 | *** SPOILER ALERT *** This post is only for those who have watched the movie 'JOKER' It is currently out on streaming video. If you have not yet seen it, please do so and then return here. _______________________________________________________ A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end, to the general applause of wits who believe it’s a joke ~ Soren Kierkegaard ~ |
JOKER is a flawless masterpiece, an artistic tour de force with an urgent cautionary tale. In this movie, just like the safety warning etched on the passenger side mirror of an automobile, be aware that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. It’s been said that there are those among us who live in rooms of experience we can never enter. In JOKER, the door to that room is open just a sliver, but there is uncertainty whether it is meant for us to enter, or for someone (or some thing) to escape. Or both.
JOKER requires you to pay attention, to stay alert and focused from the outset, not that you mind. From the opening scene you are acutely aware that something is off kilter, out of place, and things may not be what they seem. There is no passive viewing here, you are an active participant and chances are, you are unable or unwilling to turn away.
In a year when the world is more divided than ever, with Brexit in England and the impeachment of the POTUS in the States, when gun violence this year alone has taken the lives of more than 36,000 Americans, where global isolationism, widespread disenfranchisement, and disconnection of the individual from society from one another, from family and community, have all become the norm, JOKER arrives in theaters as a perfectly timed art-imitates-life powerhouse.
Where the fun begins (for some), the entirety of the movie, the telling of the story, is completely up for perceptual grabs. For those who have difficulty with ambiguity, JOKER will present quite the quagmire. While the film is accurately billed as a ‘stand-alone’ movie, meaning that it is not necessary to know the backstory concerning the Batman character, co-writers Phillips and Scott have been faithful to the story arc of the 2016 animated feature film Batman: The Killing Joke, wherein that joker infamously claims “if I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice’.
Since 1940, one year after Batman appeared on scene, the DC
Comics character known simply as 'joker' has appeared in
JOKER requires you to pay attention, to stay alert and focused from the outset, not that you mind. From the opening scene you are acutely aware that something is off kilter, out of place, and things may not be what they seem. There is no passive viewing here, you are an active participant and chances are, you are unable or unwilling to turn away.
In a year when the world is more divided than ever, with Brexit in England and the impeachment of the POTUS in the States, when gun violence this year alone has taken the lives of more than 36,000 Americans, where global isolationism, widespread disenfranchisement, and disconnection of the individual from society from one another, from family and community, have all become the norm, JOKER arrives in theaters as a perfectly timed art-imitates-life powerhouse.
Where the fun begins (for some), the entirety of the movie, the telling of the story, is completely up for perceptual grabs. For those who have difficulty with ambiguity, JOKER will present quite the quagmire. While the film is accurately billed as a ‘stand-alone’ movie, meaning that it is not necessary to know the backstory concerning the Batman character, co-writers Phillips and Scott have been faithful to the story arc of the 2016 animated feature film Batman: The Killing Joke, wherein that joker infamously claims “if I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice’.
Since 1940, one year after Batman appeared on scene, the DC
Comics character known simply as 'joker' has appeared in
countless comic books and a host of movies with the joker representing the arch villain and nemesis of the Batman as well as its own psychopathic villain out to burn the world. While each movie has had its own joker iteration, it remains a deep, dark mystery for Batman fans that the joker (in recent years played by the spectacular Heath Ledger for which he was posthumously awarded the Oscar) has no known background and no life prior to his appearance as the adult clown fandom known as the joker. He is an unknown. Phillips JOKER attempts to fill in the gaps as an ‘origin’ story.
Played beyond compare by Joaquin Phoenix, JOKER is in fact a multiple-choice experience that some have suggested does not have one correct answer. This movie is less a whodunit than it is a whatthehellisgoingonhere. The audience realizes early on that we are dealing with a painfully vulnerable and deeply disturbed individual that is trying to navigate the vicissitudes of his life despite the obvious layers of complex psychological trauma, neurological impairment, and mental illness of some, one or more, unknown varieties, and that we need to follow closely and be quite cautious in believing our lying eyes.
In the two months and some change that the movie opened to a general release in the US, the amount of press it has generated is nothing shy of impressive. In worldwide total sales, JOKER earned more than $1 billion, having grossed an estimated $100 million within the first week of its release making this movie, as far as those in the ‘Rated R’ category, the highest grossing film of all time.
Played beyond compare by Joaquin Phoenix, JOKER is in fact a multiple-choice experience that some have suggested does not have one correct answer. This movie is less a whodunit than it is a whatthehellisgoingonhere. The audience realizes early on that we are dealing with a painfully vulnerable and deeply disturbed individual that is trying to navigate the vicissitudes of his life despite the obvious layers of complex psychological trauma, neurological impairment, and mental illness of some, one or more, unknown varieties, and that we need to follow closely and be quite cautious in believing our lying eyes.
In the two months and some change that the movie opened to a general release in the US, the amount of press it has generated is nothing shy of impressive. In worldwide total sales, JOKER earned more than $1 billion, having grossed an estimated $100 million within the first week of its release making this movie, as far as those in the ‘Rated R’ category, the highest grossing film of all time.
Critical Reception:
The New Yorker Movie critic Richard Brody wrote Joker is a viewing experience of rare, numbing emptiness. Wait, were we watching the same movie? Contrast that with the review from Micah Uetricht of theguardian.com who speaks for a large percentage of viewers when he wrote We got a fairly straightforward condemnation of American austerity: how it leaves the vulnerable to suffer without the resources they need and the horrific consequences for the rest of society that can result. While Mr. Uetricht's review may appear stark and utilitarian, it at least pointed to the fact that JOKER was more than just a piece of entertainment for the sake of it. That Mr. Brody, a critic for a well-respected magazine known for its in-depth reporting and cultural commentary, finds such topical issues as severe childhood abuse, posttraumatic-stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), the failure of society to care for its most fragile among us and the grave consequence that this moral blindness incurs, as "numbing and empty", is indeed indicative of the very problem this movie highlights and warns against.
The pro’s, the con’s, the controversies, the speculation, the political wrangling and just plain deluge of reviews from every movie critic, professional and otherwise, was and continues to be, exhaustive and exhausting for those that care to follow along. Much of the negative reviews claim JOKER is the wrong movie for our times, citing among other things, the issue of gun violence. I strongly disagree. I can’t think of a single movie in recent memory that is as timely and urgent at this precise moment in our history. That critics and moviegoers alike fall on either extreme of the public bell curve, with nary a review even remotely midstream, is itself an interesting sign of our divided times.
In speaking to the various individuals and groups that have found this film objectionable, including a good portion of the public that have perceived and railed against the movie for what they interpret as its portrayal of sympathy for mass shooters (for which I again ask, ‘were we watching the same movie?’), let me state categorically that JOKER in no way glorifies violence, besmirches the mentally ill, incites violence, ‘copy-cat’ crimes, or romanticizes disaffected incels. Despite this and in caving to public concern from various and sundry groups, Warner Brothers Studio apparently felt it necessary to issue the following statement:
Make no mistake: neither the fictional character JOKER, nor the film,
is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the
intention of the film, the film makers, or the studio to hold this
character up as a hero.
In 2019 alone, new movies such as Velvet Buzzsaw, The Kitchen, Dark Phoenix, Child’s Play, It: Chapter Two, The Irishman, and Hellboy, to name just a few, are movies whose protagonists are hitmen and assassins, murdering clowns, and let us not forget an absurd knife wielding murderous children’s doll, and more. No one was concerned about the content of these films nor found it necessary to raise a peep let alone a public outcry, no individual and no organization was asked to re-consider releasing or showing it, and no movie studio was asked to make a public statement or demand a quid pro quo from the theaters (you can show it but only if you ‘donate’ a portion of all proceeds to xxxx organization).
Given the maelstrom of reviews (including, unbelievably but true, a warning from our military) for this film, that no one batted an eye or raised any public fuss over a psychopathic children’s doll whose raison d’etre is stabbing little kids to bloody death, is problematic on its face. Not only did each one of the movies contain significantly more violence than JOKER, their gratuitous and endless display of pure gore was devoid of anything socially redeemable beyond entertainment for entertainment’s sake. If you go for that sort of thing.
Last year I had the considerable misfortune to catch Lynne Ramsay’s film You were Never Really Here. Ramsay directed the brilliant We Need To Talk About Kevin starring the inimitable Tilda Swinton that, like JOKER, is a movie for our time with a particularly grave societal warning. If you have not yet seen this movie, you are sorely missing out. The fact that You Were Never Really Here also starred Joaquin Phoenix, suggested, at least to me, that it was a can’t miss, must see flick. Add to this the wide critical acclaim which was unanimously (and quite frankly, unbelievably) hailed as a ‘masterpiece’. In my apparently parallel universe, this movie was an absolutely intolerable and meaningless bloodbath from start to finish about an angry victim of childhood abuse who repeatedly beats people to death with a ballpeen hammer, replete with voluminous chunks of dripping brain matter spattered everywhere, including the otherwise splendid face of Mr. Phoenix. The unmistakable irony is that this gruesome and thoroughly empty movie epitomizes a society that JOKER warns against.
