 We'll get to it. Okay. Okay. Jokers, I finally watched Joker. It took a while because I didn't really, wasn't really motivated to go see it at the big screen. And I know as a consequence of that, I'm kind of behind the times and, you know, the cultures moved on and people have moved on. But, you know, it's a big cultural phenomena. The movie has grossed a billion dollars worldwide, 335 million in the United States. Those are not small numbers. Those are major numbers. And it's pretty amazing for a movie like this because this is not a superhero movie. I argue it's exact opposite. It's the anti-superhero movie. It is based on, you know, it's a backstory in some way to Batman. But there's no hero in the movie. There's no superhero, any kind of hero or anybody semi-even heroic in the movie. It is, it is all depressing and mired in depression and mental illness and just ugly, ugliness and ugly action. So it's interesting that it is, and not a good sign I think for the culture, that it has grossed so many dollars and it is done so well as a popular movie. I can understand why this is a movie critics love. I can understand why this is a movie certain people out there in the media and, you know, intellectual world love. But the idea that this movie is a popular hit, I have to admit is scary. Because the movie, and I'm glad I didn't see it on the big screen. I'm glad I waited. I could, I could watch it on my iPad, not get too overly immersed in it. Actually, no, I watched it on the big screen at home. But it, you know, I watched the movie to a large extent, so you didn't have to. But that's all with the good. I mean, the good is, I think to the extent that I understand movie making, I think the movie is very well made. It's very well written. It moves along. It's, it could be unbelievably boring. And there's an accent in which it is. But it does move the story along. It's consistent. It's integrated. It all adds up to one whole. It's good cinematography and it's well shot and well made and certainly well acted. I think, what's his name? Joaquin Phoenix playing the Joker does a phenomenal, phenomenal job at his role. And I think that all the supporting actors do the same. Now, all that said, though, it is an incredibly painful movie to watch. And it's an incredibly painful theme to contemplate. And it says a lot of really, really bad about the world that a movie like this is made, celebrated, and watched to the extent that it has been. Now, somebody says, just go see Taxi Driver. It's the same idea, but a better movie. No, Taxi Driver is not the same idea. It's a very different idea, very different idea. Because Taxi Driver is indeed somebody who's crazy. It is indeed somebody, but it's somebody who becomes a vigilante. Kills people in a sense that deserve killing in the name of justice. And he does it, note in Taxi Driver in a premeditated way. He trains for it. He practices it. He plans for it. He thinks about it. And he goes and he does it. There's little planning here, particularly for the first act of brutal murder. And it's a kind of an instantaneous kind of seeking justice of killing. By the way, lots of spoilers here. So if you don't intend to, if you intend to watch the movie, then you should think about muting the sound. The first act of violence where he kills people is an act where they're abusing him and he kills them. He has some sympathy to it. But the difference is with Taxi Driver, he enjoys it. He enjoys it and therefore seeks it out. He enjoys it and then kills a person, kills people, not in the name of any kind of real justice to protect anybody. Remember, Taxi Driver, he falls in love. Here he doesn't fall in love with anybody. So Taxi Driver is also an indication of particular culture. It's a culture of the 1970s. A culture where crime was rampant. A culture where depression was rampant. And in some senses, similar to today, a culture in which people were unbelievably pessimistic and everything was dark and everything seemed to be falling apart and everything seemed like it was horrific and horrible and we couldn't recover. And Taxi Driver works because it appeals to that. You remember all the vigilante movies from Dirty Harry to the ones with Charles Bronson in the 1970s as a response to the horrific violence that was happening all over the United States. Violent rates today are way down. But that same sense of decay, that feeling that things are crumbling, that feeling that things are out of control, that feeling that America is in decline, is there in spite of the relative lack of violence. Alex says he loves his neighbor, he loves his neighbor, but he's not doing any of this to defend her, to protect her. She's not a player. She's not a player in the movie. She's just a projection. But she doesn't have a, she doesn't move the plot along in the way that, in Taxi Driver, the prostitute does. Now he turns into a monster, but Joker is, as somebody says, Joker has a case study about what makes an outcast into a monster. No, it's not. Again, no, it's not. Lots of people are outcast who don't become monsters. And the difference is that Joker is not just a story of a monster and then, you know, the monster is killed at the end. There are lots of movies like that. How people deteriorate, become monsters, and then, you know, something really, really, you know, they do horrific things and then they're caught and they're killed. No. Joker is a social commentary movie. Joker is a movie about the response to the Joker. It's about the response to him becoming a monster. It's the celebration of his monstrosity that is the thing that drives the movie. If he was just a monster and that was, that was it. And he was killed at the end and we went on from there. Then, I don't think it would have been an important movie, but this is an important movie because it's not just about him. It's about the fact that everybody embraces him. It's a fact that everybody wears his mask. It's the fact that the end of the movie, he is a hero. He is a hero because he killed a guy on television. He is a hero because he stands up against a man by shooting him. He is a hero because of his nihilism. And it's the final act of the movie almost other than him being heroic, being viewed heroically. Is that he, that is the killing of the child, the Batman, the killing of his parents. His parents who have done nothing wrong other than to be rich. Now, they're somewhat detached from the mayhem, from the poverty and their portrayed as horrible and completely horrific. So it plays into the whole theme of inequality today. Of the rich not caring about the poor and not caring about what happens in the rest of America. But the act of killing them is portrayed as an act of justice. That is the act of justice. Now, Joker doesn't kill them. But Joker is the man who inspires the riots that kill Batman's parents. So there's a real glorification in the movie of his monstrosity. Not just by the crowds, but by the movie makers. He is sad. He is pathetic. But he is liberated, free, almost