Navigating the Labyrinth of Chaos: Metaphor and Myth in Joker’s Dystopian Dream
Loraine Haywood
Publication: Volume 4 Issue 1
Abstract | Navigating the chaos of labyrinthine spaces, the film Joker (Phillips 2019) reverses notions of wholeness in the image of the human subject. The opening scene depicts a dual representation of Arthur and Joker as the film constructs a dystopian dream by merging the labyrinth of the city and the labyrinth of the mind. This duality extends to the smearing of Gotham City’s saviour, Batman, who is the moral opponent of Joker as the villain. This is no longer the story we know. Joker is operating in the labyrinth as both metaphor and myth. At the climax of this journey, Arthur embraces his Joker persona as the film intersects with the standard Batman narrative. By accompanying Arthur, as he embraces his mirror image of Joker, the audience attempts to navigate chaos—a dystopian dream, mediated in the film, mirroring the life world. The film is an intense political statement about the perverse nature of neoliberal Western democracy. The formulas in the capitalist dream of “success” and “happiness,” in this society, are characterised by obscene wealth living alongside abject poverty. The labyrinth of the city space, as the epitome of civilisation, creates monsters which are of its own making. Likewise, we are navigating the labyrinthine chaos of capitalism that results in our displacement and delirium.
Keywords | Dystopia, Capitalism, Joker, Batman, Labyrinth, Chaos, Carnival, Žižek, Freud, Lacan
Loraine Haywood (loraine.haywood@uon.edu.au) is Conjoint Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she also completed her Masters in Theology in 2017. Her research interests include embedded trauma and psychoanalytic geography, outlined by Paul Kingsbury and Steve Pile, and their intersection with the Biblical Master Narratives such as creation, chaos, and apocalypse. Her research focuses on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and their development in social, cultural, and film theory by Todd McGowan and Slavoj Žižek.