“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
― Isaac Newton
"More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness." - Charlie Chaplin
If 2020 was an old-school video game, it would be the level where they make you fight all the boss characters you’ve defeated before all at once and you have to remember the right button sequences to defeat each of them. While you’re doing that they throw in Covid-19, the new ultra-powerful boss. All of our chickens are coming home to roost this year, it seems, and we have to deal with them somehow.
One of the things that the outbreak of Covid-19 has made clear is that all of us are in the same boat, whether we like it or not. What happens in China affects all of us. What happens in the US affects all of us. What happens in South Africa affects all of us. The murder of George Floyd by police officers in the US started a wave of protests against police brutality towards black people and the huge issue that is racism in general. This has also made us look at our own cases of police brutality right here at home, especially with the murder of Colins Khosa by members of the SANDF.
Charles Siboto
Stop and listen
I’ve been reading the stories around the #BlackLivesMatter protests and looking at how people I know respond to them, whether in anger that we still have to protest against systemic racism, that we still #CantBreathe or with hey, #AllLivesMatter or what about #FarmMurders and #WhiteGenocide? I spent the week just monitoring my social media accounts and watching people I know grapple with the issue of racism in various ways. Some of the responses I agree with and some not but my goal was to watch, listen and try and understand where everyone is coming from.
My takeaway is that we all need to stop and honestly listen to the experiences of others, just listen and resist the temptation to say: “Yes, but . . .” As I said before, whether we like it or not we are in the same boat and even if something like racism doesn’t affect you directly it does indirectly.
This #YouthMonth I want to look back at where we came from, back to the Soweto uprising of 1976. I want to remember how far we have come and to look forward to how far we have to go yet.
The Soweto uprising of 1976
What did the thousands of students want on 16 June 1976 when they took to the streets of Soweto in protest? They were protesting the Bantu Education Act that mandated that all school subjects be taught in Afrikaans. What those students wanted was to be taught in a language they understand, equality and equal opportunity for all youth. The Apartheid government clearly didn’t like how those students were protesting and opened fire on them. When former President Nelson Mandela was fighting for the freedom of black people he was considered a terrorist and eventually imprisoned. Bantu Stephen Biko was murdered for his anti-Apartheid activism. In the US, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated for his views even though he advocated for non-violent resistance against that racist system.
What I am getting at is that all these people and movements want the same things and have been killed trying to get those things whether they did it peacefully or violently. Whatever system is in charge always responds with violence and that is what should appal us! That the Apartheid government killed people, that the miners in #Marikana were killed under the rule of this government, that Colins Khosa was killed by members of the SANDF.
Tuesday, 16 June, sees the online launch of Good Hope, a new feature-length documentary from award-winning filmmaker Anthony Fabian...
11 JUN 2020
Equality and equal opportunity
What black people and other people of colour want are equality and equal opportunity. What women want are equality and equal opportunity. What the LGBTQ+ community wants are equality and equal opportunity. That is all. None of these groups wants to take anything away from anyone and that can’t be so difficult to understand! #BlackLivesMatter has never been about black lives being superior, just that they, too, matter. Just matter, that is all. That isn’t difficult to understand.
#MeToo and #MenAreTrash has never been about trying to destroy men but women holding men who sexually assault women accountable. Again, not such a highbrow concept. Take a step back and just think about this, every single woman you know has experienced some form of sexual harassment, every single woman. Unless they live in some secret pocket of the country I know nothing about, every single PoC you have encountered has experienced some form of racism. Every member of the LGBTQ+ community has been harassed for simply being who they are in some way. That is absolutely wild!
Multi-award-winning Afro-techno princess Latoya Nontokozo Buthelezi, aka Toya Delazy, chats to us this #YouthMonth about inclusivity, tolerance and her advice for aspiring young musicians..
If you are a straight, white male does your life not matter? Do your views not matter? Are you not suffering? Do white people not experience racial prejudice? Do men not experience sexism? As a straight, white male your life and views matter but the social contract we all live under tends to honour its responsibilities to you. You can and, in fact, you definitely do still experience hardships like any human being, though. You can be a victim of crime, you can lose your job, you can be poor and just generally have a difficult life.
