Perhaps the only thing to come out of the cinemas recently that is as interesting as Todd Phillip’s Joker has been the audience’s reaction to it. The backlash began even before its release, from hand-wringing concerns about who might ‘feel seen’ by the film to unfiltered outrage at the apparent perpetuation of sympathy for violent, ‘white’ men and stigmatising mental health myths.

Yet Joker is by no means the first film to depict a disturbed and violent character, nor is it even the only movie about a disturbed and violent clown in cinemas right now.