This text incorporates spoilers for “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
In the event you’ve been paying consideration lately, you could have seen that popular culture is experiencing a really bizarre second relating to intercourse. 25-odd-years after the proliferation of the web, we’re now a number of generations into individuals having straightforward, fast, and pretty nameless entry to sexually express materials, to the purpose the place a median expertise utilizing X (the app previously generally known as Twitter) includes seeing photos and/or movies of nudity and express intercourse acts, whether or not a consumer is in search of them out or not. Regardless of this, there’s been a bizarre and troubling wave of puritanistic prudishness on the subject of intercourse scenes in movies and tv, with a number of social media prompts and memes indicating that such moments and components are quote-unquote “pointless.” This opinion is because of many components; the flexibility for underage individuals to be extremely vocal on-line, the post-COVID nervousness of the courting world, the pseudo-progressive notion that each one intercourse scenes contain actors being unwillingly exploited, and so forth.
This has put extra strain on not simply filmmakers, but additionally on critics and journalists to go to higher lengths to level out simply how integral to a piece a intercourse scene may be. Whereas seeing intercourse and nudity involving engaging individuals in a movie ought to have a self-explanatory enchantment, it is true that any scene included in a film ought to contribute one thing of value, whether or not or not it’s tone, environment, or precise plot. Most surprisingly, this month’s “Joker: Folie à Deux” features a intercourse scene that’s not solely completely integral to the plot, it additionally doubles as an encapsulation of the film in a nutshell. It is a main second within the movie that illustrates the sport that director and co-writer Todd Phillips is taking part in with the sequel, and it is a scene that is as deeply uncomfortable because it must be as a way to put this notion throughout.
A insanity and a love shared by two
The intercourse scene in query arrives near the tip of the primary act of the movie, the place Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) has already met fellow Arkham State Hospital affected person Lee (Girl Gaga), and the 2 have develop into besotted with one another. After an escape try instigated by Lee, Arthur finds himself thrown into short-term solitary confinement, with Lee someway bribing a guard to permit her to go to him unsupervised. Unsettled by the information that Lee has been discharged, and figuring out that he is had emotional and psychological points that contributed to his hallucinating a completely fictional relationship together with his ex-neighbor, Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz), Arthur is understandably cautious of Lee’s motives. As a response, Lee initiates a conjugal go to with Arthur, however not earlier than making him placed on clown make-up in entrance of her, make-up which she made certain to carry alongside.
To make sure, there’s quite a bit happening on this scene, and we’ll dig into its implications and its place throughout the movie as a complete in a second. For now, let’s speak about how Phillips, Phoenix and Gaga play the scene: there’s just about no nudity to talk of, however the second remains to be pretty express, with the actors taking part in the intercourse from initiation all through to completion. Then there’s the context: it turns into apparent because the scene goes on that Lee has come right here with the categorical function of seducing Arthur. On one degree, it is a girl interested in a person (and the attraction is mutual), who needs to consummate their relationship. On one other, it is a fangirl attending to sleep with one in all her idols, making certain that he makes himself up for her earlier than they’ve intercourse. Added to that is the kink side of the make-up, because it’s akin to bed room roleplay, made extra thorny provided that Arthur himself is not too certain about his personal “true” identification relating to this Joker persona. Lastly, there is a skinny layer of latent sexual assault right here, as Arthur appears pressured into giving Lee what she needs. It will maybe be value mentioning Arthur’s fragile psychological state, too, had been it not for the truth that Lee just isn’t precisely taking part in with a full deck herself.
On prime of all of that’s the real affection between the couple, a high quality that is not typically seen within the conventional Joker and Harley Quinn relationship. These components add as much as a scene that is uncomfortable not simply in its ominous nuances, but additionally in its honesty, awkwardness, and the truth that these two characters are, for higher or worse, made for one another.
The intercourse scene in Folie à Deux is essential
Whereas there are different moments throughout the movie that give us comparable bits of knowledge concerning Arthur’s persona battle, Lee’s potential duplicitousness, and the couple’s chemistry combined in with a friction between them, the intercourse scene within the solitary cell provides us all of that in essentially the most potent and memorable means attainable. Thus, reducing out the scene would do the film as a complete an enormous disservice, and maybe even throw it so off its axis that the movie would develop into unsatisfying to simply about everybody (as an alternative of, because it stands now, about half of audiences seeing it).
Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver are persevering with the theme from the primary “Joker,” during which Arthur is half-victim, half-villain, with neither half being dominant or the victor. Quite, his life and the lives of Gotham residents round him are inextricably combined up, caught in a vicious cycle that has no clear origin level and no endpoint. The intercourse scene is an extension of this idea. There may be even a side of eroticism to it, not in any exploitative means however in the way in which the act is offered so awkwardly down-to-earth; sexually lively adults understand how unglamorous most intercourse may be, and that actually holds true for this scene. The second makes for one of the fascinating intercourse scenes of 2024, in addition to an unintentional argument for why we’d like extra intercourse scenes in our cinema, not much less. It is scenes like these that permit us to have such a visceral reference to a movie, its themes, and its characters, and identical to actual life, not each encounter we’ve got may be wholly nice or clear-cut.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” is in theaters in all places.