The movie is about Arthur Fleck, the man who will become Batman’s arch-nemesis. He is an entertainer, and aspiring standup comedian, who is barely getting by. He works as a clown, and lives with his mother in what appears to be 1970’s, or early 1980’s, New York. (The city was a fairly lawless place, with a lot of crime and violence.) Everyone is “mean” to Arthur Fleck, and that, eventually, “drives” him to kill, and transform into a super-villain.
The movie’s theme is that of our “post-modern” era: “I am justified in using physical force against people who hurt my feelings or offend me.”
The movie isn’t anything particularly new on the cinematic landscape. The character seems like an amalgam of three characters I’ve seen before:
- A loner who kills at random, living in the “sewer” that is 1970’s New York City. He becomes obsessed with a woman. (The Taxi Driver)
- A strange fellow with an unhealthy relationship with his mother becomes a lunatic killer. (“Norman Bates” in Psycho)
- A person who murders anyone who insults him. (Hannibal Lecter)
Arthur kills three times as part of his “transformation” into the Joker. These comprise the major scenes “mapping out” the movie and his development.
First Episode of Violence: Arthur kills some obnoxious “frat boys”. This is somewhat justified since they are beating him up, and were bullying a woman on the train. By the way, the scene was highly unrealistic. White upper-middle-class yuppies weren’t, as a rule, the ones attacking people on subways in 1970’s New York.
Second Episode of Violence: Arthur had previously discovered in a series of scenes that he was adopted and that his mother had allowed her criminally insane boyfriend to beat him so badly Arthur suffered brain damage as a result. (Throughout the movie, he has an uncontrollable laugh due to a neurological condition.) This was also not particularly realistic. In what Twentieth Century American city would a mentally ill woman be able to adopt, let alone keep, a child? Especially after he had suffered that kind of abuse from her boyfriend? This was sort of “blamed” on “the rich”, with references to unspecified “cuts in funding” for unspecified “government programs”. But, under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be courts and police to combat child-abuse like this.
The whole “anti-rich” aspect of the movie basically felt like an artistic “fig leaf” to me, anyway. It was just another way that people hurt the script-writer’s feelings, and justify, in his or her mind, acts of violence. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the main character’s name in this movie is “Arthur”, as in, the *author* of this movie, who identifies with this character.)
Third Episode of Violence: Arthur murders the guy who got him fired from his clown job with a pair of scissors. Tellingly, in this third episode of violence, Arthur lets a dwarf character, another clown, go, saying: “You were always nice to me.”
The “lead up” to this third violent scene was this: Arthur got fired from his clown job after a gun fell out of his pants while he was entertaining children at a hospital. Arthur got the gun from a fellow clown who gave it to him. For some inexplicable reason, this minor character lies to their boss, and says Arthur tried to buy a gun off of him. Why wouldn’t he just keep quiet? If he gave Arthur an illegal gun, he’d have as much to loose as Arthur, so it’d be better to just say nothing, and hope that it never got back to their boss, or the police. Also, if he didn’t like Arthur, why give him a valuable gun free of charge like that? This minor character’s motives made no sense.
With respect to the obnoxious frat boys on the train, Arthur was *possibly* justified in using force. Even the murder of his mother is “understandable”, if not justified. He had discovered she had allowed him to become the victim of massive childhood abuse. But, by the time he gets around to his fourth, and final, “episode of violence”, involving a character played by Robert De Niro, his motive is clear: He kills people who hurt his feelings.
The “set up” for this scene occurred earlier in the movie. De Niro plays a “Late Show TV Host”, Murray Franklin. Arthur Fleck idolizes Franklin, who, in his deluded mind, is the father he never had. Midway through the movie, Franklin shows a recording of Arthur “bombing” during a standup routine, and makes fun of Arthur. (This was not particularly realistic. I doubt a major TV personality would engage in an unprovoked “attack” on a complete “nobody” like that.) Later, for some inexplicable reason, Franklin has Arthur on his TV show for an interview, where Arthur, now “transformed” into the Joker, comes on stage and confesses to killing the obnoxious frat boys on the subway.
This scene is where the overall “theme” of the Joker movie is revealed. Prior to blowing away De Niro’s character, Arthur says: “…comedy is subjective, the system decides what is right and what is wrong, just like it decides what is funny…” He also says “everyone is awful”. This translates to: My feelings are what matters, even to the exclusion of the lives of others.
As a “stand alone” movie, the “message” of “Joker” is terible, but also not particularly original. (I noted three movies above that it seems to draw heavily from, with similar characters and motives.) Its theme reflects our era, at least since the end of the Nineteenth Century: Feelings matter more than people’s rights. This “post modern” idea runs all the way from the National Socialism of 1930’s Germany, to the street thuggery of groups like “Antifa”, in cities like Portland, and on American university campuses, today. (These groups think that certain “hate speech” hurts their feelings, and justifies the use of force.)
What somewhat “artistically complicates” the “clear messaging” of “Joker” is that this is a character from a “wider” work(s) of art. It’s the villain from Batman. In that sense, it may not be “meant” to be a “stand alone movie”. It has the “feel” of a flashback scene from a wider work of fiction, where the motives of the “bad guy” are explained, but not necessarily condoned. For instance, it’s set in Bruce Wayne’s “past”, although he is only a minor character in this movie. But, with that said, I think a work of art has to be taken at “face value”, which means one should not “read into” it what *was not* said. In this, particular, movie, Arthur suffers no consequence for his viciousness, which is motivated entirely by his feelings. (The last scene is the Joker murdering his therapist and escaping.) It says: “Force in the service of my feelings is efficacious and justified”.
If someone knew *nothing* about the Batman franchise, and saw this movie, they’d judge the movie as another, by now fairly tired, artistic depravity study, where the villain “gets away with it”, because the writer thinks his feelings have primacy over reality.
