Joker: A Riveting, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Conservative Vehicle

TruthDig’s review of Todd Phillips’ Joker is accurate but for one thing: What we call “neoliberalism” is really just conservatism under a different title. But whatever you call it, that the film so boldly attacks the very political-economic system that has inflicted Caligula Drumpf on the world may help explain why its net profit after taking costs into account is set to give Avengers: Infinity War serious competition.

There have been accurate comparisons of Joker to Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film, Falling Down. As in that earlier motion picture, the protagonist is a pathetic loser who has been rendered “not economically viable” in an increasingly corporatist society in which those who for whatever reason cannot fend for themselves are looked down upon and considered good only for public ridicule and as targets of violence. When at the start of Joker a group of young ruffians steal Arthur Fleck’s sign and subsequently savagely beat him with it following a chase into an alley, we immediately see that Gotham circa 1981 reflects how modern American society treats its discarded citizens: the mentally ill and the homeless are treated like scum, and although we might react with shock, horror, and righteous condemnation, we aren’t really pushing those in power to do anything about it.

As Fleck’s mental condition deteriorates, with a large amount of help from cuts to social services that likewise cut him off from badly needed medication, his reactions to the system that has kept him down become increasingly unhinged and violent, although he spares those who have not wronged him in some way.

All of this leads to a bloody conflagration by the film’s climax that the audience can see coming from miles away, and we fully understand why the elites within the story fail to see the logical response to their own hubris, because they are realistically portrayed. The character of Thomas Wayne is re-imagined here as a combination of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, blending a corporate CEO who has decided to cut out the middle men of bribed politicians to run for public office himself and an out-of-touch elitist who ridicules the very people he seeks to “save” from their own “failings” and can’t understand why no one sees how much the city “needs” him.

There are a lot of nods to Martin Scorsese’s works including The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, both tonally and visually. Robert De Niro’s character, Murray Franklin, is clearly modeled on Jerry Langford from the former, and in many ways, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck reminds us of the latter’s Travis Bickle. How much of Joker takes place in Fleck’s increasingly deranged mind and how much within the “real” world of the story itself is left to the interpretation of the viewer, another nod to King of Comedy. This is especially relevant in the ending to the film.

Indeed, this whole film might be interpreted as partly a defense of Scorsese in the wake of the auteur’s recent comments about Marvel movies not being ‘cinema’, an argument also made (albeit somewhat condescendingly) on Variety.com by Owen Gleiberman.

But here’s why I think that Scorsese and Coppola are actually right — and why in their high-minded and disgruntled what’s-the-world-coming-to? way, the two are doing American movie culture an incredible service. The way I see it, they’ve planted this issue at the center of the conversation, staking their credibility on an argument that radically challenges the status quo. And instead of carping about them, we should all take a big pause and listen to what they’re saying. Because this isn’t really about putting down Marvel movies. It’s about asking what, in the future, we want our popular culture to be.

Over the years, I’ve written positive reviews of more than my share of Marvel films. This year alone, I liked at least one (“Captain Marvel”) that most critics didn’t, and at least one (“Dark Phoenix”) that most critics thought was beyond abysmal. I stand by both opinions, so mock me if you will, but I am no Marvel basher. I think that the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” is the greatest Marvel movie, and close to a work of art.

Yet here’s why I agree, in spirit, with Scorsese and Coppola (and with Ken Loach and Fernando Meirelles, the two other directors who’ve since chimed in on this issue). What, deep in its bones, does the word “cinema” mean? If it’s merely a synonym for “motion-picture spectacle,” then obviously the two are wrong. (If “Avengers: Endgame” isn’t a spectacle, I don’t know what is.) But that’s not actually what cinema means. Scorsese said that a Marvel movie “isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” On a literal level, you could say that he’s wrong (the hero of “Guardians of the Galaxy” tries to do those things), but what he’s really speaking about comes down to a different word. The word is mystery.

