Philosophy Now Forum

bro those thugs killed Bruce's folks in the alley becuz they were broke becuz who wants to work as a wage slave in a capitalist system. of course there's gonna be some robbers... and when Bruce becomes the vigilante to fight the bad guys, he's inadvertantly supporting the capitalist system and the status-quo.

joker on the other hand is a revolutionary and social scientist who understands how corrupt Gotham city is and he ain't about to give that up for some caped crusader captian america type guy who wants to get in the way.

Joker: How Joaquin Phoenix’s Film Makes Nihilism Look Beautiful and Arthur Fleck’s Anarchist Views Far Too Believable
Surabhi R

There are several times in the film, much before Fleck completely turns into a psychopathic killing machine, where we realise his deteriorating state. Much of it doesn’t even need dialogues, Phoenix’s unforgettable, unsettling, loud yet teary laugh is enough of a warning sign. Although in many cases, the film makes you introspect about how it’s not only Joker’s transformation into a psychopath that you should be worried about but also about how apathetic his surroundings are. A problem that’s closest to reality. What I found the scariest though is that Phillip gets you so sucked into the inner workings of Fleck that his anti-elite, anarchist sentiments almost influence you.

Having finally watched the film myself, I have to conclude that there does indeed seem to be a clear indication that Joker is afflicted with any number of mental illnesses. He's prescribed 7 different medications. He seems to imagine things like the relationship with the woman down the hall. His outbursts of maniacal laughter. His [at times] bizarre behavior.

And, to the extent that is the case, he becomes less and less the embodiment of nihilism. At least as I understand it. It's like watching a film in which the supernatural is prevalent. Since I don't believe in the supernatural, how can I really relate to the characters and the plot?

Still, mental diseases are in fact a very real thing. And yet if he is more the psychopath than the philosopher, then [to me] he comes closer to Jack Torrance and "shining".

On the other hand, there's the connection between mental illness and capitalism. Did Fleck become Joker in part because of those dreary apathetic "show me the money" fuck the poor "surroundings"? A world where millions of wage slaves literally go from paycheck to paycheck just one lost job or serious health crisis away from calamity?

But as Fleck says, "I'm not political".

Even as fans may find themselves confused about the timeline of this film considering Bruce Wayne and his father Thomas Wayne make an appearance, it is Phillip’s gaze about Wayne Sr’s character that needs our attention. In of the scenes where he speaks about the ‘clown crime’, we see him making a rather elitist statement and we know who it bears resemblance to.

Here, admittedly, I'm immediately in over my head. I never read Batman comics as a kid. I watched a few of the cartoon character Batman episodes on TV eons ago but aside from The Dark Knight I've never seen any of the Batman movies.

So, I'm particularly fuzzy about the backstory here. And how that relates to Joker's motivations.

The Dark Knight
Todd Walters reports on justice, rebellion and random acts of violence in Gotham City.

Here I'll skip to the part pertaining to Joker...

Bad Jokes

If the central conflict of Batman Begins was between justice and the rule of law, then that of The Dark Knight is between order and chaos. Although Bruce struggles with questions about the propriety of his crime-fighting in a democratic society, such concerns are rather irrelevant for the charismatic villain of The Dark Knight, the Joker, sinisterly and superbly portrayed by the late Heath Ledger. The Joker indiscriminately kills, maims, steals and destroys. He has no obvious rational desires, no respect for human life, and no boundaries. He is a symbol of the most extreme form of Isaiah Berlin’s ‘negative freedom’, the absence of all constraint.

Hmm...the sociopath?

Is that the main distinction between the mature Joker and the fledgling Joker above? Is the Dark Knight Joker basically just a rampaging "fuck the world" nihilist in terms of both means and ends?

Seriously, for those who have watched the film recently, you tell me. It's been years since I saw it.

Still, to call either Joker a nihilist is a stretch. Or, rather, a philosophical nihilist. No mention by either one of exploring human interactions in a No God world given "dasein", "the gap", "Rummy's Rule", "The Benjamin Button Syndrome", "ironism" and/or "beyond good and evil".