The Story Arc:
In their effort to minimally but effectively ground the JOKER character with the whole DC Comics Batman thing, we see from the first few seconds that it is set in the early 80’s (1981 to be exact given the movie marquis in the early scenes). We are clued in from the get-go when the very opening segment shows a 1980s Warner Brother’s logo 40 years past its prime.
The film opens onto an expansive room on an upper floor of what looks to be a converted factory with a row of tall grubby factory windows that look out on the gritty grime of Gotham (AKA New York) City. In the background we hear a radio announcing The news never ends, it’s October 15th, 10:30 in the morning… There are several men mulling about in various types of clown apparel and social engagement, our first glimpse of Ha-Has rent-a-clown agency. A skeletal barely recognizable Joaquin Phoenix (who lost a whopping 52-lbs for the part) is sitting at his make-up station applying the characteristic clown grease paint. With two fingers from each hand hooked on either side of his mouth, stretching his skin into an unnatural seemingly unbearable ‘smile’, he does so as a lone tear falls down his cheek. This paradox of a tearful unnaturally smiling clown is our introduction to the duality that is emblematic of Arthur Fleck and a portent of what is to come.
The New Yorker Movie critic Richard Brody wrote Joker is a viewing experience of rare, numbing emptiness. Wait, were we watching the same movie? Contrast that with the review from Micah Uetricht of theguardian.com who speaks for a large percentage of viewers when he wrote We got a fairly straightforward condemnation of American austerity: how it leaves the vulnerable to suffer without the resources they need and the horrific consequences for the rest of society that can result. While Mr. Uetricht's review may appear stark and utilitarian, it at least pointed to the fact that JOKER was more than just a piece of entertainment for the sake of it. That Mr. Brody, a critic for a well-respected magazine known for its in-depth reporting and cultural commentary, finds such topical issues as severe childhood abuse, posttraumatic-stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), the failure of society to care for its most fragile among us and the grave consequence that this moral blindness incurs, as "numbing and empty", is indeed indicative of the very problem this movie highlights and warns against.
The pro’s, the con’s, the controversies, the speculation, the political wrangling and just plain deluge of reviews from every movie critic, professional and otherwise, was and continues to be, exhaustive and exhausting for those that care to follow along. Much of the negative reviews claim JOKER is the wrong movie for our times, citing among other things, the issue of gun violence. I strongly disagree. I can’t think of a single movie in recent memory that is as timely and urgent at this precise moment in our history. That critics and moviegoers alike fall on either extreme of the public bell curve, with nary a review even remotely midstream, is itself an interesting sign of our divided times.
In speaking to the various individuals and groups that have found this film objectionable, including a good portion of the public that have perceived and railed against the movie for what they interpret as its portrayal of sympathy for mass shooters (for which I again ask, ‘were we watching the same movie?’), let me state categorically that JOKER in no way glorifies violence, besmirches the mentally ill, incites violence, ‘copy-cat’ crimes, or romanticizes disaffected incels. Despite this and in caving to public concern from various and sundry groups, Warner Brothers Studio apparently felt it necessary to issue the following statement:
Make no mistake: neither the fictional character JOKER, nor the film,
is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the
intention of the film, the film makers, or the studio to hold this
character up as a hero.
In 2019 alone, new movies such as Velvet Buzzsaw, The Kitchen, Dark Phoenix, Child’s Play, It: Chapter Two, The Irishman, and Hellboy, to name just a few, are movies whose protagonists are hitmen and assassins, murdering clowns, and let us not forget an absurd knife wielding murderous children’s doll, and more. No one was concerned about the content of these films nor found it necessary to raise a peep let alone a public outcry, no individual and no organization was asked to re-consider releasing or showing it, and no movie studio was asked to make a public statement or demand a quid pro quo from the theaters (you can show it but only if you ‘donate’ a portion of all proceeds to xxxx organization).
Given the maelstrom of reviews (including, unbelievably but true, a warning from our military) for this film, that no one batted an eye or raised any public fuss over a psychopathic children’s doll whose raison d’etre is stabbing little kids to bloody death, is problematic on its face. Not only did each one of the movies contain significantly more violence than JOKER, their gratuitous and endless display of pure gore was devoid of anything socially redeemable beyond entertainment for entertainment’s sake. If you go for that sort of thing.
Last year I had the considerable misfortune to catch Lynne Ramsay’s film You were Never Really Here. Ramsay directed the brilliant We Need To Talk About Kevin starring the inimitable Tilda Swinton that, like JOKER, is a movie for our time with a particularly grave societal warning. If you have not yet seen this movie, you are sorely missing out. The fact that You Were Never Really Here also starred Joaquin Phoenix, suggested, at least to me, that it was a can’t miss, must see flick. Add to this the wide critical acclaim which was unanimously (and quite frankly, unbelievably) hailed as a ‘masterpiece’. In my apparently parallel universe, this movie was an absolutely intolerable and meaningless bloodbath from start to finish about an angry victim of childhood abuse who repeatedly beats people to death with a ballpeen hammer, replete with voluminous chunks of dripping brain matter spattered everywhere, including the otherwise splendid face of Mr. Phoenix. The unmistakable irony is that this gruesome and thoroughly empty movie epitomizes a society that JOKER warns against.
The Story Arc:
In their effort to minimally but effectively ground the JOKER character with the whole DC Comics Batman thing, we see from the first few seconds that it is set in the early 80’s (1981 to be exact given the movie marquis in the early scenes). We are clued in from the get-go when the very opening segment shows a 1980s Warner Brother’s logo 40 years past its prime.
The film opens onto an expansive room on an upper floor of what looks to be a converted factory with a row of tall grubby factory windows that look out on the gritty grime of Gotham (AKA New York) City. In the background we hear a radio announcing The news never ends, it’s October 15th, 10:30 in the morning… There are several men mulling about in various types of clown apparel and social engagement, our first glimpse of Ha-Has rent-a-clown agency. A skeletal barely recognizable Joaquin Phoenix (who lost a whopping 52-lbs for the part) is sitting at his make-up station applying the characteristic clown grease paint. With two fingers from each hand hooked on either side of his mouth, stretching his skin into an unnatural seemingly unbearable ‘smile’, he does so as a lone tear falls down his cheek. This paradox of a tearful unnaturally smiling clown is our introduction to the duality that is emblematic of Arthur Fleck and a portent of what is to come.
 | Fleck is an interesting and wholly meaningful choice of surname for Arthur. After all, what is a fleck if not an incongruous, unwelcome speck or unattached parasitic fragment that, having found an external host with which to latch onto, embeds itself where it otherwise does not belong. Arthur’s name appears nowhere in any of the DC Comics and we are left to assume this was yet another deftly chosen detail by the screenwriters. |
Dressed in full clown regalia, we are shown a genuinely happy dancing Arthur, prancing about the sidewalk artfully twirling a giant and weighty “Going Out of Business” sign accompanied by a gentleman playing a not-so strategically placed grand piano on the sidewalk in an apparent gig Arthur landed courtesy of Ha-Has. If you ever had the pleasure of walking down a bustling sidewalk in the heart of Times Square in midtown Manhattan in the early 80’s, this seemingly bizarre scenario would hardly have caught your attention. Not so much for the depraved juvenile delinquents that decided just for kicks, to grab Arthur’s sign and take-off with it, running down an alleyway with Arthur chasing after them in tow. The next sound is that of Arthur being seriously thwacked by the sign full on, right smack in the face knocking him out cold and clear to the filthy ground where he hits his head on the asphalt.
As he regains consciousness, the rotten juvies kick him mercilessly. Unable to get up, Arthur focuses on the sign that is lying next to him, in pieces as he lays barely moving in that filthy alleyway, all alone and left for dead. Arthur is breathing heavily like a fish that has been washed ashore, their little gills flapping rapidly to stay alive. Slowly and painfully he reaches inside his jacket releasing the secreted water button that unceremoniously squirts out from the pistil of his outsized clown flower, dripping onto the asphalt beside him. Even his happy flower is crying in what will become a continuous thread of Arthur’s attempts to appear happy when life beats him to a veritable pulp.
