Oh god, do I even want to touch this powder keg of an issue? Yeah. Yeah, we’re doing this.
So you’ve probably heard that there’s a movie called Joker coming out next weekend. It tells the origin story of Batman’s most feared nemesis, played here by Joaquin Phoenix. But there’s a problem: some people have expressed concern that the movie, which depicts the Joker as an outcast driven to crime by an uncaring society, glorifies the sort of violent loners who have, with increasingly regularity, been picking up guns and shooting people in public spaces, acting out their anger in the worst possible way.
SO. With that in mind, Variety reports that Warner Bros. will no longer be allowing interviewers on the red carpet at the movie’s Hollywood premiere this Saturday at the TCL Chinese Theatre. And of course I get why they would make that decision: they don’t want reporters asking cast and crew members controversial questions about the role movies play in the gun violence epidemic currently sweeping across the United States. No studio wants that kind of buzz around their blockbuster.
On the other hand, is barring reporters from asking questions going to cause more trouble than if they’d just been allowed to do their thing? I dunno. It’ll be an interesting Saturday. Photographers, by the way, are still allowed on the red carpet, because you can’t ask probing questions with a camera lens…well, not unless you’re good.
In fairness to Warner Bros., Joker director Todd Phillips has been saying some stupid stuff lately. Speaking to TheWrap, he argues that “outrage” has become “a commodity,“ and that it’s been that way for a while. “What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda,” he said. “It’s really been eye opening for me.”
While I think Phillips is obviously right that outrage can be commoditized, I don’t think it applies to this situation at all. The most prominent voices expressing concerns about Joker have been the U.S. military, which warned service members of potential violence at screenings, and family members of people killed in an Aurora movie theater in 2012 mass shooting, some of whom penned a letter to Warner Bros. asking the studio to support measures to curb gun violence. Notably, the family members did not ask Warner Bros. to censor or not release Joker; they were very clear that they’re not boycotting the movie or anything. They’re just encouraging corporate responsibility.
So are these the crazy leftists Phillips is mad about? Family members of shootings victims and the army? Not a good look, Todd.
Phillips doubled down in an interview with IndieWire, engaging in some raging whataboutism. “The one that bugs me more is the toxic white male thing when you go, ‘Oh, I just saw John Wick 3.‘ He’s a white male who kills 300 people and everybody’s laughing and hooting and hollering,” Phillips said. “Why does this movie get held to different standards? It honestly doesn’t make sense to me.”
Okay, let’s see if we can explain it to him gently. The John Wick movies are about a guy targeting a network of assassins who wronged him, which isn’t really a thing that happens in real life. Joker is about a guy who feels rejected by society and who expresses his anger by killing innocent people, which is a thing that happens way too often.
And by the way, I don’t think that movies or video games or media in general actually spur people to violence — that idea has been pretty thoroughly debunked. But for Phillips to claim he can’t even understand why people — rightly or not — would be concerned about his movie in particular at a time where we seem to learn of a new mass shooting carried out by a disaffected loner every other week…well, the guy sounds out of touch at best. So sure, Warner Bros., probably best to keep him away from a microphone for the time being.
Personally, I think Joker looks really good, and I plan to see it when it comes out next weekend. I hope that when people talk about the issues surrounding the movie, they use some nuance rather than dividing themselves into opposing camps. There’s enough of that already going around, isn’t there?
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h/t The A.V. Club