the world and she says no that makes us just like them we have to win the election it's all about electoral reformers in eight years we'll get an anti-war punisher movie but what's so funny about that is that that movie is very reformist but the first purge the next one is very revolutionary it's Maoist practice that's the first but wait wait what did you say what we're gonna get in the next year is an anti-war punish well that's the what's so frustrating about that

fucking netflix punisher is that netflix punisher was made by hollywood woke people and they were handed an incredibly reactionary fucking thing the punisher is just right-wing reaction from the 70s from the from the death wish era it is reactionary and they tried to make him like woke and he's actually killing nazis and but he's like he's a guy who kills people pathologically you have to try to do something like that and instead they're like no we're gonna have our cake and eat it too and it's totally and go here it sucks they need to embrace the joker as a bad guy the way this or the fucking punisher is a bad guy the way this movie does okay but they should make a version of the fantastic four where they fight the national debt on the anti-war tip though

like i when i was just reading these reviews like just you know numbing my mind with like liberal moral panic idiocy like one of the things people kept saying was just like oh so we're supposed to feel sorry for this person i was supposed to sympathize at one point someone says oh because people didn't love him enough and it's like he's like chained to a radiator really so i felt really sorry for i was not you're sorry but on the anti-war thing i realized liberals are now invoking something that we originally did with i think the um the juvenile delinquency scare and then the war on uh drugs and the war on crime and then the war on terror where anytime you were like oh shit some people like hit some buildings with a plane what are we oh you know what maybe america's

foreign policy might have something to do with that and they're like what are you sympathizing with the terrorists like absolutely you want to solve these problems yeah you want to pet you want to like make blame him for responding to no they want to be moralizing like fucking like judges and like it's like if you ever suggest like a pragmatic approach to something where it's like oh where do these people come from they're like look some people are just monsters and our entire role is to condemn them and you know what even if he might be bad even if you're like well yeah but even if you don't buy that even if you think he's responsible for his actions and he's bad so fucking what who decided at what point that you have to like and agree with the protagonist of a

movie right that they have to be a good person or they're like how do these people make something like lolita what is that child main bullshit yeah and that is the basis for all of this it's like because the Joker is not like uh the bad guy in the movie and he's the protagonist i feel i definition you have to like never really everything he does is cool that really started i feel like with with the fucking season finale or the serious finale of breaking bad i know that all the criticism of that was like he should get his comeuppance day to be should be punished i mean he died he died but it's like you know everyone was mad that like skyler should get all the money and she should go to jamaica to get her groove back and fucking his dick should fall off and he should be in jail

and it's like what just because they want entertainment to be haze right haze code era morality place yeah it's like how about this they don't sell that yeah you don't fuck over your wife no no because i see the show you're gonna make me do that it's gonna make me do it if i if he looks cool i'm gonna want to do these people believe they're like superstitious they believe art is fucking witchcraft don't listen to come town you'll have sex with your dad well when i was watching porn pornographs i want to have sex with ladies got you i don't know what you guys are saying we're over an hour so i think we should offer our concluding thoughts on where does the joker phenomenon go from here philx um we won't remember any of this shit like probably like

five days from now there'll be like a new thing a new thing that everyone fucking argues about about um yeah no you just use the rest of your life till you die um i guess the last thing i want to say about the joker and by extension like the swirl of controversy and criticism that has been coming out is um do you guys know the literary critic eave sedgwick she has this really great term which is good dog bad dog criticism which is basically what everybody does now which is to only evaluate a piece of art on how progressive it is or how reactionary it is and um i you know i think in terms of like joker like obviously i don't think it's reactionary but i you know also don't want to just swing the other way on the pendulum and be like it was so great because

the politics were great so right because i like a lot of that reaction well it was a movie but death wish is a great yes but that's different it's well it's not different when you're talking about a joker movie you know it's like a comic book movie it should that the only metric you should be like weigh this film against is like what the filmmakers stated intention or loosely is that like you can't have like you can't be funny anymore and what was the other thing he said that's the only thing i've seen time that's always this is a we live in a society basically said this guy's in a hero it's it's just like this is what happens to people right i mean you're really not supposed to like have to extract anything out of it other than like let me sit here for two hours

