It was Todd Phillips himself who said that Joker was never intended to have a sequel. In many regards, that’s not what Joker: Folie à Deux is, so much as a “second act” or “companion piece” that follows up the rise of Joker with the fall of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). Regardless, a large majority of viewers and critics haven’t been able to receive Joker: Folie à Deux in the spirit with which it was intended.
From the beginning of the announcement of the movie’s existence, the automatic reaction upon hearing that a “sequel” to Joker would arrive in the form of a musical was met with more than slight hesitancy on the part of many “purists.” That Lady Gaga was going to be cast in the role of Harley Quinn—brandishing the diminutive “Lee” instead, as though to differentiate from Margot Robbie’s untouchable performance—was meant, perhaps, to assuage those who were nervous about the film’s viability. Granted, there are just as many who lost even more faith in it upon seeing Gaga’s name next to Joaquin Phoenix’s. And yet, it is not really supposed to be taken seriously as a musical (those who do are naturally going to pan the movie). That genre merely being a tool to exemplify the artifice and spectacle that ensues after a person achieves notoriety-turned-laudability/“respectable” fame. As Arthur Fleck does in Joker after going on a killing rampage spurred, ultimately, by his total ostracism from society.
Ending up at Arkham Asylum at the end of Joker, Arthur has developed more than a mere cult following for his presumed anti-Establishment, anti-wealthy, generally anarchic tendencies. Whether he wanted to or not, he becomes a symbol. Something that the alienated and disenfranchised can project their disillusionments onto. And, although Arthur was seemingly happy to become that symbol at the end of Joker, his reluctance about being some kind of figurehead for chaos and misanthropy has waned in Joker: Folie à Deux, as he realizes that, once again, no one is actually seeing him—Arthur. They just want Joker, and he’s no longer sure if that’s who he “is,” or if it was who he became during a moment of weakness/a general nadir.
Taking place two years after the rampage he went on in 1981 (even though five years have lapsed since Joker came out in 2019), the movie, nonetheless, has a decidedly 1970s feel and aesthetic, complete with sartorial choices—particularly during the fantasy sequences—and a blatant nod to The Sonny and Cher Show (hence, calling it The Joker and Harley Show) when Lee and Joker are singing the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” on a TV stage in front of a live audience. By this point in the movie, Arthur has fallen hopelessly and blindly in love with Lee, forced to question that love when his lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), reveals to him that everything she’s told him about herself is a lie—particularly the fact that she grew up in the same neighborhood as Arthur with similarly abusive parents when, in fact, she’s from the Upper West Side (a meta detail considering Gaga’s own origins there) and her father is a well-to-do doctor. It is after this moment that he not only has The Joker and Harley Show fantasy (wherein said fantasy is tainted by the reality that she might not be all that she seems), but also starts to comprehend that maybe the only reason anyone is interested in him at all is because of their false projections. Much as he falsely projected onto her the ideal of a perfect “other half” who might save him from his misery.
The misery that Phillips and his co-writer, Scott Silver (who also co-wrote Joker), highlight in the very first few minutes of the movie via an “old-timey” WB cartoon called “Me and My Shadow,” in which Joker struts into the Franklin Theater (in ironic honor of Murray Franklin [Robert De Niro], one imagines) with his shadow starting to act out in ways far more sinister than Peter Pan’s. Eventually, the shadow self overtakes the real Joker long enough to go out onstage, wreaking havoc before and during the performance so that when he finally is subdued by the real Joker again, it is that real Joker who is blamed for everything his shadow self did.
It also bears noting that, in the title card of “Me and My Shadow,” while the flesh and blood Joker is wielding his index finger and thumb in the shape of a gun, his shadow self is toting a real gun—this being the ultimate clue that Joker is merely Arthur’s id, not who he really is a.k.a. who everyone, including Lee, wants him to be. That musicals themselves are entirely rooted in fantasy and fantastical elements further accentuates the idea that Arthur is now living in a distorted reality, a nightmare that he didn’t entirely create. For it is the public that has perpetuated this image of him as Joker…even if he’s no longer necessarily certain that’s who he wants to be (hell, if that’s who he ever was). And even if that acknowledgement means not getting the girl in the end as a result.
And yes, it becomes increasingly difficult for Arthur not to notice what a “social climber,” for lack of a better word, Lee is. Which is ironic considering she’s already at the top of the social stratum. But what gets her off is “slumming it” with Joker, who she visits in prison at one point to wistfully encourage him, “You should see it out there, they’re all going crazy for you” (Gaga loves a Madonna reference, after all). Only they’re not going crazy for “him,” but rather, “Joker.” A man who doesn’t really exist. When Arthur finally admits that to everyone in the final courtroom scene, any “public sympathy” he might have had by pleading some “insanity defense” by way of the “it wasn’t me, it was my alter ego” excuse disappears entirely. And with it, his devoted following who wanted him to be “that guy.” The guy that could represent all of their ideals and beliefs because he, too, possessed them. In the end, however, Arthur is still the confused, emotionally insecure incel that audiences first met in Joker (even if he does get to give Lee a few pathetic thrusts during an impromptu conjugal visit).
Yet, even though this very public admission should have been the death of Joker and all that he “means,” it instead opens the door for those who simply want to cherry-pick various “tenets” of his message to form their own factions, leaving the title available for a new, truly nefarious Joker who will take the helm without hesitation or any “pussy” qualms about doing what “needs” to be done. Because the Joker can be anyone, everyone. In some sense, it’s akin to how Trump is the latest symbol for white supremacy and fascistic conservatism, yet his “acolyte,” JD Vance, is the next-generation, more extreme version of it, poised for a takeover with Trump being too decrepit (and concerned with being “liked”) to maneuver his so-called beliefs toward an “optimum” level.
In another sense, Arthur’s reluctance to accept his notoriety without questioning why people are so obsessed with him (or rather, his false image) also echoes another au courant occurrence: Chappell Roan renouncing fame and insisting she’ll abandon music altogether if her fans keep acting batshit. Arthur, too, has these same kinds of feelings, but doesn’t have the, let’s say, “likeability” aspect that Roan has going for her to carry it off. What’s more, Roan has yet to be knocked off her “pedestal” the way Joker is in Folie à Deux. Though that does seem inevitable since, to loosely quote Madonna, there is nothing the public loves more than elevating and then desecrating those they “worship.”
This, in part, is what makes the reaction to Folie à Deux so predictable, with critics lining up to condemn it despite how in love they were with Joker in the first film. And perhaps that was Phillips’ intent in making Folie à Deux: to show something to the world about itself and the way it treats their “gods.” Even if they still can’t seem to see it.
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