Given the dramatic way in which my tastes and my morality have changed in the last 20 years, I expected (when I finally got around to watching it) that I’d appreciate the dark artistry of the D.C. movie, Joker, even as I was repelled by its nihilistic framing.  As dark art (so to speak), it wasn’t as good as I’d been led to believe.  In fact, at its closing scene, I wondered whether our culture (at least in the mainstream) has become so soulless that it can’t even make evil compelling.  Now I wonder if all the buzz around the movie wasn’t just more play-acting of a rebellion that our society can’t even muster in earnest, now that the rebels control the heights.

The creators of our culture are so disconnected from depth that they can only mimic the forms that used to, in their own time, trade on the depth of that which they were destroying.  Honestly, I didn’t think darkness could become so insipid.

If I thought the movie was meant as an ironic reflection of that point, I might think it brilliant, with the image of plastic clown masks in emulation of true evil, but I don’t think it was that clever.