I'll shut up again after this, but do you think she - Sarah Hagi - likes the movie?
For someone like me, a young woman who doesn’t read comic books but watches movies based on them with zero emotional investment or expectations, it is hard not to think about how a certain audience of men will perceive this version of the Joker.
And if you can be bothered:
TIFF 2019: Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is the antihero the alienated and angry have been waiting for, and that’s precisely the problem
I mention it only as an older man (not sure why that's relevant but one must keep up with the Hagis) who also doesn't read comic books, and does watch movies, but very few based on comic books for the same reason I don't read them. There's a connection there that she missed. If you don't read them why watch them? If the only reason is to write about what a miserable experience you had for the Globe & Mail (
ie for money), I begin to see why you might want to make it a matter of systemic patriarchal oppression. One wants to be invited back for another lucrative article. I can understand that (especially as this appears to be the only article she has written for the G&M), just as I understand why a shark might want to bite me, or a Group A Strep want to dissolve my flesh. One has to live, to pay the rent and buy the groceries. But there is a better path: why not read what you enjoy or find educational, and watch only movies with the same criteria? I don't care about people watching superhero (or, possibly, super-antihero in this case) movies. Good for them. I hope they felt their dollars well spent. Why should you tell us what we should watch, whether we should enjoy it, or, best of all, whether we should hate what we just watched, and
especially if we enjoyed it? Ah, yes, rent and groceries. Always the very worst motives of all, for anything at all, anywhere and at any time. And thus I shall continue to shit upon self-proclaimed young/old women/men who read or watch things other people might enjoy and try to destroy any potential pleasure. Sarah Hagi, your name is
killjoy, and you should have been born a Presbyterian instead of one who has completed the hajj.