To cite just a few examples of the Joker’s mayhem: he recruits for a position in his gang by breaking a pool cue in half, exposing its sharp, flesh-slicing points, then throwing the broken pieces down in the middle of three men so they can kill for the position (he calls this ‘tryouts’). In another instance, he threatens to blow up a hospital unless someone in Gotham kills a lawyer he has targeted. And in one of the climactic scenes of the film, he plants bombs on two boats filled with passengers, each boat given the detonator for the other, and announces that if one of them does not push their button by midnight, he will remotely push both buttons himself.

So, does this sound look someone that Authur Fleck would turn into. Instead, he comes off here [to me] as either a psychopath, a sociopath, or a "me, myself, I" thug.

Again, any insights here from those who have watched the film recently...or even many times? Any suggestions in the film that philosophers might actually want to take this character down below the surface of the "action" sequences? Something that makes him more than just the "Hollywood" caricature of a cartoon character nihilist. Or what some refer to as the ofttimes idiotic DC/Marvel "superhero" franchises.

Where's the beef here?

The Dark Knight
Todd Walters reports on justice, rebellion and random acts of violence in Gotham City.

By orchestrating these perverse social experiments, the Joker forces innocent people into making impossible life and death choices – all to articulate his central message: that human morality and social stability are not absolute, but contingent on circumstance.

In a No God world.

Or, as Michael Novak once encompassed it...

No God, and, as Michael Novak speculated in The Experience of Nothingness, mere mortals, "recognize that [they] put structure into [their] world....There is no 'real' world out there, given, intact, full of significance. Consciousness is constituted by random, virtually infinite barrages of experience; these experiences are indistinguishably 'inner' and 'outer'.....Structure is put into experience by culture and self, and may also be pulled out again....The experience of nothingness is an experience beyond the limits of reason...it is terrifying. It makes all attempts at speaking of purpose, goals, aims, meaning, importance, conformity, harmony, unity----it makes all such attempts seem doubtful and spurious."

No doubt about it: nihilism can [for some] bring about a frame of mind as debilitating as this one. Reaching the point where sociopaths can use it to rationalize -- justify -- any and all behaviors in order to sustain whatever they manage to convince themselves they want.

But: is this an accurate portrayal of Joker here?

Joker...the philosopher?

I recognized little or none of this in Arthur Fleck above.

The Joker says of Gotham’s citizens that “Their morals, their code – it’s a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be.” This shows the real core of conflict – the psychological war, the struggle for the soul of the city.

So, then the question becomes: what would he put in its place? A "survival of the fittest", "dog eat dog", "law of the jungle" dystopia? Mayhem for its own sake? Everything revolving around one or another calamitous spectacle? Or is it really just a cartoon character, comic book depiction of a world tumbling down into, perhaps, the way the world around us "in reality" is headed?

The decline in decency in the city had begun long before Joker’s arrival, but in attacking Gotham’s best and brightest he’s able to push things to new depths. There are two juxtaposed scenes showing Batman and Harvey Dent in turn torturing captives to glean information about the Joker’s whereabouts. Batman drops a mafia figure from several stories up, breaking his legs; and Harvey threatens to shoot one of the Joker’s hapless henchmen in the head. But this is exactly the kind of behavior that the Joker wants to provoke, to demonstrate that his own twisted psyche exists inside all of us, that his actions are those any human being would adopt in a Hobbesian state of nature. “I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve,” he declares.

So much for the "class struggle" some imagined was behind Fleck's own rampages? More like my own speculation that we were all capable of doing things we insist we would never do had our lives been different. That, in other words, what we do is rooted existentially in our own uniquely subjective trajectory of personal experiences. This and those like Joker who, either as the sociopath or the psychopath, take it all the way out as far as it can go.

The Dark Knight
Todd Walters reports on justice, rebellion and random acts of violence in Gotham City.

The Joker is an unconventional villain waging an asymmetric war, and in confronting him Batman feels compelled to push the boundaries of law and morality farther than he ever thought would be necessary. For example, in addition to engaging in torture, he builds a phone surveillance system to locate the Joker, despite the glaring violation of civil liberties that comes from listening in on the telephone calls of everyone in the city.

