I should revisit Joker. I wrote it off at the time as being Diet Taxi Driver.
A popular meme-type now is that one where a man progressively dresses up like a clown, to illustrate situations in which you're made or make yourself a patsy fool.
Just thinking about Joker in connection with Squid Game - the appeal being the subconscious sense we have that we're all being made clowns by the 0.1%. I imagine a billionaire watching me traipse into work every day for comparative peanuts and laughing at me.
I know I'm stating the obvious but it's definitely a power fantasy for outsiders and losers, however privileged they actually are.
But was Ledger's joker like that? People didn't want to be him, did they? They enjoyed being frightened by his naked cynicism?