Joker as a response to “woke culture” making his style of bro-centric comedy unfavorable in Hollywood. Sure, one path he could’ve taken was to write better jokes so that the Hangover trilogy didn’t feel like the same movie three times in a goddamn row. But instead, he made a movie about an unfunny, delusional wannabe comedian who snaps and goes on a murderous rampage, and it ended up earning eleven Oscar nominations (including two wins) as well as a billion dollars worldwide. Well played, guy who made
Starsky and Hutch.
Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Joker … until I read that quote by the director. It’s a genius film, but that’s such a bullshit excuse for its existence. “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he said, “… So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but f–k comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.'” That’s certainly one way of looking at it. Another perspective is that the people who liked Old School in 2003 grew the hell up and you didn’t.
DreamWorks Pictures
An unfortunate side effect of Joker’s success is that after it came out a lot of people started signing up for open mics because they left that film thinking that stand-up comedy is a suitable substitute for therapy. I know that may not be what the filmmakers had intended, but sometimes these things take on a life of their own and there’s nothing the creators can say to change people’s minds about it. After the past four years of political discourse, I’m sure the Wachowskis would love to get a mulligan on the red pill/blue pill scene from The Matrix.
As the old saying goes: You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. Every stand-up comic has something going on with their brain that is different — not broken, just different. That skewed perspective on the world affords comedians the ability to point out its greatest absurdities. And being able to filter your thoughts and experiences into something that can be laughed at can be a powerful coping mechanism, but it cannot be your only coping mechanism. That is unfair to you and your audience. Stand-up comedy is therapy in the same way that a bowl of Cap’n Crunch is part of a balanced breakfast; there’s other stuff that has to be included for it to be considered remotely healthy.
Joker was just part of the darker side of that sad clown trope, along with Standing Up, Falling Down, Entertainment, The King of Comedy, etc. where having a comedy career not work out exactly as they had hoped leads to an existential crisis at best or a mental breakdown at worst. The truth about stand-up comics is it’s a tough business to be in. No comedian is where they want to be, and very few are where they deserve to be. The world has lost a lot of brilliant comics to that despair. Many have suffered through drug and alcohol addiction because when you self-medicate, you never get the dosage right.
There just needs to be better examples of comedians dealing with mental illness, trauma, or addiction that spotlights the recovery instead of glorifying the chaos. Give us a third season of Lady Dynamite, Netflix! Make a film version of Gary Gulman’s The Great Depresh. Too “woke” for you? Give us biopics of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, or Barry Criimins. A lot of stuff that went on backstage there ought to surprise you.
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