10.5.24 - Joker: Folie à Deux: A happy ending for Arthur and his shadow
I saw Joker last night. I fucking loved this movie. And I haven't read any reviews or discourse on it before coming to my opinions, because the entire conversation around the original Joker was so fucking stupid and I know its going to be even stupider around this one. I went in with very few preconceptions .
Symbolically, the setup of the movie is very clear. It starts with a cartoon, the Joker in "Me and My Shadow." Arthur/The Joker and his Shadow fight for control, at times seeming to act in concert, but but its clear that its this shadow which wants the spotlight. By the end of the movie, I think it's obvious that this ties directly to the Jungian "shadow."
The Wikipedia definition of shadow: In analytical psychology, the shadow (also known as ego-dystonic complex, repressed id, shadow aspect, or shadow archetype) is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.
The shadow can be thought of as the blind spot of the psyche.[6] The repression of one's id, while maladaptive, prevents shadow integration, the union of id and ego.[7][8] While they are regarded as differing on their theories of the function of repression of id in civilization, Freud and Jung coalesced at Platonism, wherein id rejects the nomos.[clarification needed][9] Persona is contrasted against the shadow.[10] Jung regarded the shadow as unconscious – id and biography – suppressed under the superego's ego-ideal, the way the superego wants to be.[11] The shadow is projected onto one's social environment as cognitive distortions.[12]
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I think the analaogy is obvious, right? The Joker is Arthur's shadow——No, actually, more accurately, the Joker is this fantasy/cognitive distortion that emerges from Arthur's incapability to integrate these repressed parts of himself/deal with trauma. The Joker is the fantasy, not the shadow itself. (I took Psych a while back, I know that I'm not using the shadow concept perfectly, since the shadow can be thought of as a function of repressing the id, but I don't want to get into id/ego/supereg it just becomes a bit much).
The rest of the movie continues the Cartoon's battle between Arthur and his shadow. The two female characters, the defense lawyer and "Lee," tug Arthur in opposing, but it seems equally maladaptive——form a psychoanalytic perspective——directions.
The defense lawyer, who I really see as a Nurse Ratched type figure, as far as her role in this psychological drama, wants Arthur to completely reject his shadow, to pathologize it. In that sense, she's a reflection of the modern day impulse to medicalize, pathologize, or otherize your undesirable features (You're not lazy, you're "depressed." You're not finnicky, you have a "sensory disorder." You're not disorganized, you have "ADHD." You're not a bad partner, you have "borderline personality disorder.")
Because he lives in a SOCIETY, Arthur's only path to "freedom" (if we can call it that) is to completely reject that part of himself, the part of himself that——even thought it was BAD——was the first to assert some kind of control and take back agency from a world that constantly fucked him. He had to make himself small and pathetic again, a victim, in order to receive society's lenience. To identify with his trauma entirely, and reject any adaptive qualities that his shadow may have offered. In a sense, he was faced with a faustian bargain. And wasn't the denial of the shadow what created the Joker in the first place?
It really is a stark setup, reject your shadow entirely or be damned to the electric chair. I kept thinking about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and about how this movie also has a lot to say about SOCIETY today. The themes all just feel so timely in our therapy culture. Today too, you can escape condemntation by society if you deny or shadow and just pathologize yourself, and promise to work on it. Go to therapy, take your meds. "Do the work." In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randall P. McMurphy is lobotomized for refusing to submit to this. Here, Arthur also refuses to submit to it, but I don't think he has such a bad fate .
Before he gets to that happy ending, he does take a sharp turn in the opposite and equally maladaptive direction. In that scene where Zazie Beets is talking about Arthur's mom made fun of him behind his back, and his own defense is trying to make an extremely pathetic, but sympathetic account of him emerge, we see him doodling the Joker to drown it out, quivering, until he erupts, exclaiming I can't take it anymore! After trying to repress his shadow, the Joker emerges, he rises up and says he's going to defend himself pro-se, the crowd applauds. He's reclaimed agency.
And its Lee (Harley Quinn I guess), and all of his adoring fans (which I guess is a meta commentary on all the perceived weirdos who liked the first Joker movie; I don't buy this conception that there's some incel army who mistinterpreted the first Joker. I think he just became a meme and people don't really care about what the movie actually MEANT in a meme context. I mean look at the Patrick Bateman memes. I hate the conversation about conversations taht aren't actually happening. People have lost their minds), that wants him to take this route. They want to see the Joker! In a sense, they want Arhur to keep repressing his Shadow, but in a different way———by completley submitting to the fantasy that emerges from that repression. That was the ending of Joker 1, it seems.