As he regains consciousness, the rotten juvies kick him mercilessly. Unable to get up, Arthur focuses on the sign that is lying next to him, in pieces as he lays barely moving in that filthy alleyway, all alone and left for dead. Arthur is breathing heavily like a fish that has been washed ashore, their little gills flapping rapidly to stay alive. Slowly and painfully he reaches inside his jacket releasing the secreted water button that unceremoniously squirts out from the pistil of his outsized clown flower, dripping onto the asphalt beside him. Even his happy flower is crying in what will become a continuous thread of Arthur’s attempts to appear happy when life beats him to a veritable pulp.
| In the following scene we witness a close-up of Arthur’s face in a bizarre and unnaturally contorted manner as he laughs in this horrid high-pitched, cackling cacophony, while simultaneously crying, apparently unable to stop and all the while choking, in a futile attempt to try and bring himself together. |  |
This was incredibly painful to watch and were I sitting on the Board of the Academy Awards, I would have gotten up right then and there, burst onto the scene, and simply handed Mr. Phoenix the Oscar on the spot. This guttural mixture of deep despair and raucous laughter comes from a profoundly dark place that I wish on no one. That Mr. Phoenix was able to express this in such a raw manner, and coming from such an impuissant place, gives me pause concerning the actor’s own personal history. There is acting, the close approximation of an imagined part, and then there is the difficult dredging up of a painful real-life trauma. What I witnessed was the later.
Anyone that suffers from, or has witnessed others that have this emotional incontinence manifest as an abrupt and inappropriate paradoxical expression, can readily recognize it as the pathognomonic sign of Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA), a neurological condition that occurs secondary to neurological disease or injury such as stroke, Parkinson’s, muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, as well as a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) . It is important to note in general, but certainly as it pertains to this movie, that PBA is neither a mental illness nor a behavioral disorder, but rather, a disinhibition syndrome that occurs when there is disruption to the serotonergic and glutaminergic neural pathways as a direct result of injury or illness.
Treatments for PBA largely consist of the Selective Serotonergic Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac and Effexor, as well as the older tricyclics such as Amitriptyline (Elavil) and Imipramine (Tofranil). The newest pharmacological advance is dextromethorphan quinidine, AKA DM/Q. In Arthur’s case as we will see later on, his PBA is a direct consequence of a TBI. Or maybe not…
That co-writers Phillips and Scott chose to superimpose PBA onto the Arthur fleck character is a creative multilayered move that lends itself to both the disconsolate sad sack that Arthur embodies, as well as doling out to the audience yet another important clue for those paying attention, into the perceptual mirage of the story arc itself.
Of all the possible diseases and disorders, why choose to use PBA, an affliction that few have ever heard of let alone witnessed? From a neurological perspective, the cerebellum (that spectacularly ugly region of the brain that lays at the very base of the skull) plays a significant role in PBA in that lesions to this area (from illness, injury, or heritable pathology) show abnormal affect with accompanying emotional lability. Specifically, PBA is a direct disruption of the cortico-pontine-cerebellar circuits which is what ultimately results in the impairment as demonstrated with mastery by Mr. Phoenix.
Pathophysiologically, we know that input from the motor, frontal, and temporal cortices to the brainstem are then modulated by input from the cerebellum. It is of no coincidence that the cerebellum is also the site for motor activity, and hence Arthur’s inability, and not for want of trying, to stop these inopportune PBA outbursts once started. Interestingly, ethanol alcohol directly targets the cerebellum which is why those that find themselves having had one too many, manifest the characteristic unsteady gait and evidence difficulty staying in the upright position. But PBA also effects the frontal cortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area that controls personality and the functions related to judgment, decision-making, planning and goal setting, sexuality, empathy, and to a significant extent, sociopathy and psychopathy among others. And did I neglect to mention empathy, sociopathy and psychopathy?
The socially debilitating syndrome that is PBA, generally occurs during times of stress and anxiety and ends as quickly and abruptly as it begins which is certainly the case for Arthur. As the movie progresses, this will become a noticeable, positive correlation for him; as anxiety and/or fear increase, PBA rears it’s terribly uncomfortable head. Since PBA if left untreated becomes incurable, we can expect to see this occur consistently with Arthur throughout the movie. Or can we?
As the camera angle pans outward, Arthur is seated across from a social worker, a woman who is waiting patiently and intently for him to compose himself after a vicious but relatively short-lived PBA attack. The room is an office that resembles the musty, institutionalized space that is inside of a narrow storage room, certainly not what anyone would ever imagine resembling a safe, warm space with which to be psychotherapeutically treated. On the wall just above Arthur’s head, an industrial clock reminiscent of the kind we see in schools, hospitals, and other large public institutions, reads 11:11.
The social worker asks to see his therapy journal and it becomes clear that while he has it with him, he is terribly embarrassed to share it with her. By way of explanation he tells her that in addition to a therapy journal, it dubs as his joke journal, and despite his clear anxiety as evidenced by his uncontrollably twitching legs beneath the table, passively hands it over. As she flips through the notebook, we see an incredible detail of pictures, drawings, magazine cutouts, words covering nearly every inch of each page, until she stops on a page and reads aloud, I just hope my death makes more cents than my life. Arthur laughs in painful shame. Grimacing as judgmentally as possible, she looks up at him only briefly as she tosses the booklet across the table. It’s a cringe-worthy moment as the audience likely winces, I certainly did, taking in the otherwise unthinkable fact that even his own therapist finds him repugnant.
When the social worker asks Arthur how does it feels to come here, to have someone to talk to, he answers I think I felt better when I was locked up in the hospital. She asks him if he thought more about why he was locked up? In what appears to be a flashback, we see Arthur in a white hospital outfit in a white “observation room”, of what we are led to believe is within the walls of Arkham Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane, as he repeatedly bangs his head against the locked door. But back in the musty social workers office that he never physically left; all Arthur can answer is who knows? What do we make of the fact that the only object in that white room other than Arthur, is an institutional clock on the wall, an exact replica of the one in the office, and it too reads 11:11?
Treatments for PBA largely consist of the Selective Serotonergic Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac and Effexor, as well as the older tricyclics such as Amitriptyline (Elavil) and Imipramine (Tofranil). The newest pharmacological advance is dextromethorphan quinidine, AKA DM/Q. In Arthur’s case as we will see later on, his PBA is a direct consequence of a TBI. Or maybe not…
That co-writers Phillips and Scott chose to superimpose PBA onto the Arthur fleck character is a creative multilayered move that lends itself to both the disconsolate sad sack that Arthur embodies, as well as doling out to the audience yet another important clue for those paying attention, into the perceptual mirage of the story arc itself.
Of all the possible diseases and disorders, why choose to use PBA, an affliction that few have ever heard of let alone witnessed? From a neurological perspective, the cerebellum (that spectacularly ugly region of the brain that lays at the very base of the skull) plays a significant role in PBA in that lesions to this area (from illness, injury, or heritable pathology) show abnormal affect with accompanying emotional lability. Specifically, PBA is a direct disruption of the cortico-pontine-cerebellar circuits which is what ultimately results in the impairment as demonstrated with mastery by Mr. Phoenix.
Pathophysiologically, we know that input from the motor, frontal, and temporal cortices to the brainstem are then modulated by input from the cerebellum. It is of no coincidence that the cerebellum is also the site for motor activity, and hence Arthur’s inability, and not for want of trying, to stop these inopportune PBA outbursts once started. Interestingly, ethanol alcohol directly targets the cerebellum which is why those that find themselves having had one too many, manifest the characteristic unsteady gait and evidence difficulty staying in the upright position. But PBA also effects the frontal cortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area that controls personality and the functions related to judgment, decision-making, planning and goal setting, sexuality, empathy, and to a significant extent, sociopathy and psychopathy among others. And did I neglect to mention empathy, sociopathy and psychopathy?
The socially debilitating syndrome that is PBA, generally occurs during times of stress and anxiety and ends as quickly and abruptly as it begins which is certainly the case for Arthur. As the movie progresses, this will become a noticeable, positive correlation for him; as anxiety and/or fear increase, PBA rears it’s terribly uncomfortable head. Since PBA if left untreated becomes incurable, we can expect to see this occur consistently with Arthur throughout the movie. Or can we?
As the camera angle pans outward, Arthur is seated across from a social worker, a woman who is waiting patiently and intently for him to compose himself after a vicious but relatively short-lived PBA attack. The room is an office that resembles the musty, institutionalized space that is inside of a narrow storage room, certainly not what anyone would ever imagine resembling a safe, warm space with which to be psychotherapeutically treated. On the wall just above Arthur’s head, an industrial clock reminiscent of the kind we see in schools, hospitals, and other large public institutions, reads 11:11.
The social worker asks to see his therapy journal and it becomes clear that while he has it with him, he is terribly embarrassed to share it with her. By way of explanation he tells her that in addition to a therapy journal, it dubs as his joke journal, and despite his clear anxiety as evidenced by his uncontrollably twitching legs beneath the table, passively hands it over. As she flips through the notebook, we see an incredible detail of pictures, drawings, magazine cutouts, words covering nearly every inch of each page, until she stops on a page and reads aloud, I just hope my death makes more cents than my life. Arthur laughs in painful shame. Grimacing as judgmentally as possible, she looks up at him only briefly as she tosses the booklet across the table. It’s a cringe-worthy moment as the audience likely winces, I certainly did, taking in the otherwise unthinkable fact that even his own therapist finds him repugnant.
