"We live in a society..."
That's what Jared Leto's Joker says in the closing seconds of the latest trailer for Zack Snyder's Justice League, with the line playing specifically over the movie's title treatment. Why is the internet going crazy over that moment? Well, there is a good reason, but one that requires a bit of a long-winded explanation.
In a 1991 episode of Seinfeld called"The Chinese Restaurant," George Costanza is forced to deal with a jerk who grabs the pay phone he was waiting to use. He proceeds to go on a rant about living in a society where people are supposed to act in a civilised manner. For the past few years, this has been adopted as an online meme on sites like Reddit where it ended up being paired with images of The Joker.
As time passed, the meme became a way of pointing out something that's seen as being more popular than another, similar thing (Zack Snyder's Justice League vs. Joss Whedon's Justice League, for example). It's also been used by those who feel like outcasts from society - i.e. The Joker - as a way of pointing out how crummy their situation is, and how much better off they are for ultimately coming to that realization.
Honestly, it's a weird meme, but one that Snyder and Leto very directly address in this cut of Justice League. It could be a nod to the popularity of the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement, a way of making fans happy (a petition to get Joaquin Phoenix's Clown Prince of Crime to say it in Joker received nearly 60,000 signatures), or something else altogether. Either way, it's now part of the movie, and a lot of fans seem to love it.
Leto, meanwhile, is also well aware:
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