So while Lee and the Defense Lawyer may be pulling Arthur in supposedly opposite direction, both directions means that his soul will be damned. And spoiler alert, he gets sexually assaulted which destroys his fantasy, and his ability to repress his trauma any longer. It becomes clear to Arthur that he can't be this heroic Joker. He's still that scared, abused kid. But in accepting that, he doesn't fully go for what his defense lawyer wanted——that he's a victim doesn't exculpate him from the acts of "Joker," he can't separate the two. He's the victim, but also the victimizer. He is still the man who murdered those people.
What happens at the end, with his closing statement, is that he refuses both the defense lawyer or Lee's routes. He takes back control——in part by accepting accountability——but not my submitting to the fantasy. By accepting that it was HIM who was capable of these things. But also by accepting that he's a scared, and sad person. And the truth is he wishes that none of this ever happened and that his life could be better. It's a beautiful, heartfelt scene. To people rooting for him to embrace the fantasy, this seems like a pathetic ending. But from a Jungian perspective (yes, a very pretentious way to begin a sentence), isn't this the happy ending for his spirit? Arthur integrates his shadow! .
And note, as promised, SOCIETY damns him for this. For telling the truth. The people rooting for his fantasy damn him. His "love" who fell in love with the fantasy rejects him. The state condemns him to death, because he's not this sympathetic sad sack with a split personality. And of course he gets murdered at the end (by someone I guess is supposed to be the "real" Joker down the line? Amusing easter egg, if you're into that sort of thing. I really do not give a fuck, and at this big age I really have contempt for comic book movies, and I respect Todd Phillips for what seems to be even greater contempt for its fanbase. He knows if he slaps IP labels and adds in some references and names he can basically do anything the hell he wants——and here he wanted to make an actual good movie). But regardless of all this, doesn't his SOUL get saved? I think it was.
Now, that's how I see the STRUCTURE of the film. And I really loved it. It was fascinating to watch every second. I loved the "message." I liked the setup, it actually reminded me of the Seinfeld finale (courtroom setting where protagonists have to answer for their sins, you get to see the familiar faces come up to the stand one by one; good setup for this sort of psychodrama. Also the scene with Gary was funny at first, but ended up being really touching and sad. It could have been played only for laughs, but it actually really made you feel the weight of Artur's actions. You could see Arthur felt BAD, and you can see the glimmers of healing begin as his eyes water and betray some remorse for scaring someone he considered his friend). I love how it resolved Arthur's character arc and the tensions and ambiguities introduced in the first film. I think this movie has better rewatch movie than the first. And I think the first movie FELT like a happy ending, but was really just Arthur falling into delusion. The second movie FELT like a sad ending, but really was a redemption of his soul. In that sense, the movies' endings are inverses of one another, and I really love when sequels do that (a great example I'll have to commit to writing one day is how Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 are inverse of eachother thematically, much like the Old and New testament, and that's why Spider-Man 2 is probably the best sequel and best superhero movie of all time).
Before I get to the music, I should remark I'm probably in a somewhat rare intersection of two categories:
a) sufficiently "bro-y" to appreciate 4Chan tier humor and was super excited when Joker 1 came out, probably the kind of person all those hoity toity op-ed writers in 2019 were upset about. I unapologetically loved Joker for both the "right" and "wrong" reasons;
b) I'm also kind of gay and I love musicals (I did theater arts and live performance for much of my life) and classic cinema.
I read somewhere that Joker 2 was meant to be a fuck you to people who liked Joker 1 too much. Well fuck YOU because I really liked BOTH!
Also, I watched Joker 1 as an edgy single 19 year old who lived with five other dudes. I got to watch Joker 2 at 25 with my lovely girlfriend, and as a law student! So the differences in the movies, their themes, and the audience they're meant to resonate with have also have matched up very well with my life path.
Anyways, the music. I loved the music. I love musicals. The audience at my theater in Georgetown were having a lot of fun with it. We were all laughing and applauding after the musical numbers. It was all ridiculous in a very fun way. If you don't like musicals, I honestly hold you a slightly lower estimation. It's a beautiful art form but unfortunately a bit too saccharine and sincere for a population fed a steady diet of snark, irony, and Netflix originals. Go watch the Office or something.
That was a little mean way to end a paragraph. But I stand by it. I'm tired of culture being dragged down by people who want schlop. This was an EXCEPTIONAL movie. I'll end by saying Bravo to Todd Phillips. This was an amazing film. It was the best movie I've seen this year. Thank you Todd Phillips.
Also, I really liked hearing Joaquin's rendition of Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End" during the credits. It was a very sweet way to close out the movie. Also, if you know Johnston's long struggled with mental illness (a friend had told me about it in high school, I looked it up after this movie when I heard his song), specifically his struggles with "demonic self-obsession", it clearly was very intentional. I think it suggests that, like Johnston, Arthur Fleck was a man with a lot of problems, but maybe even HE was a beautiful, musical soul deep down.
I don't rate movies. But My girlfriend gave this 5/10 stars. I give it 17/10. Magnificent!
knxnts