When the social worker asks Arthur how does it feels to come here, to have someone to talk to, he answers I think I felt better when I was locked up in the hospital. She asks him if he thought more about why he was locked up? In what appears to be a flashback, we see Arthur in a white hospital outfit in a white “observation room”, of what we are led to believe is within the walls of Arkham Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane, as he repeatedly bangs his head against the locked door. But back in the musty social workers office that he never physically left; all Arthur can answer is who knows? What do we make of the fact that the only object in that white room other than Arthur, is an institutional clock on the wall, an exact replica of the one in the office, and it too reads 11:11?
How can this be a flashback if both clocks are simultaneously reading 11:11? So, if it wasn’t a flashback, then what was it? Things are quickly becoming more nonsensical. Where are we in this story? Are we in the hospital room or in the social worker’s office? Or somewhere else entirely?
A dissociative reaction secondary to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is defined as a type of flashback that is dissociative in nature in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic event were recurring, with the most
extreme expression being a complete loss of awareness of present surroundings. A dissociative episode could certainly account for the time warp. If in fact that is what it was. And what trauma?
On the dreary rainy bus ride home, angry and defeated and for a brief moment, Arthur is no longer invisible; a little boy sees Arthur and engages with him and in so doing Arthur’s expression brightens considerably and the interaction appears authentically playful. The comedian Red Skelton once said that I only come to life when there are people watching. As if on cue, the boy’s mean-spirited mother turns sharply to Arthur and tells him to stop bothering her boy. Another humiliation, another public beat down. When he gently protests, she gets angrier, and in shame and intense anxiety, Arthur breaks out in that loud, horrible PBA cackle, again choking menacingly in an effort to calm down.
Arthur hands the woman a laminated card that states he has a “condition”, one that is neurological in nature and that makes him inexplicably and uncontrollably break out in loud bouts of laughing and crying. The card states that the neurological condition is a consequence of (among other things) head trauma. Yet another hint at his TBI that we thus far have no knowledge of. It is abundantly clear that Arthur feels alone and invisible no matter where he is, and we cheer when we see him light up in the playful and emotionally affectionate exchange with this beautiful little boy on the bus, only to rail against the mother and society and to whomever and whatever crafted the situation that created the painful and increasingly disaffected shell that has become Arthur Fleck.
But wait a minute...during that bus ride as Arthur pulls his hands in front of his face in a vain effort to stop himself from laughing, we see the outline of white clown greasepaint on the edges of his face. Odd considering that all the while he was in the social worker’s office, there was not so much as a smudge of paint. We find ourselves once again, questioning the sequence of events.
As Arthur exits the bus, he trudges home through a dreary, unsightly, urban neighborhood as he makes the long, arduous ascent up the iconic outside staircase towards his behemoth apartment building with a cavernous, equally impersonal lobby that seems to swallow him up. He lives with his mother who ironically refers to Arthur as ‘Happy’. Penny as it turns out, is obsessed with receiving a letter from Thomas Wayne, father to Bruce Wayne, AKA, the Batman, with whom she claims to have worked for most of her adult life more than 30 years ago. Arthur is clearly the caretaker for his mother, attending to her every need including nightly baths. Yet, we see no discernible illness or handicap that would prevent this middle-aged woman who has no friends, no family, from taking full care of herself. Then again, there is that weirdness about her letters.
In what appears to be a mundane nightly ritual, Arthur sits on his mother’s bed as they watch the Murray Franklin show, a clear nod to Johnny Carson. Suddenly, the camera pans the audience and lo and behold we see a cheerful Arthur embedded within the audience, waving to the camera. Talk show host Murray Franklin singles him out and requests that he come onstage wherein a sentimental Arthur hears Murray tell the audience, you see all of this, the audience, the lights, the show, all this stuff, I’d give it all up in a heartbeat to have a kid like you… and a beaming, grateful Arthur gives Murray a lengthy emotional hug and the audience claps. Arthur is transported back to his sullen self, sitting on Penny’s bed, and we are aware that this was nothing more than a daydream.
A terribly bruised, black and blue Arthur sits shirtless back at Ha-Has where his friend and clown-mate Randall, upon hearing about Arthurs beating from the thugs during his previous gig, hands Arthur a bag with a hand gun inside. Although Arthur accepts the ‘gift’, he does so reluctantly, telling Randall in a faint and ominous whisper you know I’m not supposed to have a gun, a clear reference to someone who has either a criminal or psychiatric record. Or both; the second reference to Arthur’s troubled past. Randall assures him that he can pay him back another time for the ‘gift’, because after all, Randall tells Arthur you know you’re my boy. Is he? Or is this another fabrication of having someone, anyone, care about him.
The comradery is short-lived when Gary, the British-speaking little person tells him that Hoyt, owner of Ha-Ha’s wants him in the office. We see Arthur smiling and laughing that familiar and disturbing PBA laugh. Hoyt tells him that his pay is being docked for absconding with that sign the thugs smashed, and for the first time, we see Arthur with a seriously scary, menacing look where once outside, he goes werewolf, repeatedly kicking the hell out of the trash bin out back as a rageful out-of-control Arthur is seen plastered against the backdrop of a distant Ferris wheel. The irony and the agony.
As Arthur is bathing his mother, telling her that he is about to reach the comedic ‘big time’, Penny replies in total deadpan disbelief, but don’t you have to be funny to be a comedian? The poor guy can’t catch a break.
Arthur attends a stand-up comedy show as he scribbles notes in his joke book during the routine. When the audience laughs, Arthur laughs in an inauthentic high-pitched squeal as he looks around, gauging the reaction of others. This is not the only time he tries to intellectually grasp a basic emotion. Arthur has echopraxia, an involuntary mirroring of observed actions. This is generally seen in those with a secondary psychosis. And psychopathy. When there is no empathy to draw from, the antisocial personality stealthily observes the reactions and expression of others as a means of fitting in.
Echopraxia is an echophenomena thought to involve a system of specific groups of mirror neurons (MNS) in a region of the frontal cortex called the inferior frontal gyrus. In Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) or what we used to refer to as sociopathy, there is a disconnect in the area of the PFC that regulates empathy. Individuals without empathy have no idea what if anything they are missing in much the same way someone who is born blind can possibly know what yellow looks like, and so they learn to appear normal through imitation of those around them.
The MNS begins development shortly after birth when the primary caregiver gazes up close and personal into the eyes of the baby, and the baby, attempting to copy the mother’s facial expression, in turn elicits even more dynamic expression. This is called Serve and Return in which the primary caretaker, usually the mother, and the infant are engaged in a mirroring back and forth exchange. In so doing, the mother is encouraged by the thought that her baby is engaging with her in a loving, meaningful manner, unaware that the baby, not yet old enough to engage in an emotionally reciprocal manner, is unwittingly enabling the mother to mimic the facial muscles imperative for the formation of the baby’s brain development. You can see this in video “clip 1” at https://www.thetraumatizedbrain.com/the-video-cafe.html. This serve and return stimulation of the MNS, also stimulates the area of the PFC that is responsible for empathy. Without this engagement of the MNS, the baby will not develop normally as the developmental trajectory of the brain is highjacked whereby empathy becomes permanently blocked. One look at Penny and we can only imagine that baby Arthur did not stand a chance.
We are already aware that Arthur suffers from among other things, absent parenting from an inadequate mother and likely an absent father given his attachment or at the very least attachment-fantasy to Murray Franklin. It is becoming clear with each scene that Arthur appears to be an individual that has stopped forming somewhere in his early development. There is something missing to be sure, but we are not yet sure what it is or to the extent of the damage. But damaged he is.
Something is shifting for Arthur. While at home he scans his notes from the comedy club and suddenly smiles coyly, loosens his shoulders, tilts his head in an attempt to be seductive, and in his non-dominant left hand writes The worst part of having a mental illness is that people expect you to behave as if you don’t, with a smiley face planted inside the “O” of “DONT”. Once again, scenes are out of sequence as this was already in his notebook when the social worker was leafing through it.
The Metamorphosis:
We are hardly surprised when Arthur’s decompensation rapidly picks up its pace. He is fired from Ha-Ha’s for carrying a handgun to his favorite gig at the children’s hospital when he finds himself on the subway minding his own business and still in full clown greasepaint. Within moments he is bullied and badly beaten by three drunk Wall Street wunderkind who Arthur proceeds to shoot dead in self-defense. At least initially. As one of the three manages to leave the subway, wounded but very much alive, Arthur gives chase and fires the fatal shot on the stairwell directly in front of one of those signs etched on the subway wall: DANGER NO CLEARANCE. A fitting portend of things to come.
