Review: The People's Joker (2022)
Underneath all the in-jokes and satire, a sincere story about identity and love
The People’s Joker (2022)
Written and directed by Vera Drew
Co-written by Bri LeRose
Costumed in Joker/Harlequin drag and speaking to the camera in an opening that calls to mind Woody Allen’s opening comedy monologue in “Annie Hall,” Vera Drew begins by presenting herself1 as a comedian — an admittedly terrible one, at least by the standards of the testosterone-soaked realm of standup comedy. She begins to tell a story that is, no doubt, partially her own: how a young child with questions about their gender and identity was discouraged by their parents, received dubious and abusive quasi-medical treatments designed to fix them, and eventually escaped to the big city. There, she pursued a career and life as her own person.
The movie’s over-arching narrative is essentially that of a young person who begins, fails, and eventually succeeds in the comedy world. But it’s also a superhero movie, and every superhero needs an origin story. So her character’s beginnings occur in “Smallville,” and the treatment facility to which she is consigned is a horror movie set and named Arkham Asylum.
Comics fans will already have picked up references to places in the DC universe, the oj ewith Superman, Batman, the Flash, and others. (It competes with the Marvel universe featuring Spiderman, Ms. Marvel, Captain America, etc.) No one who goes to this movie will need any of that explained to them, but one of the remarkable things about this film is that it uses DC’s heavily trademarked characters without licensing them.
“The People’s Joker” is a non-traditional movie and a deeply personal project. Using DC’s characters— without permission or license, by all accounts, and getting away with it by asserting that the film is a satire — comedian and transwoman Drew crowd-funded and, in some cases, crowd-sourced, a feature film. It uses a combination of live-action, many different animation techniques, and effects I don’t even know the name of. (But not, as far as I know, AI, and I can only say that with confidence because the film was completed in 2022, premiering at the Toronto Film Festival.2) (This article on Indiewire explains how much of the non-live-action material was actually crowd-sourced.)
A lot of the comedy, which left some (but only some) of the audience when I saw the film laughing uproariously, depends on in-jokes about being trans, the standup comedy world, and Batman and his frenemies. I say some of the audience laughed, others of us missed a lot. (The film’s Wikipedia article3 explains many of the comics references.) In addition to the bits done for jokes, some comic-referent scenes, like the Arkham sequence, lead the viewer into a deeper understanding of the character and — to use a word that is used very archly in the movie — her situation. Here’s an explanation from an excellent Rolling Stone article4:
In 1989, DC Comics published Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, a narrative exploration of Batman’s psychological problems, as well as those of his foes. Its scribe was an up-and-coming Scot by the name of Grant Morrison. And Morrison — who would later come out as “nonbinary, crossdressing, genderqueer” — wanted to show the Clown Prince of Crime in women’s clothing. ... Warners was so outraged that it had threatened to cancel the comic entirely. Ultimately, Morrison compromised and was allowed to have artist Dave McKean briefly depict Joker in high heels, but that was it.
If you’re not a comics fan, your next question is going to be “Can I enjoy this movie without knowing all the in-jokes?” The answer is yes, because the movie is only a superhero movie on one level and a satire/remix of DC’s intellectual property on another. At bottom — under all those levels — “The People’s Joker” is a classic transwoman story, in which a child raised as a boy begins to question their identity as parents discourage the questions — the character’s mother is played by Lynn Downey in a slightly uneven but ultimately complex and sympathetic portrayal that reminded me of Allison Janney’s performance in “Bad Education” — goes through the malevolent Arkham “therapy” process, finds her way to the big city (“Gotham,” of course), and begins establishing herself as a standup comic.
Like many first features, this debut effort by writer-director Drew attempts to fit too much in. I’ve already mentioned how the film operates on several levels, and I haven’t even described the political satire, or the extended sendup of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, or the sudden shift at the end to a multiverse depiction and a final musical number. Through it all, though, the heart of the movie — as with any comedy act or satire — lies in the sincere attitude with which it was written and made. Underneath everything, all the in-jokes, all the crazy costumes, the movie is perfectly sincere.
I have seen articles that refer to Vera Drew using she/her pronouns, so I’m going with she/her