What does this remind you of? Dick Cheney and the "terrorists", right? To waterboard or not to waterboard? Did they go too far at Abu Ghraib...or not go far enough?

Nihilism construed in regard to ends more or less than means? Only many still deem those as nihilists who, in regard to ends, are anything but nihilists to those like me. The Nazis and the Communists become nihilists even though they base their behaviors entirely on a political ideology. The terrorists become nihilists even though many of them are religious fanatics.

It's just that with comic book characters the contexts can become all that much more extreme.

However, he does acknowledge this violation, and has the system destroyed after it has served its purpose. But the specter of Caesar has begun to descend, and Bruce realizes that the game may almost be up: “I’ve seen what I would have to become to stop men like him,” he says. Batman needs to pass on the mantle of justice, and he wants to pass it to Gotham’s revered District Attorney. But the Joker has other ideas.

The moral erosion of Harvey Dent is the most unnerving plot line in The Dark Knight. His fall from grace goes far beyond the psychological torture described above…but this is better left for the film to reveal.

All that is really revealed here is the at times enormous gap between American democracy as I encountered it in my high school civics text and the reality that is crony capitalism in sustaining the interest of the ruling class. Both in terms of economic policy at home and foreign policy abroad. Wall Street and K Street in cahoots with the politicians who are bought and paid for each election cycle. What pain and suffering can the Jokers of this world cause and then sustain next to the actual "powers that be"?

FIVE PHILOSOPHERS DISCUSS “JOKER”
at the AESTHETICS FOR BIRDS website

Benjamin Hale

Here’s how I see it. The main question for the film is big: How does a villain come to acquire such power while also being a terrible person? This is a question that I’ve had for a long time about most of the villains in fiction, from Darth Vader to Goldfinger to Joker.

Power? What power? It's only toward the end of the film that Joker seems to [finally] be leading an army against the actual powers that be. Before then he seems to be flitting from one calamity to the next. Also, there seemed to be very real hints that he was in fact afflicted with a "condition". His "relationship" with the woman down the hall. The fact that he had been prescribed [as I recall] 7 different medications.

As for villains in fiction, for me, it always revolves around how fascinating they were. How complex and ambiguous. On the other hand, that doesn't make the actual pain and suffering they cause for others go away. Especially when the victims really didn't deserve it. Think Hannibal Lector.

I don’t think I’ve ever been satisfied with the answer. To my eye, the director, Todd Phillips, answers this question by suggesting that villainy, unlike mere criminality, is both an individual and a social phenomenon.

From my frame of mind, Joker basically just stumbled adventitiously onto his power. Fleck, with his "laugh affliction", does his "act" at the comedy club. It goes viral. Murray Franklin gets wind of it and invites him on his show. Fleck tells the world he shot those assholes on the subway. Franklin pisses him off. He shoots Franklin dead. He becomes a folk hero.

But, sure, any hero or villain is going to become what they are depending on how their life unfolds as an individual out in a particular social, political and economic community. But one person's hero is another person's villain.

That's the part rooted existentially in dasein. The part rooted in the particular moral and political value judgments -- prejudices -- we come to acquire given the trajectory of out lives out in a particular world.

FIVE PHILOSOPHERS DISCUSS “JOKER”
at the AESTHETICS FOR BIRDS website

Rebecca Kukla

I want to acknowledge up front that many folks in the disability studies and mental illness communities are deeply hurt and troubled by Joker, reading it as yet another story of how untreated mental illness can lead to violence, and as a movie that contributes to the stigmatization of mentally ill people as dangerous and as unfit to be part of the social world.

Again, what this makes clear [to some of us] is that our reactions to films of this sort revolve largely around what we first bring to them...our own frame of mind. Here is someone with a familiarity of issues relating to disability and mental illness. So from her own perspective that is what she focuses in on. Whereas for those of us who have little or no familiarity with them, there are simply things that we are going to miss.

Well, given that this is entirely a work of fiction. And, of course, the fact that the movie industry is often going to ratchet things up to sell more tickets.

