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The Killing Joke: The Ethics of ‘Joker’

photograph of joker graffiti on wall

Batman and his archnemesis the Joker have been battling for almost eighty years. Since the Joker’s first appearance in Batman #1, the Batman versus the Joker rivalry has been taken from comic book pages and blown up on the big screen. From Cesar Romero’s slapstick take on the clown to Jack Nicholson’s off putting rendition, to Mark Hamill’s comically creepy voice acting, to Heath Ledger’s version, and finally Jared Leto’s, the Joker character has equally creeped out and engaged audiences for decades. Now, the clown has made his return to the big screen in director Todd Philips’ Joker. But this isn’t your typical Batman versus Joker story. It’s all about the homicidal clown’s backstory and how he takes over Gotham City. While the film has received great reviews, there’s a narrative of discontent attached to it. In the wake of a surge of mass shootings in the United States, some moviegoers have called Joker insensitive for how the film handles the character. The controversy surrounding the film asks the question: Should Joker have even been released at the time that it was?

The obvious answer here, and one that a business person or really anyone who can count, is yes. After all, the film earned $849 million globally, and $47.8 internationally over the weekend, with a budget of $64 million. But money isn’t the issue here; it’s what the movie means and how it’s message has translated to audiences.

It all started with the premiere of Joker at the Venice Film festival. The story of mentally ill Arthur Fleck, a struggling comedian in Gotham who has everything taken from him and descends into madness, resonated with the audience in Venice. So much so that the film was awarded a Golden Lion for best film. But on the other hand, critics pointed out that the disturbing story of Arthur Fleck hit too close to home regarding some of the recent events that have occurred in the United States. In Joker, at the peak of Fleck’s misery, he commits murder and realizes that he enjoys it. Finally, at the high point of the movie, Fleck “becomes” the Joker as he commits murder in front of a studio audience.

In response, critics explained that the Joker’s character inspires angry, misogynistic young men who’ve been responsible for far-right and white supremacist violence. Indeed, some of the most recent mass shootings have been caused by white men. For example, in August, Patrick Crusius entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and killed 22 people. Later, it was revealed that his motive was to kill as many Latinx people as possible. Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who murdered 17 students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, was known to have a “desire to kill people.” Self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylan Roof entered a church and killed 9 African American worshippers in hopes of starting a race war. With these mass shootings in mind, it’s then understandable why Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson would say that Joker “may be irresponsible propaganda for the very men it pathologizes.” He might have a point. In the film, Fleck’s life automatically garners sympathy, as the opening shot of the film is him getting beaten up in a clown suit. Misfortune after misfortune, it’s almost as if Fleck has no choice but to become the Joker. And at the same time, the film suggests that maybe–just maybe–if a few lies weren’t told and Fleck was loved a bit more, he wouldn’t have become what he did. Now, with this in mind, how many more Patrick Crusiuses and Nikolas Cruzes are out there? What are the chances that they see Joker and identify with the character to such an extent that they feel inspired by him? Even the background of Adam Lanza, the gunman who killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School mirrors Arthur Fleck’s in Joker, as they both have behavioral issues, mental health problems, and detrimental relationships with their mothers. 

But Lawson wasn’t the only one with these concerns either. Families of the victims of the Aurora shooting in 2012, where a gunman opened fire on moviegoers watching The Dark Knight Rises, penned a letter to Warner Bros, the studio that made Joker, calling for them to use their platform to fight gun violence. In response, Warner Bros. said that Joker is not an endorsement of any real-world violence. Todd Philips then went on to say that the movie is more about a lack of compassion in the world than anything, and Joaquin Phoenix, the actor who plays the Joker, remarked that viewers should simply take the film for what it is. Maybe Philips and Phoenix have a point. Philips went on to say that art can be complicated, and it’s often meant to be complicated. Maybe that’s what Joker should be taken as–art. As a movie. Just because the film is relevant to some real-world events shouldn’t mean that it can’t be released or it should be criticized for reflecting real-world issues. The tragic shootings that have happened will always be a part of U.S history, so what difference does it makes if the film came out 5 or 10 years from now? No matter when this movie would come out, the real-world events that have happened would be associated with it.

But then, there’s another side to this Joker controversy. Protesters in Beirut over thecountry’s financial crisis have started to paint their faces like the Joker. Photos of people in Joker masks and face paint have been popping up in Hong Kong and Chile as individuals protests against their respective governments. Internationally, it’s as if the Joker has become a symbol of revolution, not a twisted justification for violence. But if the Joker has then become this symbol for protest, can the film still really be seen as just art–as just a movie? It seems that the film has gone past box office expectations, not in terms of money, but becoming a global phenomenon. In the same vein, the film’s international influence almost prevents it from being contained within itself. It’s sheer influence brings it into the real world. So maybe, the film did need to be released and the world needed to see the Joker on the big screen again. Because either way you look at it, the film proposes an idea–be it terrorism or revolution. Now, since the film’s release, there haven’t been any mass shootings, but perhaps the reason that the film shouldn’t have made it to theaters is the fear of what someone who thinks that those two ideas are synonymous would do.

