Contemporary Cult: The People's Joker (2022)
A new kind of origin story.
As a generation cusper, I often feel in-between the things that "define a generation," whether that be politically, historically, culturally, or what have you. Millennials are defined as those born between 1981-1996 while Gen Zers were born between 1997-2010 and I can tell you that as a 1997 baby (I'm not a '90s kid, I'm a Y2Kid!), I have very little in common with anyone born in 1983 or those in 2009. I would suspect that most people who find themselves at the beginning or end of a defined generation could argue that these labels are too broad and too long.
As a result, I often feel like pop culture has been handed down to my half-generation more than we've defined it. As much as I love Rocky Horror or The Room, I had nothing to do with the cult following of those films. They were given to me. I didn't grow up reading Danny Peary's Cult Movies books and I'm not of the following generation who created podcasts inspired by them - though I listen to and love those podcasts.
We need our own canon of contemporary cult cinema. It's time for us to define our "classics, sleepers, weird and wonderful," as Peary puts it. We'll debate the definition of a "cult movie" by stretching the boundaries, make predictions about a film's future cultability, and honor a new generation of artists in Contemporary Cult.
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"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Joker."
It's the Goodfellas-style intro to Vera Drew's The People's Joker, a film inspired by the same love of cinema that inspired this column. Though often billed as a parody of superhero movies, it's clear that Vera loves Batman, particularly the Joel Schumacher entries, (one of the film's funniest moments is also one of its most sincere - the film is dedicated to Mom and Joel Schumacher.) With The People's Joker, director/co-writer Drew has created a new kind of villain origin story. It's about how Joker (played by Drew) becomes Joker, but it's only tangentially the story you're familiar with.
Growing up in Smallville, the child (whose dead name is bleeped out and always seems to sound slightly different under the bleep) idolizes the comedy of UCB (United Clown Bureau) Live, a Saturday Night Live/UCB (Upright Citizen's Brigade) mashup that symbolizes fun living in the big city of Gotham. Vera interrupts to monologue about Batman Forever and how most young boys see that movie and want to bonk Nicole Kidman (I was one of those boys, this is true), while she saw the film as a child and wanted to be Nicole Kidman. The child asks "Was I born in the wrong body?" and their mother freaks out, taking them to see Dr. Crane at Arkham Asylum. He prescribes Smylex, an anti-depressant reminiscent of that smile-inducing drug seen throughout different versions of Batman, like Tim Burton's 1989 film and the episode "The Last Laugh" of The Animated Series. While often used for depression or anxiety, the child uses it for their gender dysphoria.
But when the child grows up, the bright lights of the big city don't meet their expectations. Bruce Wayne's commitment to capitalism has ruined Gotham, the business of show is cruel and misogynistic, and fitting in will only be possible in the outskirts of the city. The parallels are clear.
What follows is a 90-minute blend of admiration and condemnation - a love letter to Prince's Batman soundtrack and Bruce Timm's animated landscapes, but a critique of Todd Phillips' accidental dark-comedy Joker and the physical and psychological abusive tendencies associated with the franchise's most interesting and oft-reimagined character. It's a low-budget live-action film interspersed with images or even whole scenes created from MS Paint, flash animation, and action-figure stop-motion. A transgender coming-of-age coming-out story, it's about how Drew (and Drew's character) must find herself in our real-life Gotham. "I'm not a man and I'm not a woman with an asterisk. I'm not a Joker and I'm not a Harlequin," she says.
But, as David Liebe Hart's Ra's al Ghul explains, identity is ever-changing. "Who you were before is irrelevant to who you are today," he offers in the film's most heartfelt moment.
Although the folks behind the film have had to claim fair use to keep it alive, the parodying of Warner Bros characters and iconography (even the copyright disclaimer gets a laugh) is all done with a just-poking-fun attitude. The film's harshest criticism is pointed at Gotham's versions of our real-life political villains (Donald Trump and Alex Jones to name a few) and the soft-boiled comedy of the mainstream (Jimmy Fallon and the Weekend Update duo - you won't believe what happens to Lorne Michaels.)
The film is distinctly anti-corporate, if the experimental mixed-media approach wasn't clear enough. That, infused with queer and trans re-imaginings of their beloved characters, is what caused Warner to send an "angry letter" to Drew, which resulted in it being pulled from the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival after only one screening. Too oblivious to predict an obvious backfire, the cancellation only created an instant cult following from fans who couldn't wait to see the movie. Anticipation grew and grew over the last 18 months and by the time they managed limited distribution from Altered Innocence, they had already amassed a fandom ready to see the movie and poised to love its punk-rock attitude (a #FreeThePeoplesJoker campaign circulated online.)
It was worth the wait. The queer-coded Schumacher films have inspired a film that doesn't have to be coded. It's a fourth-wall-breaking, non-linear, Adult Swim-inspired, YouTube Poop if it wasn't poop, trans memoir told through the panels of a comic book. It was destined for cult status as it's wholly singular, but Drew's multi-hyphenate talents and unlimited artistic vision make it more than just queer superhero cinema or an "anti-comedy" parody, but a film we all need to see.
The film is now, finally, playing in theaters.