Elan Martin, Corey Schink, Harrison Koehli
Sott.netSat, 19 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
© SOTT
Amidst much controversy and warning from the 'woke' media, 'concerned citizens' - and even the US military - the movie
Joker landed in theaters just a few weeks ago. We were told that the film would empower incels, inspire shootings and have a deleterious effect on the general public - "so don't go!!" In an effort to get to the bottom of all the rancor (and take a break from our computers) we went to go see it for ourselves. And what we realized about the film is that it was not only being grossly misrepresented by very influential groups and individuals, but actually had quite a lot to say that could not be more relevant to some of the most urgent issues facing Western society.
This week on MindMatters we examine the themes and subtexts of this nihilistic anti-hero story: how
Joker holds a mirror up to our contemporary societal malaise - and how the film succeeds in its functioning as art. We also look at how it strips away the charismatic "clown prince of crime" and agent of chaos - into a much more clinical, nuanced and accurate reading of the criminal mind, and just why this depiction is so insightful, rightfully disturbing, and extremely valuable to a public that is all too used to two-dimensional representations of evil in popular culture.
Running Time: 01:54:24
Download: MP3 — 105 MB
Corey Schink was born and raised in the Midwestern United States, where he worked on farms and as a welder, musician, and social worker. His interests in government, philosophy and history led to his writing for SOTT in 2012 and to becoming a SOTT editor and SOTT Radio co-host in 2014. He now resides in North Carolina, where he enjoys the magnificent views of the Appalachian Mountains.
Harrison Koehli co-hosts SOTT Radio Network's
MindMatters, and is an editor for
Red Pill Press. He has been interviewed on several North American radio shows about his writings on the study of ponerology. In addition to music and books, Harrison enjoys tobacco and bacon (often at the same time) and dislikes cell phones, vegetables, and fascists (commies too).
Born and raised in New York City, Elan has been an editor for SOTT.net since 2014 and is a co-host for
MindMatters. He enjoys seeing and sharing what's true about our profoundly and rapidly changing world.
Reader Comments
Possession is not a rare occurrence, but modern people tend to resist crediting it, whether it's positive - inspiring art or genius when the individual's own skills and capacities are inspirationally enhanced, or negative, replacing the broken individual with an inspiration to chaos and a magnetic charisma, as is exemplified by the Joker. It goes against the grain of modern sensibilities to acknowledge the reality of this, because we want so badly to be the sole source of authority over of our individual minds and hearts.
The power of this movie seems to come from artistically, and seemingly convincingly, illustrating a process in which the observer is taken on a journey from witnessing a human personality being irretrievably broken, to seeing the demonically-possessed one take its place. At the end of the process, there is no longer a human being present, which means that empathy is no longer possible. The viewer is left with having to understand this change in himself, due to the fact that what he intuitively knows to be reality conflicts with what he wants to believe. If this, indeed, was what the writer and director intended, my hat is off to them.
What if these extra-dimensional forces somehow rearranged the human genome to the point that it allowed the creation of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals without the ability to feel empathy or compassion, thus mirroring their *own* minds, and creating "organic portals" that they could access to affect this reality and create chaos and fear to feed themselves via negative emotions? Perhaps this movie shows how such beings are created, and how they - through them - continue to exert a very real influence on events and control that would otherwise elude them.
-It was pretty much what I expected. Brutal and ugly and very well made. It was operatic!
I've got a couple of notes to make which I've not seen anywhere else...
I hate to admit it, but the SJWs had a point, (probably without intending it). This film IS an excuse for violence. Everybody the Joker killed in the film pretty much deserved, perhaps not outright murder, but certainly punishment.
Those teens in Chile were torching subway stations, were they? Before or after they saw this thing? Hmmmm..!
Everybody finds losers tiresome and everybody loves a winner. When the Joker found his calling, found himself, discovered his purpose in life? The dispenser of brutal justice to those who richly deserved it? I was happy for him! I was cheering inside. "Yeah, shoot that bastard!"
"The meaning of life is to give life meaning."
Oh crap! That applies to the Dark Side as well, doesn't it?
I bet everybody who watched the film felt the same way, though you have to be pretty comfortable with your shadow self to admit it. There's a reason we don't let our monsters out, or there would be bodies in the street. But in Arthur Fleck's case, his outbursts seemed warranted to me.
In this film, the Joker was the hero! He wasn't psychopathic at all! He wasn't taking joy in people's pain, he wasn't killing at random; he understood love, he knew the difference between kindness and what horrible people were. He kissed the dwarf and let him go, "You were the only person who was ever kind to me."
