What have we done to deserve this? By god, what have we done to deserve this?
If you haven’t yet been made privy to the news that landed with the impact of a meteor last night, consider yourself lucky. But also, hold onto whatever type of chair you’re sitting in. If you’re on the subway, grip the pole tighter. If you’re walking, find the nearest wall to lean against or bench to faint upon because what I am about to tell you is so shocking that I’m not even fully sure I’ve digested it myself.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lady Gaga is reportedly in early talks to join the Joker sequel.
I didn’t think things could get much worse than when it was announced last week that the sequel, titled Joker: Folie Á Deux, was beginning production—and during Pride, god damn it! Haven’t queer people suffered enough? This month is for the remembrance of all who fought before us and the celebration of our identities, and this is how we’re repaid? With not one devastating, Joker-related blow, but TWO?
You’re telling me that while I try to spend thirty measly days having a little bit of fun on Chromatica, one Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is here on Earth, betraying the ones who trusted her the most? A little on the nose for the woman who wrote “Judas,” but if Lady Gaga were a fan of subtlety, you and I wouldn’t even be having this talk right now.
The first Joker film drew out the worst possible people from the corners of the Internet, all eager to see and support the film after director Todd Phillips publicly decried the so-called “woke culture” that brought him from films like The Hangover to the dark DC Universe. The film gave credence to incels and trolls who believe that violence—or just general hope for all-out anarchy—is an appropriate response to being shunned by societal norms.
And maybe the worst of all, it was a controversy we couldn’t escape all throughout awards season, until the pandemic locked us all away, shut us up, and forced us to talk about something else. Basically, it’s not the kind of franchise and culture that Gaga has spent so long aligning herself with, and the last thing her fans want to do is join the Joker fandom by proxy.
Details of Gaga’s character in the film are currently under wraps, but THR reports that if the deal goes through, Gaga will be playing Harley Quinn, the Joker’s psychiatrist-turned-lover. Never mind the fact that we’ve got multiple Harley Quinns in rotation right now across the media spectrum, we also just can’t handle losing Gaga to this role for months so she can satisfy all of the wild character quirks that Phillips will surely demand.
When we said, “Hey, maybe after another fantastic era of jazz standards that once again redefined classics for a new generation, could you dip your toe in the weirdo pond again,” this is not what we meant! We, as a society, have only just begun to come back from “Hold My Hand,” Gaga’s Military-Industrial Complex-sanctioned Straight Pride Anthem for the Gayest Movie of 2022. The public can only withstand so many mutual traumas before we reach a complete collapse.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway, in the hopes that my words will somehow make it past the layer of hair bleach that has apparently formed over her brain, preventing her from making sound choices: the woman with the most bonkers press tour of the last decade should not be in a Joker movie. Now, trust me, I’d love to hear what kind of method acting-isms come out of her mouth while promoting this film, but I fear she could never live them down.
She spent so much of the back end of last year talking about all of the crazy things she did to prepare for the role of Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci that there simply is just no way she wouldn’t do the same for Joker: Folie Á Deux. If she followed up, “There can be 100 people in a room,” during A Star is Born with, “Large swarms of flies kept following me around, and I truly believe [Reggiani] had sent them,” I can only imagine what she’ll come up with for the role of Harley Quinn.
Suddenly, we’ll just be forced to take her at her word if she says she actually spent three years studying psychiatry to earn her doctorate of PhD in Psychology like Harley Quinn had before she met the Joker. We’ll have to listen to stories about Gaga’s time spent studying the laborious movements of clowns at the finest French clowning institutions as if she were in Baskets. I wouldn’t be surprised if she cancels her upcoming Chromatica Ball tour just so she can spend a few months inside a psych ward to prepare.
Please, Gaga, don’t put yourself through this. The ARTPOP era inflicted enough trauma.
But maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt. This could be the perfect intersection of drama and camp that could get Gaga the acting Oscar she has been coveting so much. I mean, hey, it worked for Joaquin Phoenix. And all he did was get scary skinny, adopt an evil laugh, and get a little reclusive. If that’s all it takes to win, there’s no good reason I don’t have an Oscar for the time I got mono in 2016. But I digress.
And can you imagine the insane accent she’d adapt to satisfy the role of Harley Quinn? Worth the price of admission alone. There was already enough debate about whether Gaga’s accent in House of Gucci was accurate or taking a cold detour toward Eastern Europe, but as Harley Quinn, whose accent seems to always oscillate between Brooklyn and Boston? Gaga could be scary good…or she may just end up sounding like she did in an SNL sketch from 2013 where she played a reclusive, older version of herself living in a rent-controlled high-rise in the city. Either way, I’ll take a large popcorn with no butter.
So, yes, all that is to say that, if Lady Gaga is cast, I will be first in line for a ticket to see Joker: Folie Á Deux. Ultimately, it’s a smart decision to go after her and offer her a blank check—House of Gucci brought in record pandemic-era numbers for an adult drama and kept audiences returning to theaters all through the holiday season to see what Gaga was serving up as a glamorous black widow ex-wife. The combined, built-in audiences of Joker fans and Gaga stans is enough to ensure a smash opening weekend.
But will it feed my soul? Will it allow me to experience something I’ve always wanted, especially from a beloved pop star and performer? Am I going to feel relaxed sitting in a dark room full of incels for three hours, even if there’s a few curious queer people like myself thrown into the mix? No, not in the slightest. To all three of those questions.
So, Lady Gaga, here is my one plea: take my hand, stay Joke-anne, Arkham’s not ready for you.
