Who's Laughing Now?

Like every human being in my planet, I saw Joker. I've been thinking about doing a review, but today I want to pose a question that the movie brings to light. (Spoilers ahead.)

For those of you who haven't watched the film, the climax involves Joaquin Pheonix's Joker appearing on a talk show which had previously used a clip of him failing at a comedy show to elicit laughter from audiences. This should be good. He's said previously in the film that for his whole life, he didn't know if he existed but he does, and people are starting to notice. Now that he is appearing on a late-night show hosted by his comedy idol, it should be the high point of recognition. He should be excited. But he isn't because he sees the truth. He sees that even when he noticed, it is as a clown meant to be ridiculed so the network can bring in the ratings. He is a joke, not a person because if we saw someone as a person, we wouldn't take the most embarrassing moment of their life and play it on TV. The humor in this 'joke' basically lies in the audience feeling superior to this poor, pathetic man who bombed on stage, even though most people would probably not even go on stage in spite of having half as many challenges as the Joker, and the pathos of the situation reminds us of ancient times when stoning and hangings were witnessed for entertainment. It begs the question--is public ridicule the new public stoning?

The sad part is that the ridicule that Arthur faces are not the worst part of his journey, even though they make be the breaking point in the plot. What really makes him snap is the silent expectation that even after watching himself being laughed at in addition to being poor, fatherless, mentally ill, recently unemployed, generally disrespected, and struggling with his mother's hospitalization, he should appear on the same show that humiliated him and "be a good sport." It wasn't bad enough that on top of everything else, the country was laughing at him. He was expected to laugh at himself too.

Tell me. How many times has this happened to you?

The whole idea of making fun of people makes me uneasy sometimes. I'm always told it's all in good jest, and sometimes it is. But there are some patterns of "friendly ridicule" that I find hard to ignore. For example, people only make fun of people they think are below them, particularly in cases where the ridicule is to one's face. People who say this hierarchy doesn't exist are lying. In the larger scale of society, there are those who are above ridicule (Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Aishwarya Rai), the average folk in the middle, and those who have dropped so down the respectability scale that they are now unembarrassable (Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Rakhi Sawant, KRK). At this scale, one can argue that the hierarchy is based on how much respect one has earned. But I have seen this hierarchy to exist in my own lives as well. It seems social hierarchy is sadly inevitable, and the ones who benefit from it deny it to preserve the benefits and those who don't benefit from it deny it to stay in the good graces of those who do. I am sometimes left wondering if its all in good jest, why isn't some of the jest being extended to the cool kids? Don't you want to include them in the fun too?

Another pattern I have noticed has to do with intentions and reactions. When jokes are made just for good fun, the intention is just that--good fun. If the recipient has a reaction that isn't aligned with the intention of everyone just having a good time, then the person making the joke usually just says apologizes, or says "just kidding" and lets the moment slide. However, if someone makes a joke at someone else's expense and is met with resistance, and the resistance is challenged too much (Wait, why did you get so angry? Dude, can't you take a joke? I mean, I don't understand!), it is usually a signal to me that the joke was not made with the right intentions. I mean we all know that nobody wants to be made fun of all the time and we all have some topics that are sensitive to us, and we all need to understand that we shouldn't say things and then automatically expect people to react the way we want. If our intentions are pure, we are usually okay with facing the consequences as we know it was just a misstep on our part. If our intentions are impure, we usually get defensive and blame others' reactions to our actions and insist they change their personality or worldview instead of seeing them as merely consequences that we could not have predicted.

And then there are the situations where we collectively decide some people just deserve to be made fun of because they're dumb or whatever and we keep doing it again and again with an air superiority until the "dumb" people resent us for not respecting them from our neoliberal, urban, upper middle-class bubble and get back at us in the next election. Yeah. That happened. In more countries than one. At about the same time. Let's just top it off with with a guy standing on top of a car with clown makeup.

A lot of people have talked about what Joker means about society and the haves and have-nots. And I agree. It is about the haves and have-nots. Those calling the movie an incel training manual are naïve in thinking that every action boils down to personal responsibility and that personal responsibility is detached from personal circumstances. But I think it would be narrow-minded and a little bit of a cop out to just say if Arthur had money none of this would have happened. The whole movie, he wasn't asking for money even though he desperately needs it. What he really desperately wants is exactly what he says he wants in the following quotes:

“I don’t want anything from you. Maybe a little warmth, maybe a hug, dad, maybe a bit of common decency!” It was not about the money.

“The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.” How far is that from saying "We'll laugh at you. Just be a good sport." How far is that really?

And then there are those times when someone goes into depression or kills themselves or makes a man who set fire to his city the new king. That’s when we must remember these words “Well, no one’s laughing now”