The trouble with our blockbuster movie culture, and not just Marvel movies, is that there’s no mystery to it. None at all. It’s all on the surface; what you see is what you get. Whereas cinema, as it has stood for 100 years, represents a realm in which stories vibrate with an emotional and psychological reality that transcends the design of the film we’re watching. Cinema is about what happens, in a movie, right in front of you, but it’s also about what happens between the lines. It’s about a place where what the film brings to the audience is met by what the audience brings to the film — a sacred zone of spirit and empathy, where the identification you feel with a character takes you to someplace unknown.

The reason I bring all this up is that Todd Phillips has so obviously done with Joker what Scorsese and Coppola lament the lack of in Marvel blockbusters, and that Warner Bros. is jeopardizing (along with its potential DCEU revival) by joining forces with the boy who has ruined both Star Trek and Star Wars. To bring in a no-talent hack like Abrams guarantees that the sort of badly needed socio-political messaging Phillips employs will die an unnecessary and pointlessly cruel death, doing to films such as Joker what the thugs—high and low—do to Arthur Fleck that drive him to such extremes.

Whatever your thoughts are of this film, it IS definitely CINEMA, the kind desperately needed at a time when movies are increasingly corporatized, sanitized, and bereft of any meaning other than making a profit at the insult of audience intelligence. Joker has several messages, the most important being what late-stage capitalism and the hyper-conservatism that nurtures and protects it does to people and the logical outcome that will result if we do not reverse course. Who today remembers, or knows at all, the words of John F. Kennedy, who warned that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”? That’s the central message of Joker, and the wealthy elites who run their callous, dystopian paradise from their gated mansions and corporate boardrooms ignore it at their peril no matter how much they may pretend that they’re untouchable.

Anyway, below you’ll find my video review of Joker.

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The Wilk Report – 18 August 2018: Jamie Lee Curtis, Matt Groening, Kevin Spacey Woes, & Boots Riley

Jamie Lee Curtis talks about making ‘Halloween’ forty years after the original. Matt Groening’s latest show gets of to a rocky start. Box Office Mojo shows some surprises. Kevin Spacey’s latest movie took in a humiliatingly low amount on its opening night. And Boots Riley has some words for Spike Lee.

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The Wilk Report – 22 July 2018

Tom, Larry, and I discuss a range of topics from cartoon reboots, demolition versus reconstruction, James Gunn, Teen Titans, and much more.

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Skippy the Jedi Droid: The Mary Sue/Gary Stu Phenomenon in Today’s Sci-Fantasy

If you haven’t heard of Skippy the Jedi Droid, you’re probably not alone; the concept appeared in a one-off story in 1999’s Star Wars Tales #1 and was written by Peter David. The narrative centers around a Force-sensitive droid named Skippy, and yes, (spoiler alert) it’s the very same R5-unit with the bad motivator that appeared in the original 1977 Star Wars film. Using its powers to Jedi-mind-trick Uncle Owen into buying it from the Jawas, it has a vision of the horrors likely to take place if it and not R2-D2 and C-3PO is purchased, so it blows out its own motivator and uses the last of its fading consciousness to mind-trick 3PO into suggesting R2 as a replacement, thus saving the galaxy.

This makes Skippy quite clearly a Gary Stu, the “male” (if programmed gender identification may be applied to sexless droid constructs) equivalent of a Mary Sue.

Defenders of the Disney Star Wars movies, Paul Feig’s abominable Ghostbusters adaptation, and CBS’ STD like to resort to the straw man tactic of crying sexism whenever the term ‘Mary Sue’ is used to accurately describe the shallow, one-dimensional concepts their creators try to pass off as well developed characters. The failure in this method of defense, of course, is the existence of aforementioned male equivalent personified in Skippy (as well as The 300’s King Leonidas), but let it not be said that whiny shallow thinkers are willing to grow up long enough to acknowledge the absurdity of their accusations when faced with the cold hard facts.

