SPOILER ALERT: The following feature contains significant spoilers concerning Joker: Folie À Deux’s ending.
At best, my relationship with the Joker can be described as “hostile.” Most of it comes down to my inability to understand why he does what he does. Why dress up as a clown in an ugly suit and bludgeon Jason Todd with a crowbar? Why be mean to Harley Quinn and assault Barbara Gordon? I get that he’s all about embodying chaos, but I’ve always wanted to rip that grin off of his pasty face.
This idea, a lack of understanding, has been at the center of both of Todd Phillips’s Joker films. The first film was all about Arthur’s feeling of being misunderstood by the world and his own mother—and by extension, us as the viewer. however, changes all of that. At least in the case of Arthur, I finally get the guy. I even laughed at his jokes.
From the very first scene of the film, I empathized with what Arthur was experiencing. Seeing how uncomfortable he was in Arkham, thanks to a brilliant and physical performance from Joaquin Phoenix, and the abuse he suffered from the guards there brought me into a sense of camaraderie and empathy that was new for me in the case of this character. Finally, the humanizing approach that Todd Phillips had taken in the 2019 film made sense for this specific vision of the Joker for me. This was someone who had been transformed into a symbol of civil unrest by people he will never know. When your humanity is torn away both by the people keeping you incarcerated and the people who purportedly love “you,” a loaded term within Folie À Deux, what are you left to do? I felt ashamed to realize that I had never considered what it would be like for Arthur to be in this position.
Ultimately, as the film reveals, this is why Arthur Fleck isn’t really the Joker to begin with, a point hammered home by the film’s arresting ending. Arthur has got too much of a heart to be the Joker. The question of whether Arthur’s identity lies in either himself as Arthur, failed comedian, or as the Joker is resolved to point out how our identities are socially constructed. Other people make meaning from who we are based on the actions and behaviors that we exhibit. Case in point, the inmate who murders Arthur maniacally laughs as he carves a Chelsea smile into his face. These are actions we, as viewers with a whole host of Batman films and comics floating around in our minds, put meaning to and label as the Joker, the True Joker. Likewise, Arthur’s civilian life as the laughingstock of late night television is itself a role that requires social input—an audience to jeer at him.
Arthur’s death and the implied birth of another Joker calls to mind a moment from Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s When someone tries to kill V, he says, “Did you think to kill me? There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.” Folie À Deux’s ending recalls this element from V for Vendetta in order to reflect on both the significance of the Joker as a symbol within the film, and the additive nature of comic book adaptations as a whole.
For characters like the Joker, who we’ve seen onscreen several times now, they live beyond the bounds of the films they appear in (walk with me here). That is, even once the credits finish rolling and the house lights in the movie theater come on, they live on in both our minds and in the certain pocket in pop culture that they develop. This is reflected specifically in how the inmate who kills Arthur slices his face—it reminds us of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight as a story has long been complete, but Folie À Deux’s reference to it reanimates it once more. Coupled with the fact that Folie À Deux is explicitly about the power of Joker as an idea living on in other people, Arthur’s death is an apt illustration of this element of V for Vendetta.
I think for anyone who’s read Batman comics, Folie À Deux offers a familiar look at masks and identity. As Arthur gradually comes to terms with how his childhood trauma informs his behavior as an adult, with his softspoken and almost childlike way of speaking, Folie À Deux offers a flip side to the “Yes, Father. I shall become a bat” arc that we’ve seen with Batman. Bruce Wayne is willing to abandon his own personhood in order to harness his trauma and become Batman. Arthur Fleck, on the other hand, must discover in Folie À Deux those personal and dehumanizing costs of transforming into a symbol. He’s completely naive, in contrast to how calculating Bruce Wayne is. It brings a tragic element to Arthur’s character that I wasn’t expecting to see.
I think what I respect most about Joker: Folie À Deux is its willingness to put us on trial for our conceptions of the Joker. In being so standoffish with the character, I didn’t realize how much I was missing out. The film is aware of how saturated the super-villain is both onscreen and off, and it’s refreshing to see a Joker story take that approach. While my feelings towards the Joker that killed Jason Todd remain the same, I have to appreciate how the Joker lives on in our minds. Arthur may be dead, but the idea of the Joker can never die.
Joker: Folie À Deux, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is now in theaters. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
Jules Chin Greene writes about comics, TV, games and film for DC.com, and his work can also be found at Nerdist, Popverse and Multiverse of Color. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @JulesChinGreene.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Jules Chin Greene and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
[[{“value”:”SPOILER ALERT: The following feature contains significant spoilers concerning Joker: Folie À Deux’s ending.