He was cognitively deranged, psychotic, his reality was warped, but I wouldn't call him a psychopath, or even a sociopath.
The dude had had enough, had his anti-psychotics cut off, was being regularly attacked. He fought back. Good for him!
He's hardly any different from Batman, with the singular exception being that Batman puts people in prison and doesn't kill them. That's why that line is so important in the comics, and when people cross it, they're doing comics wrong. (But that's a whole other rant.)
In any case.., I'm damned GLAD the Far Left smeared this film from the outset! I hope they collectively continue to reject it. Because the damned thing is an Antifa war anthem. I don't think they have the collective maturity to understand that it's meant to be educational material made for responsible adults.
Have no fear - you and your ilk on both sides of the ideological divide will have your day in the sun, and it won't be long now.
I think movies like these provide a great opportunity to learn about how hard our world is and history in general and try to act accordingly (not fundamentally as a SJW but as Peterson says for example, that you can't act really without dealing with the shadow) since the information to be knowledge must be analyzed and discussed to incorporate it. Something that seems simple is not promoted in schools, universities or the family, why? are we all covert killers?
I see what Peterson says, good people who can't see these kinds of movies have a hard time acting or dealing, or get their hands dirty in this world
I think Woodsman's comment is quite insightful!
The truth is more visceral and fundamental than that described by our psychological lingo, in which no one, often including ourselves, is ever really there. Just ideas and ideologies. Just abstractions. Fundamentally, just lies.
I would think that at the so-called higher levels within the STS hierarchy, so-called evil is non-agentive, that no agency is required to collapse further into Service To Self . However, it seems that in 3 density, that through the 'agentic state' manifests a lot of so-called evil. The striving for knowledge, and sharing of knowledge is probably the best prevention.
The Joker as depicted in this film wasn't right. -That is, he killed with reason. There was an (albeit dark and disturbed) rational train of thought behind his selection of victims.
The classic Joker did not function in this way at all. He was driven by, was the embodiment of Chaos.
It might be argued that by humanizing the character, harm is done to the mythological archetypal power that the Joker normally represents in the pantheon of comic book heroes and villains.
I haven’t seen the movie, but from accounts the main protagonist doesn’t seem too far removed from that of the Invunche, since birth he didn’t seem to have much of a chance, although more of a chance than the deliberately deformed Invunche... and everybody seems to be anchoring energies of one form or another.
Society in one way is a living totem and many are keen to mutilate the human form and that of children too in this society and I think we’re all responsible for enabling the forming of a totem nobody wants and people can argue over culpability... while a kind of Chiloe Island extortion racket takes its toll and we all pay.
Knowing who made the film, and seeing the continual undercurrent of both violence (from the left) and the mentions of a civil war (also stemming initially from the left), I can't help but feel that things like this film are just more provocations, more subtle pushes for what they want. Which is to create enough violence to make the "rest" of the 99% fight back. To provide a reason for either the government or the UN to try and fix things. Well, that might be stretching things, but they really want to get rid of Trump and to disarm the American people.
The USofA is scheduled to pass a vale of tears while the epicenter of the Empire moves East. Desintegration and slide back into oblivion.
Lennon: "Don't confuse the songs with your own life".
Wigged out Beatle stalker : "But it all fits"
Lennon: "Anything fits if you're tripping off on some trip".
Without prior knowledge of this, I was looking at some of the clips of The Joker, and one of my first thoughts was "has he based his character on that Sexy Vegan guy?"
Hans DeBartolo III aka Sexy Vegan threatens to fight parking inforcement outside Craigs Restaurant...[Link]
A lot of vegans have that "about to go postal" look.
Just a after seeing the movie I saw on the french channel Arte a short movie of the Libyan revolution with people harboring the Vendetta mask on top of the Joker make up, a little too much for these memes backed up by the left political media.
You didn't talk about the role of the media in the ascension of the Joker, without them Arthur Fleck would have not became a wide meme and the catalyst of the anger of the masses. And it's really interesting to see that he was not in any case consciously searching for being covered by the cameras but simply acting his descent to hell in a flimsy manner.
Grandiosity was wonderfully put in the back and expressed as coming from him, compared to other marvel/DC movies, even at the final scene on top of the burning cop car we feel his crumbling mind trying to mimick a danse.
The poem cited by Harrison and Collingwood really touch me, I found poem from the author.
[Link]
Hope for others movie analysis !