"The People's Joker" is proof that miracles do happen. Beginning as a re-edit of Todd Haynes' 2019 "The Joker," the superhero parody cinematic anomaly revolves around a transwoman, Joker the Harlequin (Vera Drew, who also directs the iconoclastic feature), as she looks to penetrate the Gotham media scene as a stand-up comedian and falls in love with the Mr. J (Kane Distler), who also happens to be trans. The character and place names may be familiar, but this is unlike any caped-crusader film so far. Films don't usually look or feel quite like this.
The Batman (Phil Braun) still has Robbins, but these ones he sexually grooms. He's also a closeted gay man whose big pockets fund a fascist technology state. All of this is on top of the film's irrevocable affirmation of trans identities and queer sexualities, things that remain on the periphery, at best, of the major studios that make the superhero films being parodied. It's an impossible film, made through crowdfunding and unexpectedly skating by potential lawsuits, that is now available for streaming all around the world.
The Harlequin's path to acknowledging her gender identity began with the infamous nipple scene in "Batman Forever," a scene that had her wondering if all PG-13 movies made little boys want to be girls.
After voicing her gender dysphoria to her mom (Lynn Downey) for the first time, she is taken to the Arkham Asylum and prescribed Smylex, a drug that forces smiles regardless of mood. This bit about the drug – ruthless in assaulting the US healthcare system and its policing of gender performance – might be a dark horse for the most inflammatory and biting scene of the parody.
It's also a loving balance of the Batmanic tradition on the part of Drew to demean and down-right offend the powerful institutions that moderate day-to-day life.
The self-funded and artistically self-sourced film also adopts a queer style that mixes and matches various animation and CGI styles with live-action filmmaking. There is no coherent or consistent look to Drew's debut feature and that's to the chagrin of the guardians of the house-styles that have kept superheroes in a chokehold (the non-fun kind) for decades.
Drew says fuck that and does away with the boring and flavorless house style the same way she does away with gender norms. The only time it doesn't work is occasionally with the live-action, where the framing sometimes appears to be shot for full-screen and cropped for widescreen, though it is fully possible the awkward framing is intentional and it just doesn't land.
Masked affections
Her relationship with her mom never thrived, but, unlike her dad, the bridge was never completely burned down. In some ways, this is the heart of the film, and non-coincidently, it's also where "The People's Joker" is at its gayest. Her very relatable experiences related to expressing her full self in the presence of her mother are almost the only thing from her childhood (played by Griffin Kramer) that matters to the filmmakers.
She also comes back into the picture during Harlequin's adult years, providing a comparative image of resilient (though ignorant and hurtful) love in the face of Mr. J's demanding, self-interested, and even abusive "love."
The most touching moment, and one coming from a place familiar to many in the queer community, occurs with their mutual and heart-breaking acknowledgment that they don't share a single happy memory together. But that's a hard thing to have together when one person denies the full expression of identity of the other. Being seen is a prerequisite for love of any kind and "The People's Joker" knows this well.
Queerness and non-hetero sexualities in superhero movies operate simply from an accounting standpoint. A woman-loving-woman kiss here or there (or, more rarely, a male-on-male kiss) is very rarely more important than the dumb cameos these things use for clickbait, and they are also easily excisable for less-affirming markets.
They are largely non-committal depictions of queerness, perhaps other than "Thor: Love and Thunder," that allow Disney and Warner Bros to open new markets (the gays) without closing old ones (non-affirming audiences).
It won't be too long before Disney+ gives viewers the option to automatically cut out the gay kiss in "The Eternals" or the queer innuendos in the aforementioned Thor film. It's in this genre climate that Drew puts a "bleep" over top of the Harlequin's deadname upon every mention. "The People's Joker" won't allow its audience to ever see its protagonist as anything other than how she wants to be viewed: as a woman.
"The People's Joker" is well on its way to being a nail in the superhero coffin the same way "Blazing Saddles" was for Westerns or "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" for musician biopics. Sure, westerns and musician bio-pics didn't die with the satires. But they did put a new onus on the genres of record to push past bland generic reproduction or face new troubles in their box office domination. If we are lucky enough, "The People's Joker" will do the same for the elephant of the 21st-century box office.
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