Shaken to his core Arthur runs fast and furious into a filthy dilapidated public bathroom. Once inside he leans against the door with both hands in a rather inane attempt to katy bar the door. It appears as if he is trying to keep out something dangerous. Yet the only thing there of course, is Arthur.
Momentarily transfixed by the consequential event, we watch as he dissociates, successfully splitting himself off from the tragedy. In full bore tai chi he begins to dance ever-so-slowly and painstakingly as he lifts his arms and moves about in a deliberate, yet expressive manner. In keeping with the duality of Arthur, we are now witness to the early stage of development into something that is not Arthur, a freeing from his cocoon set against a night sky in the utter squalor of a filthy, bleak, darkened hovel, a public restroom where men come to relieve themselves; a blossoming from the chains of oppression, and a header straight into the depths of degradation and hell.
Against all common sense and just moments after he assassinates his assailants, we are nonetheless swept up in the beauty of Arthur’s deeply moving early metamorphosis. Like the Gestalts figure-ground set against the visual stench, we see only this individual, transformed by trauma, this person who is no longer Arthur, who is instead, becoming.
Arthur’s dancing is key to much of his metamorphosis. Not unlike his PBA jags positively correlated with extreme nervousness and anxiety, his dance routine is negatively correlated with his episodes of extreme violence. As his acts of violence increase, his dance routine becomes more expressive, paradoxically, more joie de vivre. Polite constrained Arthur, riddled with shame, isolation, trauma, and mental illness, is becoming JOKER with every kill, every murder, every cold-blooded assassination.
We are hardly surprised when Arthur’s decompensation rapidly picks up its pace. He is fired from Ha-Ha’s for carrying a handgun to his favorite gig at the children’s hospital when he finds himself on the subway minding his own business and still in full clown greasepaint. Within moments he is bullied and badly beaten by three drunk Wall Street wunderkind who Arthur proceeds to shoot dead in self-defense. At least initially. As one of the three manages to leave the subway, wounded but very much alive, Arthur gives chase and fires the fatal shot on the stairwell directly in front of one of those signs etched on the subway wall: DANGER NO CLEARANCE. A fitting portend of things to come.
Shaken to his core Arthur runs fast and furious into a filthy dilapidated public bathroom. Once inside he leans against the door with both hands in a rather inane attempt to katy bar the door. It appears as if he is trying to keep out something dangerous. Yet the only thing there of course, is Arthur.
Momentarily transfixed by the consequential event, we watch as he dissociates, successfully splitting himself off from the tragedy. In full bore tai chi he begins to dance ever-so-slowly and painstakingly as he lifts his arms and moves about in a deliberate, yet expressive manner. In keeping with the duality of Arthur, we are now witness to the early stage of development into something that is not Arthur, a freeing from his cocoon set against a night sky in the utter squalor of a filthy, bleak, darkened hovel, a public restroom where men come to relieve themselves; a blossoming from the chains of oppression, and a header straight into the depths of degradation and hell.
Against all common sense and just moments after he assassinates his assailants, we are nonetheless swept up in the beauty of Arthur’s deeply moving early metamorphosis. Like the Gestalts figure-ground set against the visual stench, we see only this individual, transformed by trauma, this person who is no longer Arthur, who is instead, becoming.
Arthur’s dancing is key to much of his metamorphosis. Not unlike his PBA jags positively correlated with extreme nervousness and anxiety, his dance routine is negatively correlated with his episodes of extreme violence. As his acts of violence increase, his dance routine becomes more expressive, paradoxically, more joie de vivre. Polite constrained Arthur, riddled with shame, isolation, trauma, and mental illness, is becoming JOKER with every kill, every murder, every cold-blooded assassination.
The iconic stairway dancing scene is generally regarded as the pinnacle of the film. It is indeed a fantastic scene, but I disagree nonetheless. Rather, it is this scene, the deliberate and seamless transformation from Arthur to JOKER in the public restroom, where he is set free, separate and apart from the world around him, set to beautifully haunting music, amid the grime of the room, the chaos of the city, and the horror of the preceding events as he sheds the persona that was Arthur. The dance ends with his steady, deliberate, and expressionless stare at the large barely reflective mirror, with arms fully extended, absorbing the sight before him. Arthur is no more.
The new non-Arthur goes to Ha-Ha’s to collect his things but not before he knocks on his attractive neighbor’s door and takes her in his arms right then and there, a totally non-Arthur moment of bravura which, as we come to find out, never really happened. At Ha-Ha’s, he violently punches the time clock off the wall, but not before the clock reveals the time as 11:11.
When Arthur appears at his next visit with the social worker, he laughs – appropriately – and says I heard this song on the radio the other day and the guy was singing that his name was Carnival, which is crazy, because that’s my clown name. Once again Phillips is taking significant liberties with our reality testing. As non-Arthur leaves Ha-Ha’s he is bold and decisive, full of energy and engaged in life. As he exits the building, the song playing in the backdrop as part of the film score (as opposed to part of the scene itself) is called Carnival. The fact that non-Arthur heard this, tells us that reality and fantasy are conflated and reality is bleeding through. Or, is it the other way around? And whose reality, Arthur’s or ours? Or someone else’s altogether?
Non-Arthur tells the social worker until a while ago it was like nobody ever saw me, even I didn’t know if I really existed. But I DO, and people are starting to notice. In the final scenes JOKER reminds us that no one notices an Arthur, other than to step over the bodies as they lay dying.
Non-Arthur opens and reads a recent letter Penny wrote to Thomas Wayne where he is made aware for the first time, that he is actually the son of Thomas Wayne. Completely caught off guard and in full panic mode, Non-Arthur visits the wealthy and powerful Thomas Wayne at his estate but instead, comes upon his young son Bruce (who grows up to become the Batman). Not unlike the scene with Arthur and the boy on the bus, Non-Arthur entertains the boy with magic tricks and the two of them engage playfully. Non-Arthur is at once struck by the constrained demeanor of young Bruce. Thwarted by a gruff mean-spirited Alfred (unlike the kind, genteel Alfred Batman fans everywhere have come to know and admire), Non-Arthur makes a second attempt to speak with Thomas Wayne at the theatre and successfully confronts him in a kind, apologetic manner, in an effort to inform him that he is in fact the long-lost son, another bathroom scene. Thomas Wayne tells him that he is not the father, that his mother worked for him long ago and adopted a son (Arthur), but that she was “crazy”, became unglued, and had to be remanded to Arkham Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane wherein Wayne unceremoniously punches Non-Arthur in the nose. The scene ends with Non-Arthur leaning against the restroom sink. The next scene begins with Non-Arthur leaning against a counter in his kitchen in the identical manner.
With increased panic Non-Arthur manages to acquire the original hospital records from Arkham (no surprise considering HIPAA was not so much as a blip on the patient’s rights radar until 1996) wherein he sees the official documentation of his adoption, that he is not the son of Thomas Wayne, and that he was horribly abused, tied to a radiator, beaten repeatedly, left to starve, and suffered severe head injuries as a result of Penny sitting idly by allowing the boyfriend to have his way. He reads that Penny is diagnosed as psychotic. According to Thomas Wayne, we are led to believe that she also suffers from erotomania, the delusion of thinking an object of one’s affection is deeply in love with the person, when in reality, they are often barely if at all known by that person.
Completely irate at having been deeply betrayed by his mother, by Randall, and ultimately by Murray Franklin, Non-Arthur seeks revenge. First stop is Penny’s suffocation. Next up, the brutal and violent beating to death of co-worker Randall to a bloody pulp, wherein he is enroute for round three. Somewhere in-between the carnage, Non-Arthur receives a telephone call from Murray Franklin’s secretary telling him that Murray wants to book him on the show, to which a surprised Non-Arthur agrees. Really?
JOKER:
With the brutal slaying of Randall, every last remnant of Non-Arthur has fully devolved into JOKER. In an exquisitely choreographed scene he emerges from his apartment having stepped over the bludgeoned body of Randall, and set against the perfectly chosen tune of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part 2, JOKER struts down the hallway and once in the elevator turns toward the camera where we see the true, fully transformed JOKER for the first time. If his costume were black instead of a nauseating multitude of primary colors, and his blazer was instead a leather motorcycle jacket, JOKER would be the the prototypical sexy bad boy. I must admit that it was impossible to believe that Joaquin Phoenix was the same character that emerged as JOKER as sauntered down the hallway in full blown self-assured narcissistic bad boy. As he made his way to the top of the iconic staircase, JOKER begins his dance down the steps, one by one, in absolute joyous abandon. A rockin’ and rollin’ descent into unadulterated madness.
