Foster child

Rating: 1/10 (19 February 2020)

Joker shoots a man on live television. Somebody alert Batman! Flash the bat signal! The Caped Crusader will take care of this joker and save us all. But alas, this is not your father's "Batman", the 1989 Tim Burton film starring Michael Keaton as the titular character. Bruce Wayne(Dante Pereira-Olson) is just a small boy, privileged but lonely, and neglected. "The only one who can save us," according to Joker's mother is Thomas Wayne(Brett Cullen), a billionaire philanthropist running for mayor of Gotham; a politician. For now, the rule of law will be tested, and in the near-future, until young Bruce Wayne grows up. In 1981, television was king. Joker inspires a copycat, an activist from the "Clown Movement", a militant group that targets the rich. An unknown assailant hidden behind a clown mask guns down Bruce Wayne's parents in an alley, as lore goes, but this isn't Batman's origin story; it's the Joker's. Why stop there? The film treats this double murder as justice for the poor and downtrodden. Thomas Wayne had it coming. The audience roots for the villain. Bruce Wayne, the audience realizes with a start, is part of the 1%. The film portrays his father as a man with no empathy for the working class; a real thug. So if Joker fights for the little guy, who will Bruce Wayne defend when he grows up to occupy the bat suit? Will Bruce Wayne still be Batman, or have some other moniker, such as Cape Fear?
Rupert Pupkin is on the move. Played by Robert DeNiro, the audience wonders if Jerry Langford(Jerry Lewis), a late-night talk show host, stands to be in any immediate danger. Besieged by autograph hounds and groupies, Jerry pays the price of fame every night after taping. The body density outside the studio, an obstacle he hazards with as much graciousness he can muster up, taxes him. To get from the backstage door to the sanctuary of his limousine is a traversal of incremental steps. DeNiro's reputation as a vigilante precedes him. He was Travis Bickle, after all, in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", a cab driver, who in a similar crowd situation, converges on the presidential hopeful Senator Charles Palantine(Leonard Harris) in motion with bad intentions. Pupkin, an aspiring comedian, however, is a different sort of sociopath. "The King of Comedy" doesn't want to kill Jerry Langford; he wants to be him. A quick study, Rupert, a fan(atic), diagnoses the mechanics of this pandemonium him and improvises, riffing as Jerry's bodyguard, then switches back to his normal self, once in the car with his captive audience of one. Feeling charitable, Jerry lets him stay, a decision he'll come to regret. The veteran funnyman has no choice but to hear Rupert pitch him as a potential guest on "The Jerry Langford Show". Jerry stops him right there, explaining to Rupert that "you don't walk onto a network show without experience". Paying your dues, starting from the bottom, honing your craft; those are things Rupert can't be bothered with. A precursor to the galaxy of YouTube quasi-stars, this delusional wanna-be wants instant fame, and when Cathy Long(Shelley Hack), Jerry's administrative assistant, tells Rupert, in so many words, that he isn't funny, the self-proclaimed monarch kidnaps his hero. With the help of Masha(Sandra Bernhard), a fellow autograph hound, who ironically, has real talent(as a torch singer), he straps Jerry to a chair with masking tape in her ritzy townhouse. Rupert packs heat, sure, for the on-street abduction, but the gun; it's a toy gun. He wants to kill Jerry Langford and his studio audience...with ruckus laughter.