White people can suffer from prejudice, sure, but not from systemic racism. Men can suffer from prejudice and be sexually harassed by women but can also not suffer from the sort of systemic sexism that affects their careers or the sort of harassment that makes them fear to be around women in general. Straight, cisgender people suffer but not for their sexual orientation or not fitting into specific gender boxes.
Start with kindness
What can you do then? The best thing to do is simply to listen to PoC, to women and the LGBTQ+ community when they express their frustrations. Taking that time to say things like #AllLivesMatter or #NotAllMen does nothing to help anyone because we know these things. When your friend has been in an accident and is bleeding out on the street they know that it sucks that you got robbed last week but they definitely still would rather go to the hospital first.
Educate yourself on social issues as much as you can. Own whatever privilege you have and use it to fight for those who don’t have the same. Talking about things like race and sexism is uncomfortable but we have to do it if we ever hope to find solutions. Just start where you are and start with kindness. Kindness goes a long way and we need it since we have a long way to go before we reach our goal of equality and equal opportunity.
In just a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has turned our world upside down and as the crisis deepens, so do the challenges with a growing number of people facing unemployment, mounting debt and numerous other issues precipitated by the disruption of the virus...
One of the things many people are concerned about with the Covid-19 lockdown is the impact on the economy. As a society, we have a long history of squandering our human resources by not allowing people to fully participate in the economy based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Well, unless people were being forced to participate in the economy for the bare minimum wage.
What I am getting at is the fighting for equality and equal opportunity for everyone is good for everyone in the end because if the social contract works for everyone there is no reason to breach it. That means crime rates drop and no one is marching and looting in the streets, because there is no need to. Being actively anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic makes the world better for white men, men and straight people too!
This #YouthMonth, let us look back at how far we have come and brace ourselves for how far we have to go until we are all free because this is #NotYetUhuru when every few months we have to remind people that #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Be actively anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic in your everyday life. Small deeds go a long way as JRR Tolkien pointed out: “I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
Sea Star Summer is the sort of YA novel you pick up and read in one sitting and when you’re done you feel a bit sad that the adventure is over. It feels like coming to the end of a really good December school holiday and having to come to terms with going back to normal life. Sally Partridge’s writing in this book is, for the lack of a better word, delicious. She manages to tackle surprisingly heavy and sensitive issues in a graceful manner that allows the reader to grapple with them without feeling weighed down. Sea Star Summer is a light touch where her last YA novel, Mine was a heavy hammer. The story is told through the eyes of Noami, an awkward, red-haired and bookish 16-year-old girl who goes to Jeffreys Bay for the December holidays with her parents. She’s looking forward to having a chilled holiday reading her books on the beach and avoiding people. Things, of course, don’t go as planned as she not only meets and befriends the carefree and imaginative Elize on the beach but also finds herself being romantically pursued by the handsome surfer, Daniel and Elize’s brooding brother, Marius. From here a whirlwind coming-of-age love story filled with literary references ensues.
Back home in Cape Town Naomi is the kid at school who never gets invited to parties because the other kids see her bookishness and intelligence as snobby and stuck up. Boys don’t ask her on dates because she’s the sort of girl who corrects them when they’re wrong and would tell them if they confuse the Greek god Poseidon with his Roman counterpart, Neptune. Her mom is always telling her that people don’t like it when you correct them. So when she arrives in Jeffreys Bay and both Daniel and Marius are interested in her she doesn’t know how to deal with the situation, especially when she comes to realise that she actually has feelings for Elize. Daniel is the typical handsome jerk that treats girls poorly and is used to getting away with it and Marius seems to be a nice guy but he is also problematic in his pursuit of a girl who clearly isn’t interested in him. Elize, on the other hand, listens to Naomi and really wants to get to know her.