The new non-Arthur goes to Ha-Ha’s to collect his things but not before he knocks on his attractive neighbor’s door and takes her in his arms right then and there, a totally non-Arthur moment of bravura which, as we come to find out, never really happened. At Ha-Ha’s, he violently punches the time clock off the wall, but not before the clock reveals the time as 11:11.
When Arthur appears at his next visit with the social worker, he laughs – appropriately – and says I heard this song on the radio the other day and the guy was singing that his name was Carnival, which is crazy, because that’s my clown name. Once again Phillips is taking significant liberties with our reality testing. As non-Arthur leaves Ha-Ha’s he is bold and decisive, full of energy and engaged in life. As he exits the building, the song playing in the backdrop as part of the film score (as opposed to part of the scene itself) is called Carnival. The fact that non-Arthur heard this, tells us that reality and fantasy are conflated and reality is bleeding through. Or, is it the other way around? And whose reality, Arthur’s or ours? Or someone else’s altogether?
Non-Arthur tells the social worker until a while ago it was like nobody ever saw me, even I didn’t know if I really existed. But I DO, and people are starting to notice. In the final scenes JOKER reminds us that no one notices an Arthur, other than to step over the bodies as they lay dying.
Non-Arthur opens and reads a recent letter Penny wrote to Thomas Wayne where he is made aware for the first time, that he is actually the son of Thomas Wayne. Completely caught off guard and in full panic mode, Non-Arthur visits the wealthy and powerful Thomas Wayne at his estate but instead, comes upon his young son Bruce (who grows up to become the Batman). Not unlike the scene with Arthur and the boy on the bus, Non-Arthur entertains the boy with magic tricks and the two of them engage playfully. Non-Arthur is at once struck by the constrained demeanor of young Bruce. Thwarted by a gruff mean-spirited Alfred (unlike the kind, genteel Alfred Batman fans everywhere have come to know and admire), Non-Arthur makes a second attempt to speak with Thomas Wayne at the theatre and successfully confronts him in a kind, apologetic manner, in an effort to inform him that he is in fact the long-lost son, another bathroom scene. Thomas Wayne tells him that he is not the father, that his mother worked for him long ago and adopted a son (Arthur), but that she was “crazy”, became unglued, and had to be remanded to Arkham Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane wherein Wayne unceremoniously punches Non-Arthur in the nose. The scene ends with Non-Arthur leaning against the restroom sink. The next scene begins with Non-Arthur leaning against a counter in his kitchen in the identical manner.
With increased panic Non-Arthur manages to acquire the original hospital records from Arkham (no surprise considering HIPAA was not so much as a blip on the patient’s rights radar until 1996) wherein he sees the official documentation of his adoption, that he is not the son of Thomas Wayne, and that he was horribly abused, tied to a radiator, beaten repeatedly, left to starve, and suffered severe head injuries as a result of Penny sitting idly by allowing the boyfriend to have his way. He reads that Penny is diagnosed as psychotic. According to Thomas Wayne, we are led to believe that she also suffers from erotomania, the delusion of thinking an object of one’s affection is deeply in love with the person, when in reality, they are often barely if at all known by that person.
Completely irate at having been deeply betrayed by his mother, by Randall, and ultimately by Murray Franklin, Non-Arthur seeks revenge. First stop is Penny’s suffocation. Next up, the brutal and violent beating to death of co-worker Randall to a bloody pulp, wherein he is enroute for round three. Somewhere in-between the carnage, Non-Arthur receives a telephone call from Murray Franklin’s secretary telling him that Murray wants to book him on the show, to which a surprised Non-Arthur agrees. Really?
JOKER:
With the brutal slaying of Randall, every last remnant of Non-Arthur has fully devolved into JOKER. In an exquisitely choreographed scene he emerges from his apartment having stepped over the bludgeoned body of Randall, and set against the perfectly chosen tune of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part 2, JOKER struts down the hallway and once in the elevator turns toward the camera where we see the true, fully transformed JOKER for the first time. If his costume were black instead of a nauseating multitude of primary colors, and his blazer was instead a leather motorcycle jacket, JOKER would be the the prototypical sexy bad boy. I must admit that it was impossible to believe that Joaquin Phoenix was the same character that emerged as JOKER as sauntered down the hallway in full blown self-assured narcissistic bad boy. As he made his way to the top of the iconic staircase, JOKER begins his dance down the steps, one by one, in absolute joyous abandon. A rockin’ and rollin’ descent into unadulterated madness.
As JOKER struts toward the subway en route to his booking at the Murray Franklin show, we realize it is the same day of the massive protest against the wealthy and powerful (an unabashed take on the Occupy movement) in sympathy with the mysterious person wearing a clown mask who murdered the Wall Street Three, all of which are wearing clown masks. I couldn’t help but think of Anonymous and their ominous Guy Fawkes masks (where have they gone?).
Just prior to going on stage a surprised Murray Franklin asks him if his JOKER costume has anything to do with the protests happening outside. He replies No, I don’t believe in any of that, I don’t believe in anything. As the curtain opens JOKER makes a brash entrance with a dramatic version of his characteristic dance; we know trouble is afoot. Cocky and full of swagger, JOKER proceeds to give the Dr Ruth look-alike guest a long-held smooch right on her kisser. The clock in the studio reads 10:40. We have no illusion that JOKER is there to do anything but confront Murray Franklin and we brace for what we know is in store. In front of a live studio and a nationally televised audience, JOKER calmly tells Murray that he is the one that murdered the Wall Street Three, claiming zero empathy and failing to understand why everyone is so concerned.
JOKER decides to tell the audience that it was he that murdered the Wall Street Three. As if offering a defense, he claims Everybody is awful these days, it’s enough to make you crazy… If it was me dying on the sidewalk, you’d walk all over me. I pass you every day and you don’t notice me… Have you seen what it’s like out there Murr-Ray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other; nobody is civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it’s like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don’t. They think that we’ll just sit there and take it like good little boys, that we won’t werewolf and go wild. Working himself up into a screaming tirade, he turns directly to Murray; How about another joke Murray? What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve and rising to his feet he shoots Murray Franklin in the head at point blank range, as the studio scrambles to switch the live feed.
While many might be reminded of the movie Network, I immediately thought of the very real and terribly tragic 1974 suicide of news anchor Christine Chubbuck who shot herself in the head on a live TV broadcast. Not unlike Arthur, Ms. Chubbuck was depressed, felt unseen and socially alienated, and had expressed her incessant dissatisfaction with television news as something that is newsworthy only when it is associated with bloody gore. As she was wrapping up her broadcast her last statement she said the following: In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts’ and in living color, you are going to see another first, an attempted suicide, as she raised the .38 caliber handgun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Just prior to going on stage a surprised Murray Franklin asks him if his JOKER costume has anything to do with the protests happening outside. He replies No, I don’t believe in any of that, I don’t believe in anything. As the curtain opens JOKER makes a brash entrance with a dramatic version of his characteristic dance; we know trouble is afoot. Cocky and full of swagger, JOKER proceeds to give the Dr Ruth look-alike guest a long-held smooch right on her kisser. The clock in the studio reads 10:40. We have no illusion that JOKER is there to do anything but confront Murray Franklin and we brace for what we know is in store. In front of a live studio and a nationally televised audience, JOKER calmly tells Murray that he is the one that murdered the Wall Street Three, claiming zero empathy and failing to understand why everyone is so concerned.
JOKER decides to tell the audience that it was he that murdered the Wall Street Three. As if offering a defense, he claims Everybody is awful these days, it’s enough to make you crazy… If it was me dying on the sidewalk, you’d walk all over me. I pass you every day and you don’t notice me… Have you seen what it’s like out there Murr-Ray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other; nobody is civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it’s like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don’t. They think that we’ll just sit there and take it like good little boys, that we won’t werewolf and go wild. Working himself up into a screaming tirade, he turns directly to Murray; How about another joke Murray? What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve and rising to his feet he shoots Murray Franklin in the head at point blank range, as the studio scrambles to switch the live feed.
While many might be reminded of the movie Network, I immediately thought of the very real and terribly tragic 1974 suicide of news anchor Christine Chubbuck who shot herself in the head on a live TV broadcast. Not unlike Arthur, Ms. Chubbuck was depressed, felt unseen and socially alienated, and had expressed her incessant dissatisfaction with television news as something that is newsworthy only when it is associated with bloody gore. As she was wrapping up her broadcast her last statement she said the following: In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts’ and in living color, you are going to see another first, an attempted suicide, as she raised the .38 caliber handgun to her head and pulled the trigger.
As JOKER is escorted in a police car to the station, the perfectly chosen Cream’s White Room plays as he dreamily stares out onto the street and sees the clown-masked protesters going rogue and creating anarchy as the city erupts in chaos. All smiles, he tells the officers he finds the chaos beautiful. It is at this moment that a protester-commandeered ambulance smashes into the police car, killing the officers and ever-so-gently removing the badly bleeding but still alive JOKER, lovingly placing him on the hood of the smashed car. The crowds gather around to worship their idol as he climbs onto the top of the police car (a la’ Michael Jackson after his sexual assault verdict) and performs his characteristic dance in bloody full abandon, making sure to paint that characteristic smile with his blood.
