Joker (2019)
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
I’ve been struggling a lot with the latest adaptation of the Joker antithesis. I went to see the release on its opening night, sat through 2 hours of highly-divisive content, and left with my mind abuzz. It seems that the popular opinion is that Joker (2019) unduly condones the actions of white, solitary men who turn to violence to solve what they believe to be the world’s ails. As you know, those men are abundant these days. But I have to say… the film made some very valid and extremely harrowing points.
In a dystopian Gotham where trash is rampant and “grungy” is putting it kindly, we see Arthur Fleck in a pretty perilous state. With sunken shoulders and a gaunt demeanor that could only be rivaled by an actual ghost, Joker has yet to surface. On the outset, Arthur is just a clown for hire with a condition that encompasses inappropriately-placed bursts of laughter and a stint in Arkham Asylum that he has yet to fully recover from. He struggles to make ends meet, has a history of mental illness, and is the sole caretaker to his not-all-there mother, Penny.
In many ways, Arthur is just like you and me. He is very obviously trying - despite all odds - to smile through the pain. As hard as it is to believe, I found that, more often than I pitied him, I admired him. Throughout the film, a sequence of events take place that strip Arthur of one thing after the other - first his safety, then his dignity and, finally, his sanity. It isn’t until he finds himself on a metro train late at night in full clown attire and little left to lose that we get our first glimpse of the Joker.
A group of drunken, frat boy-esque men are harassing a young woman who is looking longingly at Arthur for assistance. Cue his laughter. Arthur breaks into large, deafening chuckles that draw the group’s attention off of the woman long enough for her to make her escape to another train car, leaving Arthur alone with the men. They not-so-surprisingly proceed to beat him. The sequence very intentionally resembles the film’s opening scene where Arthur is being attacked by a group of poverty-stricken boys in an alleyway. This was an obvious creative decision to show that Arthur suffered blows from both the one-percenters and others like him throughout the film. The only difference? He’s now been pushed to the brink. Arthur pulls out the revolver he started carrying following that first incident and shoots and kills two of his assailants while the third hobbles off with a minor leg wound.
In this moment, we’re still safely in “I killed them in self defense” territory until he follows the third attacker off the train and proceeds to unload the clip into him. The killings go on to make headlines as the news paints the picture of a killer clown on the loose attacking the affluent. And just like that, the unintended consequences of Arthur’s outburst start to take on a snowball effect as the public begins to don clown masks in tribute to his supposed act of rebellion. However, it’s important to note that all-out chaos was never a part of his agenda. Arthur’s only interest was decency - being paid the respect he was expected to (and did) pay to others.
This marks a prominent theme in the Joker storyline: duality. There were stark dichotomies strewn throughout the film, between good people doing bad things and vice versa. Even Arthur is a walking contradiction. He’s a clown who isn’t funny, adorning a painted smile stained with the tears of acute depression. But perhaps the most notable example of the film’s schisms is Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s father) who embodies a symbol of change and progress in his mayoral campaign to “Make Gotham Great Again” (not a direct quote, but could be). However, behind closed doors, he’s the lying, abusive *spoiler alert* father that Arthur never knew he had until he inadvertently stumbled upon the truth in one of his mother’s letters.
Upon this discovery, Arthur ventures to Wayne Manor where he comes face to face with everything he will never be: Bruce Wayne. They are markedly separated by a towering gate, which palpably alludes to the very real chasm splitting their worlds. Bruce is the legitimate son of a billionaire magnate that happily accepts him as his own. However, as we know from prior Batman films, Bruce never really finds peace, despite having every resource to do so at his disposal. Arthur, on the other hand, was the byproduct of a torrid affair and would never receive the recognition he was searching for, yet that never stopped him from putting on a happy face.
In the fleeting moment where Bruce and Arthur stand opposite each other, you can’t help but notice the warm undertone in Arthur’s appearance. He loves Bruce. All he wants is a family - an identity. When Alfred so rudely interrupts their moment and denies all relations between them, Arthur goes straight to the source for the truth, Thomas.
Naturally, Thomas repudiates his involvement in Arthur’s conception all the way up to the point he punches him in the face and tells him to stay away from his prodigal son. Believing his mother to have lied about her affair with Thomas and, furthermore, finding (planted) evidence to suggest he was actually adopted and abused as a child, Arthur confronts and kills Penny. At this point in the plot, we see a man who has been taken to the precipice of insanity turn to the only identity he has left - the Joker. Yet even that persona was not of his own creation; it was the moniker conceived by Murray Franklin as he defamed Arthur on national television. Arthur gives in and becomes a part of the vicious cycle. The good become the bad, the righteous become the bullies, and Arthur becomes what society has made him.
A lot of the tension surrounding this film stems from those 6 words: “Arthur becomes what society has made him.” It begs the question, did the producers mean to insinuate that we are responsible for creating the monsters that plague our reality? The answer is sad, but true: yes, partly. However, the creative minds behind Joker covered every base as to negate the assumption that they endorse the idea that killers are solely a side effect of society’s shortcomings. Arthur suffered from physical abuse as a child (including a traumatic head injury), was institutionalized prior to the film’s timeline, actively sought mental health help in an attempt to improve his condition, and repeatedly hallucinated lengthy exchanges with his love interest, Sophie. These are not the symptoms of a man who was simply made into a killer but, rather, a man who was born at a disadvantage.
While his mental break was not a direct result of social influence alone, that does not mean it did not play a role. The systematic stigmatization of the mentally ill combined with the lack of support necessary to foster Arthur back to health were colossal contributors to his final steps over the edge. When he made his debut on the Murray Franklin show, Joker threw out his most heart-wrenching quip yet: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you f**kin' deserve!”
Model Ayesha Tan-Jones protesting Gucci on the runway by writing “Mental illness is not fashion” on her hands.
As someone who personally suffers from multiple anxiety disorders, I’d be lying if I said this quote didn’t hit home for me. Just writing about it brings back tears to my eyes because it’s so true - it’s so absolutely true. Those with a mental illness not only have to endure the agony of the symptoms that plague them but also the society that does not understand them. And this is a verity seen in actuality. Just in September, fashion model Ayesha Tan-Jones protested Gucci’s negligent use of straitjackets - a garment meant to protect the mentally unstable from harming themselves and those around them - on the runway.
After Joker drops this deeply unsettling line, he pulls out his revolver and shoots Murray Franklin in the head. In that moment, I was reminded of an excerpt from Arthur’s joke book (a written compilation of his shockingly-unfunny one liners): “I just hope my death makes more sense cents than my life.” In this scene, we see the passing of Arthur Fleck as Joker comes to life. Although Arthur was likely referring to his actual death in that quote (and was fully prepared to take his own life on Murray’s show), I think his figurative social death applies just as well in this instance. While he held little worth before, he is now the masthead of a movement - a movement that bled out onto the streets… literally.
At the height of Joker’s rampage, we see the Wayne family turning into a back alley in Gotham where they’re then cornered by a man in a clown mask. We all know what happened next. It’s no coincidence that, in the same night that Bruce became an orphan and Arthur threw himself over the edge of sanity, Batman and Joker were born. The only question that remains is who do you think will have the last laugh?