But this is a problem that is plaguing Hollywood these days: Nobody was willing to be the adult in the room and tell the likes of Steven Moffat, Alex Kurtz-Man, Ruin Johnson, Jar Jar Abrams, Paul Fatigue, and others guilty of inflicting chronic Mary-Sue-ism on unwilling audiences, that they aren’t very good and certainly aren’t half as clever as they obviously think they are. Their twelve-year-old’s writing level is all too often condescending, cynical, contemptuous of the source material, and as a result, insulting to the intelligence of the audience. For all someone like Moffat, for example, claims to be a huge fan of properties such as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, when you take a closer look at his concepts-in-place-of-characters, his version of Holmes is a classic Gary Stu, so perfect in his genius and social imperfections that he doesn’t need to change, learn, or grow.

By contrast, consider that in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes is truly challenged, both on the case he’s working on and in his perceptions of women’s abilities. He’s forced to confront his prejudices about the so-called weaker sex because he has been outsmarted by a woman, and as a result he is compelled to alter his views, to grow and learn as a person. For Victorian era England, this was a refreshingly ballsy move for Doyle and it paid off, in large part because it portrayed Holmes as a deeply flawed character who when challenged grows intellectually and spiritually, even if only somewhat, and that is what any given audience relates to. We cannot relate to or believe in a flawless, unchanging concept because it’s not based in reality. We reject it because we know that nobody is perfect, and therefore we cannot accept it in a narrative because to do so forces us to suspend too much of our disbelief to be able to get involved in the story.

Likewise, with Ma-Rey Sue, we simply cannot believe she can use the Force like a Jedi Master (Mistress?) without having undergone any real training, to defeat someone with ostensibly many years of experience. We reject it because it’s not based in reality, and any good story and character must have some basis in it. Otherwise we cannot get into the story. That’s why, when Ruin Johnson proved just how much of a rank storytelling amateur he is and always has been with his hack job on Disney’s Episode VIII, audiences reacted so harshly. We reject his and Abrams’ baloney for what it is.

And, of course, there are Feigbusters and STD, both of which rely on Mary Sues as the centerpieces of their respective tales.

The common denominator to all these is that they are so unrealistic that they cannot stand on their own. Audience won’t accept them, and on a certain conscious level, their creators know it. But instead of acknowledging their writing flaws and going back to learn how to write proper characters, the preferred tactic is to try to bolster the shallow one-dimensional concepts by tearing down the original source material. After all, they “reason”, if the original is destroyed, audiences will have no choice but to accept our creations. But the opposite effect has instead occurred: we dig our heels in even deeper in our rejection, because instead of responding to mistakes with acknowledgement and corrective action, we are attacked as sexist, racist, homophobic, and so on.

All of this is borne of contempt, and not only for the source material; too many of today’s writers hold their audiences in contempt as well. Steven Moffat even went to the extreme in one episode of Sherlock by going out of his way to ridicule fans for even trying to speculate about how the hero survived a presumably fatal encounter. But Moffat had set up questions to be answered later in the first place, and has no right to blast anyone for daring to try and come up with answers to questions he himself posed. Likewise, Ruin Johnson’s childish digs at Star Wars fans, both in The Last Jedi and on social media, speak to his sheer disdain for any who have the audacity to speculate on even the ham-handed questions Jar Jar Abrams put forth for viewers to answer on their own in The Force Awakens. And this betrays, too, an even deeper pathology: Why even pose questions at all if they’re not meant to be answered, and if you’re just going to mock people for doing what comes naturally when asked a riddle? In the minds of today’s corporate hack writer-directors, answers are irrelevant, and audiences are childish @$$holes for expecting any or trying to come up with their own. Payoff is for losers, nerds, people too dweebish even for nerds higher up in the social pecking order.

