The Siberian Dignity of Valentin Rasputin’s Money for Maria

Introduction: In Search of the Real Russia

Money for Maria is a novella by the late Soviet writer Valentin Rasputin. I came across him and his work quite by chance, as I generally prefer reading older writers. But come to him I did, because I’ve always been interested, as most foreigners who end up in Russia are, in “the Real Russia”. And Rasputin is one of its prophets.

A stamp showing Valentin Rasputin and a quote by him.
Valentin Rasputin on a stamp. The quote reads “Literature has but one goal – to help us as we read by breathing into us warmth and kindness”. Money for Maria celebrates the small acts of charity that we are all capable of.

After a time shuttling between Moscow and Petersburg one realises, especially if you look out of the train or bus window, that there is an awful lot of Russia out there that you hardly see in either of the capitals. It’s all well and good to read Crime and Punishment or The Master and Margarita – both of which take cities as their settings. But Russian literature has always stretched far beyond urban limits, as anyone who loves Chekhov, or the Gogol of Dead Souls, knows. To truly get to know the country these books were born in, one must pack one’s bags and head out into the great wilds of the small provincial towns, endless forests, and towering mountains. This world is Rasputin’s element.

Introduction: Rasputin and Siberian Fiction

Valentin Rasputin was born in Irkutsk Oblast, the area of Russia lying immediately west of Lake Baikal, and he spent most of his life in Siberia – that unknowable mass of Russia that lies beyond the Ural Mountains, home to Dostoevsky, the Decembrists, and many others during their internal exile by the Tsars. Me, I’ve never been, but it’s always been something of a dream of mine, alongside the Russian Far North. Reading Rasputin, for the moment, is as close as I can get to that mythical land. It is a Russia that can no longer claim to being European, but simultaneously is unwilling to designate itself as truly Asian. I remember a quote by Vladimir Putin that goes something like this: Russia is neither in Europe or Asia, but Europe and Asia lie to the left and the right of Russia respectively.

Siberia is a different world, and it stands to reason that it brings something of a different literature with it too. One with a new (or, as it happens, old) set of values, symbols, and virtues. Rasputin is very much an inheritor of the intellectual tradition laid out by Dostoevsky and the later Tolstoy, both of whom idolised the peasant life and soul. Money for Maria, written in 1967, is a novella that both looks to the communal past while showing the ways in which the Soviet Union challenged it. But, well, is it worth reading?

Money for Maria – The Story

Money for Maria tells the story of a few days in a small Siberian village and a crisis that erupts there when a man from the government arrives in town. Kuzma’s wife Maria runs that local shop – an essential part of day-to-day life when other villages and the city are miles and miles away. But one day there arrives this government inspector to look through the stores, and he discovers that through Maria’s poor accounting skills – she’s not been working in the job for long – a great number of things are unaccounted for. As a result, she has to pay up to the tune of one thousand roubles – a huge amount of money. The inspector explains that if she can find the money within five days, she’ll be let off. But if she can’t, then the prison awaits.

A photo of the Russian wilderness at the edge of a lake
It’s difficult to have an idea of the vastness of Russia unless you’ve been there, or to another country like it – America, Canada, Australia. The beauty of its emptiness can at one moment inspire the greatest joy, and at the next nothing but fear. Rasputin leaves the nature in the backdrop in Money for Maria, but it’s hard to forget it anyway. Photo by Octagon [CC BY 3.0]

While Maria’s reacts to the terrible news by falling into depression and lethargy, Kuzma sets out to collect the money. The story is split into two strands. The present strand concerns one last-ditch attempt by Kuzma to borrow the remaining money from his brother, who lives in the city. As he goes on the overnight train he remembers the events of the previous days, where he tried to collect as much as he could from the local townsfolk. These memories are woven into the fabric of the first narrative. Through them and through Kuzma’s journey on the train, we encounter a broad variety of Soviet citizens. They range from the snide Soviet upper class to honourable old men, petulant children, and hard-working farmers.

