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Discussion surrounding the Joker movie has been, much like the oeuvre, very polarized. The movie has become the perfect honeypot for avids of culture wars to plant a flag on either side and argue fiercely for their position. The mostly-liberal dissenter side argues that Todd Phillips’ authorial intent and the timing of the movie’s release midst an epidemic of mass shootings constitutes in and of itself a cardinal sin; all-the-while conservatives have watered its meaning down to a rebellious departure from the conventional trappings of cinema, where it has according to them become more a way of ostracizing them for political complacency than lauding their commitment to traditional values. What you get when those two clash is the tone of a conversation where everyone sounds half-drunk, and is either completely oblivious to the cultural context in which the movie exists, or sees an affront to their opinion as a fundamental misunderstanding of cinema-both cases are not ideal, and it’s why the discourse around the movie needs to be grounded in several key points before any definitive judgment is made.
Because white men seem to have a newfound knack for mass shootings, the Joker movie has been perceived by a significant…