Thankfully, there’s a limit as to how much abuse audiences will take before they vent their frustration by refusing to buy the shi**y product being sold. Although media consolidation increases, diminishing the quality of what’s sold, consumers still have the right not to purchase it. And you can’t force someone to buy something no matter how you might try to enforce it under code of law. That’s largely why Obamacare, modeled as it was on Romneycare in Massachusetts, ultimately failed. Instead of restricting prices or coming up with a public alternative, legislators and executive alike tried to force consumers to buy product that is increasingly un-affordably priced and increasingly defective in providing a necessary service. Small wonder it failed. It did so because you can’t respond to diminishing demand for low quality product by saying, “you HAVE to buy it; you have no choice in the matter.”

At some point Hollywood is going to have to grow up and accept the fundamental truth of economics: people buy product only if it’s good, useful, and reasonably priced. If you only ever produce garbage, don’t expect them to plop down money they realize is better spent elsewhere. Cinema, of course, isn’t going away any time soon. But it may be that, tired of chronic Mary/Gary Sue/Stu-ism, audiences will soon force another Renaissance on the industry. This can be done in part by supporting smaller, lower-budget, well written and executed productions. If those make money at the box office, Hollywood will adapt as it did before and produce more of that level of quality, simply in order to compete.

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Hereditary and the State of Horror in Today’s Corporatized Cinema

Sorry for the lack of posting; last weekend I was dealing with a death in the family and wasn’t in the mood to try and do an episode of the YouTube webcast, or do any writing.

Anyway, I had opportunity to watch Hereditary, the horror movie written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Toni Collette. I won’t give away too much because I really don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, except to say that if you’re looking for something with a “happy” ending or that pulls punches, you might want to watch something else. But if you’ve the stomach for the cinematic taboos this piece of cinema breaks without so much as flinching, then I recommend you go see it on the big screen in a darkened theater. You really need to do that to get the proper horror film experience.

The story deals with the subjects of inherited mental illness and the cycles of abuse and covering up that go with it. Under the guise of witch-cults and demonic possession, the movie doesn’t let its audience off the hook in condemning the failure of families to address hereditary insanity, warning that as long as we refuse to confront it and take action to get sufferers into effective treatment, the cycle will continue.

As horror movies go, I thought it was fairly good, although there were a few weak spots in the story as there are in any tale told in human history. But the good far outweighed the bad, in my humble opinion. It handles its subject matter on a far more adult level than many might be comfortable with. I was particularly impressed with the creepy performance turned in by Milly Shapiro, who plays daughter Charlie.

But the movie got me thinking of the horror genre more generally and its place in film theory. Having taken it in film school, I saw a lot in Hereditary that really ought to be in other genres, but is instead sorely lacking. Yes, by that I’m specifically calling out the brainless modern iterations of Star Trek and Star Wars.

I have long been a fan of horror (and its twin, science fiction) as a storytelling medium, especially for its ability to tell sociopolitical morality tales. In my last video, with Tom Connors of Midnight’s Edge, we were talking about how much horror has been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the seminal 1960 flick about a motel owner whose domineering mother drove him to become lost in maintaining the memory of her. John Carpenter’s Halloween famously used the character of Michael Myers to replay Hitchcock’s archetype of the emasculated male driven to slaughter young people, especially women, in an effort to reclaim his masculinity. Further, the character of Laurie Strode, like Norman Bate’s parent, represents the Primal Mother, whose power to dominate or defend against male aggression ultimately prevails. And, of course, in a nod to Psycho, Donald Pleasence’s character Sam Loomis was named after the boyfriend in Hitchcock’s masterpiece.

1980’s Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham, turns the concept of the primal mother dominating her offspring to the point of consuming him, on its ear by reversing it: The trauma of losing a child consumes the mother, who then becomes the child in her own mind in order to both erase the tragedy and get revenge. So powerful is this cinematic concept that Cunningham has been battling it out in court with Friday co-creator Victor Miller in court over ownership, which is a whole story in itself.

And who can forget Wes Craven’s 1984 horror-slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street, wherein Craven successfully pulls off what Hitchcock did decades before by killing off the movie’s opening protagonist part-way through the story?