A Kafkaesque Arrangement –Structures and Symbols

I don’t know whether Rasputin was familiar with the works of Kafka when he wrote Money for Maria. But when Kafka’s works were, eventually, smuggled into the Soviet Union, the Soviets originally believed he was someone living within their borders – they couldn’t believe that a Jew from Prague could have created his world for himself when it seemed so eerily like a twisted version of their own. Money for Maria is not overtly absurd, in the way that the short pieces of Daniil Kharms are. But in its structure, its underlying attitude towards bureaucracy, even in its setting and subtle symbolism, I get a sense of the absurd and of Kafka, nonetheless.

To begin with, there is the question of the money. One thousand roubles was, in those days, a lot of money. It appears to be more than most people make in an entire year. When Kuzma goes around begging for donations most people are only able to give him a few roubles. When the head of the local council offers to give him the month’s pay of the councillors there’s still not nearly enough to repay the debt. Though we know that occasionally Maria might have made a mistake, the scale described by the inspector is unbelievable. When Kuzma gathers together all the money he’s managed to collect on the night before he heads out in the train, he thinks that he must have more than anyone else in the whole town. The money quickly becomes a symbol for the absurd punishments meted out by an unknown and unstoppable state.

The train also reminds me of Kafka’s style. The idea that Kuzma is going, going, but never seeming to actually arrive anywhere because each mile is accompanied by lengthy detours into the past. It creates the same uncertainty as Kafka’s stories have, where one hopes against hope that the protagonists might – just this once – succeed in entering the castle, or proving their innocence, or whatever. At the very end the train does arrive, but that doesn’t change the overall effect. The story ends just as Kuzma knocks on his brother’s door – we don’t know whether he will be met with success or be turned away. The abrupt ending thus prolongs the uncertainty of the whole work, and refuses to grant the reader the respite from the feelings of persecution that a more positive ending would offer.

The symbolism of Money for Maria is also Kafkaesque, though this time closer to The Castle than The Trial. Kuzma spends the story waiting for snow to arrive, but it never does – not until the last moment. Until then, the liminal windy space between autumn and winter reflects the general feelings of uncertainty and fragility of peace:

“He thought that such was the time of year: neither fully autumn nor fully winter, but an autumn that at any moment could shatter, then winter would arrive.”

The wind becomes the main weather symbol, like the snow in The Castle. Here the wind comes to represent the fatalism of the characters – their feelings of powerlessness. Early on, Kuzma looks at the street and wonders whether people are going by their own strength, or whether the wind is just blowing them around instead.

Christian symbols are occasionally visible too, but under State Atheism it’s hard to know what to think of them. Like Kuzma, we are left trying to find hope in a world whose magic has been ripped out of it by state machinery. It’s up to the reader to decide whether its symbols should reassure or disappoint us.

The Politics of Money for Maria

We don’t know how that much money was lost. We don’t know whether the inspector is right. But we know that he can’t be questioned, and, like Josef K in The Trial, Kuzma tries to rid himself of the feeling of persecution rather than questioning the truthfulness behind the accusations themselves. The atmosphere of persecution and disbelief is also pretty reminiscent of Kafka. Here are two examples:

“And he did not move for a long time – it seemed that he was waiting for a miracle, when someone would arrive and tell him that the whole thing was just a joke and that the whole story about the shortfall was nothing for either him, or Maria, to worry themselves about.”

“Kuzma rested, but it was the temporary respite of one being tried before the moment of judgement, and he knew it.”

This atmosphere cannot exist independently of political questions. Kafka’s works are universal in that there’s little to mark them as originating in Prague as opposed to anywhere else. Money for Maria, meanwhile, is a clearly Soviet work. There is the history – the references to the Second World War; there also is the particularly Soviet vocabulary of Kolkhozes and other bits and pieces. This is not essential, by any means, to the work. But it means that reading it you are aware that it’s set within a particular place at a particular time, and that its problems are the problems of that time. Rasputin was a member of the Village Prose movement, a group of writers who wrote about life in the Soviet villages in the later part of the twentieth century. They were critical of the state, but ultimately nationalistic in outlook – and thus useful enough to remain publishable.