In the last scene we see what appears to be a handcuffed Arthur dressed in hospital whites sitting in a white hospital room with a microphone pointed at him, across from a psychiatrist that looks remarkably like a more polished version of the social worker from the early scenes. Arthur is laughing in a manner similar to his PBA laugh, but with no attempt to calm himself down as if it is natural. In reply to the psychiatrist asking him what is so funny he tells her I was just thinking of a joke as the camera switches to the dark alley, eerily reminiscent of the one where Arthur was thwacked with the ‘going out of business sign’, and where Bruce Wayne is standing over the dead bodies of his parents that were murdered by a man wearing a clown mask but who was clearly not one of the protesters. When asked if he would share the joke, Arthur says without making eye contact and under his breadth you wouldn’t get it.
While looking directly at the psychiatrist, Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life begins playing in the background as he quietly sings: That’s life, and as funny as it may seem, some people get their kicks stomping on a dream, but I don’t let it get me down, because this fine old world, it keeps spinning around… The camera cuts to Arthur walking out of the room, still handcuffed, and as he walks down the hall, with each lift of his leg we see a bloody shoe print. The next stanza of That’s Life gives us the final clue we need...
I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate
A poet, a pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race.
As he arrives at the end of the hall he slowly and effortlessly begins his dancing routine until an orderly begins to give chase.
The last lines of the movie are similar to a scene from the last Batman movie wherein the Alfred character played by Michael Caine tries to explain the otherwise unexplainable psychopathy of the joker’s actions. He tells Bruce Wayne Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with; some men just want to watch the world burn.
In keeping with what we know about JOKER’s dance routine, Arthur’s last dance is supposed to alert us that he murdered the psychiatrist. But how would that be possible while still handcuffed? And were that the case, why was Arthur’s pristine white hospital outfit and his hands completely spotless, not a drop of blood anywhere, not to mention the unlikelihood of leaving perfectly formed bloody footprints.
The last scene tells the story of the entire movie signifying that much if not all of the past two hours was not what it appeared, that we somehow got it all wrong. Here is what we were led to believe…
My Interpretation:
Popular consensus seems to be that Arthur never really left Arkham Hospital, that he had been an inpatient the entire time fabricating most of the scenes as a result of his delusional disorder and PTSD, and, conflating some of the factual scenes including his childhood. Some say that the ‘joke’ Arthur refuses to reveal to the psychiatrist at the end, is that it has always been Arthur, there never was a JOKER, or that there was never an Arthur, it has all been JOKER.
I have a different take altogether.
The only factual scene in the entire movie took place in those few minutes at the end when Arthur was sitting in the white hospital room across from the psychiatrist. Everything that occurred prior to that brief scene, including the final hallway scene the moment he leaves the psychiatrist, never existed anywhere other than in this man’s imagination.
This individual is neither Arthur nor JOKER, and he was never in Arkham Psychiatric Hospital until his arrest and psychiatric intake at the end of the movie. We know this because he is handcuffed with a microphone, a scenario that only occurs when an individual is first admitted. Once a resident, there is no need for a microphone, or the visit in an Observation Room with a lone psychiatrist. He is in the Observation Room of Arkham, the same room we saw in Arthur’s first ‘flashback’ and it probably occurred at 11:11. The three clocks that were set at 11:11 was our first hint that what we were seeing was a product of this man’s mind.
Some (but certainly not all) of these scenes were true at least from an informational perspective. But did they actually occur anywhere other than in this man’s imagination, in the telling of it? No.
Considering that the only factual portion of the movie takes place in those few moments at the end, it stands to reason that everything that occurred during that scene is likely also real and the only scene the camera focuses on is that of the alley where young Bruce Wayne is standing, motionless, over the bodies of his just murdered parents. Therefore, the man in handcuffs talking to the psychiatrist is the same man that most likely shot the Wayne’s for which he was captured and brought to Arkham; just your average marauding psychopath.
There may or may not have ever been riots or protesters wearing clown masks. The man sitting in the psychiatric hospital is a psychopath with a gift for story construction. He has no relation to the Wayne’s; he was simply a low-brow criminal that - maybe - followed the famous family as they exited the movie theatre dressed to the nine’s and seized the opportunity as they walked into the dark dank alley. He chose not to take Mrs. Wayne’s pearl necklace because money is not what he was after. He is just another empathy-devoid psychopath that simply wanted to watch the world burn, hence the dramatic cut of the pearl necklace.
Did this man also murder the Wall Street Three? Maybe, maybe not, if in fact these murders actually occurred. Did he murder Murray Franklin on live TV? No. It is doubtful that Murray was murdered at all, it may have just been a character that this man loathed. Did he murder Penny? He may have murdered his mother and it may have been a Penny-like character. Maybe, maybe not. Did he murder Randall? There may not have been an actual Randall or a Ha-Ha’s. What does fit is that anyone that he felt betrayed by was likely murdered either in his thoughts or in real life, but that he took liberties with his storyline. The whole clown get-up was nothing more than dramatic imagery.
The Message:
Birds born in a cage, think flying is an illness.
~ Alejandro Jodorowsky ~
His psychopathy notwithstanding, this man was able to cleverly and accurately cobble together a story that demonstrates the pervasive indignities and ensuing psychological unraveling when the vulnerable members of a society are tossed aside, their cries for help ignored, guidance and direction removed, and ultimately left to fend for themselves. He just may not have been that particular person.
JOKER tells the story of a preventable uprising between the haves and have-nots, between the resilient and the vulnerable, those that were lucky enough to have been dealt a good-enough early hand and those that began life through no fault of their own, on fragile footing. Through the story arc of Arthur and JOKER, we are presented with the stark reality of how trauma begets trauma and how trauma’s intergenerational legacy impacts and eventually creates traumatized societies.
Whether or not the narration was accurate concerning the individual we came to know as Arthur (and I do not believe this man was ever Arthur), the deep character study that portrayed him as a broken man, a product of Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) from severe early childhood maltreatment, was spot on. We know that early childhood trauma during the critical years of neurodevelopment for certain regions of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex and limbic areas, highjack normal neural development, altering both the structural and biochemical aspects of the brain.
Years of research has corroborated the fact that veterans and active-duty service members with combat-related PTSD have a significantly larger amygdala, a region responsible for negative emotions such as fear, aggression, and anxiety, then their counterparts with other brain injuries, but not PTSD, and those with no neural impairment and no PTSD. Similarly, we have known for the past few decades that traumatized children have a decrease in the size of their hippocampus, an area of the limbic system responsible for the processing of certain types of memory and emotions. Often we see traumatized children develop an alexithymia secondary to their post-traumatic stress resulting in the inability to identify and label their feelings and thoughts, a type of emotional numbness or blindness that renders these children without the ability to tell their story of what happened to them, an absolutely essential ingredient in healing. We saw this clearly illustrated with the Arthur character.
A plethora of research on survivors of the Holocaust and their offspring, and the children of their offspring, have provided us with a tremendous window with which to understand the effect of trauma and intergenerational impact on entire families and communities. The 2005 movie Syriana presented an albeit simplistic but understandable and decent picture of the enculturation of trauma within entire societies that are then passed down through the generations.
When large segments of a population have been exposed to chronic inescapable trauma, those that develop PTSD have altered portions of their limbic-prefrontal regions that in turn alter the functioning of those areas that target the executive functions of organization and planning, decision-making, judgment, attentional processes, working memory, cognitive flexibility, novel problem solving, impulse control, self-monitoring, regulation of emotions, multi-tasking, task prioritization, and goal-setting among other vital cognitive functioning. These areas of developmental impairment are susceptible to epigenetic gene modification, meaning, that these areas of psychological impairment, even absent any physical touch, are passed down to one’s offspring much the same way that our DNA is passed on.
Imagine if you will, what just a single generation can pass on through epigenetic heritability to an entire population in the relative blink of an evolutionary eye. Add to that the environmental, learned aspects of children being raised by parents or caregivers or an entire village with PTSD, and the picture quickly becomes alarming.
Despite basing the premise of the movie upon a comic book action figure, JOKER stands alone as a brilliantly executed societal wake-up call couched within the genre of a psychological thriller. A two-hour imaginatively crafted montage of a story arc that never actually happened. But could. And will, if we continue along the familiar path of collectively turning a blind eye to those among us who are most in need.
