More Thoughts on the 'Joker' (2019) Reaction
The culture's response to this film shows the massive shift in the values on the Left
Twenty years ago one might have thought that a film portraying a working-class man struggling with mental health issues in a highly unequal and inopportune society-where plutocrats hold tremendous political and social power and rich young stock brokers are given especial consideration and care, where cuts to public programs erode society and lead to dysfunction and violence-one might have thought that such a film would be praised on the Left.
Add to this the fact that the writing and pacing are top-notch, the cinematography is excellent, and the acting is widely considered to be among the best performances of this century, and the disdainful and fearful reaction among cultural sense-makers (journalists and critics and commentators) might be puzzling. It’s violent but not superlatively so. It’s not political whatsoever. It doesn’t glorify or lionize the protagonist (quite the contrary). It does portray grim and alienating society and depict how poverty and social neglect and mental illness can lead to anti-social violence. This is no longer a message the Left wants us to absorb (at least when it involves young white men).
It might be puzzling to read the mostly chilly and condemnatory responses and see the mediocre critics’ scores… if you’d spent the past two decades in a time capsule. The Left has changed. So has the Right, of course (neither for the better, in my opinion) but the Left had a crucial role in a capitalist society with weak unions and a relatively high degree of wealth inequality, like ours: the Left agitated on behalf of the working class and supported social programs and pushed back against corporate power and (some) big money sources of political funding. Obviously the teachers’ unions and trial lawyers and Hollywood were wealthy and have been liberal and Democrat-centric in their support for decades, but the party itself-its intellectual foundations and its primary concerns-strongly focused on the poor and the working class.
Those days ae gone.
There are several major changes at play here, but certainly the largest is the shift in focus on the left away from economic issues (‘bread and butter’ in the poli-sci vernacular) to identity politics. Poor white men are no longer under the umbrella of shelter and concern of progressives. It’s irrelevant whether they’re struggling with mental illness, or veterans, or felons, or illegals. They, as a class, are privileged and on the collectivist Left that means that every individual in the category is treated as privileged. Working class whites of any type are now seen with skepticism or hostility. Ignore the fact that they are one of the largest demographics and absolutely contain more poverty and social dysfunction that any other by far. The Left is not fighting on their behalf. Rather, “queer” (a term that doesn’t really mean anything any more, but which definitely includes those trans people who are left of center-as a category they outrank basically all others within the coalition at this time) people are the focus. “Nonbinary” people (which means little, aside from attention-seeking young people, and usually implies significant household wealth) are the focus. “People of color” (another strange new term-and just another way of saying “nonwhite”) are the focus. “Sex workers” and “unhoused people” (notice the novel labels-CT believers love to rename things in order to display status and affiliation to one another) are the focus. The focus on these last two is mainly driven by the massive complex of rich nonprofits dedicated to ‘solving’ the issues, which means funneling government money to college graduates to make slideshows and conduct studies. To a much lesser extent women are the focus. There are theoretical reasons for this.
Critical Theory long ago identified certain groups as prime candidates to be catalysts to erode the status quo and abandoned all those with some collective historical status, regardless of their current struggles. It ignores all the rest, even if they are systemically and institutionally disadvantaged. Privilege is often used as a term to denote the already-empowered groups in American society but this isn’t really accurate. Drug addicts (as a group) have no privilege. Working single moms have no privilege. Schizophrenics have no privilege. Why aren’t the needs and priorities of these groups given weight? These groups (as groups) are never even discussed. Simply, they weren’t estimated to be good coalitional members to push for radical change so they are ignored (unless the members do intersect with ‘intersectional’ categories, which themselves exclude most of the disenfranchised and struggling people in the US). I could provide a dozen convincing examples but here’s one: there are probably 100x more illegal immigrants (~15-18 million) than trans people in the US. The immigrants have little status, little recourse to law, work at steep discounts, and struggle to feed and house themselves. No group in the US has fewer protections. Yet “trans issues” (really just trans activist issues) get 20x the exposure and attention that immigration reform does.
One reason is definitely Critical Theory. Another is the (ironic, and-in the media-totally ignored) wealth and privilege of young, urban progressives. They are the real muscle and energy of the Left wing in the US, and they are one of the richest and most well-educated demographics in the country. If they were fighting for immigration reform and social services and public housing they would be eroding the source of their status and privilege: their wealth. By instead focusing on issues of race and sexuality and gender they can grandstand and make virtuous public declarations about ‘carceral systems’ and ‘systemic privilege’ and ‘decolonization’ while attending exclusive private schools and seeking big internships and going to work for powerful law firms.
Literally every progressive I can think of as I write this (dozens) is inordinately privileged (as far as I can tell). How about you?
They get all the optical benefit of being a crusader while protecting their own immense privilege, and while avoiding the need to interact with any actual poor people (except under the most carefully controlled and advantageous circumstances). Why won’t you read about this universal new status quo in the media? Simply, because journalists are themselves mostly soft young people from this class. They might be queer and they might be black but you can make money all day betting that they grew up well-fed, well-educated and well-loved.
As for the rest of society? The unemployed young white men and the insomniac veterans and the opiate addicts and the immigrants? They are encouraged to view themselves along racial and sexual lines… and check their privilege.
