Don't you Think the Joker Laughs at You?

So... last month, I saw the Joker; which was great, but not quite what I expected. No, I'm not saying, "oh it's gotta be like the comics!!!" since I knew it wasn't going to be much like in the comics anyway. I just meant I thought that society would push Arthur (the real name he's given in this film) around for a while, then he'd be forced to participate in a heist in a chemical plant and fall into a vat of chemicals (the usual origin of the character, best told in Moore's The Killing Joke and immortalized in Burton's Batman) and it would become a kind-of slasher movie but with the Joker.

And I was way off.

It's really a brilliant piece depicting the confusion of someone living with mental illness so powerful that he has delusions. As the film progresses, we don't know whether what we're seeing is real, a delusion or a lie. Someone expecting an action blockbuster might be disappointed, and it better serves those who are prepared for a film that's more "art-house" in its approach. I also didn't think the film would utilize the Batman mythos much, but it did. Thomas Wayne is a crucial figure in the film and is portrayed in a much different light than in Batman Begins, which leads me to this point: Heath Ledger is still my favorite Joker and The Dark Knight is still my favorite Batman or Joker movie.

© 2019 Warner Bros.

But I'm not really interested in reviewing the film. Instead, I want to talk about the media's ridiculously over-the-top hand-wringing about how they expected violence at screenings for the film. I saw it at the Cinemark in Pacific Commons in Fremont and there were at-least three police vehicles.

Why?

Well, let's take a trip back to 2012. There was no DCEU and even the Marvel Cinematic Universe was just getting warmed up with The Avengers proving that you could combine different heroes into one team and one "cinematic universe." And, of course, Warner Bros released the final chapter of the Dark Knight trilogy: The Dark Knight Rises.

Tragically, at one of these screenings, some asshole in a somewhat Joker-esque costume (for fuck's sake, the guy had orange hair, the Joker has green hair!) shot up a movie theater. And since this film takes that same figure and makes a large to-do about mental health, in their infinite shallowness, thought that a copycat shootings--or many copycat shootings--might occur.

The logic, however, doesn't quite add up, when you consider one important thing: the Joker wasn't in that movie. He was the main villain of the previous film, The Dark Knight, which had come out in 2008, but not The Dark Knight Rises. No incidents at that screening. Plus, when you consider the fact that the Joker was first introduced in 1940 (and seen in countless comics since then), first seen in live-action in 1966 and the main villain of the 1989 blockbuster Batman, we can see that the Joker did not have a history of inspiring this kind of violence before the theater incident.

Then consider the fact that after The Dark Knight Rises, the Joker did appear in Suicide Squad. No, he wasn't the main villain, but it was hardly a cameo. And yes, it was a very different version of the character than what we saw in TDK, but so was the Joker of this film.

And, of course, the Joker was seen in any number of comics, animated installments and video games, including Injustice: Gods Among Us, in which--in an alternate universe, of course--he makes Superman hallucinate that Lois is Doomsday, causing him to kill her. Superman finds out, kills the Joker and starts a regime, causing the Batman of that universe to call upon the heroes of the main universe of that game.

This is an example of why the media isn't taken seriously by very many people, regardless of political stripe. They are biased. They whip people into a frenzy at will, just to move copy.