Glass
vs. Joker
Last year, I wrote a bit
about the recent M. Night Shyamalan film, Glass (2019). On release, Shyamalan's
film was largely pilloried by American critics who claimed at the time to be
tired of the superhero sub-genre, only to subsequently praise the mega-budgeted
Captain Marvel (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (also 2019) as pinnacles of
blockbuster cinema. As the same critics now busy themselves with the pointless
task of comprising the best and worst films released during the past year, it
makes me sad to think that Shyamalan's personal and eccentric vision will no
doubt end up further denigrated by its inclusion on many of these "worst
of" listings.
Despite its flaws, Glass
remains a bold and original work that stands outside of the conventions of any
other superhero movie released in the last two decades. A film that UK critic Mark
Kermode compared favourably to the cult works of William Peter Blatty -
specifically The Ninth Configuration (1980) - while fellow critic Mark Cousins
compared it favourably to The Testament of Orpheus (1960) by Jean Cocteau.
Corridors of the mind: Like
The Ninth Configuration, the hospital becomes a physical representation of the unconscious
state; the cerebral space where the three characters as manifestations of the
"id", the "ego" and the "super ego", battle for supremacy.
However, this end of year
concern isn't the only reason why I'm thinking about the film again. Followers
of contemporary British politics will know that last month the country voted
almost unanimously for the Conservative government to remain in power for the
next five years.
Led by bumbling Etonian
elite Boris Johnson - a man who compared Muslim women in Niqābs to
"ninjas" and "letter boxes”, called black people
"piccaninnies with watermelon smiles", referred to homosexual men as
"bum-boys" and called working class people "lazy, stupid and
feckless" - the Conservative party is now free to continue its campaign of
austerity, cruelty and division. A campaign that over the last ten years has
seen amenities privatized by massive corporations that refuse to pay tax,
services cut or underfunded to the point of failure, benefits for people with
disabilities and learning difficulties removed completely, and student loans
increased to the point that a good education is now something that only the very
privileged can afford.
Most of our town centres are
dead and dying. Police funding has been massively cut to the point that violent
crime statistics have skyrocketed in the last five years, with hate-crimes increasing
exponentially. The future of our National Health Service is at risk and
continual focus on Brexit has shown to the world that the British are a nation
of bigots and racists that can't get along with any other country unless seeing
themselves as superior to them.
That the majority of voters in
the UK looked at these last ten years of toxic Conservative leadership and
thought: "Yes please, five more years of that!", is truly dispiriting,
and while I attempt to remain respectful of others' political choices, I can't
help feeling ashamed that this is now the general attitude of the country I
grew up in (especially as the result has further widened the political and
personal divide between England and our neighbouring countries, Scotland,
Ireland and Wales).
But how does this relate to
Glass? At the end of Shyamalan's film, three characters marked by grief and
trauma, sit together on a bench in the middle of the busy 30th
Street train station in Philadelphia (significantly: "the city of
brotherly love.") Crossing the divides between age, race and gender, the
three characters hold hands and together commit to an act of defiance. Their
end-goal? To overthrow the insidious forces that attempt to control and
regulate the general populace; to prove to the world that every one of us is
remarkable, that every one of us has the power to be extraordinary; to
demonstrate that if we work together we can bring about positive change.
Glass: Behind the Scenes
Footage [Unknown, 2019]:
I was unable to source an adequate
screenshot of the scene in question, so this behind the scenes footage will
have to suffice.
Glass [M. Night Shyamalan,
2019]:
Physical gestures and
hand-holding are major visual themes in Shyamalan's work. It's often a way for characters
to connect or to show their true intentions. Such moments frequently illustrate
characters at their most vulnerable; letting down their defences or letting
another character in on a secret.
Praying with Anger [M. Night
Shyamalan, 1992]:
The Village [M. Night
Shyamalan, 2004]:
The Happening [M. Night
Shyamalan, 2008]:
Arriving at the end of the
film, this connection between characters remains a moment of pure hope and
positivity; a complete subversion of the usual expectation of the superhero or
comic book movie, where the requirement is for a grand battle in which cities
are destroyed, the heroes vanquish the villains, and a beam of light is fired
into the sky.
The final battle in
Shyamalan's film is less a bang than a whimper, but it's necessary in showing
its audience that heroism is not about who can punch the hardest or who can
take the most punishment, it's about passive acts of courage. Not beating and
abusing mentally ill people whose delusions have made them believe that they
have superpowers, but by honouring those same people and standing up against
governments and organizations that want to deny each of us our own identities
and differences, our strengths and weaknesses, and anything else that mark us
out as unique and extraordinary human beings.
