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‘Joker’ is a problem, and it’s on all of us

Art holds power. It can change us. It can move us physically and emotionally in ways we don’t expect, and it can inspire us to greatness just as easily as it can drag us into the depths of depravity.

That’s the power of art, in all of its forms — and it’s why we’re in such a tricky place right now when it comes to the upcoming Warner Bros. film Joker.

Joker is ostensibly an origin story for Batman’s infamous, psychopathic archenemy who delights in the suffering of innocents while wearing the face of a clown. Indelibly portrayed in 2008’s The Dark Knight by Heath Ledger — who won a posthumous Oscar for his incredible performance — the Joker makes his way back to the big screen in the October film, which casts Joaquin Phoenix as an emotionally stunted outcast who deals with the obstacles he’s faced in life by donning clown makeup and becoming the titular mass murderer.

At a point when the U.S. is experiencing an epidemic of disturbed men engaging in deadly shooting sprees as a response to some perceived slight, Joker couldn’t arrive at a more inappropriate time — and it presents a unique dilemma for everyone interested in it for one reason or another.

Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker
Warner Brothers

The Aurora letter

Families of the victims of the 2012 Aurora, CO shooting spree that resulted in 12 deaths and injuries to 70 others during a screening of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises (the sequel to The Dark Knight) recently penned an open letter to Joker studio Warner Bros. Pictures expressing concern that the film could inspire another mass shooter. That the killer in the Aurora shooting, James Holmes, was initially — albeit erroneouslyassociated with the Joker character makes the connection between the new film and the real-world tragedy even more troubling. The letter’s authors compared the film’s titular lead to Holmes, another “socially isolated individual who felt ‘wronged’ by society.”

“My worry is that one person who may be out there — and who knows if it is just one — who is on the edge, who is wanting to be a mass shooter, may be encouraged by this movie,” said Sandy Phillips, the mother of Aurora victim Jessica Ghawi, who worked with other victims’ families to craft the letter. “And that terrifies me.”

She’s not alone.

This week, the U.S. military warned service members of credible threats uncovered by the FBI regarding potential acts of violence at screenings of Joker by incels, radicalized men whose violent, misogynistic ideology is rooted in a perception of themselves as “involuntary celibates” wronged by society. Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger self-identified as an incel before murdering six people and injuring 14 others in 2014 near the University of California campus in Santa Barbara.

Holmes himself is often held up as a hero in some incel circles, and it’s the conversation in those circles surrounding Joker that put the FBI and the U.S. military on alert.

JOKER - Final Trailer

It’s not the body count

Adding to all of the troubling buzz surrounding the film is the surprisingly dismissive response from the film’s director, as well as Phoenix, who both seem to be genuinely perplexed that anyone would see a link between the arc of the film’s socially deranged psychopath and that of the real world’s recent outcasts-turned-murderers.

Phoenix walked out of an interview when asked about the effect the film might have on individuals prone to violence, while director Todd Phillips has suggested Joker and its story of an average man who decides to become a mass murderer is no different than that of John Wick, a stylized action movie about a nigh-invulnerable assassin who fights his way through legions of killers-for-hire to punish the criminal who killed his puppy.

What Phillips — and, apparently, Phoenix — don’t seem to grasp is that it’s not the film’s body count that raises red flags.

Polarizing debate

It’s no secret that lax gun-control laws in the U.S., combined with the nation’s relative disinterest in treatment of mental health issues, are at the core of the mass-shooting epidemic in the country. Despite a groundswell of public support for sensible gun regulation and improved mental health practices, meaningful progress on both issues remains a distant hope in the current sociopolitical environment.

However, as the Aurora survivors and countless advocacy groups, think pieces, critics, and even psychologists have argued, the power of a movie (or other forms of art, for that matter) to inspire, shape opinions, and even incite action is part of that dangerous picture, too.

The debate over Joker has polarized public opinion, with one side recommending we take a hard look at the film’s themes and the likelihood of it inspiring another shooter, and the other dismissing that recommendation from one of two positions: Either a movie can’t hold blame for someone’s actions, or that holding a film accountable is a slippery slope to the total eradication of creative freedom.

The first argument hails from the same, basic philosophical camp as “blame the person, not the gun” and strips art of its power to move and inspire its audience, while the second suggests that the piles of bodies created by mass shooters are the price we pay for preserving creative freedom.

The evidence against the former — which supports the power of art to inspire and move us — is well-documented at this point. As for the latter, that morbid sentiment isn’t likely to find much support when you put it to public consensus (particularly among survivors of mass shootings).