Another photo of the Russian wilderness
Just another photo of some empty space. I’d love to go to Siberia one day. Have you been? Why not leave a comment to tell me about your experience if you have? Photo by jxandreani [CC BY 2.0]

Rasputin’s criticism of the state in Money for Maria is not overt, and in its essence, it boils down to the traditional complaint of countryfolk the world over – leave us alone to get on with our lives. Stalin’s rule is implicitly criticised after one member of the town is described as having been given a fifteen-year sentence for a minor crime. But as for the modern state, there is only the silence to suggest the “crime” committed by Maria isn’t entirely real. And once, only within the context of this historical crime under Stalin, there is the suggestion that the mistake may lie higher up, on some rung within the endless mechanisms of bureaucracy, but that because nobody is willing to take responsibility and accept the blame for themselves, the person who is punished ends up being the villager, who cannot defend themselves. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.

Dignity and Heroism in Money for Maria

With all that said, Money for Maria diverges from Kafka in a vital way. It places the supreme value upon the village community. While Kafka’s works showcase the endless isolation of modern life, Rasputin finds salvation within retreating to the old, close, ways of living. What this means is an emphasis on the kindness and generosity of those who have almost nothing to give. The same people who inspired Russia’s utopian socialists in the 1860s and 1870s, and Tolstoy later on, also inspire Rasputin. The kindness of the chairman of the local council in offering his and his workers’ pay is matched by the generosity of old men and women who give all they can to Kuzma as he wanders about. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who don’t want to part with their money – but Rasputin shows that in the village old ideas of charity still predominate.

This same attitude is reflected in the depiction of village people generally, even those who don’t know of Kuzma’s struggle. On the train he meets an old couple and a young man, and after a time the four of them start talking about love. It is a scene that would feel right at home in Chekhov, and Rasputin’s attitude towards the characters is equally Chekhovian. The young man’s wife has just left him, and he boasts about his serial infidelity. Life, he says, is boring with only one person. But in opposition to him the old woman says that she’s been with her husband without either of them being unfaithful even once, and that it’s never been boring. The old man doesn’t speak, and we might suspect – as does the young man – that the woman doesn’t know the whole story. But her love shines so brightly that we don’t worry.

In much the same way, Kuzma hasn’t always been faithful to Maria. But, as he goes around, collecting money, and travelling on the train, he realises just how much he loves her. Loyalty doesn’t always mean love, and the opposite can be true too.

There is also a small amount of humour in Money for Maria which further adds to this view of the world. The moment I remember best is when, having collected the council’s wages, Kuzma waits the next morning for the money to be gradually begged away by frustrated family members. First the wife of one of the worker’s comes, and Kuzma dutifully parts with some of the money. We sit with him in awful apprehension as we wait for the next guest. At last we hear footsteps outside, and a girl appears, one of the worker’s daughters. We suspect the worst. But then she tells Kuzma that she just wants his eldest son to stop teasing her at school. It’s a moment that defuses the tension and makes aware of the respect Rasputin has for the lives and struggles of even the most simple of villagers.

Conclusion

I started writing this piece unsure of whether I had actually enjoyed Money for Maria. As much as I had found the story interesting and new, it seemed to lack the passion and belief of the great Russian works of the nineteenth century. Now that I’m finished, I realise I’ve changed my mind a little. The story does lack great essays on the fate of humankind, and characters who I can see living inside me as long as I live. But it carries on the quiet faith in the common man and woman and their small deeds that Chekhov is justly famous for, while adding a distinctly Soviet, Kafkaesque twist to his work. Money for Maria is beautiful and warming more than it is deep. But it doesn’t need to be deep. It’s still well worth reading, and a lot cheaper than a ticket to Siberia.

Rasputin’s most famous work is a short novel, Farewell to Matyora. I’m hoping to read that too, once I have time and energy, but for the moment I’m putting Rasputin aside. If you want to read more about works set in Siberia, have a look at my thoughts on Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales; for another Soviet writer who shares Rasputin’s preoccupation with human dignity in the face of terrible circumstances, look at Andrei Platonov.

Have you read Rasputin yourself? What did you think of him? Leave a comment!

