Joker´s laughing evil is an oxymoron

Text by Harald Olausen

There's something strange about the latest Joker. Is it a bad casting mistake or is the whole theme a cakewalk? As an extended joke, the movie is no longer interesting even in the name. It would have had its chance. In its calculated pursuit of gapless perfection, it wasted them, and the shitty society no longer slaps you in the face like a wet rag so you can feel it.

On Thursday, October 3rd, I was watching the press screening of the latest Joker movie in Helsinki with dozens of other journalists. I was surprised by the boringness and too long duration of the film, in addition to the fact that both the film itself and the actors seemed bad. The whole movie was unclear and not interesting, and it was already visible in the review I wrote in finnish the next day: 

https://www.kulttuurivihkot.fi/blogit/kinosilma/kun-vitsi-menee-pitkaksi-joker-folie-a-deux/

Watching the movie makes you feel cheated. Couldn't they do better? Why did the anarchist Joker have to be made a cheap joke? Joker Part I had viewers all over the world queuing night after night at the box office. Why was a good story faded and the film turned into a hollow self-repetition and rebelliousness into a narcissistic presentation? And why was the rebellion sold cheaply to show business? t is now more of a blood-curdling macabre grimace of evil.

And its belonging to Hannibal Lecter's terrifying category of horror in its brutality, than a role model and encourager of millions of rebellious world souls. For Todd Phillips, the first part of Joker in 2019 brought, in addition to huge fame, the pressure to succeed in the expected sequel to Joker. The man was not believed to rise above his competence, after all, he has a lot of cinematic achievements behind him. Now the big tuition fees had to be paid, but unfortunately only in retrospect.

Folie à Deux were high a few years ago after the great global success of the first Joker, when the second part started to be discussed. Why a musical? The chosen form of the film is somewhat surprising. Hollywood tends to embrace the serious with musicals and laugh hollowly in its syrupy love stories. It's the same in Joker: Folie à Deux, so cold.

While Part I was socially critical, now the boring sequel Joker entertains as a profession. As a dull depiction of the times, the old Joker was chillingly terrifying, anticipating the prelude to a new generation's revolution; the bloody pop operetta was a final reminder of both the futility plaguing humanity and the danger of emptiness, and like a warning from the brink of the abyss. 

Now it's just presented that way. None of this remains, thanks to Lady Gaga's queen complex in Joker: Folie à Deux, which represents a dark gothic romance that is distantly related to horror films, and especially to the toneless world stained by the deadly obscurity of Seven (USA 1995) with its rotting lemurs. Fortunately, something remains from the original.

Such as the Joker's raspy laugh, which is as inhuman and compulsive as a desperate cry for help or a gasp on the last beach. The Joker's externality is "Dionysian" in nature, when he tries to tear off the strangling straitjacket with crying laughter. The Joker is a fetish whose power is in the outfit, like Samson's hair. The Joker kills and the face of the corpse smiles wryly.

(Batman issue no.1, 1940, The height of irony, laughs at his death. Grinning as the deceased). Herein lies the Joker's power and allure: he can laugh at and while dying. Laughing evil is an oxymoron (Greek ὀξύμωρον) - i.e. self-contradiction - a rhetorical figure that combines two opposite or mutually exclusive concepts, Almost nothing works in the movie. Why was this made?

Only for money and Lady Gaga? What was the idea here? The thought of a musical makes the wool on the neck of a more critical viewer stand up: the American horror musical has traditionally only been entertainment meant to scare teenagers. Artur's tame expeditions themselves seem like a cheap courtship of the audience.

In choosing an easy-to-swallow format, more thought has been given to the young audience than the content itself. Joker: Folie à Deux, will probably be nominated for an Oscar in the categories of costume design, set design and cinematography. But the same cannot be said about the actors, unfortunately. As such, it is even more frightening and worse than evil. 

That's where evil denies itself, and the Joker is just innocent and unhappy in his guilt. The Joker is no longer a harmless madman who bullies his surroundings with his sick whims, but like a wasp fatally stings his bullies back, or like a wounded lion who is no longer content to growl but bites and fights.

Joker I and II will still be remembered for a long time as the first steps of the revolution, even after the sky has already fallen irreversibly on our necks. And even though the film is impressive right down to the last drawing, its value is not so much artistic, as the message shows the breaking point of suffering, where life is one noise and chaos in the stranglehold of evil.