Welcome to How Gay Is It? Out's new review series where, using our state-of-the-art Eggplant Rating System, we determine just how queer some of pop culture's buzziest films and tv shows are! (Editor’s note: this review contains mild spoilers for The People's Joker.)
The People’s Joker is a comedic triumph that is truly (as the title suggests) for the people.
From visionary filmmaker Vera Drew comes this new vision of the iconic villain that is the only depiction of the character I've ever seen that I think the real Joker would actually approve of.
The People's Joker tells the autobiographical story of its star, director, and co-writer, Vera Drew, but if it took place in the world of Batman's Gotham City.
It starts with Drew's character as a young child, who wants to be a comedian, growing up in Smallville, Kansas. After seeing Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever, they realize that they want to be a girl, but they are immediately taken to Arkham Asylum where they are prescribed Smylex, a drug that gives users a happy face even when they feel awful.
Soon, the main character has grown up and moves to Gotham to join the United Clown Brigade, or UCB Live. When they can’t afford the fee to join, the main character and Oswald Cobblepot, another struggling comedian, start their own "anti-comedy" troupe in an abandoned warehouse.
That's where we meet Mister J, a trans man comedian who our protagonist becomes immediately enamored with and who helps Drew's character to come out as trans herself. This is when Joker the Harlequin is born.
Drew (who also co-wrote the film with Bri LeRose) is a brilliant lead, perfectly capturing the absurdity of gender and performance that trans people, and clowns, know so well. Much of the movie is autobiographical, to the point that Drew thinks calling it "semi-autobiographical" does it a disservice.
This is especially clear in scenes where a young Joker's mother takes her to a doctor and complains that her child is "always crying" and "hurts her" whenever they say they were born in the wrong body.
"I'm sorry I said that, I promise I won't ever be sad again!" the young child desperately says.
It's also clear in Joker the Harlequin's relationship with Mister J. (In this version, Mister J is Carrie Kelly, a former Robin mantle holder who transitioned to become Jason Todd and now looks like Jared Leto's version of the Joker.) Together, Mister J and Joker the Harlequin form the most toxic T4T couple ever put on screen. And it's diabolically real to anyone who has been in the trans community.
The People's Joker is a true triumph in filmmaking and is unlike any other movie you see this year. It's hilarious, weird, confrontational, and complex, and it will make you think in a way that no superhero movie has before.
The movie's style is just as chaotic as its main character, jumping from green screen to green screen and mixing in various styles of animation throughout, never letting you get used to the visual language, let alone bored with it.
Of course, we can't ignore the piece of history that’s being made by the film. Vera Drew is officially the first out trans actor to play the role of the Joker in a film.
So far, the Joker has been portrayed in live-action films by only a handful of actors, and all of them are legends or quickly becoming legends. Cesar Romero was the first life action Joker, followed by three-time Oscar winner Jack Nicholson. The next Joker, Heath Ledger, won an Oscar for the role, before handing it off to another Oscar-winner, Jared Leto. After him, came Joaquin Phoenix, who again, won an Oscar for playing the Joker. The most recent live-action Joker before Drew was played by Barry Keoghan, another Oscar-nominated actor, in The Batman.
Hopefully, the pattern will continue and some award recognition for Drew will be on the horizon!
So, how gay is it, you ask? Well, The People's Joker is as queer and trans as a movie can get, not only centering a trans story and T4T romance, but queering the very ideas of comedy and superheroes. So for that, we give the film 5 out of 5 eggplants on Out's rating scale!