and if this is like funny when it's supposed to be intense when it's supposed to be then like that's it that's good that you know i don't need anything more out of a joker movie than that we don't really need to be literal or didactic right the stuff i think my thing that like leaving this like i basically can't wait till a year from now uh when people have to go back and watch this and explain why they were so scared yeah seriously like that is the thing it's like you're gonna it's gonna be like going back going to the jersey and being like hey remember and you guys all thought war the world was happening and you got muskets and put columbus around your head and formed a militia to fight off the aliens all so much of my like uh like

sort of artistic satisfaction comes from patience and foresight at this point um and i guess like i guess like the other thing is it's just like wow people just really can't enjoy anything nope no they can't they're just like incapable of enjoying because everyone's too panicked about the fact that they only control gary glitter dancing no it's a great scene yeah yeah that's cool they they're just panic they're hitting the culture button because the power button is broken that is a very good phrase i know you're drunk and that's why you said it but let's remember it no i think it's true uh so i have three final thoughts jesus christ number one can i have a question number one uh speaking to i'm glad this was brought up i have talked a lot about how i love

its themes and i think it's brilliant uh and it works on every level of metaphor uh but i also want to insist that it is not only the reason i like it i believe that when it comes to it as a film it is well acted great shots he's great every joke lands there are a handful of jokes everyone hits which is having a fucking thousand percent like ratio yeah with and having them hit that well fantastic the violence is really gripping and and and gritty in a way that is grounding his character is compelling i feel for him rare i feel for him uh i love all the performances i love the way it ends everything that happens i'm clapping when he kills his mom i'm amazed when the little person is trying to get up get out of the house and the fucking chain won't go

that's a beautiful fucking physical comedy yeah so i think at that level it works and then the on top of that the metaphors and everything are fantastic that one shot where you know he says the thing about your son was killed in a drunk driving accident and how quick and like just i mean it's like a fraction of a second to get that timing right to cut to that bitch being like you can't joke about that like how do you do that it's so fucking funny point to two two felix's uh argument that we'll forget about it in six months i agree because nothing stays in the zeitgeist for that long it's too moving too much there's too much data uh data i do think people will get mad again when it wins a bunch of oscars well then it'll come back that

when that happens but and but i think that that doesn't mean that it won't come back because the thing is as you have pointed out a million times time is a flat circle culturally everything is just the same everything never really changes so things go out of the cycle but then they come back in some are embedded because of the import i think the joker is so freighted now with cultural import as a concept and this movie is such a good job of bringing a lot of those things to the fore that it will be bow embedded and come back and it'll go away but i think it'll come back so that's my my my guess about it and then third last point i think that the importance of the joker character the his usefulness is a metaphor in the contemporary moment uh can be shown with a simple

point and that is that during the uh obama years the tea party guys would go around with posters of the obama as the heath ledger joker and it would say like uh that's what i say so it was in politics and and and there and and brock obama embodied chaos and disorder and horror and destruction of the country now at pro trump rallies they have pictures of trump is the joker and that transition from seeing the jokers this force for chaos and evil embodied by obama and now trump being of the the savior and also embodying all the joker's traits that shows you where the joker does where the what the joker's like a cultural expression and usefulness is so that's it oh wait real quick uh my ex-boyfriend is it a zizak talk the first question in the q

and a was what did he think of the jargon what did he say he hadn't seen it yet i know i do he doesn't like it i'll be very disappointed um you'll love it i do i do i do i do want to have a small retort to what matt said about this being your retort all right you know what i think childish is your podcasting is fucking childish i've never wanted to do this i regret everything um no i i i feel like we're like in a cultural lost decade where nothing from this time will be reabsorbed into the cycle it'll be forgotten for just a decade of products that were consumed for the exact time they're out and gone forever everything's such a fucking regurgitation and a reboot that everything is all the references are to other things just like joker

is but i guess that's what i mean okay i'm sorry one more thing but he will cut back one more thing on that tip i have to say i was talking about this with jen like when i think of what and i whatever i wore my iron maiden shirt in tribute of this when i think of what you know scared like the tipper gores like the last major cultural moral panic where by the way like liberals and woke people did join with like conservative christian right and the authorities to be like by the way if you listen to prince you're going to be a misogynist yeah take down twisted sister yeah like i have to say though like what did they say keep your children away from it was the simpsons and bivison butthead it was like nwa and death metal and these kids these poor kids

