The People’s Jok­er – you have to see it to believe it

Few plot syn­opses strike dread into a cinephile’s heart like “[noun] com­ing of age sto­ry.” The mar­ket is over­sat­u­rat­ed, plus they’re most­ly shit because the writer/​director attempt­ing to pour their heart out doesn’t actu­al­ly have enough insight or dis­tance to make their film good. (And, as always, actu­al tal­ent is in short supply.) 

How­ev­er, Vera Drew’s The People’s Jok­er is a mul­ti­hy­phen­ate mas­ter­piece that effort­less­ly satiris­es spe­cif­ic films, the decline of Amer­i­can empire, media monop­o­lies, the New York standup and sketch com­e­dy scenes, cor­po­rate rain­bow-wash­ing, and the con­cept of the bil­dungsro­man itself, while offer­ing nov­el insight into trans issues, unhap­py child­hoods, addic­tion, and emo­tion­al­ly abu­sive relationships. 

This may sound like a giant mess, and yet Drew’s wild nar­ra­tive about an unfun­ny standup tran­si­tion­ing, falling in love, and sav­ing the world by appear­ing on a fac­sim­i­le of Sat­ur­day Night Live nev­er fal­ters. She also has a throw­away gag where, after list­ing off some Bat­man vil­lains hang­ing out at an anti-com­e­dy club, she intro­duces a char­ac­ter named ​“Tim­my Two-Times” who, à la Good­fel­las, says, ​“I’m gonna do some pop­pers, do some pop­pers” before walk­ing off­screen. (Pre­sum­ably to go do some poppers.)

This is to say her sense of humor is impec­ca­ble, a mix of absolute­ly stu­pid bull­shit and fierce­ly per­cep­tive com­men­tary. Drew, a for­mer edi­tor for Tim Hei­deck­er and Eric Wareheim’s var­i­ous ven­tures, under­stands that the idea of the come­di­an as brave truthteller is, at this point in his­to­ry, absurd and more often than not active­ly harm­ful. (Con­sid­er Joe Rogan or Bill Maher.) 

Yet the pow­er of com­e­dy to express what straight­for­ward dra­ma so often can­not is unde­ni­able, and Drew uses this to full effect. Fur­ther­more, her deci­sion to ground her trans com­ing out sto­ry in com­e­dy is pow­er­ful on the lev­el of genre: trans peo­ple were often the punch­line to so many lazy jokes across all media made before (rough­ly) 2016. The People’s Jok­er reclaims the genre with­out announc­ing itself as so. 

Drew cre­ates a space for trans peo­ple to not mere­ly be trag­ic, lost, or bro­ken, but nei­ther does she shy away from or fears lam­poon­ing the inescapably trag­ic, con­fus­ing, and heart­break­ing aspects of being a trans per­son in a cis/​het world. One could say that this impulse is also like the Jok­er him­self: embrac­ing the dark and dis­turb­ing and laugh­ing at it. How­ev­er, tak­ing that to heart as an adult is, fun­da­men­tal­ly, stu­pid as hell — a fact that Drew has no prob­lem skew­er­ing either.

This rad­i­cal recon­fig­u­ra­tion of what peo­ple expect LGBTQ+ media to be is also present in the film’s visu­al style, which satiris­es and inverts the com­plete­ly soul­less way block­buster movies are made. Near­ly all of the actors in The People’s Jok­er per­formed entire­ly in front of a green screen, and Drew recruit­ed over 100 ani­ma­tors to cre­ate the world (and addi­tion­al char­ac­ters) that appear through­out the film. 

There is no attempt to make these dif­fer­ent artists’ styles match or even flow togeth­er; instead, how things look rad­i­cal­ly changes from scene to scene. This pas­tiche lit­er­alis­es the pas­tiche Drew’s nar­ra­tive makes of var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Bat­man and pop cul­ture at large, while also call­ing back to ear­li­er queer artists such as Jack Smith (Jok­er the Har­le­quin is indeed a flam­ing crea­ture), but also rep­re­sents the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of experience. 

This is not a sin­gu­lar tale of one woman real­is­ing who she is. Rather, it is an expres­sion of mul­ti­ple truths: Vera Drew is not The One, but mul­ti­tudes, which means her sto­ry is not the defin­i­tive trans com­ing out sto­ry. Mem­oir often fic­tion­alis­es, inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly, as mem­o­ries are unre­li­able. The vast array of styles, some­times work­ing with or against the emo­tion­al tenor of the sto­ry, is the truest way to express the finicky nature of expe­ri­ence on this earth. Again, it feels insane to say this about a movie that has a run­ning joke about Kamala Har­ris becom­ing Two-Face, but it must be seen to be believed.