In a single camp, you’ve a younger, smug prosecutor named Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) and the total severity of the state. They need to actually fry Arthur in an electrical chair. “He’s a monster,” Dent tells reporters on the TV and radio. They view Arthur as little greater than a wolf strolling amongst sheep that must be put down. Conversely, you’ve the sheep, or not less than probably the most unsettling followers: the sort who costume up just like the Joker and idolize him as some sort of people hero who gave them permission to do unhealthy issues… like, say, gun down the wealthy in entrance of little child Bruce Wayne.
Each views characterize a predictable response to a man who killed America’s favourite comic on late night time TV. However additionally they encapsulate a response to the earlier movie, which noticed some critics clutching their pearls and refusing to present it a grade as a result of Phillips’ film was “too harmful,” a naive and considerably regressive approach to have interaction with artwork. Then there was that group of vocal on-line followers who appeared to worship the film a bit of an excessive amount of, cosplaying as Arthur Fleck’s Joker, but in addition copying his mannerisms, his perspective, and pondering he had one thing vital to say about society.
In different phrases, the film appealed to each comedian ebook followers who wished a few of their favourite characters taken significantly as intellectual artwork and perhaps felt a bit of too vindicated by Arthur’s not essentially dependable narration/perspective, in addition to edgelords and alt-right media personalities who peddle in grievance for loners and poisonous segments of fandom (i.e. “incels”). This in flip feeds into the narrative of Joker’s detractors. For instance, David Edelstein wrote in Vulture, “It’s an anthem for incels” and appears to point a connection between “civil massacres” and the character of the Joker.
Each side, Joker Folie a Deux insists, failed to know the humanity of poor Arthur, and this turns into the whole thrust of the sequel’s exhausting 138 minutes. You might have those that want to demonize Arthur as a monster, and those that see that monster as some sort of rock star chief who must be unleashed once more. However in Phillips and presumably Phoenix’s studying, Arthur was by no means that man—not the singer of an “anthem for incels” or the idol of his age. Actually, the one one that appears to see Arthur for who he’s within the sequel is his protection legal professional Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), who spends most of her scenes explaining the thinly veiled subtexts and themes of the primary film.
The truth that Arthur’s mom (Frances Conroy) had him give her baths whereas he was in his underwear within the 2019 film strongly hinted at a tragic background in psychological and certain sexual abuse. That’s made express in Joker 2 when Maryanne says Arthur was abused in all these methods at seven years previous when the state didn’t take him away from a mentally unwell mom. Arthur is a sufferer of his mom but in addition a society that fails these with out energy. Maryanne says this ugly fact to symbols of the system and the established order, in addition to to these within the film’s viewers who simply write off the lonely and mentally in poor health as “incels.”
On the flip aspect are people who see Arthur killing Murray Franklin as a second of liberation as an alternative of a ultimate laborious flip into infinite tragedy. It’s these of us who blow up the courthouse the place Arthur is being sentenced, and their fellow vacationers who mistake this troubled and in-need man as some sort of hero who they cover of their automotive. Presumably they intend to take him to some “protected house” the place he can inform them what to do subsequent. They actually get themselves run over whereas chasing after this false messiah.
