A Class Analysis of Joker and The Dark Knight

Comments · 1.1K

• TH

  @thecountalucard666 · 3 years ago

  I wish you had gone more into Alfred “some men just want to watch the world burn speech.“ Because, it’s not just the movie telling us that some people don’t have a past, or just agents of chaos, etc., it’s literally Alfred‘s response to Bruce attempting to puzzle out the Joker’s motivations. But in my personal opinion, the gem thief in Alfred’s story has a pretty understandable motivation, once you remember that Alfred is doing war crimes in the guy’s country.

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• CI

  @CitizenLenny · 3 years ago

  "The Dark Knight's Joker is 9/11" is an observation that feels really obvious but somehow never crossed my mind

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• MY

  @mynamedoesntfitgah · 3 years ago (edited)

  The Joker (as a returning stock character, not a specific appearance) was in real need of a qualified philosophical analysis to nuance the pop-cultural stereotype of him possibly being <b>the</b> nihilist stock character

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• CR

  @Crusherdude75083 · 3 years ago

  The BoyBoy clip at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffkn3MPXGs&amp;t=2055">34:15</a> is so chilling. It&apos;s like finding a trade secret. Probably the same mentality of cops worldwide.

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• SA

  @samuelrosander1048 · 3 years ago

  &quot;For a person to be pushed into committing a mass shooting by a Hollywood movie they saw, there must have already been such a collossal failure on the part of numerous social institutions that to focus on a particular movie they saw seems absurd.&quot;<br><br>It seems that way, yes...but I can&apos;t help but wonder, &quot;at what point do we stop pretending and just accept that the failure really is collossal?&quot; Acknowledging a problem, and especially the extent of a problem, is the first step towards addressing it. If we don&apos;t acknowledge the extent of the problem we&apos;ll quite likely only address some of the symptoms rather than the problem itself. Or rather, &quot;our politicians,&quot; because we also have to acknowledge that we have no control over them, and their actions primarily serve the interests of the elite, and prolonging the problems is more profitable than addressing them.<br><br>Interestingly, movies coming out that humanize the villains, particularly the Marvel movies, make their causes good but their actions bad. It&apos;s the equivalent of capitalists saying &quot;okay, we acknowledge that carbon emissions are bad, but the only solutions anyone has are ones that will destroy the economy, so let&apos;s fight to maintain the status quo.&quot; In reality solutions abound that woiuldn&apos;t destroy the economy for the masses, but would mean changing priorities that would be massively unprofitable for capitalists &quot;right now,&quot; but they can&apos;t say the quiet part out loud without giving the game away. The same applies to the movies with villains trying to do good things; they have to be mass murderers to support the narrative requiring the status quo to be maintained.<br><br>Great video.

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• GA

  @gaspardbonnehon8758 · 3 years ago

  While Arthur Fleck, the character, was really well done, my first thought when I walked out of the theater was that the movie was a rich person&apos;s understanding of poor people as a whole - not concerning the Joker, but the rest of Gotham. People will yell at someone for making their child laugh, randomly beat up anyone who falls down, start a massive fight with the smallest incentive, and are ready to riot in support of a murder at the drop of a hat

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• DE

  @DefunctPhoton · 3 years ago

  Great video as always. I think Nolan&apos;s moralism can also be seen in the last act of Oppenheimer - Oppie isn&apos;t destroyed because he was actively campaigning against a military industrial complex that wanted nothing more than an arms race with the Soviet Union (a class-based, materialist analysis) but because he offended some venal politician decades ago. The vast, unfathomable power of a system he was very helpful in creating is not really addressed, and really is kind of obfuscated by making that one guy the villain. He did have the cajones to imply Jean was murdered by the FBI, though, so that&apos;s a point in his favor.

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• SA

  @sambernhofer7613 · 3 years ago

  I thought it was interesting that there was no celebration of Bruce Wayne&apos;s wealth in The Batman (2022). In The Batman, Bruce Wayne had to address the discomfort that late stage capitalism in Gotham City&apos;s had with itself: IIRC, there&apos;s a line where he states he doesn&apos;t care what happens to his wealth, which felt like a change from any other Batman film where his billions were celebrated or at least not questioned.

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• AD

  @AdamPuntigliano · 3 years ago (edited)

  My dream analysis from Čeika would be comparing the V for vendetta comic with the film. I think there are a lot of defining social forces that influenced the production and release of both works that could be discussed in length.

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• RE

  @reybladen3068 · 3 years ago (edited)

  In The Batman, most of the badguys showed on screen where politicians and cops, even though Batman was fighting low level criminals, he was exposed to the corruption in Gotham and i hope The Batman explores it more in the sequel and even fights against it using his Bruce Wayne persona.

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• LA

  @Lawarch · 3 years ago

  Its always a good day when Jonas drops a new video

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• LP

  @LPSlight0 · 3 years ago

  Timestamps:<br>Introduction: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffkn3MPXGs">0:00</a><br>Alienation: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffkn3MPXGs&amp;t=700">11:40</a><br>Class and Revolution: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffkn3MPXGs&amp;t=1297">21:37</a><br>Riots: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffkn3MPXGs&amp;t=1650">27:30</a>

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