The Controversies Surrounding Joker Are A Refection Of Our Panic Than The Movie Itself

When Warner Brothers announced a stand-alone movie Joker and the biggest concern people had was 'Oh god are we in for another Suicide Squad fiasco?' but these fears were quickly forgotten when Joaquin Phoenix was cast in the lead, an actor who has given stellar performances throughout his career and the last person we thought would do a comic book movie so this movie had to good.

When the movie finally had its premiere at the Venice film festival it received an 18-minute standing ovation and took home 'The Golden Lion' for best picture and with critics showering it with praise and stating that Joaquin Phoenix gave the finest performance of his career.

However, when the movie was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival it was not so well received. Many critics claimed that the movie encouraged violence, there is a reason behind this because of a mass shooting that occurred in 2012 when a man shot up a movie theater claiming he was the Joker and was inspired by Heath Ledger’s performance in 'The Dark Knight'

Yesterday Landmark Theaters, the chain which owned the movie hall where the shooting took place in 2012 has announced a ban on people wearing costumes, face masks or face paint at all Landmark theaters.

Adding to the controversy was a document prepared by the US Military which says that officials have been alerted to "disturbing" online chatter about a potential mass shooting threat at a theater during next week's release of the movie "Joker," but it references no specific location".

The association between Joker and gun violence seem to interconnect when lead actor Joaquin Phoenix walked out of an interview when he asked about the connection. 

Many people online seem to believe that the movie's realistic approach is disrespectful to the 2012 victims and that the movie promotes Incel culture and sympathies with the lone wolf narrative, Todd Phillips the director of the movie responded to this by saying "I think it's because outrage is a commodity. I think it's something that has been a commodity for a while,"

He went on to say, "What's outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far-left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda."

What is interesting about this argument surrounding this movie is how selective it is, there are hundreds of movie that are released every year that have violence none of them received this kind of backlash.

Random acts of violence have always been blamed on movies, rock music, rap, video games, and this trend will continue because it is the easier way like putting a band-aid on a broken leg that is not to say movies and music have an influence on us but to blame that on the violent acts of someone mentally disturbed is going too far.

Joker is a movie about a man who lost his mind and turned into a psychopath and this movie aims at pointing a mirror at society as to how it happened art, after all, is said to a refection of society and blaming a movie for doing that says a lot more about us than it does about a movie about comic book character.

In India Joker releases in theatres on 2 October.