Clown for President! reads Todd Phillips' blockbuster movie Joker (2019) as an economic and political allegory of our times.
What could be more surprising than Joker as a solution to our present economic and political predicament? But in twelve riveting chapters, Clown for President! leads us precisely here. Grip this movie's visual language, the book insists, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to everyone, to articulate a new solidarity.
The predicament Clown for President! diagnoses is urgent: how late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality by persistently depoliticizing the demos, only to unleash a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. Clown for President! maps this unravelling to Arthur Fleck's own transformation into the Joker. When the movie begins in 1981, neoliberal tides are shifting the sands: the rise of insecure work; the destabilizing of welfare; the explosion of racialized incarceration. Neoliberal theory vilifies power formed in solidarity with others. It criminalizes poverty. It labels social justice, democratic regulation, and collective redress as both inefficient and evil. Slow-reading this film, what Kennedy and McNaughton call grip-reading, allows Clown for President! to isolate and confront the effects.
But Clown for President! says that movies have still more to teach us. Joker challenges the superhero melodrama of Batman: that we will be saved by canny corporate accounting and trust babies, tech bros and saviors who work beyond the law. Clown for President! reminds us instead how inheritance and trust law fashion capital to offload costs to others and to nature. What's more, Clown for President! shows melodrama itself has become late capitalism's preferred and recurrent genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama even appears perverted and disfigured in conspiracy theory. Melodrama allows demagogues to describe themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.
Whether addressing psychic outcomes in late capital-where mothercare inverts to smotherhood, where broculture slips to incel-or diagnosing the structural fissures within liberalism itself-where prioritizing economic freedoms leads to suppressing democracy-Clown for President! presents a compelling, accessible account of our current moment. And in a final chapter, Kennedy and McNaughton succinctly offer some ways forward.
The myth of the lone superhero has let us down. If we don't want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!
Kennedy and McNaughton read Todd Phillips’ record-breaking Hollywood blockbuster Joker as an economic and political allegory of our times. It is a book full of dazzling insights into the malaise of contemporary capitalism.
What could be more surprising than the cinematic presentation of the Joker as a key to solving our present economic and political predicament? Send In the Clowns! leads us precisely there. Grip this movie’s visual language, its authors insist, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to all, that articulates a new, world-changing solidarity.
The predicament Send In the Clowns! diagnoses is urgent: the way late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality, unleashing a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. These pages map this unraveling onto the narrative of Joker. When the movie begins in 1981, neoliberal tides are shifting the sands: the rise of insecure work; the destabilizing of welfare; the explosion of racialized incarceration. A close reading of the film allows Kennedy and McNaughton to isolate and confront these phenomena.
Send In the Clowns! shows how melodrama has become late capitalism’s preferred genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by caricatured villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama allows demagogues to depict themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.
The myth of the lone superhero has brought us to the brink of disaster. If we don’t want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!