Nature and Politics in Joseph von Eichendorff’s Life of a Good-for-nothing

This is not a book for our times. Joseph von Eichendorff’s From the Life of a Good-for-nothing / Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts is a novella that is positively soaked in the Romanticism of its day. But while that might make for exciting poetry elsewhere, it doesn’t make the story nearly as interesting as one might hope. While other writers of German Romanticism, such as Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann used their Romantic milieu to create gripping and horrific tales that made use of magic and monsters, Eichendorff’s decision to – on the contrary – use Romanticism’s tropes to tell an ultimately happy and positive story means that the whole thing just becomes drearily cheery and predictable.

An etching of Eichendorff
Joseph von Eichendorff. He wrote, as did many of the German Romantics, a combination of both poetry and prose. From the Life of a Good-for-nothing contains a great many poems interspersed among its pages.

That’s not to say that From the Life of a Good-for-nothing isn’t without its positive aspects. But for me at least they weren’t enough to make me finish reading with a sense that I’d really enjoyed the work.

Plot

The plot of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is not complex. Our narrator, an Austrian, is kicked out of his father’s house and decides to find his own happiness in the wide world, taking with him his violin. He finds work in a castle, first as a gardener and then as a collector of customs duties, and there he falls in love with one of the women who live within its walls. Events force him out of the castle and onto the road again, and he decides to visit Italy. On the way he meets various other people, from painters to chambermaids, with whom he sings and dances. He also spends a lot of time wandering through nature, in true Romantic style, falling asleep in bushes and dreaming of being a bird. Once in Rome he meets his beloved again, and chases her back to Austria, where they marry.

Music, Nature, and Poetry in From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

I read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing in the original German. Normally, I try to avoid the originals of these novellas like the plague, but I enjoyed Eichendorff’s work more than I expected to. His writing is rather clear. More importantly, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing contains a lot of poetry, which is never fun to read in translation (including below). I’m not going to pretend that the poetry was fantastic, because unfortunately it is infected by the same sickly cheeriness as the rest of the book, but there were a lot of nice ditties, like this one, from the beginning:

If God decides on joy for man,
He sends him into the wide world
And there He shows him all His wonders,
In crag and river, wood and field.

Those lives which lie enclosed at home
Are not refreshed by morning dew;
They only know of children's cradles,
Of worries, burdens, toil and sweat.

Among the hills the river springs,
The larks are whizzing high from joy,
Why shouldn't I be singing with them,
With all my throat and all my chest?

I let the dear lord God be praised:
His rivers, larks, and woods and fields,
And earth and heaven are so great,
And He gives blessings to me too.

The poem really contains within itself the essence of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Here nature is seen as the greatest thing that humankind possesses. And real happiness is to live within that nature. Singing and playing music always seem the happiest moments of the narrative, especially because as the novella progresses the narrator finds himself ever more often in the company of people who are willing to join in with him in the playing. Music is a universal language, in contrast to the various other languages encountered by the narrator – French, Latin, and Italian – which he doesn’t speak. He is left isolated and sad when he is unable to speak with and understand people, but using the power of music he is able to overcome language barriers. There is one moment near the end where he joins in a Latin song because the music is accessible to him.

A painting showing a castle which is falling apart and overgrown
Heidelburg Castle by Carl Blechen. Castles were beloved by the Romantics for their history and imaginative potential. The narrator of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing spends lots of time in castles as he travels.

Nature’s great. The narrator spends lots of time wandering around hills and forests and falling asleep in trees. He also regularly expresses a wish to be a bird. This is Romanticism, but it’s not always particularly interesting. It may be that I didn’t understand all of the fine details of the descriptions of forests, but I feel like I understood enough to follow the general idea. The problem with all of this is that the book is hopelessly cliched to modern readers, and far too happy. Don’t get me wrong, I try to be positive in my own life, but the whole worldview of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is so terribly optimistic it makes me squirm. All you need is the power of music and your own two feet and you can travel the world, make money, and marry the girl of your dreams. It sounds silly.