Is Arthur Fleck more or less mentally ill than, say, some would like him to be? In other words, to the extent we do see him as mentally ill, his behaviors become increasingly more "beyond his control". The social commentary about class politics, the medical industrial complex and the neglect of those who are burdened with brain afflictions...often just throwing them in jail or prison when their conditions result in criminal behaviors...can fade into the background.

This part...

I read the movie differently. I think it actively resists suggesting any single causal story, both through sustained ambiguity and indeterminacy in the story line, and by situating violence as legible within gun culture, class warfare, White privilege, ableism, and failed infrastructure.

Suppose, on the other hand, Fleck had no mental afflictions. Did not need to be on multiple medications. Did not imagine relationships and events that never happened. Instead, he was clear and lucid regarding the manner in which capitalism often does create or exacerbate the "conditions" that lead to the mounting neglect of those not in sync with the aims of the "deep state"?

He adopts the Joker persona as a more dramatic way in which to bring his radical politics to the attention of "the people".

The iconic backdrop of 1981 New York/Gotham underscores that the violence is a product of place and social context as much as personality.

Better still, why not bring Joker into the world that we live in today? The world of Trump and MAGA and Q-Anon. A world where increasingly the F word is bandied about. The other F word. Even in the mainstream media. Fleck reacting to all of that in a more "clear and lucid" manner.

That said, I also think it is not hard at all for viewers to see the movie as an affirmation of the ableist narrative of mental illness as the root of violence. This is certainly one of the many various superimposed narratives offered by the movie, and it is one with a lot of cultural authority. Thus I think the movie is potentially dangerous, and can play into ableist narratives; in this sense making it may have been irresponsible.

You tell me.

FIVE PHILOSOPHERS DISCUSS “JOKER”
at the AESTHETICS FOR BIRDS website
Erich Hatala Matthes

I did not love Joker. I did not enjoy watching it. But I think that these assessments actually reflect an aspect of the movie that was successful: its criticism of other movies that glamorize moral monsters, and the pleasure audiences take in those depictions.

The Hannibal Lector Syndrome let's call it.

Because he is clearly intelligent and "cultured"...a fascinating guy, an Übermensch...there are those who cut him some slack when he savages those who are truly innocent. Dr. Chilton, sure, he's a complete asshole. But what of those who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The philosopher A. W. Eaton describes a category of character that she labels “rough heroes.” Unlike traditional anti-heroes, who are flawed but ultimately good (like Han Solo, say), rough heroes are characters with grievous moral flaws, but whom the narrative, whether movie or TV show or novel, nevertheless manages to render appealing to the audience (like Hannibal Lecter).

Or, let's face it, any number of out and out sociopaths will cheer him on simply because that's what they would do themselves. They do whatever they think will gratify them. Others are merely a means to that end.

With, Fleck, however, I never felt he was anything at all like Lector. He seemed to have stumbled into the role of the working class hero taking on the powers that be. His whole life up until then found him working as a clown hired out to clownishly perform for one or another business, prescribed all manner of medications for whatever mental afflictions he had acquired in what appeared [to me] to be a rather dreary life with Mom. A mother he ends up smothering to death once he learns of all her lies and abuse.

Hannibal Lecter is a vicious sociopath who murders and eats people to satisfy his cravings, and yet he is portrayed as brilliant and charming in a way that manages to win the audience’s allegiance...The character of the Joker is often rendered in this very way. Heath Ledger’s Joker, for instance, is a vicious killer with a complete disregard for human cares and concerns, but who is ultimately delightful to watch: he is mysterious, quirky, and always has a trick up his sleeve. By contrast, there is absolutely nothing endearing about Phoenix’s portrayal of Arthur Fleck. He is sympathetic at turns, but mostly pitiful, horrifying, and incompetent. Rather than being darkly satisfying, watching him on screen is a deeply uncomfortable experience.

Yep, that's pretty much my own take as well. He might configure into Ledger's Joker in the upcoming sequel, but he was almost nothing at all like that in Joker.

And to the extent anyone becomes "a vicious killer with a complete disregard for [the] human cares and concerns" of others, I don't care how "mysterious and quirky" or "charming" he appears up on the silver screen. He is still not less the nihilistic thug when push comes to shove.

