>One of the central points of contention around Phillips’s comic-book villain origin story is that it in some way panders to incel culture, or “involuntary celibates” – men who see themselves as losers and “beta males” who women don’t want to sleep with. Angry, misogynistic and feeling entitled to sex and attention, incels have been prone to real-world violence, as with the Isla Vista murders in 2014, when a killer targeted a sorority – shooting 11 people and killing six before killing himself.
>In Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s unhinged Arthur Fleck is in every sense a loser – and perhaps in all but self-identification, an incel. He is friendless aside from his mother, works as a party clown, and his paralysing tendency to burst into peals of maniacal laughter unnerves everyone he meets. And when, like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (obsessed by Betsy), he becomes romantically intrigued by Sophie (Zazie Beetz), a pretty girl he barely knows, his fantasies go into overdrive.
Why not? Exploring certain themes is what works of fiction are all about.
Carter Miller
That media picked up the word incel is funny enough to make this movie worth it.
John Williams
>muh incel Says more about the people using it than the 'incels' themselves.
Jackson Stewart
because the actor who is playing him has white skin. it's really that simple. if he had brown or black skin none of these people would be saying anything about incels and the alt-right. they are clearly racists
Cooper Price
why does everything have to be about 'incels' now. Is incel the official new boogeyman for the media to point towards?
Lincoln Wright
these people got so mad at the work onions that they had to make their own version of it.