The Context and Politics of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing was finished by Eichendorff in 1823, and any deeper look at the novella will struggle to avoid the political dimensions that lurk beneath the surface of the work. But first, the context. The German lands, Britain, Austria, and Russia in 1815 had ultimately emerged victorious in the conflict with Napoleon. However, the ideas of the French Revolution were not to be stopped as easily as its political and military leaders were. To combat these ideas, of progress and of freedom, the Austrian foreign minister and later also Chancellor, Klemens Metternich, organised a system of alliances with Russia and Prussia to isolate France and liberalism and also keep such ideas repressed within their own borders by means of increased censorship.

From the Life of a Good-for-nothing, for all its apparent innocence, is not free from the influence of its times, and is ultimately a rather conservative book – just as Romanticism more broadly in some ways was. The novella begins in a world of hard work – a world where even the snow drips “industriously” (emsig), under the shadow of the narrator’s father’s mill. Although the mill is not a modern invention, its inclusion nonetheless reflects the Romantics’ concerns about the destruction of nature for economic reasons. The narrator, instead of continuing to try to conquer nature, goes out and wanders. He finds his joy singing among the trees – a harmony, where the mill otherwise indicated disharmony. His job as a gardener is also implicitly contrasted with that of the millworker. As a gardener he is responsible for ensuring nature’s growth and development, rather than its control and destruction.

The narrator’s reward for his rejection of the stodgy, sedentary life, is the girl of his dreams and a house and wonderful wedding trip. He manages to “earn” more by not trying to “earn” anything within the growing industrial framework of value, and he does all this while being happier than the average worker. Further evidence for the rejection of modernity comes in the portrayal of Rome, where the narrator dreams of nature and doesn’t enjoy the company of the people he meets.

The ending of the novella is not only conservative for its attitude towards hard work. It’s also important to pay attention to class here. The poet’s beloved, who for the majority of From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is referred to as the “Countess”, turns out not to be a noblewoman at all. At the very last moment of the story she declares herself a foundling – thus making her marriage to the narrator suitable from a social perspective. The conservatism of the novella lies, therefore, not simply in a Romantic rejection of early industrialisation and urbanisation, but also in a subtle refusal to allow anything that would go against the existing class structures and propriety. Go into nature if you so wish, but know your place. In light of Marx and the development of radical politics later on in the 19th century this message is dangerously naïve.

Conclusion

Look, don’t get me wrong, From the Life of a Good-for-nothing is a fun and innocent book. It comes from a simpler, kinder time than our own. To come at it with a modern and critical sensibility is to destine yourself for disappointment and frustration. Its escapism is too unreal and impractical to offer any solutions for our own cynical lives, and its ultimate message of idleness being the source of wealth is not particularly inspiring either. If idleness had engendered a mental wealth, but not a physical one, then the book’s message would be both more relevant to our own days, where many are attempting to extract themselves from the rat race. To say we can make money by doing nothing, unless we’re rentiers already, is a stupid lie, and one that distracts from the value of the escapism the book otherwise proposes. At least the poetry’s good.

For more German poetry, have a look at my thoughts on a few pieces of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s work here. For more interesting examples of German novellas, see Storm’s Aquis Submersus and Meyer’s Marriage of the Monk.

Have you read From the Life of a Good-for-nothing? Am I wrong to dislike it? Have I completely misunderstood the whole thing? Why not leave a comment!

Ambiguity, Class Conflict and Mental Health in Joker

I watched Todd Phillips’ Joker yesterday and it may well have been the best film I’ve ever seen – but then, I’m not exactly a film person. When I watch films, I generally balance out my serious reading by choosing light-hearted movies. Joker shows an alternative path forward for the ever-popular comic book movie genre – one that says that films about costumed heroes and villains can be every bit as introspective and challenging as other “serious” films. Indeed, given the violence, destruction, and brutal origins and lives of many comic book heroes and villains, perhaps the films should be.

 Joker is also a highly political film, as much of the more negative media coverage of it has indicated, but the suggestion that Joker supports the cause of “incels” is to my mind very much a misplaced one. Instead, using ambiguity as its guiding principle, Joker carefully explores the connections between class, violence, and mental illness. In this way, I’d like to use it as a companion piece to explore a few of the ideas I mentioned in connection with Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, which I looked at here.

