Three Fun Things for May 5, 2024
A trans coming-of-age story, the books behind a mediocre Netflix series, and a podcast about the MTV Generation.
1. The People’s Joker
The People’s Joker, a trans coming-of-age Batman parody, is a gorgeously messy film that is finally in wide release after a yearslong legal battle with Warner Brothers, which owns the characters. (Fair use, baby.) Filmmaker Vera Drew plays herself as the titular Joker the Harlequin, alongside a troupe of fellow “anti-comedians” operating on the margins of a fascistic Gotham where individual expression is outlawed. In this mirror world, evil Batman is in charge, unhappy children take medication that forces them to smile, and aspiring comics must pay astronomical fees for workshops at the Unified Clown Brigade, overseen by a poorly rendered CGI Lorne Michaels (voiced by Maria Bamford). By surrounding herself with fellow misfits, including an emotionally manipulative boyfriend, Drew learns to transcend her oppressive upbringing and become the beautiful, beneficent Harlequin Joker she was always meant to be.
The People’s Joker is manic, hilarious, and heartwarming; it’s also insanely fun to look at, so much so that I felt myself straining to take in every corner of the screen at Beacon Cinema, where I saw it in April. The aesthetic is joyously low-budget; the film may have been shot on greenscrean, but it looks like it was made for $5,000 by a troupe of theater kids armed only with a 1990s game engine, a box of wigs, and a kindergarten’s annual supply of tempera paint and papier mâché.
I suggest putting on your best clown collar and seeing The People’s Joker in person if you can (it’s playing at the Capitol Theater in Olympia through next Sunday); otherwise, it’s streaming on MAX.
2. The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin Liu
A disappointing Netflix series attempts to address the weakest element of Liu Cixin’s epic Remembrance of Earth’s Past books, best known by the name of the first book, The Three-Body Problem: The characters.
[SLIGHT SPOILERS]: Unfortunately, the backstories the TV series gives its crew of photogenic physics geniuses are shallow and underwritten—a sexy/tough Latina expunges guilt over a destructive use of her nanofibers by going to a dusty village inside a Mexico filter and using the tech to fix their dysentery-riddled water—and the characters themselves have no agency, since the good guys’ actions are, in a departure from the books, all directed by one seemingly omniscient, omnipresent dude.
The books, unlike the show, mostly transcend their two-dimensional characters (including a truly appalling fantasy girlfriend) by throwing one huge idea at you after another, from the titular three-body problem of orbital mechanic to the central question posed by the series: Would it be such a bad thing for humanity to go extinct?
The books are long, but if that’s a make-or-break issue, you can save yourself some pages by skipping over the sections where Liu writes about women, who are either ethereal vessels or creatures of pure emotion who, the second they get power, find a way to fuck it up. That I love this series despite this massive flaw is a testament to the genius of Liu’s ideas and the breadth of his imagination (his inability to imagine a heroic woman notwithstanding).
3. Who Killed the Video Star
Hosted by comedian and former MTV veejay Dave Holmes, this podcast is a breezy jog through the rise and fall of MTV, which “raised” millions of latchkey kids like me. Episode 3, “TV Mattered, Nothing Else Did” was a surprisingly moving journey through my early high school years: Friday, watching 120 Minutes on the living-room TV with the volume turned down; Saturday, Headbanger’s Ball with this guy as my guide. MTV had a long heyday and left the scene (technically, it still exists, but isn’t a cultural force), but it’s fun to remember (or learn) why it was so important and how its influence can still be felt.