Pop quiz hotshot, It’s the middle of the culture war, #cancelculture is in full effect where even “allies” who make a single misstep outside the restrictive bounds of the prevailing woke, regressive ideology are publicly eviscerated for their transgressions. You are a white male in an era that has painted them public enemies number one and you are asked this question about a film in which you are playing one of the most iconic villains of the 20th and 21st century…The Joker.
Mr. Phoenix, are you…
“…worried that this film might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results”.
What do you do? What do you do?
Well, if you’re Joaquin Phoenix you walk out of the interview. Which is what he did when he was asked this ridiculous question by a ‘journalist’ who was interviewing him for The Telegraph.
And rightfully so.
There is no ‘safe’ way to answer that question. The pink-haired mafia, the SJW horde, the woke scolds have already been on the attack of this film as some sort of ‘Manifesto To Angry White Male Conservatives’ as silly as that sounds. Phoenix is as liberal as they come, endorsing Bernie fricken Sanders for the 2016 Presidential election for crying out loud. So this notion that he would get behind something like that is patently insane. Nonetheless, answering the question in any form would have been seized upon and used to attack both the him and the film (more). It was a question with no good outcome and was probably asked out of bad faith so the journalist could score some woke cred by taking a white male actor to the tool-shed.
I was not, am still not, particularly interested in the Joker outside of the context of the Batman universe but I hope the film does well all the same. I hope so purely because the primary reason the film is under so much scrutiny in the first place is because it is a movie about a straight white male starring a straight white male which for many on the left is already a hate crime.
We need to push back against these maniacs at every possible opportunity. This includes protecting the things they hate and telling them to stick their ideology where the sun doesn’t shine. So I say go see Joker, or even if you don’t go see it throw it some cash anyway. Consider it a conservative campaign contribution.
Go see Rambo: Last Blood too while you are at it, for pretty much the same reasons.
