Prior to the release of Todd Phillip’s
Joker, several media outlets, including Slate,
The
Guardian, and Salon,
amongst others, have discussed the film’s potential to foment
alt-right and incel-related violence. Associated with these
conjectures is the image of white, angry males (WAMs) a cohort
supposedly replete with abundant privilege, yet rife with some
unenviable life circumstances. The question to ask with Joker is,
in a world that attributes a significant amount of violence to WAMs,
“who is really privileged here?”
Near the outset of Joker, we
learn that Joaquin Phoenix’s character carries with him the burden
of mental illness. He appears as an individual who seeks treatment
and struggles to function in the everyday world of a place possibly
sicker than him, '80s-ish Gotham. Joker, the character known to
incite violence in the Batman canon, now has a narrative that
more closely echoes the profiles of (domestic) terrorists, in the ilk
of Timothy McVeigh, the Trenchcoat Mafia, and James Holmes Et al..
If the pattern of mass violence in
America often imbues the following key terms: white, male, mental
illness, the pattern further reified in Joker, why do keep
thinking we’re punching up when we’re probably punching down?
If privilege is to be associated with
some kind of advantage, why is mental illness so callously ignored
when it comes to the sympathy calculus for WAMs? If we’re going to
characterize riots as “the language of the unheard”, we should
also characterize mass shootings or other forms of violence
associated with mentally ill, WAMs with a commensurate level of
sympathy.
The fear around Joker is that it
will inspire a new wave of violence from WAMs. The critical pattern
observed by the Left regarding WAM-related violence primarily focuses
on the cycle of the Right blaming violence on mental illness, rather
than gun ownership. The Left then cries foul when the Right refuses
to support mental health initiatives, both in “peace time” and in
times of crisis. What’s less discussed, however, is the phenomenon
wherein the Left will assert, by omission of protest, the deranged
condition of all of these perpetrators, yet label them as privileged,
by virtue of their skin color, sex, and sexual orientation.
Why should mental illness be considered
a disadvantage, on-par with not being born white or male? Because
mental illness is often hereditary, like skin color or sex. Even in
the cases where mental illness is “acquired”, ailments like
Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Depression, and Personality
Disorder, amongst others, can be brought on by environmental factors,
which again, are largely outside of the control of WAMs (and others
who have mental illness).
More intimately, the fear around Joker
is that it will succeed in inspiring a new wave of violence from WAMs
because it presents a villain sympathetically. Perhaps, however,
before people start accusing a film of pouring gasoline over the
flames of WAM-rage, they should consider why they’re keeping the
spigot to the fire hose closed.
-Blake Pynnonen