The People’s Joker is an intriguing artifact of modern media, with absurd lo-fi stylings that break the mold of modern, mass-produced superhero movies. The story of a trans comedian in Gotham City, Vera Drew’s long-awaited DC Comics parody is rendered with all the flair of a local used car commercial, though it feels like it couldn’t have taken any other form. It is, at times, far more ambitious than outright entertaining, but it also bends the boundaries of ostensibly “good” media (see also: studio-polished media) in self-reflexive ways.
The film is also, quite strangely, a semi-autobiography of its author, filtered through a superhero-saturated zeitgeist as a means of both cultural critique and intriguing self-reflection. Some have called The People’s Joker “outsider art” — the cinema of the self-taught, which inadvertently strays from convention — but the director appears to have a keen sense of formal control. She seems to intentionally echo the DIY aesthetics of The Amazing Bulk, the self-funded, so-bad-it’s-good Incredible Hulk knockoff filled with obvious green screen and stock CGI that went viral in 2012.
These intentionally flimsy aesthetics are unlikely to attract a wide audience, as are the movie’s numerous anti-jokes aimed at intentional awkwardness. But they are ripe for cult-like consumption in an era where cult movies no longer really exist. It’s a work that demands better and smarter output from major studios, before providing its own example of just how easy this would be — and drawing corporate ire in the process. The movie, which Vera Drew co-wrote with Bri LeRose, may not always work, but when it does, it works like a charm.
What is The People’s Joker about?
Reaching deep into the corners of DC Comics lore (with a number of Warner Bros. superhero movie and Martin Scorsese references to boot), The People’s Joker follows our protagonist in flashback, a young trans girl whose deadname is bleeped out through most of the film. At first, this voluntary censorship is both gentle and hilarious, but eventually it leads to an emotional gut punch when the name is spoken out loud. An ethereal framing device clues us in on what’s going on, as Joker the Harlequin — played by the director herself — speaks to us from a magic mirror lodged in neon clouds, as she drops deep-cut Batman Easter eggs and insider references to the New York comedy scene with machine-gun pacing. It’s as welcoming to general audiences in one scene as it is impenetrable and in-joke-ey in the next.
The young Joker’s journey is reminiscent of Clark Kent’s; they’re both Smallville kids who go to the big city to find themselves. Only in Joker’s case, her path to self-affirmation is stand-up comedy at a time when comedy has been made illegal in Gotham. This, too, manifests as yet another paradoxical dichotomy: It takes the form of niche internet references while speaking the language of the mainstream “culture war” with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek.
After being rejected by the highly corporatized, Saturday Night Live-like United Clown Bureau, aka the UCB (the film has a particular bone to pick with improv institution the Upright Citizens Brigade), Joker teams up with a delightfully verbose and surprisingly encouraging Penguin (Nathan Faustyn) to start an outsider troupe of underground “anti-comedians” to strike at the heart of Gotham’s fascist crackdown. It’s here that she meets and becomes romantically involved with the elusive Mr. J (Kane Distler), a Joker-esque figure modelled after Jared Leto’s incarnation of the character in Suicide Squad, and a trans man who flaunts his top surgery scars without apology.
This oddball romance draws from the Joker-Harley Quinn dynamic in numerous comics and shows, wherein Mr. J is both welcoming and controlling. But in this case, he also helps Joker the Harlequin, who presents as male until they meet, find herself and come to a better understanding of her own gender identity. The People’s Joker may take the form of fan-fiction fantasy, but its tale of transgender self-discovery, and the painful imperfections of even the most life-changing romance, is stunningly true to life.
Meanwhile, even its seemingly unrealistic elements, like its poorly composited green screen, serve a distinct purpose. As a trans woman figuring out her place in comedy and in the world at large, Joker the Harlequin never feels like she exists in the same physical space as the movie’s backdrop. It’s a jarring effect that draws attention to the movie’s flimsy artifice. However, by capturing this disconnect, this sense of dissonance, it casts a spotlight on Joker the Harlequin, and in the process, forces us to not only watch the director’s performance, but to truly see her.