A film still showing Arthur putting his makeup on while crying
Joker asks us to consider how whether our own seemingly benign actions, whether at the ballot box or on the street, may have real and painful consequences for people like Arthur Fleck, the Joker.

Medication and Meetings – Austerity in Joker

At school I ended up doing some community service. I’m pretty sure it was there only because it’s one of the things private schools in the UK need to do retain charitable status. Either way, there were various activities on offer, ranging from picking up litter to looking after our (private!) library… I, however, somehow ended up doing one of the few serious activities – I chose to help a local theatre company teach people with Down’s and autism how to act. It lasted about half a year and was a life-changing experience. Never before had I spoken to anyone with Down’s. I remember the unease I felt on first entering the school buildings they used for the training. I’d thought these people were monsters. And when I first went to the bathroom and heard one of them noisily coming in a felt a real fear come over me.

Luckily, all that passed. With time I got to know each of the people there. Not well, but enough to realise that my preconceptions of them had been completely out of touch. They were, even though they often needed help, people like the rest of us, with their own passions, loves, and sadnesses. But I mention all this for another reason. One session one of our acting tasks was to pretend we were in a political rally. Obviously, the whole idea was strange for a bunch of boys who saw nothing amiss in the current system. But the others were excited. Each and every one of them chose the same topic for their protest – cuts to their benefits, challenges in getting medication and access to counselling when they needed it. It was a humbling moment to realise that these peoples’ entire lives were actually affected by our votes and politicians.

I couldn’t, after that, consider blindly the consequences of austerity and cuts the same way. Joker likewise features relatively prominently those political-economic decisions that can cause real consequences for our mental health. The first scene in the film features Arthur Fleck, the future Joker, having a meeting with a mental health worker. Although she doesn’t much care for him, she at least tries to help by encouraging him to open up and organising his medication. But when they meet again, later on in the film, she announces that her department’s budget has been cut. She can’t help him anymore, and he loses access to his medication. The film doesn’t suggest that she is doing a good job – in fact, Arthur gets angry at her for ignoring what he says and just repeating the same questions – but it’s undeniable that he suffers when her support is removed. Politics has human victims.

Violence in Joker – Purpose and Effect

The high point of the film’s early stages and the first decisive moment in Arthur’s transformation into Joker is his killing of three young men on the subway. They are well dressed but drunk, and turn out to be employees of Wayne Enterprises. After verbally abusing a young woman they turn on Arthur and begin – randomly – beating him. However, using a gun given to him for his protection, he shoots two of them and finishes the third off as he tries to escape. The murders – as determined by the media, and by Thomas Wayne himself – are politically motivated. Such “clowns” are simply envious of the rich for being more successful than they are. Wayne’s remarks lead to a general increase in civil unrest. What was not a murder to begin with – it was self-defence – is morphed into a symbol of class conflict by Wayne’s ignorance.

Violence as a Reflection of Moral Decay

Joker is a violent movie, but its violence is brutal and infrequent rather than sustained, as in a superhero movie. It’s important, considering the criticism of the film, to note that all of the violence serves a thematic purpose. There are a few scenes I’d like to mention and explain why the violence is, in its way, necessary. The first scene, which features in the trailers of Joker, involves the theft of Arthur’s sign by a few children. After chasing them through town they eventually hit him over the head with the sign and begin kicking him while he’s on the ground. The violence is unmotivated and pointless – its purpose in the film is to show the state of moral decay into which Gotham has fallen at the film’s beginning.

In the film, Thomas Wayne enters the mayoral race with the aim of bringing prosperity back to the city. He comes at it from a standard right-wing perspective, arguing that what will work for his business is bound to bring happiness and economic rejuvenation back to the people too. I’m not an economist by any stretch, but I’m willing to say that his view is dangerously simplistic – (just as opposing views from the left can be). Wayne himself is a big fellow, the very model of a serious capitalist. He encounters Arthur once in the film, in a bathroom at a theatre, where Arthur claims he is Wayne’s son and begs for kindness – more on that later. Wayne’s reaction, however, is to punch Arthur to the ground. As soon as he realises that Arthur won’t accept his answer, he resorts to violence. A simple solution, but not the moral one.

