“Is Something Funny, Asshole?”: Joker’s Nihilist Violence
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Bülent Diken
Abstract
Joker is a film that explores the forms of nihilism and their intertwinement in contemporary society. Thus, it can be viewed as a piece of theorizing and social diagnosis.We start with looking at the Joker’s violence.Why is it nihilistic and what sort of nihilism is that? But we can also see the Joker’s violence as an act of anti-nihilism, as a way of challenging society’s inherent nihilism. We discuss this in the following section. Is the Joker a revolutionary that criticizes society and opens up for a space for a new politics? In the third section, the article focuses on the film not as a narrative but as form: is it a comedy of pain or an attempt at overcoming nihilism? And, finally, by way of a conclusion, we ask what we should do with the Joker’s obscene laughter. The pivotal intuition in our discussion is that the concept of nihilism is a central and necessary tool for a diagnosis of our political predicament and a way to rethink the possibility of a radical emancipatory act within it today.
Abstract
Joker is a film that explores the forms of nihilism and their intertwinement in contemporary society. Thus, it can be viewed as a piece of theorizing and social diagnosis.We start with looking at the Joker’s violence.Why is it nihilistic and what sort of nihilism is that? But we can also see the Joker’s violence as an act of anti-nihilism, as a way of challenging society’s inherent nihilism. We discuss this in the following section. Is the Joker a revolutionary that criticizes society and opens up for a space for a new politics? In the third section, the article focuses on the film not as a narrative but as form: is it a comedy of pain or an attempt at overcoming nihilism? And, finally, by way of a conclusion, we ask what we should do with the Joker’s obscene laughter. The pivotal intuition in our discussion is that the concept of nihilism is a central and necessary tool for a diagnosis of our political predicament and a way to rethink the possibility of a radical emancipatory act within it today.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- List of Abbreviations VII
- Introduction 1
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Part 1: Philosophy and Politics
- Nihilism and Violence from Plato to Arendt 5
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthetic Stage and the Ideology of Nihilism 25
- “To smear his boots with the other’s fat”: Conscious and Unconscious Violence 45
- Cruelty, Bad Conscience, and the Sovereign Individual in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality 65
- Walter Benjamin’s Media Theory in the Times of Platform Nihilism 89
- ‘Like ants’: The Mafia’s Necropolitics as a Paradigm of Nihilistic Violence 111
- Against the Kinship: State, Terror, Nihilism 139
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Part 2: Literature and Film
- Nihilism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Thought 159
- Violence, Evil and Nihilism: Nietzschean Traces in Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas 189
- Signifying Nothing? Nihilism, Violence, and the Sound/Silence Dynamic in Cinema 203
- Aestheticizing Murder: Hitchcock’s Rope, Nietzsche, and the Alleged Right to Crime of Superior Individuals 231
- Nihilism, Violence, and the Films of Michael Haneke 255
- “Supposing Truth is a Woman?”: Nihilism and Violence in Nietzsche’s The Antichrist and Von Trier’s Antichrist 275
- “Is Something Funny, Asshole?”: Joker’s Nihilist Violence 297
- Notes on the Contributors 315
- Names index 319
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- List of Abbreviations VII
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Philosophy and Politics
- Nihilism and Violence from Plato to Arendt 5
- Kierkegaard’s Aesthetic Stage and the Ideology of Nihilism 25
- “To smear his boots with the other’s fat”: Conscious and Unconscious Violence 45
- Cruelty, Bad Conscience, and the Sovereign Individual in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality 65
- Walter Benjamin’s Media Theory in the Times of Platform Nihilism 89
- ‘Like ants’: The Mafia’s Necropolitics as a Paradigm of Nihilistic Violence 111
- Against the Kinship: State, Terror, Nihilism 139
-
Part 2: Literature and Film
- Nihilism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Thought 159
- Violence, Evil and Nihilism: Nietzschean Traces in Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas 189
- Signifying Nothing? Nihilism, Violence, and the Sound/Silence Dynamic in Cinema 203
- Aestheticizing Murder: Hitchcock’s Rope, Nietzsche, and the Alleged Right to Crime of Superior Individuals 231
- Nihilism, Violence, and the Films of Michael Haneke 255
- “Supposing Truth is a Woman?”: Nihilism and Violence in Nietzsche’s The Antichrist and Von Trier’s Antichrist 275
- “Is Something Funny, Asshole?”: Joker’s Nihilist Violence 297
- Notes on the Contributors 315
- Names index 319
