Tag: masculinity

On the politics of Joker

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Over the weekend I saw Joker with a friend. The movie has been controversial to say the least. Despite the connections the commentary has had with my research interests I’ve been hesitant to write anything about it. Now that I’ve seen it for myself, boy do I have some feelings. 

But first off, I feel it is a shame that I and so many others are spending more time engaging with the commentary around this movie instead of engaging with the movie itself. As a piece of art, Joker was incredible. The movie left me feeling shaken and speechless. The cinematography was stunning, Joaquin Phoenix was mesmerising, and the script left me feeling both emotionally wrecked yet driven to discuss it with everyone I know. In short, it is a masterpiece. 

Many critics have written about the artistic merits of the film – I especially recommend Luke Buckmaster’s excellent review. But for me, it is the politics that drive my interest in this movie. 

Much has been written about what Joker is about, and a lot of it has missed the mark. I’m going to start my analysis about what Joker is not. 

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Book Review: See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill

I just finished the excellent book See What You Made Me Do by the journalist Jess Hill. See What You Made Me Do is an in depth investigation into domestic abuse in Australia, written by a journalist who has spent years covering the topic, and who brings a lot of expertise into the field.

The book is comprehensive. There are so many interesting parts, and I found the sections on why women stay in abusive relationships, alongside the section on domestic abuse in indigenous communities (and the failures of the police to deal with this in any way at all) particularly powerful. Today however I want to focus on the three chapters (chapters 3 – 5) which focus on why men commit domestic abuse.

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Why do men join far right groups, and how can we get them out?

Last night I went to an excellent lecture from Professor Michael Kimmel, hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Kimmel researches why men are attracted to far right groups and spoke about how to get them out in this talk. . There were a bunch of people who were interested in the lecture when I was tweeting about it, so I thought it would be worth noting down some of Kimmel’s ideas and some of my own reflections on them.

First! Please note, I’ve included some of the cartoons that Kimmel used in this lecture to illustrate his point (photos I’ve taken of his slides). These cartoons are extremely racist, homophobic and sexist. I am not using them as an endorsement of their message, but rather as a way to highlight the point Kimmel was making. But beware of their content!

Kimmel’s research is based on the acknowledgement that men are more likely to join and be active in far right groups than women (although not exclusively), and therefore to understand these groups we have to have a gendered analysis of them. Understanding gender alone, he argued, would not allow us to understand the extreme right. However, you also cannot understand the extreme right without understanding gender.

Kimmel went through a three stage process in how far right groups talk about and use gender in their materials, recruiting etc. I’m going to go through these stages and then provide some further reflections.

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