happy, when he kills. When he commits acts of random violence, when he is celebrated as the nihilist monster that he is. Joker is a bad guy. Bad guys die at the end of a movie. Bad guys are not celebrated. Bad guys are not imitated. Bad guys are not, you know, do not inspire the man on the street. Joker celebrates nihilism. It celebrates the lack of control of Joker himself. His inability to control himself. Well, he's pathetic. He's pathetic. He doesn't look pathetic when he shoots the guy on TV. He doesn't act pathetic when he shoots him. And then he's embraced. I don't think there's a warning in the movie. I don't think the movie is warning against nihilism. I think the movie is embraced nihilism. It gives no alternative. It gives no counter. The only guy who's count, the only two people in the movie seem to be countering the culture of nihilism are the TV talk show host. He gets butchered and Batman's father. And he gets butchered. And neither one of them is portrayed like a good guy because the guy on the TV host is making fun of a sick person. So he's portrayed as a bad guy. And Bruce Wayne, the father, father of Batman, is portrayed as a rich jerk who claims that everybody writing and demonstrating out in the street is a bad person. So no, this is a warning isn't a warning against nihilism. It's an embrace of nihilism. Or just a reflection of nihilism. This is what nihilism is. So absolutely, it's the origin story for Joker in the Batman series. It has to be in the Batman universe. But it's a movie. It stands on its own. And somebody chose to make this movie versus a hundred different other movies. Nobody says you need to make a movie of the Jokers. And you could make a very different movie. You could have at least somebody out there, policeman, somebody who is heroic, who has pro values, who is fighting for values, who doesn't die at the end. So by the way, it's not Batman who's the bad guy. It's Batman's dad who is the bad guy. So no, I think Joker is philosophically an awful movie. It's not just a shock movie for teenagers, because it's far too philosophical, ideological, meaningful. It's far too clever. I don't think teenagers just went for this because it has a bunch of people getting killed, because the fact is, there's not that much violence in the movie. There's not that much action in the movie. It's a very cerebral movie. It's relatively slow. It focuses a lot on kind of his mental health, or lack of it, and how he was abused as a child, and how it unravels. It's clever in the sense that sometimes you don't know if what is happening is imagined or real, and the movie has to tell you that. No, this is not a movie that I would have thought, oh yeah, young people would go to see this because hell, it's got a lot of action in it and just blow them up. It's not a movie like that at all. It's far too serious a movie. It's far too homemade a movie. It's far too intellectual a movie to just shrug it off as some action movie and not care about it. This is a movie that means something. It means something about the culture. It doesn't mean anything good about the culture. It means a lot of bad about the culture, and it is a movie that's embraced the culture. It's a movie that is embraced, embraced. A culture of nihilism in many respects celebrates it, empowers it, and provides, provides kind of a, not an explanation for the culture because we have no explanation for the culture. We have no explanation for the writing. We have explanation for the we have explanation for the people out there, but it shows how nihilism latches on to the worst, to the sickest, to the most monstrous. I don't recommend the movie. It is not enjoyable. There is nothing to enjoy in it. There is nothing of value there other than, as I said, the cinematography and the acting and so on. And some people, I mean, I go to see movies like that, even though I know it's the theme and everything else is bad, but the theme here is horrible and you walk out of the theater depressed about the state of the world, depressed about the world in the movie. So if you want to be depressed, and if you want no hope because the movie presents no hope, that's what it is. I find it funny people, and I know you don't always like me commenting on the people in the chat, but it's fun because the people in the chat just confirm my view of the culture. And maybe I overemphasize how they are. But isn't it pretty amazing that people in the chat complain about how I'm terrible at my commentary? I'm worthless of political commentary. I'm worthless in cultural commentary. I'm worthless in movie analysis. I'm worthless in pretty much everything. And yet here they are listening to me. Wow. These are people who have no lives. Really, really, really have no life. Right? That to me again says something about the world in which we live. The world in which we live. What a world. And maybe YouTube just brings out the best in people. Maybe that's it. Somebody says, Joker getting the shit kicked out of him by a gang on a train and then shooting them was justice. Yes, it was. But then from there, it just turns to nihilism. And he says, he says explicitly that he enjoyed shooting them, not in the sense of enjoyed standing up to the thugs, but enjoyed watching them die. And then he manifests it. He manifests. I don't need all your love on the chat. Don't worry about it. I just find it funny that these people are such absolute idiots who have no life and who continue to waste their life by listening to my show. So I'm glad to be a vehicle for their wasting their time. And thank you for beefing up my stats on viewership and on time watch. I just think it's funny. Anyway, it's, you know, it's a philosophically wretched movie. Somebody by answers this on philosophically wretched. That's a good way to say it. And it's a culturally wretched movie. And it says something about the state of our culture that it has been so successful and held both critically and, you know, from from the perspective of of the public. All right. So that is, that is Joker. I don't recommend it. So, you know, I suffered through watching it. So some of you could not. I know that somebody says, disagreeing is trolling. Disagreeing is not trolling. Telling people they suck on a chat while somebody is talking and trying to make a point. That's trolling. By the way, with no evidence and no facts and nothing, just you suck. That's trolling. So I know some of you like Joker. And I don't know what to tell you. You should go see a good movie. You should go figure out what good movies look like. And again, Joker is well made. So I can I can sympathize with that. But oh my God, it's it's philosophically, it's a nihilistic movie. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, women's or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday, when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to www.uranbrookshow.com, support or go to www.subscribestar.com, Iranbrook show and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next