While people have chosen to lambast Joker: Folie à Deux for all the wrong reasons (mainly because it doesn’t fit in any way with the fanboy expectation of the DC Universe—much the same fate that befell Marvel’s She-Hulk series), no one appears to be looking at all the very clear trolling Todd Phillips is doing. Not just of the so-called fans, but of a certain kind of person…as embodied by Harley “Lee” Quinzel. And while, obviously, Lady Gaga’s iteration of the character could never have been as iconic as Margot Robbie’s, Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver wield her for purposes beyond merely having Halloween costume cachet (which, by the way, this version of Harley does not).
To mirror the phoniness of everyone who claims to be a supporter of Joker (Joaquin Phoenix), it seems inevitable that Lee should turn out to be a total poseur as well. Accordingly, she initially tells Arthur at Arkham, “I grew up in the same neighborhood [as you]. Me and my friends used to take that staircase to school every day.” This said when Arthur steals a moment with her after being placed in the same B Ward music class, despite his assignation to the E Ward (a.k.a. where the dangerous and violent are relegated). Because, for whatever reason, one of the usually bullying security guards, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson, still bearing an Irish name in character, naturally), decides to get him into the class. (Based on certain information given later, who’s to say that Lee wasn’t the one to make that happen?)
Having encountered Lee while walking past that class a few weeks prior, Joker is only too eager to attend—especially since Lee flashed him a flirtatious sign by wielding her index finger and thumb as a gun and pantomiming killing herself with it. Talk about love at first sight. Or so she wanted to manipulate him into believing….
This comes complete with further laying it on thick with her “poor me” backstory so that Joker will feel even more “kindred” with her as she tells him, “My parents didn’t give a fuck about me either. My father beat the shit out of me.” And then died in a car accident. An elaborate sob story, to be sure. Along with her explanation for being at Arkham: “I set fire to my parents’ apartment building.” As a result, “My mother had me committed. She says I’m psychotic.” Per Lee’s version of events, anyway. But even before she expresses contempt for her own matriarch, Arthur, apparently feeling comfortable in her midst, confesses, “Nobody knows, but I also killed my mother.” Lee smiles at him fondly, as though he’s just told her the sweetest thing ever (though, based on some women’s mothers-in-law, the smile isn’t totally out of left field). She then makes him feel even safer about parading his crazy around her by responding, “I should have done that.”
Although Lee’s secret intention is to make Arthur bring out his “true” self—Joker—the effect she ends up having on him is quite the opposite. For he falsely believes that Lee loves the “real” him, not the man who took leave of his senses for a few days, culminating in the murder of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on live television. To Lee’s dismay, that’s not who he is—because, like many of us, he gave in to a single moment that caused him to snap. A blind rage-sadness that made him do something he wouldn’t have ordinarily done. And now everyone, including Lee, wants him to be that guy. The one Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) describes on the news as follows: “His depraved acts of violence are only admired by his followers, not only in our city, but all over the country… And they are still willing to commit acts of violence in his name. Now these people, they believe Arthur Fleck to be some kind of martyr.”
Soon after Dent’s public declaration, Fleck appears on a TV special with interviewer Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan). This arranged by his lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), as a means to funnel a bit more goodwill in Arthur’s direction. Indeed, Maryanne seems to be the only one in Arthur’s life who actually wants him to “just be himself.” Paddy, on the other hand, wants to invoke the beast for the sake of his viewership. Even after Arthur firmly tells him of the person that killed five (er, six) people, “That’s not me anymore. That’s not who I am.”
When Paddy demands what’s changed, Arthur announces that he’s not alone now. Paddy, like most of Gotham, is aware of who he’s referring to, with Lee’s overt displays of affection for Joker making headlines everywhere—especially since she’s out of Arkham and ready to talk to whoever will listen. Of course, she tells Arthur that the reason she’s being “sent home” is because “they’re saying you’re a bad influence on me.” This after the two “escaped” (a.k.a. danced a bit outside the confines of the prison) together when Lee insisted they ditch a screening of The Band Wagon, with Phillips strategically homing in on the scene during which “That’s Entertainment!” is sung.