The politics of Glass are
the politics of hope, which is perhaps why the film was received with such
cynicism. Because mainstream critics recognized that they are part of these
organizations that tell people they're worthless; that punish those that
attempt to be different; that destroy those that seek to push the message that
each of us is capable of great change. The critics, who saw Shyamalan's
anti-authoritarian, anti-government commentary, were blinded by it; seeing only
a critique of themselves and their poor profession.
Glass [M. Night Shyamalan,
2019]:
A moment of reflection: Dr.
Ellie Staple, named after the piece of stationary that holds the pages of comic
books together, becomes a critical stand-in. The supposed voice of reason or authority
that tells these characters they're ordinary; that they're unremarkable.
Lady in the Water [M. Night
Shyamalan, 2006]:
A moment of reflection: Dr.
Staple connects back to one of the most controversial characters in Shyamalan's
oeuvre; the entertainment critic Mr. Farber. Farber stands in judgement over
the events of the film, misreading the wonder and magic of the story unfolding through
an attitude of cold cynicism.
Unbreakable [M. Night
Shyamalan, 2000]:
In the film's
reconfiguration of the title character, Mr. Glass, from his appearance in the
earlier Unbreakable (2000) to his function in the film in question, Shyamalan
has turned the character from a proto-terrorist into an almost Jeremy Corbyn or
Bernie Sanders type figure; someone going up against an organization that wants
to keep people in their place so as to profit from them; someone pushing a
message of hope and collaboration.
As Corbyn, Sanders and
others like them have been vanquished and denigrated by cruel populists like
Johnson, or the American president Donald J. Trump, so Glass was vanquished by
the designer nihilism of another comic book movie, the Todd Philips directed
Joker (2019).
Praised by critics for its
novelty of presenting the famous comic book villain as if it were a serious
psychological study on mental illness, Joker aims for profundity, but merely
wallows in its own unpleasantness. Rather than explore mental illness as a
serious condition it merely exploits it, as a window dressing. Its
existentialism is shallow and third hand; the product of someone that has never
read the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Søren
Kierkegaard or Immanuel Kant, but has seen the films of Martin Scorsese,
specifically Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), and has borrowed
from them, liberally.
Joker [Todd Philips, 2019]:
The King of Comedy [Martin
Scorsese, 1982]:
Nothing about Joker is
original or authentic. Its director, Todd Philips, made his name directing
atrocious comedy films like Road Trip (2000), Old School (2003) and The
Hangover trilogy (2009-2013); films that revelled in sexism, racism and
homophobia, that were crass and morally repugnant, that were defined by a poor,
televisual aesthetic. In interviews Philips claims to have turned to drama
because comedy has been ruined by millennial "snowflakes"; the
culture is apparently so "woke" that audiences don't appreciate the
Philips brand of offensive humour. It's no surprise then that Joker has played
into the mindset of people like Jordan B. Peterson and Paul Joseph Watson;
cultural commentators who see the film's defiantly nihilistic, offensive right-wing
aspects as a blow to the supposed suppression of political correctness.
Paul Joseph Watson repeatedly
aligning himself with the Joker as a right-wing "anti-SJW" icon.
Throughout his career,
Shyamalan's innovations have been denied him. With Unbreakable, he wasn't
simply ahead of the curve in creating a modern-day superhero movie, he was
creating a serious, psychological superhero movie that approached the sub-genre
as if it were a gritty procedural. Shyamalan's film received mixed reviews with
many critics calling the film silly, joyless and pretentious. Cut to five years
later, when Christopher Nolan directed Batman Begins (2005), and the same
stylisation and aesthetic was praised as game changing.
We're seeing the same thing
now with Joker being touted as an original work, despite Shyamalan directing
arguably the first gritty supervillain origin story with Split (2016) several
years earlier. Once again, those that control the narrative have the power to
re-write history and Shyamalan's innovations are credited to someone else.
Glass isn't as great as
those earlier Shyamalan films, but it's nonetheless a work that connects to the
mood of the day and feels - in its final moments at least - like a necessary healing,
especially for our countries that have lost sight of what it means to see
others as friends and allies. It's a film that shows its surviving characters
moving towards something hopeful, something positive, towards genuine change. You
can balk at the film's slow pace, its weird tone, its intentionally anti-climactic
final face-off (though no critic would balk at these things if the film were a foreign-language
art-movie or had been directed by some hitherto unknown A24 sponsored Wizkid),
but you can't deny its positive intentions and its message of hope.
