Dying to laugh: the (lack of) grace of the existence visited in Joker, by Todd Phillips

Abstract

The understanding of madness as a psychic condition, socially sustained and produced as well, it acquires new references in cinema since the release of the film Joker, directed by Todd Phillips. On screen, Joaquim Phoenix incorporates the iconic character of DC Comics in such a way that sparks the debate about how, through a network of relationships and connections between different social actors, mental disorders are relegated to a place of exclusion and stigma, an operation that maintains dynamics and intensifies vulnerability processes. Using an existential-Sartrean theoretical framework, we seek to show how the character's trajectory, in this production, is marked by social practices that are the effect of rationalities that marginally conceive madness and associate it with dangerousness. As a result, we bring to the scene directions oriented by the anti-asylum struggle and psychiatric reform, with a view to affirming the power of non-normative lives.