Naomi reads Jane Eyre to Elize on their beach dates and a quote from that book captures the theme that lies at Sea Star Summer’s heart, women and their perceived place in society.
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
Everyone wants Naomi to behave in a certain way in the novel. Her parents want her to be ‘normal’ and to make friends and meet a nice boy. The two boys she meets aren’t actually that nice, though. The relationship she has with Elize is healthy and not as toxic as what she would have with Daniel or even Marius but that’s the one her parents disapprove of. Daniel wants her tone down her intelligence and be impressed with how cool he is and Marius wants to be the saviour type. Only Elize wants her to be just her. Sally Partridge managed to pack in feminism, toxic masculinity and homophobia in Sea Star Summer without it feeling like some sort of lecture on those issues but just the story of a young girl finding herself.
“We was born to mothers who couldn't deal with us
Left by fathers who wouldn't build with us”
“Sometimes, I was held down by the gravity of my pen
Sometimes I was held down by the gravity of my sin
Sometimes, like Santiago, at crucial points of my novel, my only logical option was to transform into the wind”
Trauma runs deep in my generation, right down to our bones. It hit me for the very first time lying in bed recently how much I’ve achieved despite my numerous failures or, rather, a perception of numerous failures. I spend so much time with middle-class to outright wealthy people that I measure my levels of success by their standards. This is something that has been exacerbated by my move to Germany and spending time with Europeans. Many of these people are painfully average and have none of the tenacity many people from my type of background possess and yet they succeed because they come from a place of security. This is no fault of theirs and I don’t blame them in any way. I am also not taking away from the individual challenges that even privileged people face. What I am looking to do for myself and people in the same situation as me, is examine and unpack my own trauma and, perhaps, get some closure.
Our childhoods form us and continue to haunt us as adults. One thing that sticks out for me when I look back into my childhood is that I am a liar, through and through. Just a terrific liar. Much like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. I mostly lie about my wellbeing. If you ask me, I’m always okay. I don’t know how to tell people that I am, in fact, not okay, that I am falling apart. Lying about my wellbeing has been my go-to brand of protective mechanism. What’s really captured my fascination lately, though, is how I’ve lied to myself over the years. I’ve wanted to be like all my middle-class friends so long that I have downplayed my journey to where I am now. I’ve allowed myself to be crippled by depression because I can never measure up to some standard that was never even for me. All I’ve ever wanted was to be good enough. I’m that fish trying to climb trees alongside squirrels.
My thoughts have been time travelling back to the parts of my childhood that have always been too traumatic to deal with. I’m the child of domestic workers raised in backrooms. I’m the product of leaky roofs and sleeping on i-sponge on the floor. I grew up with the green bar of Sunlight and taking baths in a waskom. I would never go to bed on an empty belly because my grandmother made sure we at least had a loaf brown and tea to break our fast and pap and cabbage to quiet the stomach rumblings before bed. I was raised by a grandmother who made less than R2000.00 a month. I was raised by a single mother who worked piece jobs, tying together small pieces of income to make ends meet.
Growing up, I was told that I’m smart and that positive reinforcement played a huge role in how I saw myself, it gave me the confidence to compete in school. I did well, but not a well as I know I could. My academic journey from primary school to high school was pretty much a gradual and somewhat graceful arc of good marks. I made it to university where, rather than a graceful arc, my academic performance became a herky-jerky line from one crisis to another. I look back at my time in university and it’s a time a remember fondly but also one where I feel I suffered failures that follow me to this day. I should’ve done better and I beat myself up quite a lot for that time. With my external circumstances, I did the best that I could, though. I need to recognise that when I had the mental breakdowns I did in university I had no support. No one in my family could guide me through that territory because I was the first person in my family to traverse that territory. I needed mentorship but tried to carry all of that weight on my shoulders. My mountain was higher than that of many of my peers but I didn’t know because I kept looking at them scale their mountains and feeling like I was not as good as they are. For people like me sometimes just showing up at a place is the victory, but showing up isn’t enough, you still have to complete the task at hand.