All these films were much-influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, who was a master of manipulating his audience and who possessed tremendous understanding of the human psyche. Hereditary is no different in owing its story’s concepts to Hitchcock’s use of the Primal Mother to frighten audiences. It is through the matrilineal side of the movie’s family that the evils are passed on, and it is the ever-present domination of the family matriarch even in death that drives the action. To the extent that the male characters factor into the story, it is as victims, the dominated being controlled and ultimately consumed by the females.

Of course, Hereditary borrows as much from Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece, The Wicker Man, as it does from Hitchcock, in misdirecting the audience, although those who’ve seen the earlier film will probably see it coming from a mile away. That, I think, is the only major weak spot in Aster’s narrative, but it’s hardly his fault nor can it really be helped. It still works.

There’s a parallel between Hitchcock’s concept of powerful women emasculating weaker males, and Hardy’s. In The Wicker Man, Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Neil Howie is tempted by Britt Ekland’s Willow MacGregor in a seductive nighttime dance that leaves the former frustrated and impotent to deal with his own sexual urges, which he continually suppresses. And it is that very suppression, borne of fear of women masked in pseudo-Christian righteousness, that ultimately proves his undoing. One less frightened of women might have given in and saved himself in the process, but his unwillingness to acknowledge his urges as normal and healthy and alter his attitude toward women, dooms him.

The pattern in these films and their imitators is one in which women have far more power over men, for good or for ill, than many are comfortable with, and in the slasher subgenre of horror, the only way for males to reassert their masculinity is to lash out in violence. They are compelled to kill or dominate in their own twisted manner, unable to cope with the control women have over their lives.

As this concept applies to modern horror and slasher movies, and cinema in general, I think there’s something lost in the seemingly endless string of reboots and reimaginings. None of the reboots really capture the spirit of the originals, leaving shallow, empty shells of the stories told far better and with much more informed inspiration by writers and directors who have greater understanding of both cinematic language and human psychology. For all we’re supposed to believe that STD and Disney Star Wars are promoting “strong women,” they’re really not, because the female concepts have nothing beneath the pretty skins of the actresses portraying them. The concepts are poorly written and executed, make goofball mistakes that belie their supposed strength, and are so incompetent and unsympathetic it is difficult to believe proclaimed strength.

Too many of today’s so-called writer-directors have learned only the technical aspects of movie-making, without learning any of the deeper storytelling taught in film theory. It really takes more original projects by people such as Astor to tell the kinds of horror-driven morality tales we need. The blockbuster adventures over-saturating movie theaters just can’t do the job, at least not on the adult level Hereditary and its contemporaries do. For all the social and political subtext in, say, Black Panther, it can’t even begin to compete with lower-budget, more independent films. That’s because a budget of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars generally suppresses true creativity, almost requiring movie-makers to play down or ignore deeper meaning altogether. There’s too much pressure to go for the cheap thrills and laundry-list checkpoints, because something that actually makes people think about the subject matter within the story is considered too risky given the amount of money being spent. Better, the studios think, to take the safer path.

The problem is that this risk aversion provides hit-or-miss results, and as we’re seeing with Star Wars, it’s more miss than hit. But the beauty of having a lower-budget horror story is that the risk might be higher, but so too are the rewards at the box office if it scores a home run with audiences. Consider that Carpenter’s Halloween, made for $320,000, pulled in seventy million dollars worldwide at the box office, far exceeding what was spent to make and market the film. Suppose Marvel Studios and LucasFilm were forced to make smaller films that focus more on character and storytelling, than on a laundry list of stunts and gimmicks? How might cinema change for the better?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. If you like what you read here and want to help me improve the webcast, please consider becoming a patron by clicking the link to my Patreon page and subscribing. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell icon to receive notifications when I upload content.