Does Violence Have to Beget Violence?

When violence is undertaken by the representative of the status quo in Joker instead of a search for a peaceful solution it becomes clear what kind of moral decline Arthur’s world is undergoing. One of the most poignant moments, if I’m remembering right, is when Arthur declares to the talk-show host Murray Franklin that if people only showed a little human decency then he himself wouldn’t have turned out the way he was. But instead, violence often begets violence, as Arthur discovers when he learns from a trip to Arkham Asylum that as a child he was physically abused. In fact, his recurrent uncontrollable laugh turns out to be due to head trauma undergone during that time.

A still showing Arthur laughing
Arthur’s uncontrollable laugh is the result of childhood trauma. But it is the cruelty of those around him who humiliate and denigrate him that leads to his own violence, and not the initial trauma at all.

But it’s interesting the way that the abusive childhood trope is used in Joker. Instead of simply becoming bad because of his brutal childhood, Arthur is left damaged – with his laugh – but able to live normally and kindly. It is only the endless mocking of his laughter by other people that leads him to violence, rather than the original abuse. The responsibility for his murderous madness becomes (partly) that of those who mocked him instead of showing warmth. He could easily have turned out differently if they had. When Arthur murders one of his old colleagues, Randall, but spares another – Gary – for treating him kindly, it isn’t madness on his part so much as the only possible action given a world in which violence becomes acceptable for solving problems. It’s difficult not to look at Joker’s violence and find that Arthur’s actions are the necessary results of his surrounding world.

Capitalist Realities – Who Decides What’s Real?

I found Joker at times difficult to watch, and not just for the violence. To me it ended up echoing a world that I was all too familiar with myself, growing up in highly privileged circumstances in the UK. The challenge of Joker is that it forces us to become aware of the multiple “realities” that exist in the highly unequal societies engendered by capitalism, and the way that they are easily manipulated. The manipulation of reality by the rich that is most interesting when comparing Joker with Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. I’ve already mentioned how Thomas Wayne, using his influence and the media, creates a reality in which the deaths of the three businessmen is as a sign of class resentment instead of self-defence or simply a mystery. This idea of jealousy comes up again and again from his mouth and that of other wealthy characters like Murray Franklin.

But what the film is equally clear about is that this idea is a lie. There is resentment against the inequality, but it is in no way from jealousy. What the film instead shows is the way that, carelessly, the rich can hurt the poor without realising it. From cuts to mental health services to Murray’s television show, where he plays a clip of Arthur’s bad stand-up to laugh at him, there is a sense that the although the rich think they understand the poor, by their actions they repeatedly deprive them of their dignity. When Arthur tells Murray that his show humiliated him for entertainment Murray’s response is that “you don’t know me”. But the evidence of Joker is enough to condemn him, just as it condemns Wayne. It reveals a disjunct between their self-perceptions and their actions that they refuse to acknowledge.

A still showing Murray meeting Arthur
“You don’t know me” – Joker showcases the disjunction between Murray’s view of his actions and the real, harmful, results they have on people like Arthur.

Of course, this idea of the accidental cruelty of the wealthy towards the poor out of ignorance is a simplification made inevitable by the length of the film. In the real world we are a little more lucky with our rich people, if only a little. But the point remains a valid one. Without trying to understand people through talking with them – and in doing so, respecting their dignity as individuals – we can’t avoid ignorance of our actions’ consequences, however well-intentioned we are.

Parentage

Arthur lives with his mother, Penny Fleck. There’s no sign of a father, and for most of Joker the comedian, Murray, is his surrogate father figure. His true parentage is only revealed later on, probably. Arthur opens one of the many letters that his mother writes to Wayne – she had once been employed by him, and trusts to his goodness to help an old employee out – and learns that Wayne is in fact his father. Arthur then heads to Wayne Mansion, outside of the city, where he encounters the young Bruce and a his guardian in the grounds. The guardian has a loud and violent argument with Arthur, who says he wants to see Wayne because he knows the truth.