My measuring stick has been way off and I have never taken the time to sit back and celebrate any of my victories. I’m sitting here, right now, living in another country and I feel down when, looking back, every part of my life is a resounding success. It’s like Neil Gaiman said of his tremendous success with his comic book series, The Sandman, that he never heeded Stephen King’s advice to enjoy his success. Instead of enjoying his success, he spent the time worrying about it. I remembered this when the children’s book I co-wrote was published and enjoyed every moment of people coming out to support the book. But I still forget to do this with other parts of my life. It’s good to pause and look back at how far one has come. Sure, I’ve not achieved as much success as I would’ve liked and many of my peers are doing much better than I am but I haven’t done as bad as my anxiety would have me believe either. And in this age of Instagram where we only see the best foot that people put forward, you also can’t just assume that people are doing better than you because we hide our struggles. All each of us can do is be sensitive to what others are going through and to continue to learn to know and improve ourselves.
The main reason I’m trying to delve into my childhood trauma is that I want to write a novel and I am scared to death of the task at hand. The world is on lockdown because of the Coronavirus outbreak so I have time to focus on the task but panic and fear of failure are holding me back. What if I write a book and it’s not good enough? So, I’m sitting here trying to write through those childhood mental blocks. Looking back to move forward, as it were.
Here's what to look forward to on the big screen in 2020
Welcome to 2020 at the movies, let's see what this new decade has in store for us.
Reboots and long-awaited sequels
As ol’ King Solomon once said, there’s no new thing under the sun. This year’s reboots kick off with the horror feature, The Grudge –
which will be released in theatres on 17 January. This is a reboot of
three existing films released between 2004 and 2009, and those movies
are based on the Japanese franchise!
Will Smith and a chubbier Martin Lawrence are back for one last ride as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett in Bad Boys for Life. This is one we’ve been waiting for since 2003’s Bad Boys II. Belgian
directors Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi have taken over the reins from
Michael Bay but it looks like we can still expect a whole lot of
explosions, car chases and gunfights. Bad Boys for Life hits our screens on 24 January.
Move
over Eddie Murphy (and, I guess, Kyla Pratt from the straight-to-DVD
versions), it’s Robert Downey Jr’s turn to take a crack at the eccentric
Dr John Dolittle character in Dolittle also being released on
10 January. The man who can talk to animals is accompanied by a wealth
of talent voicing all of his friends, including Rami Malek, Octavia
Spencer, Kumail Nanjiani, John Cena, Emma Thompson, Antonio Banderas,
Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent, Marion Cotillard, Frances de la Tour,
Carmen Ejogo, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Tom Holland and Craig
Robinson. The film is directed by Stephen Gaghan (Syriana, 2005).
HG Wells’s The Invisible Man gets a remake starring Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale), Aldis Hodge (Clemency) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (The Haunting of Hill House).
The film, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, comes out on 13
March. 27 March sees Disney continue with its live-action/hauntingly
real CGI adaptations in the form of Mulan, directed by Niki Caro and starring Yifei Liu, Donnie Yen and Jet Li.
Daniel Craig is back in his fifth film as James Bond in No Time to Die on
3 April, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The movie picks up after Bond
has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica and
co-stars Rami Malek, as the Bond villain, Léa Seydoux and Lashana Lynch.
Apparently, people have been waiting for a sequel to 1986’s Top Gun and their prayers have been answered! Tom Cruise is back as the legendary fighter pilot, Maverick in Top Gun: Maverick on 3 July.
Hollywood is taking another stab at Ghostbusters this
year after the 2016 version didn’t go down so well. They are linking
this one right back to the originals and tapping into that glorious ‘80s
nostalgia that’s keeping Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard employed. 10 July gives us Ghostbusters: Afterlife with
the original feature’s director’s son, Jason Reitman, in the director’s
chair. The movie starts good ol’ Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Mckenna
Grace, Carrie Coon and Bokeem Woodbine.
We’ve had Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle and now we go back in time with the prequel to discover the origins of the very first independent intelligence agency, The King’s Man, on 14 February. The King's Man stars Harris Dickinson, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton and Djimon Hounsou. Matthew Vaughn is back as director.
