Because dystopia begins at home

Surely the worlds been rightly blown away by Joaquin pronounced Waakeen Phoenix as Joker in Todd Phillipss 2019 masterpiece of the same name Comparisons with Heath Ledgers equally delirious why so serious turn in Christopher Nolans The Dark Knight 2008 are inevitable Let alone Jack Nicholsons popular rendition of the same part in Tim Burtons Batman 1989 which was closer to the comic bookThat said The Dark Knight in all its adult dystopian bleakness hinged on stark realism was still very much DC How does one accurately place Phillipss Joker in the familytree of films One is tempted to draw up a minisyllabus for a moviegoer And I say this having revised the material myselfmdashthe past couple of days since being hit by Joker and further by its equally dark inspirations To a point that I need help myselfThe first clue of course is Robert De Niro in Joker If you look at it one way hes the movies hero For why else would one of Americas finest working actors willingly pick up or even be offered a threefourscene role in a twohour film from a multimillion comic book universe Because latently he is the movies muse In the same way that he was Martin Scorsesesmdashfor a considerable part of the directors careerAt any rate he was for Scorceses Taxi Driver 1976 available on Amazon Prime Videomdashabout a lonely depressed directionless cabbie Travis Bickle De Niro who finds a disturbing modicum of meaning in life or lack thereof through the course of a neonoir psychological thriller That film pretty much shook up the publicAnd yet Bickle as a character was far less unsettling than De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in Scorseses The King Of Comedy 1983 also on Amazon PrimemdashTaxi Drivers sequel in spirit The distressingly delusional Pupkin fairly normal on the surface like Phoenixs Joker nee Arthur Fleck is a wannabe standup comedianBasically you mash up Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy amp up the scale bloat up the existentialist angst centred on a lead character that the world cares for as little as he begins to in returnmdashyou get Joker similarly set in the 70s80s in Scorseses streetlevel Manhattan thats effectively a front for DCs Gotham CityFew films have polarised critics over glorification of violence without redemption and its likely impact on copycat crimes as Joker This is what forced Stanley Kubrick to pull back prints of The Clockwork Orange 1971 from British theatres in 1973 The problem with the argument is it doesnt adequately recognise that a movie is a movie Two just because it deeply explores a phenomenon meditates on an idea doesnt implicitly imply that it condones it let alone celebrates it The impulses could be purely journalisticAnd director Phillipsmdashknown to all as the superhit filmmaker of the relatively lowbrow The Hangover trilogy Due Date Starsky amp Hutch remake etcmdashis a solid reporter Hes chronicled lowlife White America through two documentaries both available on YouTube thatll hit you in ways that youll find hard to instantly recover fromWith Frathouse 1998 Phillips zoomsin on fraternity hostel life and initiationhazing ragging culture in East Coast US campusesmdashas we terrifyingly observe the lengths to which collegekids will go to fit in Nitesh Tiwarys Chhichhore 2019 was childs play compared to this CaucasianAmerican realityPhillips made his directorial debut with the documentary Hated GG Allin And The Murder Junkies 1993 diving deep into the hatefilled deranged perennially naked punkrocker GG Allins life Which like his concert tours involved defecating in publicstage eating and smearing himself with the same gunk being pissed on puking when not directing physical violence against his audiencesUnaware of his early works I metinterviewed Phillips much after hed won an Oscar nomination for cowriting the comedy Borat 2006 Which he argued had workedmdashbecause the joke was on Borat Unlike BrunomdashBorats sequel that he had nothing to do withmdashwhere the joke was on everyone else In another interview on YouTube I find Phillips calling his debut Hated GG Allin as an intended comedyAt the core of GG Allins appeal which becomes clear with one of the soundbytes to the effect is that he was doing things that a lot of people wished they had the balls to Phillips funded the film thanks to a paintingposter he got Allins serialkiller friend JW Gacy to make and that he sold for thousands of dollars Because it seemed creepy cool to own one back in the dayWhats common between the deeply aggressive deranged dangerously violent GG Allin and Joker and to extremely varying extents the White Fratboys Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin Incel Involuntary celibacy or sexual frustration social isolation toxic masculinity mental diseaseshellip All kinds of possible diagnosesNone of which we afford brownfolk holding a gun in the MiddleEastern sun willing to die for religion hoping for life yes but not this one Try making a film from the perspective of that guy Watch the uproarMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates