Joker

I have just seen the most honest and straightforward, yet at once the most ambiguous, movie I’ve ever seen in my life, and it is called Joker. Layered and multifaceted, it manages to be a thoroughly leftist trope while artfully validating Far-Right grievances. It is both deeply politically and blissfully apolitical. In short, I think this is the most meaningful movie of the last decade.

Note: In reviewing this movie, Identity Dixie does not condone the unabashed violence which defines it. In fact, we pray that this movie does not incite anyone of any political persuasion to violence.

Set in an all too obvious 80s New York City, or “Gotham,” we are introduced to the plight of protagonist anti-hero, and aspiring comedian, Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix). Fleck is a mentally ill, middle-aged white man who lives with his mother. Alienated, ignored, abandoned, and unnoticed, he manages to cope with his life through medications administered by government social workers and doctors. When funding for those programs is cut by crooked bureaucrats, he is left to his own devices to deal with the torrent of negativity that burdens him.

It is said that the greatest art is that which is obscure, left to the audience to interpret through the prism of their own life experience. This is exactly what you get with this movie. I myself identify as “Dissident Right.” I am opposed to globalism and multiculturalism. It was easy to get caught up in the fact that through much of the movie, Fleck is bedeviled and dejected by people of color, particularly women of color. From an uncaring black female social worker, to an obese black woman on the bus, to a gang of teenagers who torment him while doing his job, to an attractive mulatto single mother in his apartment building who barely acknowledges his existence, it is easy for a heterosexual white man who has experienced similar things to empathize with him.

But the truth is, this movie only hints at humanizing Fleck’s plight in terms of his whiteness or his maleness. The real villains in the movie aren’t purple haired SJW cat ladies, nor are they “Black Lives Matter” protestors. He doesn’t go on a rampage of shooting transgender men reading to children at libraries, nor does he bring an end to the stranglehold of Marxist control by leftists in academia. The villains in this movie turn out to be white guys in business suits, and as such, this movie could have just as easily been set in a 2009 “Occupy Wall Street” backdrop, with clown masks exchanged for Guy Fawkes masks. By the way, that theme in itself could have been a nod to Dissident Right politics if the villains had been named Goldman or Silverstein. But they were not, and instead, we get tired leftist tropes about rich white men in suits being the enemy to the oppressed common man (including incel white men).

This review sounds like I’m being negatively critical of the movie. On the contrary, I loved it. Without offering too many points that might be seen as “spoilers,” I can honestly say that it was the best movie I’ve seen in years. What I don’t want people to believe, however, is that it’s a movie designed solely to offer empathy to the disenfranchised straight white male. What it does do, much to its credit, is cast judgements on this “society,” the society that creates people like Arthur Fleck, or Charles Manson, or Brenton Tarrant, or Mark David Chapman, or even common run-of-the-mill drug dealers, thieves, and rapists.

I give this movie 5 stars. It is a must see. If you are Dissident Right, you will be validated by this movie from start to finish. But be honest with yourself when you watch it. This movie is brutally honest, so you owe it to yourself to be honest too. Enjoy it for what it is, and let it cause you pause to reflect. If it makes you angry, channel your feelings where they will be beneficial. Do something positive, for yourself, for your family, for your community.

-By Dixie Anon