"Joker | Fanart" by Gerardo Lisanti is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
終於看了Joker所以能閱讀他人的影評，不意外地多數人強調電影中刻畫的跨世代創傷、精神疾病與霸凌的議題。但最令我感到震撼的其實是Joker對於whiteness（白人性/白人化）的呈現——即使這可能不是導演的本意，但種族的階級化卻在電影中城市隔離的安排上，以及男主角Arthur Fleck和非裔社工師的對話中清晰表明：「他們不會理睬我們這種人的。」
Arthur從一個不斷被周遭人霸凌、具有社會化困難的低階中年白人男子，每次將白漆塗上臉時便彷彿得到重生。這樣的重生一開始對他可能只是一個作為表演者的吃飯工具，但在謀殺事件後，他塗白漆的儀式卻讓他成為另一個角色：白人性作為社會之惡的體現，特別是電影中七〇年代美國的社會福利減縮和貧富不均，人與人間的冷漠和暴力，如何將一個「人」轉化為「魔」，而這個魔鬼，就是白人性的起始。換句話說，白人性的暴力即是種族化資本的相對面。
Joker白人性的performativity，在他上電視參與名人脫口秀前最為清晰，他甚至將白漆畫上舌頭——literally swallowing whiteness to make it his own。當然這樣的本質化最後是失敗的，白漆不斷掉落、溶解，Joker的"white paint"/"white pain"卻成為一種民粹主義的追隨。這場看似「仇富」的運動是沒有明確政治意義的，就像是白人性在現今社會體現的問題，白人男性（電影中的反抗主體）對於社會不正義的不滿、階級提升的挫敗和妄想（Arthur母親），因為缺少全球物質面對於階級、種族、性別等等全面性的批判，終究只能成為一種隨機暴力的宣洩，與一場自我嘲弄。 Joker沒有要成為什麼時代的英雄，他反應了人性給予自己最大的傷害，經由世代、家庭不斷重複，像是許多後殖民思想家警告過的，白人性從整個啟蒙運動開始試圖將自身提升作為humanity的常規，但造成了多少次戰爭、種族屠殺、環境迫害，註定要成為一場兩敗俱傷的笑話——卻要讓種族的他者共同承擔。
The most surprising effect of Joker is the representation of whiteness, even though this may not be the intention of the director. However, the racial segregation of the city and conversations between Arthur Fleck and the black social worker are the most telling about the racial themes, when she tells Arthur: “They don’t care about people like us.”
Arthur as a victim of constant bullying, a person with difficulty of socializing due to his mental illness, and a working-class white man, gets “transformed” when he paints his face white. In the beginning, the white face may only be part of the job of being a performer, but after his murders, the ritual of painting his face white makes him someone other than himself: that is, we get to see how whiteness as the embodiment of the social ill, something bigger than Arthur himself. The critique in the film is quite clear here, the state’s neoliberal disinvestment on social services and increase of class inequality, the distancing of social interaction, transforms the subject from a “person” to a “monster,” and this monster, is the formation of whiteness itself, the mirror image of racial capitalism and its violence.
The performativity of Joker’s whiteness gets quite literal right before he goes onto the talk show, where he literally tries to swallow whiteness to make it his own. However, such embodiment turns out to be a failure as the paint constantly drips and falls off, yet the "white paint"/"white pain" is taken on as a symbol of the emergent populist movement in the city. The “Kill the Rich” movement has no actual political contents, just like the effects of whiteness today, particularly, white masculinity (the protest subject in the movie), though fueled with feelings of disfranchisement and abandonment by social inequalities, the failure and even psychopathic delusion of class advancement (Author’s mom) -- only turn into random acts of violence and destruction and self-mimicries , due to the profound lack of critical analysis on the global effects of race, gender, class, etc.
After all, Joker doesn’t want to be a hero or an anti-hero, he only reflects the destruction of humanity on itself, through intergenerational trauma and relational abuse. This is something that postcolonial theorists have warned us many times already - whiteness attempts to make itself real and elevate itself as the norm of humanity, yet it has caused numerous wars and meaningless deaths, and inevitably turning into a mutually destructive joke — that it forces all the racial Other to bear nonetheless.