At best, my relationship with the Joker can be described as “hostile.” Most of it comes down to my inability to understand why he does what he does. Why dress up as a clown in an ugly suit and bludgeon Jason Todd with a crowbar? Why be mean to Harley Quinn and assault Barbara Gordon? I get that he’s all about embodying chaos, but I’ve always wanted to rip that grin off of his pasty face.
This idea, a lack of understanding, has been at the center of both of Todd Phillips’s Joker films. The first film was all about Arthur’s feeling of being misunderstood by the world and his own mother—and by extension, us as the viewer. however, changes all of that. At least in the case of Arthur, I finally get the guy. I even laughed at his jokes.
From the very first scene of the film, I empathized with what Arthur was experiencing. Seeing how uncomfortable he was in Arkham, thanks to a brilliant and physical performance from Joaquin Phoenix, and the abuse he suffered from the guards there brought me into a sense of camaraderie and empathy that was new for me in the case of this character. Finally, the humanizing approach that Todd Phillips had taken in the 2019 film made sense for this specific vision of the Joker for me. This was someone who had been transformed into a symbol of civil unrest by people he will never know. When your humanity is torn away both by the people keeping you incarcerated and the people who purportedly love “you,” a loaded term within Folie À Deux, what are you left to do? I felt ashamed to realize that I had never considered what it would be like for Arthur to be in this position.
Ultimately, as the film reveals, this is why Arthur Fleck isn’t really the Joker to begin with, a point hammered home by the film’s arresting ending. Arthur has got too much of a heart to be the Joker. The question of whether Arthur’s identity lies in either himself as Arthur, failed comedian, or as the Joker is resolved to point out how our identities are socially constructed. Other people make meaning from who we are based on the actions and behaviors that we exhibit. Case in point, the inmate who murders Arthur maniacally laughs as he carves a Chelsea smile into his face. These are actions we, as viewers with a whole host of Batman films and comics floating around in our minds, put meaning to and label as the Joker, the True Joker. Likewise, Arthur’s civilian life as the laughingstock of late night television is itself a role that requires social input—an audience to jeer at him.
Arthur’s death and the implied birth of another Joker calls to mind a moment from Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s When someone tries to kill V, he says, “Did you think to kill me? There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.” Folie À Deux’s ending recalls this element from V for Vendetta in order to reflect on both the significance of the Joker as a symbol within the film, and the additive nature of comic book adaptations as a whole.
For characters like the Joker, who we’ve seen onscreen several times now, they live beyond the bounds of the films they appear in (walk with me here). That is, even once the credits finish rolling and the house lights in the movie theater come on, they live on in both our minds and in the certain pocket in pop culture that they develop. This is reflected specifically in how the inmate who kills Arthur slices his face—it reminds us of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight as a story has long been complete, but Folie À Deux’s reference to it reanimates it once more. Coupled with the fact that Folie À Deux is explicitly about the power of Joker as an idea living on in other people, Arthur’s death is an apt illustration of this element of V for Vendetta.
I think for anyone who’s read Batman comics, Folie À Deux offers a familiar look at masks and identity. As Arthur gradually comes to terms with how his childhood trauma informs his behavior as an adult, with his softspoken and almost childlike way of speaking, Folie À Deux offers a flip side to the “Yes, Father. I shall become a bat” arc that we’ve seen with Batman. Bruce Wayne is willing to abandon his own personhood in order to harness his trauma and become Batman. Arthur Fleck, on the other hand, must discover in Folie À Deux those personal and dehumanizing costs of transforming into a symbol. He’s completely naive, in contrast to how calculating Bruce Wayne is. It brings a tragic element to Arthur’s character that I wasn’t expecting to see.
I think what I respect most about Joker: Folie À Deux is its willingness to put us on trial for our conceptions of the Joker. In being so standoffish with the character, I didn’t realize how much I was missing out. The film is aware of how saturated the super-villain is both onscreen and off, and it’s refreshing to see a Joker story take that approach. While my feelings towards the Joker that killed Jason Todd remain the same, I have to appreciate how the Joker lives on in our minds. Arthur may be dead, but the idea of the Joker can never die.
Joker: Folie À Deux, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, is now in theaters. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
Jules Chin Greene writes about comics, TV, games and film for DC.com, and his work can also be found at Nerdist, Popverse and Multiverse of Color. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @JulesChinGreene.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Jules Chin Greene and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.”}]]
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