Exploring affect, identity, and populism in and around Todd Phillips’ Joker

Abstract

Cultural identity has become a fluid concept in which several positionalities converge; most of them are influenced greatly by popular culture, causing a constant individual negotiation between their real lives and the image on the screen. In 2019, Todd Phillips’s Joker achieved worldwide success not only at the box ofce but also in critical appraisal. Unlike previous representations of this villain as a disruptive social persona, Joker showed the main character as a political fgure that gives agency and voice to the people who are socially repressed. The impact of this representation transcended Anglo cultures to the extent of symbolizing a populist uprising and a growing antigovernment sentiment. Nevertheless, this fgure’s appropriation brings twoproblematic ideological standpoints to the goal these groups aim: violence as the only alternative to restoring equality in society and color blindness that silences the struggles that cultures face depending on their context.