Bothsidesism and Why It Matters

Image of many protesters in Charlottesville

In early December, Kelly Craft, the new US ambassador to Canada, stated in an interview that she believes “both sides” of climate science. When asked directly whether that meant that she believed that human-made climate change was a real phenomenon, she stated that “both sides have their own results, from their studies, and I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.” As many pointed out, this position is misinformed: there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that human-made climate change is indeed a real phenomenon; indeed, it was expressed by a recent report conducted by hundreds of scientists from the US itself. This is not to say that there are not unresolved questions about climate change, nor is it to imply that there is universal agreement amongst scientists with regards to the facts about climate change. And there are of course those who continue to deny that climate change is occurring, or occurring for the reasons that scientists have stated. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there are two sides to an issue does not mean that both sides are equally well supported by evidence or that there are no reasons to prefer one side over the other.

Recently, there seems to have been an increase in the amount of, for lack of a better term, bothsidesism. One such instance that many found particularly egregious was Donald Trump’s comment in the aftermath of the Charlottesville protests last year that there were “very fine people on both sides,” which many interpreted as Trump lending his support for, or at the very least failing to condemn, white nationalism. More recently, PayPal banned a number of accounts associated with the far-right group Proud Boys, but at the same time also banned accounts belonging to a number of anti-fascist groups. As The Guardian reports, many found PayPal’s grouping together of these two sides as a failure to distinguish between groups that spread hate speech and those that attempt to fight against it. As was the case in the aftermath of Trump’s remarks, PayPal’s actions were interpreted by some as another instance of catering to the interests of the far-right.

Although these cases are different – the first involving Craft’s treating “both sides” of climate science as equally legitimate, and the second involving the equivalent treatment of far-right hate groups and those protesting against them – they have something important in common. In these cases there are, broadly speaking, two sides to some issue. The balance of reason and evidence, however, supports one side over the other: there is overwhelming evidence to believe that human-made climate change is a genuine phenomenon, for example, and overwhelming reason to believe that white nationalist hate groups are morally reprehensible. Bothsidesism occurs, then, when the mere fact that there is more than one side to an issue is, itself, taken to imply that there is a reason to remain agnostic with regards to an issue, or else to imply that both sides are equally worth considering.

We need to be careful here: there are many issues about which there are competing views, and in which it may very well be appropriate to say that one appreciates that there are good arguments on both sides. The problem I have in mind is not like this. Instead, the problem with bothsidesism is that a disagreement is presented as a legitimate one, with both sides deserving equal discussion, simply because there is disagreement, and not because there is, in fact, good reason to consider both sides.

Legitimate disagreements, on the other hand, are driven by a search for the right answer to a question, and so both sides are given careful consideration because one wants to figure out which one is right. Many recent incidents of bothsidesism, however, appear to not be driven by any concern for the truth, but are instead motivated by political or other practical concerns. After Craft’s remarks on climate change, many pointed out that her husband is a multi-millionaire coal magnate, and thus Craft herself is presumably highly motivated to deny the existence of climate change. Critics of Trump after his Charlottesville remarks argued that Trump was trying to prevent the alienation of a key demographic of votes, while critics of PayPal argue that they are motivated by monetary concerns, not wanting to lose users who might have far-right political affiliations.

There are many potentially moral concerns surrounding the kind of bothsidesism considered here. First, there are always potentially bad consequences in spreading misinformation – in these cases, this misinformation involves the implication that both sides are equally well supported by evidence. Second, a consequence of the spread of this information is an emboldening of those holding the minority view. For example, as Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times argued, Trump’s “equating activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists” after Charlottesville “buoyed the white nationalist movement.” Continuing to believe that there are equally good arguments on both sides of the climate change debate could have disastrous consequences of its own, as continuing to debate an issue that has received scientific consensus threatens forestalling important actions related to preventing further environmental damage.

Some have proposed that the best way to deal with certain types of bothsidesism is to refuse to engage in debate, thus refusing to give a side that is not worth consideration and kind of consideration at all. For example, in response to a recent report from the UK by Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew denying the existence of climate change, MEP Molly Scott Cato created a petition of “politicians, scientists, academics and campaigners” to pledge to “refuse to debate those who deny that human-made climate change is real.” Cato’s goal is to stop giving a “voice to the pseudoscience of climate change deniers; we must urgently move the debate on to how we address the causes and effects of dangerous climate breakdown.” Refusing to debate the existence of climate change thus prevents climate denial from being given any sort of legitimacy, and thus can prevent the harms associated with failing to take action with regards to climate change.

Again, we should not conclude that there are no legitimate cases in which there are two sides of an issue that deserve equal consideration; nor should we think that it is always appropriate to refuse to engage in debate when we disagree with a minority view. But when views are motivated not by a concern for the truth, or when the motivations behind holding one’s views are morally reprehensible, giving such views equal consideration simply because they are contrarian can be actively harmful.