The comic book stuff
DC kicks off things with Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn on 7 February. Remember Suicide Squad? I
guess this movie picks from there. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn’s
broken up with the Joker and is looking to start a new life. I don’t
even know. At some point, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary,
Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord,
Black Mask. Birds of Prey stars Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth
Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay
Basco, Ali Wong and Ewan McGregor. The film is directed by Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs, 2018).
3 April gives us director Josh Boone’s horror-influenced X-Men movie New Mutants, hopefully. The movie was supposed to be released in 2018 but was delayed. It stars Game of Throne's Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy. Marvel Studios opens their Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Black Widow on 1 May. The film is directed by Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome,
2017) and stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow,
alongside David Harbour, Florence Pugh, O-T Fagbenle and Rachel Weisz.
Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), the film sees Romanoff on the run and forced to confront her past.
2017’s Wonder Woman was a huge hit and we’re super excited about the sequel, Wonder Woman 1984.
The sequel hits screens on 5 June, it’s set in the ‘80s (like so many
films and series these days) and sees the return of Steve Trevor
somehow. The movie is the ninth instalment in the DC Extended Universe
and is directed and co-written by Patty Jenkins. It stars Gal Gadot as
Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, alongside Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro
Pascal, Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen.
More highlights
Other films to look forward to in 2020 are The Turning,
based on Henry James’s novel – which is the story of a nanny hired to
take care of two creepy kids in a creepy house in Maine. The film stars
Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard (this kid again), Brooklynn Prince and
Joely Richardson. Sonic the Hedgehog is a thing that’s
happening. In this live-action adventure comedy, Sonic and his new best
friend Tom (James Marsden) team up to defend the planet from the evil
genius Dr Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and his plans for world domination.
A film I’m looking forward to – because I loved the books as a kid – is Artemis Fowl, which
is about a 12-year-old Artemis who is a millionaire, a genius and a
criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn’t know what he's taken on when he
kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit to harness
her magic to save his family. Disney Pixar is also releasing an
interesting project with Soul, a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions. Soul stars Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey and is directed by Inside Out's Pete Docter.
“So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” — Worlds' End
Eish, Jozi . . . Ja, neh . . . Jozi, that great city where dreams and their dreamers are swallowed up whole more often than not. To survive in Jozi you don’t necessarily need the right tools, you need the creativity to make the wrong tools work for you. Like many major cities around the world, Jozi is made up of layers. The top layer is the rough and tough face of its everyday business, that mainly being people going about their business at a furious pace. The first lesson my mother taught me about this city is to keep moving and not to speak to anyone. On its surface, this warning always seemed like it was about avoiding being a victim of crime but it also served as a warning about something stranger. The warning sometimes included the word amasilamusi. A word that both intrigues and frightens me to this day. A word that made quite the impact on Twitter last week.
The great city of Jozi has a mystical layer that appears on the surface every now and then but that usually exists under everything else or on the fringes. In Neil Gaiman’s novel, Neverwhere another London exists below the hustle and bustle of the familiar one on the surface, a mysterious and magical London Below. Inspector Tyador Borlú finds himself trying to solve a crime that spills over into a city that occupies the same space as his city in China Miéville’s novel, The City and the City. A city most can see from the corner of their eye but avoid focusing on. In Jozi, too, below its bustle and grime, there exists another Jozi. One most of us have heard about but tend to look at only from the corner of our eye, if ever at all. The citizens of Jozi learn to navigate the city around its strange elements.
One of these strange elements made an appearance on Twitter last week with Noluthando Zuma’s Tweet asking if people know about the taxi from Fourways to Bree that’s driven by a cat. Her Tweet blew up as others came forward with their own stories of this taxi driven by a cat looking to make ends meet. More people came forward with other equally strange experiences or stories from sources like cleaning ladies at work. In my own experience, cleaning ladies at work are an excellent source of all things weird and to do with witchcraft. The story with the cat makes for great memes but what stands out is how many people seem to have encountered this cat driving his route between Fourways and Bree. We might not be sure if this cat plays Maskande or Amapiano on his drive but we all do believe the story on some level. The concept of isalamuzi or amasilamusi came up, with people reporting having had their heartbeats stolen by a driver that made sounds like a baby or purred like a cat.
