Significance of Joker’s Dancing scene in Joker (2019 Movie)
This isn’t a review of the Joker (2019 Movie). This is just an interpretation of a key scene that has audiences polarised worldwide — while one section of the audience revels in the grooving beats of ‘Rock and Roll Part 2’ accompanying the screenplay, the other section just sits shuddering silently.
The scene in question is that of the Joker dancing away in full glory after a murderous spree, post having strangulated his adoptive mother and butchering a former colleague.
Any good storytelling needs smooth yet unpredictable transitions. When the audience can easily predict the next scene, the story falls flat and the narrative starts to wane. Now, imagine if the dancing on the stairs didn’t happen and we directly cut to the Live Interview scene with Murray Franklin, the Talk show host played by Robert De Niro — We would easily know what the Joker would be up to. There would be no tension built and no suspense therein, rendering the next few shots as a monotonous killing spree. And there would be no depth to the extremely complicated character, which is the Joker.
Masterstroke Screenplay : Introduce Anarchy
As per the story-line, which takes most of its inspiration from The Killing Joke (1988 graphic novel), the Joker is a subdued character living against extremely trying conditions. He wants validation and craves admiration. This can be seen in his hallucinatory flashback scenes — a) where he is appreciated by Murray’s crowds and is eventually hugged by Murray and b) where he is imagining his date enjoying his jokes in a comedy show.
Throughout his life, he’s been disappointed because of his constant hysterical laughing condition accompanying his mental illnesses impeding him from having a normal interaction with anyone — he neither embraces his condition nor tries to do anything about the constant barbaric taunts by the society and thereby repeatedly falls prey to them (Wild kids stealing the signboard and colleagues trying to throw him under the bus).
The one time he tries to do something in his self-defense is the moment that marks his initial trajectory and essentially catapults his transition to becoming “The Joker”. And, he celebrates that in a scenic bathroom ballet-style dance. The aftermath to that just adds onto his delusion of grandiose fame, as the downtrodden masses don clown masks as a symbol of their revolution against oppression by the rich of the Gotham City.
As the story-line unfolds, we have him exploring his own truth. His confrontation with his alleged father (*not his father*) leads him to another painful truth about his adoptive mother and eventually the truth about his mental condition. That is the second jolt to his trajectory, and thence he is on his own path in embracing his madness in full.
He is no longer the slouched character we see climbing the stairs, nor is he the one ‘being manipulated’ by the society. He’s the one dancing victoriously on the stairs, and he’s the one manipulating the masses to do his bidding by orchestrating the chain of events to kill the two detectives pursuing him.
And, the scene that captures the essence of all this and gives meaning to this transition of the Joker’s character arc is the dancing scene on the stairs. Without this scene, we just see the Joker being on a random killing spree. This scene is neither meant for us to rejoice nor for us to shudder, but is meant for us to pause and reflect on the transitions that has happened. Like a pause is to a speech for the audience to grasp the meaning of what was just said, this scene in the Joker (2019 Movie) is for us to pause and reflect the trajectory of the character that is the super-villainous Joker.
And the icing on the cake is when the Joker discards the clown-mask signifying that he doesn’t need a mask anymore. He is essentially THE clown-prince of crime in Gotham, and the penultimate scene in the movie is when we see him earning that very title.
