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Joker Resurrectus: Pop Iconography Fills The Nihilist Void
As these words are written the streets of Santiago, Chile and Beirut, Lebanon are ablaze with the fury of thousands of voices raging against an irrational economic system. It is a world of tremors at the moment, with riots serving as a conduit for the general mood of vast communities. Significant is the fact that we are also living through a moment devoid of political vision or revolutionary alternatives. The old icons have receded in the public consciousness. Who are the thinkers of our time brushing away the old world? The cost of living hurtles upwards and an economically stable life becomes elusive for the young. Who speaks for them? Within the current void the masses instead lose themselves in the comfort of fantasy and caricatures that symbolize their despair.
Emerging through the smoke of the riots in Beirut and Chile are faces painted like the Joker. Not just the general villain out of the Batman comics, but the current incarnation of urban madness portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips’s nihilistic Joker. Now in the age of Trump, where even more despair is sensed among the restless societies of the world, it is fitting that characters which embody an utter sense of hopelessness take center stage. Joker, the latest from Phillips who is best known for the raunch fest The Hangover, is a film memorable as a work of nihilistic aesthetic. Visually it captures the mood of millennials and others caught in an uncomfortable generational shift where good jobs are…
