review: Phillips’ Joker

The film is a critique on how an increasingly dissociated society fuelled by late capitalist values undermines the human rendering it a mere mask, a mere facade of what it was. This mask, wilfully carried by those who succeed within the pre-formatted social structure of this alienated society, isn’t the mask of a clown, but the mask of consumerism, the mask society is told to ‘become’ in order to ‘be’. The mask has been diligently worn so many times that society has forgotten its ‘human’ face which now lies buried under layers of media-stimulated simulacra.

 To wear a mask in a society where the mask itself passes for the face, is to rebel against this hypocrisy. To wear a mask thus  becomes a symbol and act of rebellion. To wear a mask now signifies truth, humanity and an ethics of care which are all taken for granted in the current socio-political climate the film critiques. The film invites for a painful reflection on the sacrifices one is expected to make in order to live in a ‘civilised’ society, a society that is supposed to offer protection in the exchange for freedom. But when society takes our freedom and betrays us by failing to nurture and protect, what is left?

 The character of the joker comes to the painful conclusion that the mask society carved into our faces is nothing but a joke, a joke at the expense of humanity itself. And with that last laugh, he tells us, in a closed system that is itself a caricature of what it was, that the only authentic move is to reverse the predisposed order, to laugh when one should cry and to be the joker when everyone else is but a mere joke. Aka in a society that doesn’t care it’s better to be the joker than the joked upon.