Joker: Some thoughts

I was captivated while watching it. As compared to Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, it very boldly brings public response — fame, protest, unrest, political psychology —into the story, and supposedly into the motivation of the protagonist.

An hour after leaving the theater, however, I felt that the core of the movie was less than satisfying, that core being the protagonist’s selfhood and motivation, his sense of purpose. Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Rupert Pupkin (King of Comedy) cohere as characters much better than does Arthur Fleck (Joker).

It didn’t feel like he was motivated by envy or revenge, even in allegorical forms according to Arthur’s personalized world. Nor ambition or a craving for attention. Instead, the movie offered “nihilism” as explanation. Killing made Arthur feel that he “really existed.” He even spouts a few words about how right and wrong are “subjective.”

In 2014 I read the manifesto of one killer, and was struck by his seething sense of injustice. He did not think that there was no right and wrong, or that every opinion was just as valid as any other. I think that nihilism, whatever that means, is a red-herring. The killer imagined a doting parental figure or troop leader who adored him and appreciated his great beauty and deservingness, while others around him did not. Striking out randomly follows, I think, from an atavism from the small ancestral band, in which others did, in a way, assent to or even collectively ratify the recognition and treatment shown to each in the band. So he felt that “they” had been unjust to him. “They” had denied him of what he was entitled to. His violence was justified.

I didn’t get any such feeling for Arthur Fleck.

I had a similar dissatisfaction with No Country for Old Men. The villain just didn’t work as a human being.

Adam Smith’s organon is that every moral sentiment relates to a sympathy, and understanding that locus of sympathy is our only way to understand the person’s moral sentiment. By understanding that locus of sympathy we begin to understand where people are coming from, how they think of themselves, and why they do what they do. So who is Arthur Fleck in sympathy with? What is his man within the breast like? Here, Joker and No Country fail us, I think.

Meanwhile, I recommend King of Comedy. As for Taxi Driver, it doesn’t age that well. Besides the “You talkin’ to me?” I love the interactions with Cybill Shepherd.

Last night my daughter and I once again watched It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Hard to pick a favorite character!