Entertainment
How A Superhero Movie Drove Peaceful Americans To Madness And Violence
screenwashed (adjective) — When something seen on a screen completely changes how someone thinks or feels, as if their old beliefs were erased and replaced by what they just saw.
By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
In 2020, violent protests rocked the United States, devastating major cities. Since then, dozens more have appeared, so many that it almost seems normal.
But it isn’t normal.
Make a list of the most violent protests of the past 20 years, and you’ll find that the majority of them didn’t happen until after 2019. Before that, most protests, even the big ones like Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party protests of the early 2000s, were just a lot of dudes walking around with signs until it got dark. There were exceptions, like the disastrous riots in Ferguson, Missouri, but those were noteworthy because they were unusual.
Now, violence, particularly from supposedly peaceful protesters themselves, is the norm. A daily occurrence in some cities, a regular seasonal event in others. What changed? In 2019, one movie took theaters by storm and manipulated its most ardent viewers to stop playing nice.
This is the story of how Joker screenwashed Americans into accepting violence as personal expression.
The Story Of Joker
Joker was billed as being about Batman’s arch-nemesis, but it has no true connection to the world of comic books. Instead, it’s a grim character study about Arthur Fleck, a mentally ill, socially invisible man slowly crushed by a city that doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. There are no superheroes, no grand conspiracies, and no redemption arc, just a sad, broken man discovering that the only time the world notices him is when he stops playing by its rules and embraces nihilism.
When Joker arrived in theaters, it was both controversial and a huge box office hit. No movie captured a bigger share of the cultural conversation in 2019 than it did, and theaters were packed with people looking for something edgy, different, and maybe even dangerous.
The Lone Observer
The debate over Joker often centered on whether it might inspire mass shootings or homicides. All of that discussion missed the true danger in the film.
Only one person saw the truth. It wasn’t mass murderers or an increase in individual homicides that we needed to worry about. A few months after Joker’s release, at the start of the George Floyd riots in 2020, master persuader Scott Adams made this observation:
“I’m willing to bet 90% of the protesters have seen Joker. It’s so powerful and well-made that it bounces around in your brain and burrows in, forming a dominant go-to pattern for your thinking.” – Scott Adams
Scott then asked, “Can one movie nudge a young person into violence and anarchy? A bad movie can’t. Even a good movie can’t do that. But Joker can. That movie is next-level, persuasion.”
Joker doesn’t merely depict unrest; it romanticizes it. It does it, using some very specific persuasion tricks.
Catharsis Through Violence
The film presents social collapse as catharsis. Arthur Fleck’s personal breakdown is fused to a citywide explosion of masked demonstrators who burn, riot, and kill. All while the camera treats it like liberation.
That’s what Catharsis is. The release of pent-up emotion through experience or expression leaves the mind clearer by safely discharging feelings that were previously contained or unresolved.
The need for catharsis exists in all of us. It’s an irresistible pull. That can be healthy, prompting reflection, relief, and clarity. But it can also distort judgment, causing people to chase emotional release for its own sake, overreact, or embrace narratives that justify anger, sadness, or guilt just to feel unburdened.
That’s what Joker taps into.
The violence isn’t framed as tragic or cautionary. It’s operatic. The mob becomes the chorus validating Arthur’s transformation. Gotham’s chaos isn’t shown as a failure of civilization, but as a necessary purge.
This matters because culture isn’t created through instruction; it’s learned by association.
Arthur Fleck is introduced as powerless, humiliated, and ignored. By anchoring the audience inside his suffering before any violence occurs, the film ensures viewers emotionally identify with him.
Joker’s Six Screenwashing Tricks
Joker screenwashes its audience by employing six distinct persuasion techniques.
Responsibility for violence is consistently shifted away from the character and onto abstract forces: “the system,” “the rich,” “society.” This trains viewers to see violence as an inevitable consequence, not a moral failure.
- Two, Aestheticization of Chaos
Riots are filmed beautifully. When violence is visually pleasing, the brain associates it with power and release rather than danger or shame.
- Three, Catharsis Substitution
The film substitutes violence for resolution. Destruction itself is the payoff, reinforcing the idea that “burning it down” is a valid emotional endpoint.
Arthur’s transformation is validated not by reasoned argument, but by mass approval. Viewers subconsciously absorb the same validation loop.
- Five, Thinking Past The Sale
The story strongly implies that violent societal collapse is unavoidable. When outcomes feel predetermined, audiences stop asking whether violence is right and start asking only when.
- Six, Meaning Injection Into Rage
Most importantly, the film gives rage a story. Raw anger becomes “truth.” Once anger is framed as insight rather than impulse, acting on it feels justified.
Before Joker, America had a culture in which only truly peaceful protest was acceptable. After Joker, the cultural zeitgeist became one in which violent protest wasn’t just acceptable, it was the only way to be heard.
In the movie, Joker had nothing to say; he just wanted to be heard. And now, being heard is all that matters, not whether or not you have anything worth saying.
The Case Against Joker’s Power Of Persuasion
Those without an understanding of persuasion say audiences are smart enough to separate fiction from reality and can’t be affected by what they see in screen. If culture can be changed by a single movie, then why didn’t the movie V for Vendetta have a similar effect?
A movie like V for Vendetta could never achieve the same effect because it frames violence as symbolic, ideological, and abstract, not emotionally personal. V is not an everyman the audience inhabits; he’s a mythic construct with clarity, planning, and moral certainty. His actions are presented as an allegory, not catharsis. The film creates distance through stylization, speeches, and overt political philosophy. This keeps viewers analyzing rather than identifying.
Joker is a totally unique piece of screenwashing because of the way it collapses that distance, rooting chaos in intimate humiliation and emotional grievance, making mass violent release feel personal, spontaneous, and psychologically relatable rather than theatrical or ideological.
Was Joker’s Impact Intentional?
I think it’s important to say here that it’s not clear if plunging America into endless violent riots was the intent of director Todd Phillips when he made Joker. Little is known about Phillips’ personal political views; he refuses to be categorized.
It’s possible Philips’s goal was something besides the one he achieved. Indeed, the movie’s sequel suggests he wasn’t entirely happy with the effect his first movie had on its viewers. Joker 2 attempts to undo much of what the first movie did, revealing Joker as a fraud and his followers equally so.
Of course, Joker wasn’t solely to blame for a cultural shift towards violence. COVID lockdowns created a powder keg, and irresponsible media coverage lit it. But would things have gone as badly as they did, and continue in that direction for years after, if Joker hadn’t been there, at that exact moment, to condition rioters in advance?
Watch one of the riot scenes from Joker. Then watch any Portland, Oregon protest and ask yourself if what you’re seeing is organic or just Joker cosplay.
Joker didn’t invent violent protest. But it did something arguably more influential: it made violent protest feel understandable, beautiful, and emotionally correct. Once culture grants moral permission, reality tends to follow, no manifesto required.
Congratulations, fiery but mostly peaceful protestors, you’ve been Screenwashed.