The People’s Joker belongs to a bold new wave of trans cinema.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to look at The People’s Joker alongside Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the upcoming I Saw the TV Glow and hail (or at least hope for) the emergence of a new transgender cinema that loops back around on itself. From memes and online challenges to the most visible, mainstream film and television, both Vera Drew and Jane Schoenbrun’s work taps into the specific millennial experience of being shaped by media, but before the act of finding online communities to bond over these experiences was as easy as it is today.
It’s the cinema of the niche internet forum, born from a combination of loneliness and limited access to mirrors, in the form of other people with similar experiences. But as much as The People’s Joker is filled with inside jokes, its true feat is balancing its in-group conversations with a unique perspective on mainstream cinema. It’s also the cinema of self-reflection via self-projection, playing out like some fantastical fever dream about the way an adolescent Vera Drew might have seen herself in the pages of DC Comics, or in its movies and shows.
Her transformation into Joker the Harlequin — whose look is inspired by Joaquin Phoenix in Joker — also works as a fantastic critique of the modern superhero movie. The People’s Joker isn’t a parody in the Friedberg and Seltzer sense (the great minds behind Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans), where familiar iconography is both the target of and vehicle for the lowest-hanging fruit. Rather, the film’s parody strikes at the heart of a culture that uncritically embraces a movie like Joker without recognizing what it’s missing — a queerness that Joker and other superhero movies don’t fully embrace, despite frequent chatter about nominal diversity.
The modern superhero has swung between self-serious (The Dark Knight) and self-effacing (The Avengers), but rarely has it been self-critical enough to embrace the campiness of its source material. I wrote in my review of Joker in 2019 that there was something especially kitsch about Phoenix’s performance as he completed his transformation — an effeminacy that seemed to embody society’s fears and rejection of queerness. But the film itself never follows through on this. Vera Drew picks up this baton and charges headfirst into a pane of stained glass dedicated to the sanctity of modern superheroes. She is, in effect, making the 2019 Joker movie feel complete; her film is as much a parody as it is a complementary puzzle piece.
However, the movie was nearly prevented from seeing the light of day.
The delayed arrival of The People’s Joker.
After its premiere at TIFF in September 2022, subsequent screenings of The People’s Joker were pulled from the festival, and from subsequent festivals like Fantastic Fest. The details are muddy, but appear to involve an initial letter from DC Comics owners Warner Bros. Discovery — not technically a cease-and-desist, but something strongly worded — which may have had an inadvertent Streisand effect, propelling the film to heroic underdog status.
Soon, even to those who hadn’t yet seen it, The People’s Joker wasn’t just a parody film but a symbol of mistreatment by powerful conglomerates, despite the movie appearing to fall under fair use according to copyright law. Even without the spotlight shone on the movie thanks to this controversy, it would still have functioned as a critique of corporate IP. Instead, it was transformed into a meta-text in the process. The film is both about, and fully embodies, the notion of artistic freedom.
Perhaps it’s more “important” than consistently good — it fails to be funny or engaging for stretches — but its importance can’t be understated. Its fictional story is of a closeted trans woman searching for an outlet through artistic expression despite fascist crackdowns and the corporatization of art, just as its journey to the screen is one of a trans filmmaker attempting to express her own story in the face of corporate suppression. As reflected by the malaise at the box office, “superhero fatigue” has inevitably set in for audiences. Yet this meta text reinvigorates the genre, as The People’s Joker not only tells a subversive story of fighting the powers that be, but fully embodies that message with its passion for the IP and its utter irreverence for its supposed sanctity. (Deadpool’s R-rated snark feels tame next to Joker the Harlequin’s.)
Ironically, Warner Bros.’ wariness over Vera Drew’s movie has made The People’s Joker all the more powerful. However, this superhero parody is also zany, silly, kitschy, and above all thoughtful enough that it would’ve likely struck a chord regardless.
The People’s Joker is now in theaters.
