'Joker: Folie à Deux' (2024)

Spoiler alert: "Folie à Deux" isn't referring to Arthur and Lee

Joker: Folie à Deux (which I will henceforth refer to as Arthur because I can’t be bothered to track down the “à” every time) is one of the best comic book movies ever made.

I say that, fully aware that it will probably be deemed a contrarian statement that was made for the sake of being contrarian. It was not. You see, saying something with the primary intent to offend or get a reaction from somebody, is very different from acknowledging the possibility that what you’re about to say is going to offend or get a reaction from somebody. Funnily enough, no film understands this better than Joker.

Arthur, for its part, has been criticized pretty extensively for giving a large middle finger to Joker fans. But in actuality, Arthur only gave a middle finger to the Joker fans who didn’t actually know what Joker was about. In fact, it gave a middle finger to just about everyone who didn’t know what Joker was about. Which is to say, it gave a middle finger to most people, and most people didn’t like that.

Arthur marks the return of Joaquin Phoenix to the title role of Arthur Fleck. While incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital, he meets fellow patient Lee Quinzel. Sparks fly, songs are sung, and Arthur finds himself with a new lease on life, right as he’s about to stand trial for all the murders he committed during the events of Joker.

Naturally, we need to talk about what Joker is first. It is a comic book movie. In other words, it operates within the framework of speculative genre fiction, but the way Joker spins that is it does away with the plot/world elements you would expect in a spec genre fiction story, and replaces them with more realistic elements. Instead of aliens and wizards and magic, there’s homicide, but Joker treats homicide as it would aliens and wizards and magic. More on that later.

Why is this important? Because you can’t treat all of Joker’s plot elements as grounded and literal and dramatic and conducive to some sort of protagonistic character study. Otherwise, you end up interpreting the film as an incel power ballad that glorifies violence and anger; an interpretation that, no matter which way you swing on it, is incorrect.

Joker is about cynicism and irony, the latter of which is a common — if not crucial — tool in both the art and organism of comedy; the Joker persona being styled as a comedian is no accident. In Joker, pay attention to how Arthur is introduced as a comedian at the comedy club; his intro (that Arthur wrote himself) is wholesome and is something that he genuinely believes in. How does the introducer react to this introduction? Like he’s some sort of weirdo. How does the audience react to this introduction? By laughing at the weirdo.

And that’s just one instance. Throughout Joker, the people who antagonize Arthur do so from a place of irony (watch how the three businessmen treat Arthur on the subway before he kills them), insincerity (watch how Murray treats him on the show during the film’s climax), and an overarching lack of interest in honest love and genuity. This is precisely what Arthur wants; honest love and genuity and joy.

But the world has no time for that, so Arthur burns it all down. Except he doesn’t. No, he builds fantasies that give him some sort of security in his life; if the world won’t accommodate his need for sincere love, he’ll just create his own world. This world that Arthur makes is populated by a loving mother and a girlfriend who looks a lot like his neighbor from down the hall.

But then he finds out the truth about his mother, and an encounter with his neighbor dispels the illusion of that relationship. All of a sudden, Arthur is no longer safe anywhere; not in the world, and not in his head.

But Arthur doesn’t burn the world down; he becomes a part of it. He laughs at the people he murdered when the world suddenly demands sincere compassion for them. And because this is a comic book movie — and therefore does not play by the rules of realistic dramatic weight (otherwise, we’d be genuinely horrified at every world-ending event that threatens the Marvel Cinematic Universe) — we can treat murder and the mistreatment of Arthur as the same thing; that’s what the spec genre fiction framework allows and, at this point in the film, encourages.

And frankly, from a thematic perspective, they are the same thing. Why should Arthur care about the people he murdered? Why should the world care about Arthur at the beginning of the film? Why should we, ourselves, care about anyone, period?

This is the tragedy of Joker; Arthur is now hiding behind the very irony that was weaponized against him. He has submitted to the populist dark art of apathy. It was never about being angry at the world or mythologizing one’s righteousness; it was about protecting oneself from a world that has socially outlawed the concept of genuinely giving a shit. Such a world creates people who will say something contrarian with the primary intent of offending or getting a reaction out of someone.

Joker isn’t about Arthur; it’s about us.

But I’ve talked about Joker long enough. Let’s talk about Arthur.

It is not possible to gloss over how disgustingly meta Arthur is. Observe:

• Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) mocking Arthur about thinking he was the main character (which, again, he literally wasn’t, and there’s an argument for Arthur knowing that diegetically as well).

• Sophie (Zazie Beetz) bemoaning all the phone calls telling her it was her fault that Arthur did what he did (incel power ballad, remember?).

• Joker literally saying “We’re not giving the audience what they want” into a godforsaken microphone.

In any other context, this would be tacky, but all of it is done directly in response to how Joker was absorbed by the world, and because we did such a terrible job of that, Arthur earns the right to be disgusting with its meta elements.

