Joker Folie a Deux: was Todd Phillips examining fans' parasocial relationships with criminal celebrities?

It can’t be as bad as Madame Web, can it? For all the positive reviews Joker: Folie a Deux received during the festival season, how things change so quickly during a general release.

To say reception since the release of the Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga led sequel to Todd Phillips 2019 character study has been frosty would be to say a British winter at times is rather mild. One can’t even blame review bombing either - it would seem that critics and fans alike think the movie is dismal.

But why? It bears all the hallmarks that made the original film popular, from its gritty portrayals to the dystopian cinematography with its greys and beiges. The musical element isn’t even overplayed (in my humble, written opinion now) and adds to the narrative provided by the characters in place of conversations expressing how they feel.

The musical jukebox aspect just further demonstrates the delusions that Arthur Fleck/Joker is known to suffer from. The film plays around once again with the idea of what is real as we follow an unreliable narrator in Fleck, so what went so wrong this time around?

Maybe it was the fact that as a viewer, we’re being admonished for our enjoyment of the first movie? I’ve seen arguments raised on Reddit that the entire film just felt like a middle finger from its creators towards the fandom that made the first film popular.

But therein lies the paradoxical beauty of Joker: Folie a Deux; and much like the vicious moments throughout the cinematic history of Joker, from Phoenix to Nicholson to Ledger (and I guess Leto), the joke is ultimately on us, the hapless public.

Joker 2 was a commentary on parasocial relationships

… and that’s why we’re so pee’d off with it. Spoilers ahead.

In the film, we are introduced to Harleen Quinn, played by Lady Gaga; we are told her tragic backstory and how she relates to Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) after seeing him on television.

She’s a fan - a superfan, when we later learn that she checked herself into the same mental institution, from an affluent background and influences Arthur to be more “Joker” than himself. Cue the musical numbers.

But as the film goes on, and the folie a deux between the pair grows stronger and stronger, we are given a huge dose of reality when one of the characters from the first film enters the courtroom; Glenn Puddle.

In a heartbreaking scene, Puddle reveals that he is saddened at the deaths he witnessed first hand by Fleck in the original film, proclaiming that Fleck was the only person who was nice to him and that he’s suffering from severe trauma that a “friend” could act that way.

That ultimately leads us to Fleck renouncing the character of Joker, admitting he is at fault for everything and that he should, by rights, be sentenced to death. His supporters are shocked, while his one-time superfan, Quinn, no longer wants anything to do with him.

In many ways, the film has two surrogates for the audience; Quinn in part represents the parasocial fans who, according to Phillips, didn’t “get” what the first film was all about, while Puddle represents the fanbase who realise that the character is not one to be canonised, in the film itself and the outside world.

Quinn can’t quite fathom that Fleck has renounced the thing that made him a cult of personality and rejects him for being a lowly, worthless individual who despite how much we’ve lionised him is, ultimately, a murderer.

Should we have “idolised” Arthur Fleck?

That is ultimately the question I believe Phillips was posing with the movie, despite it being to some one of the most offensive ways to get a point across; but isn’t that the more visceral response to a creation that became the “anti-hero du jour” when the first film came out in 2019?

We’ve almost become enamoured with true crime and the details of the likes of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and many more, but because we are not in their immediate proximity, we’re safe watching their stories on TV or in the theatre. I still recall people on social media “thirsty” for a real life figure who killed 30 people - that’s not normal, right?

Maybe that’s what Phillips is trying to convey; that we’re not meant to enjoy Joker and he was never meant to be a character in cinema that we rally behind. He’s a wretch, he needs help and just when he seems like he’s getting it, the parasocial “fan” in Quinn tells him to reject the help - for her own entertainment, and ultimately ours as a viewer.

Can you tell I enjoyed the movie? Well, I’ve enjoyed the fallout from it just as much with the analysis taking place currently juxtaposed with the threats many people are contending with for having a contrasting opinion on the film.

It’s all subjective, yet it’s become almost another form of tribalism to defend or criticise a film or a director. Almost similar to when there were criticisms of Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, that led to reviews going out anonymously for fear of reprisal from Swifties - a similarly strong fandom in the world.

Am I drawing comparisons to the character Joker and Taylor Swift? Absolutely not. Am I drawing comparisons to both fandoms though? Yeah, I guess I am.

Whether Joker: Folie a Deux was a good movie is once again a matter of taste, but if Todd Phillips’ idea was for us to take a good look at ourselves and how we hold sinister characters on a pedestal, he’s achieved it - albeit in the most extreme means possible.

Joker: Folie a Deux is currently screening in cinemas in the United Kingdom. Let us know if you agree with this writer’s comments about the film by leaving a comment down below.