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--Spoilers--
I recently watched the new movie Joker in theaters and I couldn't help noticing the similarities between the scenes in the movie and events that took place in Native Son. In this blog post, I'll be comparing a few key aspects that I noticed.
Joker is set in 1981 and follows the life of Arthur Fleck, a clown available for hire and aspiring comedian, who lives in Gotham city and has a condition that makes him laugh uncontrollably in random situations. One of the first important settings that is shown is Arthur's workplace, housing circus members and party clowns. For now, this location can be seen as his "home". Similar to Native Son, the author is able to see how Arthur spends a lot of time in a space that is cramped and inhospitable like Bigger in his one room apartment. Arthur and Bigger also both encounter a "rat" that drive them to murder. For Bigger, this is the first time he kills and it is shown in the narrative as not really a big deal because the rat is subhuman and not respected. In Joker, the rat is a figurative rat (A clown who later rats him out to Arthur's boss and police) and this clown hands Arthur a gun. The movie progresses until Arthur is stuck in a train with three people who harass a women and then bully him for his condition. Arthur pulls out his gun to stop them from hurting him and kills all three of them. Both Bigger and Arthur are shown to have had no choice but to murder in these situations and it further introduces their capacity to kill. Bigger has his moment of "revelation" and euphoria after killing the rat and teases his sister with the body. Arthur has a similar moment in the train station's bathroom and does his signature Joker pose. For both characters, they are not reprimanded for killing and are actually praised; Bigger by his younger brother and Arthur by the rest of society. The three men that Arthur kills turn out to be rich, Wayne Enterprises employees and he is regarded as a hero for murdering these subhuman and pretentious people. A movement begins against the rich and the people all wear clown masks as a symbol for their rebellion. Later in the movie, Arthur ends up killing the clown who gave him the gun after figuring out he ratted him out, and there is an interesting scene after where Arthur teases a midget with the dead body, which is very similar to how Bigger teased his sister with the rat's body. Arthur commits all of these murders with his clown mask on, which hides his identity, and once the uprising starts, he is protected and hidden by the rich's view of everyone as the "same person". Bigger also has his own type of mask of society's view of African Americans as a collective group of the "same people".
Perhaps due to the fact that these stories both address the affect of society on people, they have a similar method of portraying elite people. In Native Son, Mary Dalton symbolizes wealth and higher status from the perspective of Bigger, and in Joker, Arthur Fleck's mother fills this role as she is treated almost religiously by Arthur (This relation between Mary Dalton and Arthur's mother soon becomes important). Coming back to the idea of society, both Bigger and Arthur are on the bottom rungs in terms of status and in the minority. Bigger is a poor, black male and Arthur is poor and has a mental illness. Racism ultimately destroys Bigger's innocence and stigma against mental illness destroy's Arthur's. These characters are both introduced to an organization that could supposedly help them. For Bigger, the Communist party and for Arthur, the Clown Company or the Social Workers, but in the end, both characters end up messing up and losing the opportunity. The way Bigger and Arthur mess up lead to the reflection between Mary Dalton and Arthur's mother. Mary Dalton flirts with Bigger and they end up kissing in Mary's bed and is nearly caught by Mary's mother. Arthur's mother is involved in an accident and through this accident, Arthur is able to find out his mother's past. In scenes that are almost identical, Bigger muffles Mary with a pillow in her bed and Arthur muffles his mother in her hospital bed. Since Mary Dalton and Arthur's mother symbolize higher status, this shows Bigger's and Arthur's "destruction of society". All these situations that Bigger and Arthur are put into are narrated to seem like they had no choice but to kill, but in reality, a normal person would not react in the same way. However, this puts the characters into a paradox because they become characters that are created by society to break societal norms and ultimately go against society.
Another interesting reflection in terms of imagery and symbolism is the idea of struggling up stairs but frolicking down. After Bigger becomes comfortable with murder, he completely abandons the idea of fitting into society and believes himself to be invincible. In Joker, Arthur also is also in a sense invincible, more so than Bigger, because he is the embodiment of a movement/rebellion in a sort of V for Vendetta-like way. Bigger and Arthur both embody the struggle between a class of people rising up against society. To conclude both Native Son and Joker, both characters finally end up locked away/killed in the very end.
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