But that hasn’t stopped defenders of the film from putting Joker at the center of an imaginary battle for our creative souls.

Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker

A slippery slope

It’s no surprise that defense of Joker has been equated to a defense of artistic freedom, given that the argument offers the best defense for doing nothing.

Acknowledging that a movie like Joker could indeed increase the likelihood of another mass shooter like Holmes forces us to choose between our ability to enjoy the movie guilt-free and the potential for harm to come to innocent people.

It’s a tough moral dilemma to present to the casual movie fan — which probably explains why, at a point when most major releases have already begun screening for critics, advance screenings of Joker have been conspicuously limited to film festivals attended by only the most dedicated cinephiles. That audience is more likely to prioritize cinematic creativity over any potential social or cultural implications of a film, even while extolling the power of the medium to inspire its audience.

The sticky implications of the film don’t end there, either.

The controversy around Joker also has a nasty habit of putting otherwise open-minded, progressive movie lovers in a difficult position regardless of whether they’ve seen the film.

At a time when we’re urged — and are urging others — to listen to the voices of survivors of abuse, racism, bullying, and other injustices, there’s plenty of resistance to the warnings from the survivors of the Aurora shooting and others with firsthand experience with exactly the sort of individuals Joker could potentially inspire. The survivors have identified the thematic red flags their tragic experiences make them acutely aware of, but when it comes to Joker, it’s become all too common to dismiss what they’re telling us.

No easy solutions

At this point, with just a week to go until Joker is scheduled to hit theaters, there’s no easy solution to the problems the film poses.

On one hand, the studio could delay the film’s release until a more appropriate time, but there’s no certainty we’ll ever get to such a point, given the litany of obstacles to treating the root causes of mass shootings. Conversely, the studio could release Joker in theaters as scheduled, surrounded in a cloud of controversy and fear, and hope — along with everyone who buys a ticket — that its legacy will have more to do with the box office than real-world bullets and bloodshed.

The most viable option might be to educate the film’s most prominent advocates — Phillips and Phoenix — on the complicated issues the film and its themes present in a world where bitter men turning to mass murder is an all-too-real phenomenon. As the ambassadors of such a high-profile film, they have the ability to get the right message out there about the story they’re telling in Joker, and would do well to spend more time reinforcing that message instead of walking out of interviews or condemning critics.

As for the rest of us, a movie like Joker coming to theaters makes us all look at what we’re actually willing to sacrifice. If we as a society are silent on Joker or try to rationalize it away as being just a movie, it means we’re only in favor of dealing with the causes of mass shootings when they don’t directly affect us — and don’t require any self-sacrifice or self-examination.

I don’t have the answer as to exactly what we should do about a movie like Joker coming out at a time like this. But I do know there’s great power in art, and we owe it to ourselves — and a generation growing up with the specter of mass shootings looming over their offices, schools, and movie theaters — to wield that power with great responsibility.

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Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
Families of Aurora shooting victims fear new Joker movie could inspire violence
Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker

Family members of the victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting have penned a letter to Warner Bros. voicing their concerns about Todd Phillips' new Joker movie, set for release on October 4, fearing that it could inspire more violence.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that five family members sent the letter to the film company on Tuesday.

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One of the most common complaints about Suicide Squad was that there wasn't enough of the Joker and Harley Quinn, but fans will soon get their fill of those twisted characters. Warner Bros. is developing a Joker-Harley Quinn movie, according to Variety. And don't worry, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie are on board to reprise their roles.

The studio describes the film as a "criminal love story," which makes sense given that the two characters' relationship is more bad romance than modern fairy tale. The Joker is an actual psychopath, and Harley, a former psychologist, became unhinged herself after meeting him in the asylum where she worked. Their unconventional bond went over well with Suicide Squad viewers, and it should make for an interesting stand-alone film.

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The Digital Self: How tech can solve our gun problem (and why we won’t let it)
digital self smart gun