A ‘Joker’ — and a world — gone mad from nihilism

Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix alike imbue the character with such fundamental dignity, even in his abasement, that we never forget that we are called to love him, not laugh at him.

Tara Isabella Burton

Whether you’re a comic books-to-screen movie fan or not, you’ve probably run across the rampant discussion of “Joker,” the last film in the Batman franchise.

Of course the Batman saga itself goes all the way back to 1939. And the Joker character made his first appearance in 1940. So, it would be interesting to note the gap between Joker as first imagined by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson and the TV/movie renditions of him over the years. Was nihilism [and mental illness] ever deemed to be a component of his character way back then?

In other words, will the real Joker please stand up?

The movie itself is a Scorcese-style pastiche directed by Todd Phillips that reenvisions Batman’s most famous antagonist as Arthur Fleck, a sad-sack failed comedian who has been driven, by a combination of mental illness, societal alienation and sheer nihilism, to absurd violence.

Hmm, let's connect the dots: https://screenrant.com/joker-king-of-co ... n%20common.

Rupert Pupkin/Arthur Fleck: "Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, a struggling stand-up comedian with mental health issues who longs to appear on Langford's show." wiki

Only [to me] The King of Comedy was more about the "made in America" obsession with fame. No one gets killed.

To many of its progressive critics, “Joker” is a glorification of the plight of self-pitying white men, and those lonelyhearts known as “incels” in particular. Or maybe, if you read economist Tyler Cowen’s blog, Marginal Revolution, the film is a thorough condemnation of populist movements like antifa: One of Fleck’s early acts of violent self-defense inadvertently launches a wider and even more chaotic movement of resentment-fueled clowns, keen to bring down Gotham’s unjust elite.

Pick one:

1] your rendition of "woke"
2] their rendition of "woke"

Is Arthur Fleck your champion or is he really just a ludicrous -- demented -- clown?

At least until the workers of the world do unite and bring down the elite as disciplined revolutionaries. After all, much that unfolds in Fleck's life is clearly "inadvertent".

But at its core, “Joker” is less about any specific 2019 political phenomena — be it incels or Occupy — than it is about nihilism itself: What does it mean to live in a world without any meaning at all?

Of course...nihilism as far out as one can take it: no meaning at all.

On the other hand, my nihilism revolves more around the manner in which the world we live in today is bursting at the seams with meaning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

Go ahead, pick one. Then insist it is in turn the One True Path to, well, whatever you believe that to be.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:51 pm bro those thugs killed Bruce's folks in the alley becuz they were broke becuz who wants to work as a wage slave in a capitalist system. of course there's gonna be some robbers... and when Bruce becomes the vigilante to fight the bad guys, he's inadvertantly supporting the capitalist system and the status-quo.

joker on the other hand is a revolutionary and social scientist who understands how corrupt Gotham city is and he ain't about to give that up for some caped crusader captian america type guy who wants to get in the way.

Though Joker will kill anyone. He's not a revolutionary. A revolutionary has some plan. They are changing society. They think they know how things should be run. Joker wants to burn. He wants chaos.

I mean if we take them literally as characters. If we want to make it some Jungian thing, then we can actually consider Joker a kind of valid alternative.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 11:24 pm Harris, Sam would say the J had some bad luck that's all. I mean that's all it can be in a world in which neither geners nor memers have any freewill.

Well, if you want to focus on what one had. But we still have to deal with what one is and does. Someone has the bad luck to meet him in a bank, but has the good luck of having a gun. A city that has the bad luck of having him around and the good luck of having options in how to deal with his existence.

Sure, as you later say, Batman is upholding the system and the system is fucked - my paraphrase.

But we don't have to like either one of them.

A ‘Joker’ — and a world — gone mad from nihilism
Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix alike imbue the character with such fundamental dignity, even in his abasement, that we never forget that we are called to love him, not laugh at him.
Tara Isabella Burton

Fleck — played with uncanny innocence by Joaquin Phoenix — is no internet-radicalized glory-seeker. He is not even an eroticized agent of chaos, as Heath Ledger played Joker in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 contribution to the Batman canon, “The Dark Knight.” Instead, Fleck’s a Holy Fool: His trembling lips and wide-eyed stare belie not resentment but sheer confusion.

