JOKER'S DOUBLE BIND

Joker is an ambiguous playing card. He can replace any other card in the deck. Taken on face value, Joker means nothing. In this way, the card invites all possible readings, while at the same resisting any reading. Take this concept to the cinema, and you get Todd Phillips's JOKER - a film that plays Poker Face on its audiences.

Joaquin Phoenix is Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian with a laughing disorder. Living in a co-dependency with his ailing mother Penny, Arthur is jobless and depressed. He has no social life – people reject him because of his strange laughter. He gets beaten up, harassed and abandoned by the social services. Arthur becomes violent, killing three people in a gruesome subway incident. The violence inspires Gotham City’s underclasses to start a masked revolution.

Arthur never gets a diagnosis, but his ambivalent laughter may be likened to double-bind communication. The double bind refers to a simple psychological concept: an individual receives two contradictory messages, with each message negating the other. A typical example is a mother telling her child: "Be spontaneous." If the child acts spontaneously, he is not acting spontaneously because he is following his mother's direction. As a result, the child may lose his grip on reality.

When Arthur meets his presumed father, billionaire Thomas Wayne, the father disowns him. Penny Fleck’s hospital records reveal that Arthur might have been adopted. It is unclear whether Arthur even had a true mother, or a father. His mental illness could be causing hallucinations. In a telling sub-plot, Arthur is dating a black girl from the neighborhood. Some days later, it appears the girl is a figment of his imagination.

True to his family name, Arthur represents nothing. To become the Joker, he must first establish himself in society. Opportunity arrives when Murray Franklin asks Arthur to appear in his comedy show. This is yet another contradiction. On the one hand, society is showing acceptance, finally giving Arthur a chance in the spotlight. On the other hand, Murray invited Arthur only to ridicule his lack of talent. Arthur’s pent-up anger turns into a violent rebellion. Finally, he becomes the dreaded anti-hero Joker.

But the triumph is fleeting. Joker’s success comes from violence and murder. His creative impulse turns into destruction. Even worse, his role as a vigilante serves Gotham city’s sinister authorities. The system scapegoats Joker’s violence as the culprit of evil. Meanwhile, the government’s creation of social inequality remains hidden.

The film’s very design is a double bind. Everything seems real, and unreal, at the same time. Shot in retro-1980 style, JOKER recreates, with gritty realism, a fictional Gotham City. There are allusions to films like TAXI DRIVER, KING OF COMEDY, PSYCHO, or THE SHINING. In all these films, the anti-heroes are rebels against the very system that produces them. Similarly, the film JOKER carves its path on the basis of cultural references. On the one hand, the film contains the legacy of its predecessors. On the other hand, it is contained within that legacy.
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The four-dimensional Hypercube provides a nice illustration of the film's visual structure:

Imagine that the smaller cube represents the film JOKER. The cube is inside a larger one that may be viewed as the audience. When the cube rotates, it appears as though the film contains us, and we are starring in Joker's show. In the fourth dimension, you can imagine an infinite number of cubes containing smaller cubes. The ''fictional'' and ''real'' world exist in the same double bind. In this way, the body of the film is extended across multiple realities.

Polarized reactions confirm the impact of this poker-faced design. Leftists see the Joker as a social justice warrior. Liberals see him as a righteous vigilante. Christians recognize a crucified Jesus, or the God of vengeance. Boomers might think of a failed Anarchist, Millennials might cheer the modern Nihilist. Common to all these reactions is a shared feeling of paralysis. The thought that we can neither live in an unjust system, nor succeed as individuals.

The double bind is difficult, but not entirely hopeless. As Einstein said, ‘’No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.’’ There are two ways to approach this. We can embrace the double bind, enjoy our suffering in a failed system. Or we can think of the double bind as an opportunity to create something entirely new.