We can send a man to the moon, a robot to Mars, and access the world's wealth of information from a $200 hand-held gizmo that fits in our pockets – but we can't figure out how to stop a crazy person from walking into an elementary school with an assault rifle to murder innocent children.
When it comes to preventing gun violence, technology has failed us. Why is that?
This question has tugged at my subconscious since the hideous shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December. So-called 'smart gun' technology, which would prevent guns from being fired by people other than their rightful owners, seems like the perfect middle ground to the gun control debate: Nobody has to give up their guns, and everybody is a bit safer. Despite having existed in one form or another for two decades, smart gun technology cannot be found in a single firearm at your local gun store. According to some backers of tighter gun control, this is a problem.
"… A lot could change if, for example, every gun purchased could only be fired by the person who purchased it," said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during a meeting with video game executives in January. "That technology exists, but it's extremely expensive. But if that were available with every weapon sold, there's significant evidence that it ... may very well curtail what happened up in Connecticut. Because had the young man not had access to his mother's arsenal, he may or may not have did what he did."
Smart gun tech
When Biden says smart gun technology is expensive, he's not kidding. One of the most commonly cited smart gun solutions is the Smart System developed by Armatix GmbH, a German company. The Armatix iP1 .22 caliber pistol will only fire when in range of a watch that contains an RFID chip, and requires the user to punch in a five-digit pin to make the firearm operable. (Try doing that in the dark, with an intruder barreling down on your family, says every gun owner ever.) That setup, while not yet available in the U.S., would cost buyers about $10,000.
Mossberg Group has developed a similar product, called the iGun, which requires users to wear an RFID-embedded ring that unlocks the iGun's trigger once it's in close proximity.
Another company, TriggerSmart, which is based out of Limerick, Ireland, recently patented a "childproof" gun technology, which also uses RFID chips to "personalize" the gun. TriggerSmart has also developed a system that creates "safe zones" in which no enabled guns will fire – like, for example, an elementary school.
In the days following the Sandy Hook shooting, TriggerSmart founder Robert McNamara found himself utterly frustrated by the lack of safety technology in our guns.
"I was literally pulling my hair out," McNamara told Reuters. "I thought, we have a technology that could have helped prevent that massacre."
If you’re anxious for us to find a solution to our gun violence woes, smart guns seem like an exciting, next-generation option.
Other smart-gun solutions are more high tech. The New Jersey Institute of Technology began developing a smart gun in 2003, after state legislature passed a law requiring all guns sold in state to have smart technology within three years after a viable product becomes commercially available. The NJIT's smart gun solution is a special grip, which uses pressure sensors to learn the muscle pattern of its owner – a kind of grip "signature" similar to a fingerprint. The training period is about 50 shots, and the system has a 99 percent reliability rate – meaning, out of 100 times, if someone other than the owner picks up the gun to fire it, it won't shoot all but one time, on average.
Millions of dollars in state and federal funding later, a commercially viable smart gun is not yet available.
The smart gun opposition
The problem here is not just that the tech is too expensive or too clunky – though all the available solutions seem to have at least one of these problems. As with all things related to the 2nd Amendment, the truth is far more complicated. But it basically boils down to this: People who want guns don't want smart guns – especially if they cost ten grand.
Herschel Smith, a blogger and gun enthusiast, summed up the general sentiment about smart guns this way: "… Here’s a note to manufacturers. You go right ahead and 'dabble' in smart gun technology. I will purchase such a gun when hell freezes over."
That's not to say some people, like those with small children in the house, might choose to buy a smart gun but not a "dumb" gun. But those people appear to be few and far between. And as a result, gunmakers aren't pumping R&D money into making a product people ultimately won't buy.
"The gun industry has no interest in making smart-guns," SUNY Cortland political science professor Robert Spitzer, who has written four books about gun policy, told The New York Times. "There is no incentive for them."
Adding to the complications is that neither pro-gun nor the anti-gun lobbying groups support smart gun technology. Pro-gun groups, like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, say the technology is unreliable, and dismisses the possibility that smart guns will curb gun violence. And the Violence Policy Center (VPC), which is generally in favor of gun control, actually agrees with this assessment.
"Many of the issues addressed by a smart gun can be addressed by a trigger lock," Josh Sugarman, founder of the VPC, told U.S. News. "I think we have to be honest about what percent of gun violence this might affect – most homicides are committed with a person's own gun."
So, in short, the only way for smart guns to gain ground in America is for Congress to completely ignore both sides of the gun control debate, and impose laws, like that of New Jersey, requiring gun manufacturers to install smart technology in all of their weapons. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that that will never, ever happen.
And even if it did – which it won't – that still leaves all the guns already out in the wild that would remain smart tech-free. According to Small Firearms Survey (PDF), Americans currently own in the neighborhood of 270 million guns – or 89 guns for every 100 people. Those guns would still be out there, dumb and potentially dangerous in the wrong hands.
Conclusion
As the gun control debate rolls forward, expect to see a lot of talk about smart guns, and how they can solve all our problems with gun violence. If you're anxious for us to find a solution to our gun violence woes, smart guns seem like an exciting, next-generation option. But you shouldn't believe any of it. The tech may be there, but the market isn't – and nothing on the horizon will change that.

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