That was my own take on him. It wasn't like he ever sat down and attempted -- philosophically, politically, psychologically, etc. -- to "think through" his experiences. Or made an attempt to come up with one or another overarching "ism" to either explain the world around him or to change it. He basically seemed to just stumble though the days reacting to events based on the manner in which existentially he had become the man that he was.

Then the part where those watching the film focused on the extent to which they thought that he was "mentally ill". And that is crucial because to the extent that he was, is the extent to which any number of important parts of his life become "beyond his control". His brain was just "misfiring" [in a free will world] and he doesn't react to his travails as others not afflicted with "clinical" conditions might.

It’s not just that he is mentally ill: Marred by what the Christian tradition calls sin, the world makes no sense. His seeming “madness” is imposed upon him, from without, by a world in which violence and power hierarchies are the only moral or natural laws.

Still, what does an assessment like this really come down to? Aren't we generally going to take out of it what we ourselves first put into it...our own subjective understanding what a Christian tradition or sin or madness or power hierarchies entail? Our own subjunctive reaction to such things as moral and natural laws.

Phillips’ homage-filled “Joker” feels inauthentic, its constant references, not only to Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” but to other films in the Batman cycle, only intensifying the sense of surreality that Fleck faces. The world we’re living in is profoundly (or, rather, profanely) unreal. It is, implicitly, a godless world.

Yes, and that is precisely the part that some will construe as most reflective of nihilism. A world where practically anything goes. Think Trump and DeSantis today. Elect us and we'll take America back to the 1950s. Back to a time where law and order prevailed, and father knew best regarding, say, behaviors revolving around sexual mores.

Phillips doesn’t glorify Fleck. Only Fleck’s final rampage, a murderous televised conversation with his talk-show-host idol, played by Robert De Niro, starts to feel a little self-indulgent, courting too strongly whatever is the reactionary equivalent of YAS QUEEN!!!.

Or, perhaps, YAS WOKE!!!

A ‘Joker’ — and a world — gone mad from nihilism
Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix alike imbue the character with such fundamental dignity, even in his abasement, that we never forget that we are called to love him, not laugh at him.
Tara Isabella Burton

That the Joker’s humanity is never in doubt is the movie’s greatest strength. Phillips and Phoenix alike imbue the character with such fundamental dignity, even in his abasement, that we never forget that we are called to love him, not laugh at him.

On the other hand, there will always be those "classists" who basically disdain any and all characters who are of, by or for the working class. Why? Because they are convinced that some of us are just naturally superior to others. In intelligence in particular. Think Plato and his Republic or Nietzsche and his Übermensch or Hitler and his Aryan super-race.

For them Fleck is a clown in more ways than one. And if he has been shat on by "society", well, what would one expect of that caste. Either that or they brought it all on themselves. And Fleck is also a "nut case".

If there is a moral criticism to be made of “Joker,” it is that the film almost never challenges its unrelenting claim of the necessity for nihilism.

Again, we all take out of films like this what we first put into them: our own rooted existentially in dasein self.

I didn't watch the credits roll at the end thinking the movie was making any claim for the necessity of nihilism. It showed a world where some citizens struggling to survive and living in an urban jungle are abandoned...and if pushed far enough they are going to react to that...to fight back. But not in a way that was really "thought through" by any of the characters. And not in the way in which, say, a Marxist would react to that world. Or the nihilists who embraced anarchism back in the day or the characters in books written by those like Dostoevsky or Turgenev.

It explores, wrenchingly and almost overwhelmingly, what contemporary nihilism is, but never once asks the question if it’s all there is. It’s a bleakly descriptive film, but never a proscriptive one. With the exception of a shared smile with a child early in the film, we never see Fleck positively connect with anyone.

Well, as the author here understands nihilism perhaps. But not in the manner in which I do. For me, there is no prescriptive moral narrative or political agenda to be had. There is only one or another rendition of democracy and the rule of law. And to the extent Fleck is "fractured and fragmented" that was seen by me to be more in sync with his mental illness. Connecting to others from my own cynical frame of mind is, at best, problematic.