Re: [Marxism] The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * And I have to add: when Fleck is invited to De Niro’s tv show it is to play the clown, to entertain and, most of all, to be ridiculed, laughed at, not with. Hardly a sign of white privilege, but perhaps more like non-white artists and non-white culture were often treated historically. Website: http://filmint.nu/ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FilmInt Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/FilmInt > 10 okt. 2019 kl. 09:29 skrev Daniel Lindvall via Marxism > : > > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > Wow, what BS. Racism is obviously a matter of fact. But to imply that the > main driving force here is Fleck being spoilt by white privilege makes no > sense. Throughout most of the film he does his shitty, precarious, low pay > job and asks and expects basically nothing at all. On the contrary, he tries > to make his mum realize the Waynes of this world don’t give a damn about > them, white or black. Only when he has reason to believe he actually IS > Wayne’s biological son he comes to think for a moment that this will make a > real difference (a rather human reaction, I’d say). This arch-conservative > review, posing as anti-racist, is just a version of the line that the kind of > decent working conditions and welfare that the labour movement created are > themselves at their very core about white privilege and have spoilt white > workers who need to get over them and accept capitalism (”nature”, ”life”) as > it is. It is intended to silence and split workers. > > Re ”Joker”, I went to see it expecting to hate it, as I hate the Nolan films > (thinly disguised fascism, here’s my review: http://filmint.nu/?p=5351). It > is far from perfect and, yes, it could have treated its black characters > differently. But nevertheless this actually is the complex, intelligent film > that many claim the wildly overrated Nolan films to be. Class and > exploitation are at the heart of it, not white privilege. > > >> 10 okt. 2019 kl. 01:59 skrev Louis Proyect via Marxism >> : >> >> POSTING RULES & NOTES >> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. >> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. >> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. >> * >> > > > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/daniel.lindvall%40filmint.nu _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Wow, what BS. Racism is obviously a matter of fact. But to imply that the main driving force here is Fleck being spoilt by white privilege makes no sense. Throughout most of the film he does his shitty, precarious, low pay job and asks and expects basically nothing at all. On the contrary, he tries to make his mum realize the Waynes of this world don’t give a damn about them, white or black. Only when he has reason to believe he actually IS Wayne’s biological son he comes to think for a moment that this will make a real difference (a rather human reaction, I’d say). This arch-conservative review, posing as anti-racist, is just a version of the line that the kind of decent working conditions and welfare that the labour movement created are themselves at their very core about white privilege and have spoilt white workers who need to get over them and accept capitalism (”nature”, ”life”) as it is. It is intended to silence and split workers. Re ”Joker”, I went to see it expecting to hate it, as I hate the Nolan films (thinly disguised fascism, here’s my review: http://filmint.nu/?p=5351). It is far from perfect and, yes, it could have treated its black characters differently. But nevertheless this actually is the complex, intelligent film that many claim the wildly overrated Nolan films to be. Class and exploitation are at the heart of it, not white privilege. > 10 okt. 2019 kl. 01:59 skrev Louis Proyect via Marxism > : > > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Oct. 9, 2019 The Real Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight By Lawrence Ware This article contains spoilers for “Joker.” Before “Joker” opened last weekend, much was being made of how its tale of a murderous villain echoed news stories of mass shooters and incel threats, and how the film might encourage unbalanced viewers to commit acts of violence. As it turned out, it mainly inspired audiences to open their wallets for the biggest October opening ever. After watching the film, I could understand the concerns: Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the deranged clown Arthur Fleck, the title character, “Joker” is simultaneously a well-made film in its own right and a blatant mash-up of “The King of Comedy” and “Taxi Driver.” It nods at classism and winks at the Bruce Wayne family mythos, but at its core the movie is about a mentally ill loner. Still, what struck me most is that what the film wants to say — about mental illness or class divisions in American society — is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about whiteness. For it is essentially a depiction of what happens when white supremacy is left unchecked. It shows the delusions that many white men have about their place in society and the brutality that can result when that place is denied. The fact that the Joker is a white man is central to the film’s plot. A black man in Gotham City (really, New York) in 1981 suffering from the same mysterious mental illnesses as Fleck would be homeless and invisible. He wouldn’t be turned into a public figure who could incite an entire city to rise up against the wealthy. Black men dealing with Fleck’s conditions are often cast aside by society, ending up on the streets or in jail, as studies have shown. And though Fleck says he often feels invisible, had he been black, he truly would have been — except, of course, when he came into contact with the police. They’d be sure to see him. Though Fleck is pursued and investigated by Gotham’s finest, his whiteness acts as a force field, protecting him as he engages in the violent acts of the latter half of the film. Consider his appearance on the live talk show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). A black man acting as strangely as Fleck does would not have been allowed to go on the air. But the white Fleck is given access, and bloodshed soon follows. Or look at how Fleck interacts with others. He is frequently in conversation with people who occupy a lower rung in society than he does: a state-appointed therapist he sees early on; a protective mother who chastises him for playing peekaboo with her son on the bus; his possible love interest, a neighbor who lives in the same building; and the psychiatrist he sees in Arkham Asylum. Every one of these characters is a black woman with whom he eventually has confrontations. Phillips consistently places Fleck in an oppositional or antagonistic position to these women. I don’t know if this is intentional on Phillips’s part, but it is significant. When we learn that his relationship with the neighbor (played with artful restraint by Zazie Beetz) was merely a figment of his troubled imagination, the way he leaves the apartment implies that this realization has led Fleck to kill her and perhaps her child. After his final conversation with the Arkham doctor, his bloody footsteps suggest that he kills her as well. Fleck kills white men because he cannot access their status and is ostracized by them, but his black female victims are so invisible that the film does not bother to show their deaths. We as viewers can and should take note of them. There are other ways that whiteness informs Fleck’s character. He anticipates he’ll be treated as a son by the Wayne family, and assumes he’ll be given medical records just by asking the hospital orderly (played by the great Brian Tyree Henry). The privileges that come with Fleck’s race set him up for these unrealistic expectations. When they’re not met, the consequences are deadly. Whiteness may not have been on the filmmakers’ minds when they made “Joker,” but it is the hidden accomplice that fosters the violence onscreen. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
