What fascism means to me

1968. I went to Sarasota Junior High School, which was basically The Lord of the Flies with lockers. I'm a scrawny, brainy, nerdy, big-mouth, 7th-grade weirdo. Walking down the halls. Look over at the bike rack. A beefy 8th-grader is fucking with my bike, trying to kick the lock off.

I'm pissed. So pissed, I forget the other his size and weight advantage. Just blindly run up to him.

"Hey! Stop trying to steal my bike!"

Gut punch. Then he slaps me down to the ground, and sticks his foot on my face. Pins me. Says calmly ...

"I wasn't trying to steal your bike."

"I saw you!"

I writhe, but I can't get up.

"No, you didn't. You're lying."

He pushed his foot harder. Tennis shoe. Dirty. Stinks.

"Stop lying."

"You were ..."

"Admit you're lying."

"No! You! I saw ..."

He ground his fucking dirty foot in my face.
"I'm ..."

"Tell the truth."

"Stop!"

He pressed down. Dirt, stink, weight.

"Say, 'I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar.'"

"No."

Harder. About to snap my jaw.

"Say, 'I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar.'"

"I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar."

He smiled and let me go.

That's what fascism means to me.

Joker, Smoker, Midnight Toker

This is a movie about a damaged person's descent into the abyss. It shares DNA with Notes from Underground and A Clockwork Orange.

Joker makes A Clockwork Orange look like Singing in the Rain.

The screenplay ripped-off owes a huge debt to Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. It also bends a knee to Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver. This Joker is pretty much Travis Bickel in clown makeup.

That’s ironic. White, black, it's doesn't matter. (At least in Todd Phillips' fictional universe.) He bends over backwards to make sure it doesn't matter.

(To be fair, the original Joker was the ultimate white guy.)

Christopher Nolan’s movie got it right. His Joker was a nihilistic motherf**ker. His backstory kept changing. “Wanna know how I got these scars?” Whatever he told you was bullshit. There’s no rational explanation for the Joker — and that's the best explanation.

Paul McCartney wrote a song about a roller coaster. The title of the song was "Helter Skelter." Charlie Manson took it as a coded message to start a race war. Which just goes to show there's no accounting for crazy people. 

Aside from that one big flaw, there are also several minor flaws. 

• Bruce Wayne’s dad is a pudgy guy in his early 50s. Batman’s dad should look like Batman’s dad, goddamnit.

• Phllips’ Joker isn’t funny. Damaged or not, he should be funny — even if only in his own mind. I'd put in a hallucinatory scene where he was metaphorically killing the audience at the Pogo — then quickly flash to the reality where he bombed.

• The Joker character should fight to be normal. And fight to be funny. I'd put in a scene where he's reading a how-to book on stand-up comedy. "The secret of stand-up comedy? RELATING TO THE AUDIENCE. They have to care about you, and you have to care about them! Love works—hate works too! Either way, you gotta make a connection!"

• The film sets you up to feel sorry for the Joker. I don’t want to feel sorry for the Joker. But f**k my feelings — it's dishonest. Society's what drove him crazy, I tells ya. Society is the real Joker. 

• The Joker’s loser persona is bad psychology.

Yes, mass murderers and serial killers are often losers. But many come off like kings who’ve been cheated of their thrones. They’re charismatic, often handsome. Look at Charlie Manson. Look at Ted Bundy. These cats don’t have a self-image problem. They think they’re better than everybody else. The world doesn’t see it that way. That gives them a license to kill.

• Phillips' Joker never decides to be the Joker. He never takes a conscious step into the dark side. 

I’m prejudiced in favor of free will. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re all meat robots. I can’t ignore the possibility.

• There's no fall from grace. (The movie tries to cheat this storypoint with blahblah about being off his meds and finding out he was adopted. It's a cheat.) This Joker is all Hyde and no Jekyll. The portrayal echoes Stephen King's criticism of Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining. The character starts out crazy. There's no place to go.