Now, pay attention to how the teacher of the Arkham music therapy group (where Arthur meets Lee for the first time) describes the purpose of music therapy; it’s honest, sincere, and wholesome in the same way Arthur once believed in his purpose of spreading joy and laughter. Couple this with the fact that Jackie only put him there to make fun of him, and it should become apparent that Arthur is also about what Joker was about.

The act of singing in this film intends to draw attention to the idea/mentality of authenticity, which frequently partners itself with joy. Pay attention to how the guards respond when the other patients begin singing “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In” together. Compare that to when Jackie sings it. Compare that to when Lee sings “That’s Entertainment.”

What Arthur does differently, however, is that it leans into the purpose of Arthur’s fantasies more, and simultaneously gives a middle finger to the reality that we’re expected to treat as the one true reality (and remember, that so-called “one true reality” is defined by its adherence to apathy). Importantly, that middle finger is one that Joker had been giving all along.

Most all of the musical numbers take place in a fantasy world created by Arthur, Lee, or both. But their love is real; Arthur is being met where he’s at, and it’s from a place of honesty. And before you say that Lee made most of her backstory up, her intent to love Joker and all their shared fantasies is the core of that honesty, rather than the details she utilized to make good on that intent. Facts tend to muddle truth that way. More on Lee later.

All of a sudden, Arthur has a safe world that’s predicated upon — and better yet, shared with — someone who isn’t going to take it away from him. Indeed, wouldn’t you rather joyously sing and dance in the rain with someone you love than have to deal with the mean-spirited pessimism (and that’s putting it extremely lightly) of Arkham State Hospital? Or a courtroom of rotating personalities trying to tell you that you, specifically, are the problem, when really you had just been copying everyone else for the sake of protecting yourself (read: conformity)?

And then along comes Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill), Arthur’s former coworker who was present when Arthur killed Randall, and who Arthur spared because of Gary’s past kindness to him (both events having taken place in Joker).

Gary, you see, is no stranger to the desolation of the irony-drenched world that Arthur fears and assimilated into. His dwarfism has resulted in him being targeted and mocked in ways not dissimilar to Arthur, as evidenced by the snickers that occur as Gary enters the room and walks up to the podium.

Gary’s testimony is an emotional one. A sincere one. One that reminds Arthur of how nice he was to Gary, and how Gary remembers that. Gary knows firsthand that Arthur’s motive in life is love, rather than violence and anger, and Gary knows this because he engaged with Arthur sincerely, first in Joker and now in Arthur.

Arthur isn’t prepared for this. He offers no defense, and allows himself to show real emotion over how the Arkham guards treat him and the other patients. The Joker character — the embodiment of Arthur’s assimilation into apathy — is beginning to crack. He has love, he is love, and he remembers that second thing thanks to Gary.

You know what would really make for a final nail in the proverbial coffin right about now? If, upon being mishandled by the guards upon his return to Arkham, Arthur witnesses another patient standing up for him (partly by singing loudly), and lies helplessly as that patient is strangled to death for standing up for him.

If that happened, Arthur’s mind might drift to the question of what he represents to all the clown-faced protestors outside the courtroom (and, by extension, the real-life angry white men who adore him — and Joker — for something that he isn’t).

The next day, Arthur renounces his Joker persona — now a symbol of violent apathy that he never wanted it to be dubbed as, and which he never considered the possibility of because no one ever acknowledged him prior to the Joker persona — in his closing statement. He makes good on this renouncement even further by running away from Joker cultists that are trying to rescue him from the courtroom following the car bomb attack.

At this point, Arthur is no longer subjugating himself to the apathy of others, nor is he assimilating into it; he rejects it entirely. He’s giving a shit about the people he killed. He’s taking responsibility for the violence and anger performed by him and in his name. He’s grounding himself in the reality that the world wants him to. He’s being sincere about it all.

And everyone — from the characters in the film to real-life audiences — hates him for it. Go figure.

But hey, he still has Lee, right? He still has love and his own little corner of the world that he shares with her, right?

Well, no, because their love was grounded in a reality separate from the one that the world wants them to commit to. And because Arthur is now committing to the world’s preferred reality (i.e. taking it seriously, i.e. treating the world as though it’s not a comic book world), he’s forsaking the reality he had with Lee; the one that he was happy in. “All we had was the fantasy, Arthur.”

But what about Lee’s pregnancy? Well, what about it? You didn’t actually think that was a serious, stake-sensitive plotline with regard to what this movie actually is, did you? This isn’t entertainment, folks; this isn’t a character study, this isn’t a romance, and this isn’t an origin story.

No, it’s the same movie that it’s always been; an ode to sincerity and love, and a warning against living your life in irony. Arthur is about the exact same thing that Joker is about, except Arthur is being way, way, way, way, way less polite about it, to the point where it pissed pretty much everybody off.

But seeing as the world at large missed that first memo and subsequently regarded Joker the way it did, we got what we fucking deserved with Arthur.

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