The Joker’s Love Affair With Male Rage

Is it okay for a film to glorify male violence?

The Joker (2019) was a controversial film before it even aired in theaters. The plot is about a mentally ill clown as he breaks down and goes on a bloody, gun-ridden killing spree. Since in the US, mental illness is often scapegoated as the cause of gun violence, you could understand why the film has ruffled one or two feathers. Throw in a b-plot about the subjectivity of comedy, and well, it triggered quite the reaction, which was probably the point. It has grossed over $93.5 million, making it the fourth highest R-rated film of all time.

With constant closeups and a repetitive violin theme, the movie desperately tries to be an excellent piece of art that addresses many of society’s pressing cultural questions. The Joker wants to be about the stigmatization of mental illness, wealth inequality in the US, the potentially violent consequences of revolution, the subjectivity of comedy, and the rise of Incel culture.

This full roster, however, means it ends up being about none of these topics. The only striking thing that remains once you strip away the “grittiness” is the main character’s anger. The Joker is actually about the rage that bubbles to the surface when white males are denied the future they think they are entitled to. It’s an accidental case study into the masculine violence plaguing our society, and we should treat its casual glorification of violence quite seriously.

Violence Personified

The Joker has always been a violent character. The archnemesis to DC Comics’ Batman is perhaps best known on the page as the person who brutally shot Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. On the Silver Screen, he is best remembered as Heather Ledger’s agent of chaos who just wants to watch the world burn.

The comics do not have a concise origin story for the clown nihilist. He is an unreliable narrator who has told Batman many conflicting accounts of his upbringing. This unreliability is brought to director Todd Phillips’s film adaptation as well. We know next to nothing about Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker by the time the credits roll. We are left doubting everything — his childhood, his illness, and even whether or not this story happened. According to Phillips, this was entirely by…