Perhaps not aware of just how meta that choice would be, it bears noting that The Band Wagon was initially regarded as nothing more than a box office disappointment before going on to garner the eventual respect it deserved (one can only hope the same might happen for Joker: Folie à Deux). The choice is overt in its pointedness, placing especial emphasis on the lyrics, “Anything that happens in life/Can happen in a show/You can make ‘em laugh/You can make ‘em cry/Anything, anything can go/The clown/With his pants falling down/Or the dance/That’s a dream of romance/Or the scene/Where the villain is mean/That’s entertainment!”
Making mention of a “clown” isn’t the only thing that applies to Arthur, with his own dream of romance causing him to be blind to the fact that, as Maryanne warns him, “She’s playing you for a fool.” And even though Arthur tells Paddy, “You’re just like Murray, you just, you want sensationalism. You don’t care about—you just wanna talk about my mistakes, you wanna talk about the things I did in the past, not about who I am now, not how I’m different now,” it’s something he could just as well be saying to Lee. After all, she just wants him to be the bad boy that will assist her in securing her own fame. A viable fear of Arthur’s that leads into one of Joker’s musical fantasies of the two doing a duet as Sonny and Cher (except they’re Joker and Harley).
Soon, Lee starts to get a little too interested in her solo—a rendition of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody”—with the crowd going quiet when Joker stops singing to tell her, “You weren’t even looking at me anymore. You were making it all about yourself. And the song is about loving meeeee!” The two then make nice as Lee agrees, “You’re right, let’s give the people what they want.” Joker assumes this to mean they’ll take it from the top again with their lovey-dovey song and vibes, only for Lee to pull a gun out and shoot him. For that is, in the end, what the people want. Because the Joker they had in mind didn’t live up to the ideal, with Lee, too, feeling exactly the same way after seeing far too much Arthur shine through.
And, in the end, her only motive for checking herself into Arkham was for the purpose of “seeing” Joker, like some sort of private museum display meant solely for her to enjoy and exploit however she wants. In the end, she doesn’t “see” him at all though. Nor does Arthur really see her. Not for what she is. That unveiling is left to Maryanne, who informs her client, “She didn’t grow up in your neighborhood. She lives on the Upper West Side with her parents [this clearly being a nod to the frequent shade thrown at Gaga’s own real-life background]. Her father is not dead, he’s a doctor. She voluntarily committed herself to the hospital and then just checked herself out when she wanted to.”
Arthur is still insistent that the lies Lee told him are true, prompting Maryanne to then ask, “Did she mention she went to grad school for psychiatry?” Needless to say, she’s a mental illness tourist—someone who likes to pick and choose certain facets of the DSM and try them on to see if it might make them more interesting. Not to mention a lover of poverty porn (à la Nicola Peltz-Beckham with Lola). Incidentally, Arthur sings a lyric from “Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)” that cuts to the core of who Lee is even before he finds out the truth, singing to Paddy, “She’s a fool and don’t I know it/But a fool can have her charms,” then shrugging, “Lost my heart, but what of it?/She is cold, I agree.”
And it’s true, her coldness knows no bounds by the end of Folie à Deux, when she emotionally gut-punches him right on the very staircase that made him iconic, breaking the news, “We’re not going away Arthur. All we had was the fantasy, and you gave up… There is no Joker, that’s what you said, isn’t it?” In effect, because he doesn’t want to play along with the fantasy that she and everyone else has of him, she’s got to move on. This by way of singing “That’s Entertainment!” to convey that spectacle is all anyone truly wants—from him and in general.
Arthur begs, “I don’t wanna sing anymore. Shh. Just talk to me.” He tries to cover her mouth while urging, “Just talk, please stop singing.” But she can’t be stopped. “That’s Entertainment!” must be sung in all its glory. Even though Phillips opts to leave out the additionally applicable lyrics, “The world is a stage/The stage is a world/Of entertainment!” and “The dame/Who is known as the flame/Of the king/Of an underworld ring/He’s an ape/Who won’t let her escape.” Funnily enough, that last line speaks to the version of Joker that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn gets wet for. The one that Lee wants to enjoy, too.
Only she’s instead saddled with this flaccid incel type who hardly lives up to previous images of Joker played by the likes of Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and even Jared Leto (panned as Suicide Squad was, Leto still delivered on being the kind of “sexy” Joker Lee wants). A disappointment that effectively ends Lee’s “tour” of how the other half lives.