My mother’s warning about Jozi was also a warning about amasilamusi, whose powers seem to change according to whoever tells the story but there are overlapping elements in all the stories. One of my mother’s experiences with these people, creatures or whatever they are, happened in the late ‘90s. She was coming out from the now infamous Smal Street Mall when she was stopped by an old lady asking for directions. My mother made the rookie mistake of stopping the hear the lady out and fell under some spell. She says she lost control of her wits and found herself going to an ATM with this lady and withdrawing her daily limit. The whole thing was like being in a dream. Next thing she was in an alley with this woman and some men carrying a suitcase filled with money. The old woman told my mom to hand over the money to the men and take the suitcase from them. The idea was that the two of them split the money in the suitcase. My mother obliged and made the exchange. And just like a dream, the next thing she remembers is being in a taxi from Faraday to Turffontein. The suitcase was now a Checkers plastic bag in her lap filled with cut-up newspaper. She told the people in the taxi what had happened to her and, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, they told her it was the work of amasilamusi.
Apparently, some amasilamusi are so powerful that they can steal all the money on your person by merely touching you and when you get home all you have is worthless paper where the money was. This only happens if you talk to them, though. That seems to be their one binding rule, that their powers can’t affect you unless you speak to them. Most of us have a blueprint to navigate this other Jozi because our parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents told us these stories but it becomes buried in our subconscious at some point, operating in the background. Noluthando Zuma’s Tweet about that industrious cat has taken the world of amasilamusi and introduced it to Twitter. The result has been largely hilarious and a bit frightening but my thinking here, eyam’ iworry is whether amasilamusi are ready for Twitter? Can their world still exist in the shadows with Black Twitter’s finest on the lookout?
I remember first hearing about Joker around this time last year and not giving it much attention - until I started seeing the marketing footage over the next few months.
A lot of the visual style made me think of Lee Bermejo’s illustrations in Brian Azzarello’s brilliant 2008 graphic novel, Joker. The end result does bear some resemblance but you can see that there isn’t a direct inspiration or anything.
Scorsese in the Batman universe
Some of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke is in there somewhere. And I can even argue for Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum inspiring a lot of the film’s take on mental health in the modern age.
I would say that writer/director Todd Phillips (War Dogs) went with his own take on this iconic character, though. And the result is a character study that leaves the viewer feeling unsettled.
Phillips and his team draw heavy inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s films, Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982). Quite amusing. Scorsese views all these comic book movies from the last decade as not being “real” cinema – much in the same way that comic books are often not viewed as “real” literature.
The comic book film aspect of Joker sits in the back row of what this film is about, even more so than in Christopher Nolan’s gritty and “realistic” Batman trilogy. So, what I’m saying is that Joker is a Scorsese-esque film that happens to play out in the Batman universe.
Dark and twisted
The film has a lot going for it. The cinematography is gorgeous! This 1980s Gotham City is dark, gritty, straight up dirty and the atmosphere is oppressive. The city itself makes you feel depressed, and it’s the sort of place where people’s psyches are broken.
Joaquin Phoenix (Irrational Man) portrays the mentally-troubled comedian Arthur Fleck, who lives with his ill and equally mentally-troubled mother.
He’s bullied at work and in public and just waiting to have a nervous breakdown. Phoenix’s performance is breathtaking but also feels forced at times.
The supporting cast consists of Robert de Niro as Murray Franklin, a talk show host Fleck admires; Zazie Beetz as Fleck’s neighbour and love interest, Sophie Dumond; Frances Conroy plays Fleck’s mother, Penny; and Brett Cullen plays a Thomas Wayne who is more ruthless businessman than the philanthropic version we’re used to.