"Joker", directed by Todd Phillips, weaponizes "The King of Comedy", because this time, the gun is real and the gun goes off. Since the filmmaker borrows so liberally from Martin Scorsese, "Joker" comes across as an unofficial remake. Robert DeNiro, in effect, pulls a Patty Duke, playing both student and teacher, like Duke in the 1962 and 1979 versions of "The Miracle Worker", most notably, as Helen Keller in the Arthur Penn original. DeNiro returns as talk-show host Murray Franklin, a thinly-veiled version of Johnny Carson, which makes him the de facto "King of Comedy". Arthur Fleck(Joaquin Phoenix), the Pupkin stand-in, has a day job working as a party clown. Stand-up comedy runs through his blood, too, but he outworks Rupert by starting from the bottom, which means open mic nights at seedy comedy clubs. Arthur listens to Jerry Langford, a communique between films, while at the same time, Rupert Pupkin would have better luck persuading Murray Franklin, who has no qualms about putting a rank amateur on national television. Both men, Rupert and Arthur live with their mothers, but we see Penny Fleck(Frances Conroy), whereas Rupert's mom is just a disembodied voice, who the audience hears telling her son repeatedly to keep the noise down. Does she even exist? "The King of Comedy" is set in an era when seeking psychiatric help for mental problems was a few years away from being a social norm. During Rupert's monologue on "The Jerry Langford Show", a deal that "The King" arbitrates with network brass in exchange for their employee's life, one gag is built around the premise of a surprise visit from his mother, who has been dead for nine years. Rupert needs meds; he's schizophrenic. The protagonist is fallible, in regard to what we hear over the soundtrack. His network television debut is real, no doubt about that, but we can't trust the sounds coming from the live studio audience. They could be booing. Rupert hears what he wants to hear; his dead mother, laughter. Arthur, on the other hand, is on meds, seven different kinds, and has regular appointments with a social worker. When the clinic closes down, due to cuts in Gotham's budget, Arthur goes off the meds, all seven, he suffocates Penny Fleck with a pillow in her hospital bed. But that's beside the point. Both films, set around the same time, down to the very year, actually, feature mentally-ill protagonists; one diagnosed, and the other undiagnosed, because the former, is actually living in "Modern Times" and doesn't feel the stigmatization of seeking medical treatment for his troubled mind. "Joker" is not really a period-piece. And Gotham couldn't be anywhere but NYC. Charlie Chaplin played Adolph Hitler in "The Great Dictator", but the filmmaker chose to be more subtle, going with Chaplin's 1936 film being exhibited at a movie palace with Thomas Wayne in attendance. The subtext of "Joker" isn't limited to the diegesis. Allusions to extra-diegetical matters turn the film itself into a bat signal.
The real-world pop culture references begin with Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times". It has the effect of reorientating the audience back from the comic book world. "Joker" starts off in Gotham, since Murray Franklin and his guests, including Sandra Winger(in actuality, Debra Winger, who would be promoting "Cannery Row", given the timeline) and Skip Byron, an amalgamated moniker(Skip Stephenson and Byron Scott, two cohosts from the newsmagazine show "Real People"), are, quite pointedly, not real people. But Charlie Chaplin is. He plays his trademark character "The Little Tramp", a hobo; and the elite, the 1% who congregate at the fancy bijou for a benefit screening of "Modern Times", are laughing at, in essence, the economic obstacles that face the poor day-in and day-out. The 21st century and its correlating non-fictive metropolis introduce themselves after patiently waiting in the wings to tear apart the Brechtian distanciation of the mis-en-scene to pulp shreds.
The future is now. A Johnny Carson-type would never humiliate some mental defective. The soundstage is a time machine. The gunshot blast activates it. Murray Franklin reclines in his throne with a forehead blemish; a bullet hole. Gotham is New York City. Cut to the Wayne family emerging from the movie theater. On the marquee, two real films: Peter Medak's "Zorro, The Gay Blade" and Brian DePalma's "Blow Out" are playing. Bruce is under 18, so presumably, his parents took him to see "Zorro". Just a few minutes later, Bruce Wayne suddenly finds himself parentless; a potential foster child if not for Alfred Pennyworth(Douglas Hodge), the Wayne's manservant. It's no coincidence that "Joker" is set in 1981. Martin Scorsese had no idea that "Taxi Driver" would inspire a Travis Bickle copycat who wanted to save Iris(Jodie Foster), a child prostitute, from "Sport"(Harvey Keitel), her pimp. This filmmaker, however, knows that he's taking a risk. "Joker" works as John Hinckley's origin story. This powder keg of a movie has the very real potentiality of changing two histories; the DC universe and ours. Bruce Wayne is the 1%. Who will Batman defend when he grows up?
And somebody out there in America, at this very moment, using Arthur Fleck as a role model, a Che for our times, is starting his own revolution.