We do condemn the violence but still love the joker, because the joker is partly the player of an instinct we all hide in our grey shades and secretly nurture.
For a mediocre audience, cinema is strictly a structural unwrapping of Freytag’s Pyramid starting with an introduction which through rising movement settles up in a climax and moves into denouement. As a matter of fact, the form has been so insistent in cinema in determining the aesthetics for decades. The melodramatic and social realistic movies were the best examples of this where the plot structure was centric to the process of narration. However, cinema as one among the most popular art forms which incessantly subsumes and reflects the cultural and artistic waves of the time, has quite often dared to supersede convention to pursue the radical social realities. Quite naturally, in the late 20th century, the postmodern or post structuralist philosophy came to influence the cinema with its explosive outlooks on the artificiality of all sorts of structure found in cultural, political, linguistic and social realms. Specifically, the philosophical stream called deconstruction by Jaquez Derrida had an exemplary impact on cinema that it ignited directors for a first to explore the facets beyond realism and melodrama. Chaos and anarchy being rudimentary in these philosophies were revisited by the cinema which initiated discussion on the so-called normality of structural logics; the binaries, like true and false, right and wrong, and good and evil. This close dismantling of the fabrics of social structure shed light on the inherent ‘constructedness’ of all systems which for centuries were the corner-stones of narratives and made all to believe that coherence is the essence of all existence. But, embracing anarchy and chaos as the lack or the failure of structures which is a supposed human construct there evolved a possibility in cinema to emplace and attack what is constructed; the nation state, the religion, and the sorts which are preserved through systems of law and order, and social codes. The human instinct was a key to all these messy grey shades of human life which contemporary cinema quite amiably exploits. Though many films depict the rupture of the system in conflict with the basic human instincts, the movies Joker and Jellikettu have expounded this possibility to a great extent by showing it on two versatile geographies and in two dimensions.
As Freud said, it is a sort of a fight for survival where the abled will endure.
The common logic of contemporary philosophy comes with a notion that ‘every function’ is a process which is operated on the grounds of constructed systems and this systemic logic is concealed behind everything we presume to live. In that understanding, the world we live in is purely a systemic one and it needs to closely follow the rules of the system to legitimize one’s life as socially relevant and meaningful. But, in films I have mentioned above there is a sharp-edged criticism on this structural process and its long enduring functionality. The Movie Joker tells this logic in a wider angle that it takes the spectator along with the protagonist to showcase how a system functions and how it legitimizes a living being as a social subject. The character, Arthur Fleck/Joker as we see a troubled person is one among the points of perception through which the audience gets into the logic of a structural world that the film describes. Once the audience assumes the status of joker, he/she understands the fight that happens between Joker and the world around him which is structurally composed and monitored. In the fight here the joker neither can win nor resolve unless he makes changes in the system, because this fight is a part of a process of inclusion and exclusion where the bunch marks of inclusion are structurally defined. The system and its followers identify the joker with his frantic smile and traumatic past as a misfit in the society. He never gives up, but tries hard to be normal which is again a set up standard. On this pursuit, his ventures with standup comedy gravely fails him and makes him more a laughing stock among all other characters who strictly manifest the normal. As Freud said, it is a sort of a fight for survival where the abled will endure. But he finds a way out of all his worries in the chaos, or anarchy; the disruption of existing structure that will finally take him off from humiliations and shows his way into a perfect inclusion. Violence is the means he finds towards that world. Even though the shootout in the metro station was an involuntary act for survival, it turned his waves and led him into a way beyond the so-called social living which he has been trying to cope up with for years. Violence gives him impeccable power of action. The incident in the studio where he kills Murray Franklin seems overly an act of revenge on the folks who played on him, is in fact a moment where he for a first chases the normal out on his own terms. Thereafter, Joker sets out to make a world that normalizes what he is and what he does. The identity of Joker and the enchantment he represents become more and more iconic and heroic for the people who were his kind. Later, the film goes on showing the derailment of the social system and amounting of a social anarchy where violence and bloodshed butchers the strands of social living. We do condemn the violence but still love the joker, because the joker is partly the player of an instinct we all hide in our grey shades and secretly nurture. Moreover it shows the unassailable anarchy that protrudes behind every normal we live through.
The catching of the bull which involves the whole village is very much similar to the Derriidian notion of ‘play’ which disrupts the desire for stability.
When it comes to Jellykettu, the whole idea of chaos seems to be well placed in a more realistic way as the geographic and demographic features seem contemporary. Here, the bull is the trigger of the commotion which takes us to an explosion of the deeply engraved apocalyptic human behaviors. The society here is Kerala’s ‘High-range’ which has a prominent history of migration and handful of unsung tales of survival and violence in credit. The violence here is mostly primitive in kind as the people quite often fight against the natural dangers like the wild animals or a rough and untainted nature. The nature vs man social life of ‘high-range’ is vivaciously adapted in the movie through effective background music and cinematographic techniques. The frantic vocal chanting and marching of raid parties with torch perfectly accompanies the universe which visualizes the impending commotion. The movie begins with a bull’s escape from a local slaughterhouse which creates a casual confusion that is placed simultaneously with the regular and smooth functioning of social life in the village. There are random pulses of the village life described through actions like elopement, adultery and raw sexual encounters and religious function which always associate with the country life in High ranges. But, gradually, the bull moves into the center of the tale through its intensifying violence and the village, by and by, immerses into the act of catching it. The catching of the bull which involves the whole village is very much similar to the Derriidian notion of ‘play’ which disrupts the desire for stability. The bull here plays the role of a player which in one way or other destabilizes the normal village life through various acts of violence until it finally becomes a personal endeavor for many to catch the game. The characters like Antony and Kuttachan and many unnamed players happen to relate the game as personal which stands to define one’s existence. So, the game here lays a forking path which leads to a labyrinth from which no one can escape. The violence further increases and it takes the whole village out of their huts and they lose the sense of time and rules of law as deeply involved in the game. In a scene where Kuttachan falsely states that he was not stabbed but attacked the bull, the enigma of the game boldly flashes and it finally leads to a more spectacular apocalyptic climax of the movie. In the end of the movie, the whole village chases the bull into a mire and stacks over it to claim their victory over the ‘thing’ while losing their own life. Here we find the whole social order shrinks into the inner spaces of a human being where we find nothing but the flaring instincts. The chaos more poetically exposes the fragility of normal and shows the canyon beyond it.
In many ways, both the movies with skillful use of violence and intensive action portray the bogus realities we are made to believe. The contemporary cinema has come daringly to seize the chaos which is engraved under the dictated norms of normality. This pursuit will further enlarge in the future as the virtual realities engross the life in strange bizarre of illusion.
Cover Photo: Harindran Narendran
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