As a character study, Joker focuses on the circumstances that eventually lead to Fleck’s utter and violent breakdown. This is a character suffering from mental illness, who comes from a broken and abusive home trying to survive from day to day in a city whose institutions fail to help him.
Mental illness and economic inequality
This is something we see in our own societies, where funding meant to assist people who need it never seems to actually make it to the institutions responsible for this assistance. Meanwhile, you have people like Thomas Wayne sitting in their mansions and judging the people on the ground as being clowns who are too lazy to do anything with their lives.
Fleck is also misunderstood at work, adding to his difficulties to deal with his reality.
When he finally has a nervous breakdown, a wave of violence ensues and this is where people are divided on what to think of the film.
Are we to sympathise with this character? Is the film a warning to us of what happens when we ignore the troubles of those around us? Does the film encourage violence in a time where mass shootings in the United States have become a fairly regular occurrence? It’s all up for discussion.
Joker is a film that tries to take us deep into the troubled mind of someone alienated by society, and explores the catastrophic results of that alienation. The film succeeds in many ways to do this but a lot of it also just feels flimsy, like the whole premise is built on a house of cards.
Especially when you look at all the characters around Fleck, most of them are having just as difficult a time as he is but they don’t go on any shooting sprees. His neighbour is a struggling single mother living in the same squalid apartment block he does. You could centre a whole film around her. The film also doesn’t actually do much work exploring Fleck’s mental illness.
An incomplete character study
He bursts out laughing at inappropriate times and has delusions, but we aren’t given any deeper explanation than that. In the end, I’d say that the film gives us an incomplete character study compared to let’s say a great example like Walter White from Breaking Bad but that’s an unfair comparison, perhaps.
I am as big a champion of the villain's story being told as you could hope to find. My academic research and vast collection of Evil Queen memorabilia can attest to this...
A better comparison is to the other portrayals of the character in cinema over the years, especially to Jared Leto’s take on the character in Suicide Squad and Heath Ledger’s take in The Dark Knight. I still find it difficult to make a comparison because all the other portrayals are very much comic book villains with the usual outlandish evil plans.
Jared Leto’s Joker is silly at best and Heath Ledger’s version makes for a better comparison. The Heath Ledger version has the advantage of being able to stay shrouded in mystery and that being the whole point. He’s a force of chaos and we don’t know where he got those scars, but that’s what makes him scarier. He’s also not the focal point and responsible for carrying the whole film so it’s easier to praise him as the better Joker.
My verdict is that the film has a lot going for it, and it’s worth the trip to the cinema. The cinematography is a thing of beauty and the acting brilliant (with some over-the-top moments from Phoenix) but the movie doesn’t reach the lofty heights it’s reaching for.
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
- Sir Philip Sidney
Hello,
Death, God, Joy,
Remember me? It's been a while since I wrote to you last. I apologise. Life happened. I should be thankful for Life, I guess.
Death, you've been sticking quite close to me these last years. I won't even front, your call has been very enticing and I'm hoping to find a way to stave you off a while by writing these letters. I'm trying for that Drake More Life kind of thing.
God, how are you? I sure have strayed far from the flock. I've been busy being woke. So, no time to talk when I don't even know if I believe. The prodigal son returns it would seem.
Joy, I've been very far from you, indeed. You think it would be okay if we talk every now and then?
"Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show"
I'm 32 now! I've has some success and just a whole lot of failure. I got married. In that time I've caused my wife more tears than laughter. I miss laughter. I became part of a team writing children's books. That fell apart. I joined a team working on some EduTech software. That relationship fell apart. Life's been hard but I really want to change that for the better. So, I'm thinking that I need to sit down and put my thoughts to paper, make that commitment.
I want to fall in love with Life. I'm hoping that turning to verse or, rather, turning to the written word in general, I can explore that love in fall deeper into it in the process. I'm 32 now and can feel that this living in the light of past mistakes isn't working out for me. I need to do better and to be better.
I've picked up my pen again and hope that these sessions with all of you result in me being a better person.
