After a long wait, DC fans were finally offered an official trailer of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. While the Snyder Cut is one of the most-awaited movies this year, one moment that many fans have been looking forward to in the film is the promised conversation between Jared Leto’s Joker and Ben Affleck’s Batman. The trailer has now confirmed that this will indeed happen, but something that Leto is heard saying in the first trailer has gathered a lot of attention online, leaving some fans both shocked and amused at the same time.
Just as the trailer is about to end, Leto’s voice echoes over the movie’s title screen: “We live in a society ... where honor is a distant memory. Isn’t that right Batman?” To many, it may seem like a philosophical statement, perhaps referring to current political scenarios. But for the more ardent fans, who have spent a lot of time following online Joker memes, the “we live in a society” dialogue means a lot more, thus causing a flurry of comments on social media.
The dialogue itself originated in the 90s with Seinfeld, the show that has been dubbed as the “show about nothing.” Fans of the series probably remember hearing the dialogue in “The Chinese Restaurant”, where Jerry Seinfeld, Elaine Benes, and George Costanza are seen waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant. While the episode ends with the three leaving the restaurant before even getting a table, a scene of Costanza losing his patience over waiting for a payphone to become available, remains as one of the most memorable moments in the show. The “we live in a society” dialogue that follows the scene has been shared by fans over the years and was eventually turned into an unrelated meme almost 25 years later.
In 2015, Hong Kong-based online platform 9gag first tied up the popular Costanza dialogue with the Joker. Along with an image of the villain, the graphic read, “When the nice guy loses his patiance (sic) / the devil shivers.” The meme immediately went viral and was turned into one that was used by those who felt like they didn’t fit into the society they lived in, similar to the Joker, to point out other people’s supposed hypocrisy or pretense. It also became popular among the gaming community and was often linked to Heath Ledger’s Joker, even though the character never actually said the line in the movie.
When the movie Joker was released in 2019, the meme made a comeback online. The community behind making the graphic viral again even started a petition on change.org, asking the filmmakers to get Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker to say the “we live in a society” dialogue as part of the film. The petition has more than 58,000 signatures today. They seem to have achieved what they wanted with Snyder including the dialogue in the trailer. Fans cannot stop talking about this little easter egg online, starting a “WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY” trend on Twitter.
It could just be Snyder’s way of trolling Justice League fans, as the filmmaker is known to be very active on social media. Whether the dialogue was originally a part of the Justice League script, or if it was just added to the Snyder Cut is something fans will never know. For now, they revel in knowing that not only are they getting to see Snyder’s version of Justice League in a month, but they have finally heard Joker comment on the society they live in.
Source: Twitter