they get a comic book movie that's really true and you know what i feel like great art to be scared of this movie doesn't suicide bombing there's never going to be a best ever death metal band out of dentin about a joker movie you know and that's the sacrifice they were willing to make to make this movie because it had to be a comic book movie to encapsulate the entire phenomenon but the fact that it's a comic book movie will fix it in time and make it less relevant and so you know what i retract what i said joker will come back but in a different form oh yeah well did you see there's a lady joker but i find this i will say that the sacrifice this movie made is pure and beautiful and it is a fucking martyr final thoughts nick and adam i don't know go see

the movie and then go back to googling epstein gives a shit about the joker movie keep posting about epstein epstein ain't going away yeah see the see the joker movie um and and say thank you to warner brothers check out love guru too and check out love yeah for a movie dealing with similar themes as love guru and the joker check out two guns but like also just a bigger point and i i mentioned earlier don't forget that this is just a movie studio finding a way to make a fucking comic book movie for 60 million dollars and to use its pr department to drum up controversy and then have like a smash success and then it's opening weekend it is also that always be doing material is also just a fucking company making a movie that and they found a way to like yeah but

it's good and it's good that's the thing that's the thing i'm not scorsese criticism of those marvel movies where he says like oh they're like theme parks and it's like well no theme parks are fun yeah but the marvel movies just are dog shit they're not like you don't have to not enjoy i love roller coaster by like paying attention to like the political economy that produced right right right a movie have some popcorn have fun i will say this though just about the craft of it take a girl try to hold her hands ask if you hold the bottom of the popcorn i hold the woman next to you like i'm excuse me i think our popcorn's got switched can you reach to see is this your penis in my popcorn what you were going to do it just like wander around the theater excuse me

ma'am i you should when you go to see this movie you should be doing a really bad day if we could just talk for a minute and i could smell your hair no yeah when you see this movie you should do the thing that you know you should do when you see any movie and just like talk about your life's problems when you buy your ticket go right up to the ticket counter and just tell them what's going on this movie is absolutely just a cynical product of a profit-minded content mill absolutely yeah but it's just also it's just a miraculous coming together it's the way that like the thing swells out of the the ooze it's like it's just a random product of like buy of bioproduction sorry it's just it's it's dna going crazy it's life finding away as Ian Malcolm would say yeah but i will say

this i've watched every single marvel movie the vast majority of them in the theater so i'm there i'm not looking at my phone i'm looking at the screen the whole time and none nothing i've seen in what 40 hours now of footage has held my interest and attention as much as the first couple of fucking minutes of this movie i think donald said on letterbox he he found himself carrying what happened next yes which is a great review yeah now i don't give a fuck when i watch those movies i'm high or on a plane and farting there were there were maybe like two there was like a 15 minute window where that movie started to drag but other than that it was great the entire fucking time we need to wrap up the joker symposium i think the uh generally says with the consensus

view uh the joker not going away even though hollywood continues to be a you know uh a cycle of uh repetition and self cannibalization however at this one turn around the wheel the stars wanted to make something that was somewhat like somewhat uniquely perceptive about the joker phenomenon and like just general cultural relevance of this like 1930s oddball comic character that continues to uh you know bedevil the public conscious uh through you know largely and uncannily good performance by walkie and phoenix but also wittingly or not some wittingly or not some fairly perceptive and smart uh writing and directing one question oh for christ sake just know want to pose one question this is more of a comment than a question matt christman it is a

rhetorical question it does not mean to go on just think about it guys imagine a world where the character that the joker is in our world this symbol of darkness this twisted menace this incredibly challenging role for any actor to take because of the darkness within it instead of the joker it was the crypt keeper and like it's it had like fucking yakin spent six months thinking up like uh halloween themed puns how amazing that would be that's a world i want to live in i yeah no once people see the monster mash see mass shootings books uh continue continue to be twisted uh keep it twisted everybody uh this is what medicare signing off thanks again to our roundtable philips bederman genpan ember ely frost matt christman nick mullen adam freedland

chris wade and will medicare signing off bye see you so you