Cracking up
Joker and the mediatisation of the arse-end of the world
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21783381 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caroline Bainbridge (0000-0003-4446-5953, University of Roehampton, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 54-64 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Review of Film and Television Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-0309 • E-ISSN: 1740-7923 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17400309.2020.1861882 |
| OpenAlex | W3133817080 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
Joker is a polarising popular cultural phenomenon. Reviews of the film range from rave acclaim to outraged dismissal. As a barometer of a western conjuncture in which binaristic division, ‘toxic’ culture, and the demise of liberal freedom are dominant, Joker articulates experiences of anxiety, evoking a zeitgeist inflected by the paranoid-schizoid mentality. Joker challenges viewers to reflect on its distressing content, while suggesting that a more responsible, reparative, depressive mindset is nevertheless within reach. This article uses Meltzer’s psychoanalytic theory of ‘the claustrum’ to read Joker as a media object that allows the working through of complex psychological experience resulting from decades of neoliberalism and the intensification of populist ideological division. Processes of introjective and projective identification offer viewers a means of coping with anxiety and the dissolution of relationality linked to these experiences. Joker, then, mediatises the western conjuncture as the arse-end of the world, helping to evacuate internalised toxicity and to process malignity and fear. I examine the power of film as a cultural object to provide perspective on the complex internalised relations created by neoliberalism, showing how the mediatisation of anxiety compounds the discursive and socio-political dynamic, while paradoxically bringing it to the surface
Aesthetics · Art · Media studies · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Gender Studies · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |