The Man (of) Who(m) Laughs

Abstract

This paper analyzes the dialogized heterodiscourse and the ideological-evaluative positions sustained by the social voices moving around the movie Joker (2019). Our theoretical framework is based on the proposals of dialogic discourse analysis (DDA), more specifically, the Bakhtinian notion of (dialogized) heterodiscourse and the Volochinovian concept of ideological sign. The relations and effects of meaning constructed by the film narrative emerge from the dialogical relation of opposition established between the centripetal/dominant speeches and centrifugal/oppositional speeches which, in turn, inscribe different meanings and values in the signs, which are configured as the arena of class struggle among antagonistic social classes.