But the guardian says that Arthur’s wrong, that there was no relationship, and that his mother was instead crazy. This is the officially accepted story, and, seeking the truth, Arthur goes to Arkham Asylum, where he steals his mother’s medical records. He learns that he was adopted and that his mother has Narcissism and various other disorders. Now there are two conflicting truths – the one that his mother possesses, and the one that the rich have determined. At this point it’s impossible to know who is right. But later on, we find a photo of Penny as a younger girl and see that it’s signed by Wayne. To my mind, this is proof that her story is the right one. Wayne used his power to have Arthur made an adopted foundling and have his mother discredited, all to protect himself. Through connections and power, Wayne’s reality comes to dominate.

Arthur’s hallucinations

An interesting point of comparison is between Arthur’s own hallucinations and the reality-shifting antics of the rich. For much of the film Arthur believes that he is dating a single mother who lives down the hallway, but as the film reaches its conclusion, we learn that he had hallucinated the whole thing. The moment of realisation is terrible. He enters her flat in complete despair and hoping for support but instead she asks the stranger to leave her house. All of this points to a sad truth – all of us are capable of creating our own realities, but only those who are given power are able to expand their realities beyond themselves. Wayne can erase his illegitimate son’s existence and make it something everyone accepts, but Arthur cannot count on even one other human heart to accept his need for comfort.

A still from Joker showing Arthur's imagined girlfriend.
Arthur’s imagined girlfriend in Joker. Our minds can sometimes offer comfort, but when we need a real hug and a pat on our back the illusions we create prove inadequate – unless we have the power to make them be considered reality.

Overall, what all of this serves to do is make us ask questions about what we believe, and how far we can trust the reality of things as it’s shown to us. It’s easy to believe that the political actions of the privileged rarely have consequences, but Joker shows that for people living in a different, harsher reality, the consequences are real. But without any listening – whether it’s Arthur’s psychiatrist or Wayne himself, this gap of experience and privilege cannot be bridged, and we talk and act past each other. And so, the film ends in a violent cacophony. It may inspire some youthful would-be revolutionaries, but the final scenes really shouldn’t. The pointless violence may be a release of pent-up energies, but rioting achieves nothing and shows as little respect for the rich as the rich of Joker show to the poor.

Joker is clever enough to raise its questions while discrediting the easy answers it puts forward. It doesn’t advocate violence, but it forces us to ask whether or not we ourselves have a hand in creating a world in which violence is inevitable.

Conclusion

Joker is simply a fantastic film. Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro give excellent performances, the music is perfect throughout – the score by Hildur Guðnadóttir takes us right into the mind of Arthur, whether we want to be there or not. It raises the questions of social inequality’s connection to mental health and violence and in doing so gets us talking about topics both taboo and rarely raised in polite discourse.

It is true that the film’s politics can, as happened with Fight Club, create its own clown-sympathisers and imitators. But I’m not sure how far we should let that turn us off the film. It’s far better to have the courage to raise the questions, even if we don’t know the answers to them, than to pretend that the problems Joker depicts – the effects of cuts to social welfare on the people who need it most, and the dreadful consequences of inequality and class conflict – don’t exist.

To devalue Joker for its politics is to do exactly the thing that Arthur warns us about in his rant to Murray when he compares killing the young businessmen to being killed himself. If Joker had only been about how being “crazy” leads you to murder then we wouldn’t be talking about it. Like a beaten madman on the street it’s easy to nod and accept such a moral and move on. But when, without excusing Arthur’s actions or suggesting that they are caused by capitalism alone, Joker shows us that our own system and its politics can exacerbate our mental illnesses and bring a man to violence – this provides a challenge to our mental status quo that we can’t just ignore in the same way.

The answer is not class violence, but – perhaps – rather a newfound sense of responsibility. We have to do our best to listen to those we’d otherwise pass over without a second glance. Otherwise, we ourselves become to blame for when they can take our neglect no longer. Ultimately that is the central message of the film – to listen and care – much more than any anti-capitalist note. And luckily, it’s a message that’s easy to accept and worth every effort to act on.

For my piece on Capitalist Realism, click here. If you’ve seen Joker and have your own view whynot leave a comment of what you thought of it and my own ideas on the film?