The Wilk Report – 16 June 2018: Halloween 40 Years Later

In this week’s episode, Tom Connors from Midnight’s Edge joins me to talk about the new Halloween film being released in October.

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‘Halloween’: Jamie Lee Curtis, Jason Blum Dish on Michael Myers’ Return

http://comicbook.com/horror/2018/06/13/halloween-jamie-lee-curtis-jake-gyllenhaal-michael-myers/

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Halloween: 40 Years Later

The Halloween franchise is returning to the big screen this Autumn with a whole new entry directed by David Gordan Green, who got the project thanks to actor Jake Gyllenhaal. Taking a page from Toho, producer John Carpenter, who co-wrote and directed the original 1978 slasher film, has decided to eliminate all but that production from canon, displacing even Halloween II, which many fans consider to be the second half of the original Michael Myers story.

To get an idea of what’s going on, it’s necessary to go back and retell some of the history behind the production of Halloween II and why Carpenter and his creative team behind the new movie have decided to do what they did.

In 1978, Halloween, which was produced for $325,000—a fairly small bit of change at that time, debuted in theaters and quickly gained acclaim, not to mention box office success with a box office gross of $47 million domestic and $23 million foreign, for a total gross of $70 million. Needless to say, the film was a huge hit, and helped spark a slew of imitators trying to capitalize on its success. These included the much lesser quality Friday the 13th franchise, which had a fair share of simulated blood and gore and gratuitous nudity.

Not to be outdone, bank-roller Moustapha Akkad wanted sequels with which to compete against the imitators, and went ahead with plans to produce one. Carpenter and Halloween co-creator Debra Hill were at that point done with the film and wanted to move on to other projects, but by 1981 it was clear that Akkad was going to do the sequel whether they wanted it or not. Unwilling to be cut out of their share of the profits, they agreed to come aboard the project, but relegated themselves to writing and producing, handing the directorial reigns to Rick Rosenthal.

The intention was to officially wrap up the Michael Myers story and be done with it, and in fact, 1982’s Halloween III had a completely different story and characters with no apparent connection to the previous two films. Carpenter envisioned an anthology series centered on the holiday of Halloween, and for better or for worse, the failure of that at the box office led to the resurrection of Myers and his arch-nemesis Dr. Sam Loomis (played by the great Donald Pleasence) six years later.

For reasons that are still a bit murky, the decision was made to insert more blood, gore, and boobs than was in the original film, and on top of that, add the plot twist that made Jamie Lee Curtis’ character Laurie Strode Michael Myers’ sister, thus explaining his stalking of her and her friends and subsequent murder spree.

Carpenter and Hill were never thrilled with those decisions, which were made under studio pressure and displeased Halloween II director Rosenthal, who voiced his upset over re-shot scenes to put in more gore. So when the opportunity came up to start over with a new movie, Carpenter & Co. took full advantage.

The trailer and press interviews tell us a few things about the story:

The original Halloween II has been retconned out of existence, and so too has been the familial connection between Myers and Strode.

For some reason, Laurie Strode has spent the last forty years preparing for Michael Myers’ return, converting her home into a well laid trap for the homicidal maniac.

Also for some reason, a pair of documentary film-makers investigating Myers’ 1978 rampage for a new project visit him at the mental institution and in the preview, hold his mask up to him (an act that causes a great disturbance in the yard among inmates and guard dogs alike).

Yeah, thanks for giving me my mask back, posh British documentarians (and keeping it so well preserved).

Now, ordinarily I’d protest against the exclusion of 2-6, because it happens that I had a big crush on actress Danielle Harris from 4 and 5 and I never liked how those three films were so disrespectfully eradicated from canon when Dimension decided to do its twenty-year reboot in 1998. But with John Carpenter involved and guiding things behind the scenes, well, I have to admit I’m curious to see exactly what he and director Green do with the story. Curtis says that the new movie lives up to the original, but then, we got that sort of spin twenty years ago and the final product turned out to be less than stellar. So we’ll see.

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