In the last scene we see what appears to be a handcuffed Arthur dressed in hospital whites sitting in a white hospital room with a microphone pointed at him, across from a psychiatrist that looks remarkably like a more polished version of the social worker from the early scenes. Arthur is laughing in a manner similar to his PBA laugh, but with no attempt to calm himself down as if it is natural. In reply to the psychiatrist asking him what is so funny he tells her I was just thinking of a joke as the camera switches to the dark alley, eerily reminiscent of the one where Arthur was thwacked with the ‘going out of business sign’, and where Bruce Wayne is standing over the dead bodies of his parents that were murdered by a man wearing a clown mask but who was clearly not one of the protesters. When asked if he would share the joke, Arthur says without making eye contact and under his breadth you wouldn’t get it.
While looking directly at the psychiatrist, Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life begins playing in the background as he quietly sings: That’s life, and as funny as it may seem, some people get their kicks stomping on a dream, but I don’t let it get me down, because this fine old world, it keeps spinning around… The camera cuts to Arthur walking out of the room, still handcuffed, and as he walks down the hall, with each lift of his leg we see a bloody shoe print. The next stanza of That’s Life gives us the final clue we need...
I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate
A poet, a pawn and a king
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race.
As he arrives at the end of the hall he slowly and effortlessly begins his dancing routine until an orderly begins to give chase.
The last lines of the movie are similar to a scene from the last Batman movie wherein the Alfred character played by Michael Caine tries to explain the otherwise unexplainable psychopathy of the joker’s actions. He tells Bruce Wayne Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with; some men just want to watch the world burn.
In keeping with what we know about JOKER’s dance routine, Arthur’s last dance is supposed to alert us that he murdered the psychiatrist. But how would that be possible while still handcuffed? And were that the case, why was Arthur’s pristine white hospital outfit and his hands completely spotless, not a drop of blood anywhere, not to mention the unlikelihood of leaving perfectly formed bloody footprints.
The last scene tells the story of the entire movie signifying that much if not all of the past two hours was not what it appeared, that we somehow got it all wrong. Here is what we were led to believe…
- Life’s unrelenting harsh experiences transformed the mild-mannered and severely depressed Arthur into the murderous empathy-devoid psychopath that is JOKER.Arthur and JOKER together murdered seven people in cold blood, possibly nine if we include the Wayne’s.
- JOKER murdered those that betrayed him.
- That JOKER’s dance routine always occurred in relation to a murder, either directly prior or directly after a kill.
- Everything we ever knew prior to this movie regarding Thomas Wayne and Alfred being loving, kind, and altruist benefactors of the city was incorrect; we are instead to perceive these characters as vicious, cold-hearted, snakes-in-the-grass.
- Young Bruce Wayne was an especially aloof, detached child despite every known comic book and movie portraying young Bruce as a loving, attached child.
- A stranger wearing a clown mask murdered the Wayne’s.
- Arthur was an adopted child whose mother was not Penny Fleck and whose father was not Thomas Wayne.
- We are to understand the story arc in sequence despite the clocks showing either 11:11 (thrice), 10:30, and 10:40.
- The flashbacks were just that, scenes from Arthur’s life.
- That Arthur had been previously hospitalized in Arkham Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane sometime prior to 1981, only to be readmitted after murdering talk show host Murray Franklin on live television.
- By shooting the Wall Street Three and ultimately murdering Murray Franklin, JOKER became a demigod for Gotham’s disenfranchised.
My Interpretation:
Popular consensus seems to be that Arthur never really left Arkham Hospital, that he had been an inpatient the entire time fabricating most of the scenes as a result of his delusional disorder and PTSD, and, conflating some of the factual scenes including his childhood. Some say that the ‘joke’ Arthur refuses to reveal to the psychiatrist at the end, is that it has always been Arthur, there never was a JOKER, or that there was never an Arthur, it has all been JOKER.
I have a different take altogether.
The only factual scene in the entire movie took place in those few minutes at the end when Arthur was sitting in the white hospital room across from the psychiatrist. Everything that occurred prior to that brief scene, including the final hallway scene the moment he leaves the psychiatrist, never existed anywhere other than in this man’s imagination.
This individual is neither Arthur nor JOKER, and he was never in Arkham Psychiatric Hospital until his arrest and psychiatric intake at the end of the movie. We know this because he is handcuffed with a microphone, a scenario that only occurs when an individual is first admitted. Once a resident, there is no need for a microphone, or the visit in an Observation Room with a lone psychiatrist. He is in the Observation Room of Arkham, the same room we saw in Arthur’s first ‘flashback’ and it probably occurred at 11:11. The three clocks that were set at 11:11 was our first hint that what we were seeing was a product of this man’s mind.
Some (but certainly not all) of these scenes were true at least from an informational perspective. But did they actually occur anywhere other than in this man’s imagination, in the telling of it? No.
Considering that the only factual portion of the movie takes place in those few moments at the end, it stands to reason that everything that occurred during that scene is likely also real and the only scene the camera focuses on is that of the alley where young Bruce Wayne is standing, motionless, over the bodies of his just murdered parents. Therefore, the man in handcuffs talking to the psychiatrist is the same man that most likely shot the Wayne’s for which he was captured and brought to Arkham; just your average marauding psychopath.
There may or may not have ever been riots or protesters wearing clown masks. The man sitting in the psychiatric hospital is a psychopath with a gift for story construction. He has no relation to the Wayne’s; he was simply a low-brow criminal that - maybe - followed the famous family as they exited the movie theatre dressed to the nine’s and seized the opportunity as they walked into the dark dank alley. He chose not to take Mrs. Wayne’s pearl necklace because money is not what he was after. He is just another empathy-devoid psychopath that simply wanted to watch the world burn, hence the dramatic cut of the pearl necklace.
Did this man also murder the Wall Street Three? Maybe, maybe not, if in fact these murders actually occurred. Did he murder Murray Franklin on live TV? No. It is doubtful that Murray was murdered at all, it may have just been a character that this man loathed. Did he murder Penny? He may have murdered his mother and it may have been a Penny-like character. Maybe, maybe not. Did he murder Randall? There may not have been an actual Randall or a Ha-Ha’s. What does fit is that anyone that he felt betrayed by was likely murdered either in his thoughts or in real life, but that he took liberties with his storyline. The whole clown get-up was nothing more than dramatic imagery.
The Message:
Birds born in a cage, think flying is an illness.
~ Alejandro Jodorowsky ~
His psychopathy notwithstanding, this man was able to cleverly and accurately cobble together a story that demonstrates the pervasive indignities and ensuing psychological unraveling when the vulnerable members of a society are tossed aside, their cries for help ignored, guidance and direction removed, and ultimately left to fend for themselves. He just may not have been that particular person.
JOKER tells the story of a preventable uprising between the haves and have-nots, between the resilient and the vulnerable, those that were lucky enough to have been dealt a good-enough early hand and those that began life through no fault of their own, on fragile footing. Through the story arc of Arthur and JOKER, we are presented with the stark reality of how trauma begets trauma and how trauma’s intergenerational legacy impacts and eventually creates traumatized societies.
Whether or not the narration was accurate concerning the individual we came to know as Arthur (and I do not believe this man was ever Arthur), the deep character study that portrayed him as a broken man, a product of Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) from severe early childhood maltreatment, was spot on. We know that early childhood trauma during the critical years of neurodevelopment for certain regions of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex and limbic areas, highjack normal neural development, altering both the structural and biochemical aspects of the brain.
Years of research has corroborated the fact that veterans and active-duty service members with combat-related PTSD have a significantly larger amygdala, a region responsible for negative emotions such as fear, aggression, and anxiety, then their counterparts with other brain injuries, but not PTSD, and those with no neural impairment and no PTSD. Similarly, we have known for the past few decades that traumatized children have a decrease in the size of their hippocampus, an area of the limbic system responsible for the processing of certain types of memory and emotions. Often we see traumatized children develop an alexithymia secondary to their post-traumatic stress resulting in the inability to identify and label their feelings and thoughts, a type of emotional numbness or blindness that renders these children without the ability to tell their story of what happened to them, an absolutely essential ingredient in healing. We saw this clearly illustrated with the Arthur character.
A plethora of research on survivors of the Holocaust and their offspring, and the children of their offspring, have provided us with a tremendous window with which to understand the effect of trauma and intergenerational impact on entire families and communities. The 2005 movie Syriana presented an albeit simplistic but understandable and decent picture of the enculturation of trauma within entire societies that are then passed down through the generations.
When large segments of a population have been exposed to chronic inescapable trauma, those that develop PTSD have altered portions of their limbic-prefrontal regions that in turn alter the functioning of those areas that target the executive functions of organization and planning, decision-making, judgment, attentional processes, working memory, cognitive flexibility, novel problem solving, impulse control, self-monitoring, regulation of emotions, multi-tasking, task prioritization, and goal-setting among other vital cognitive functioning. These areas of developmental impairment are susceptible to epigenetic gene modification, meaning, that these areas of psychological impairment, even absent any physical touch, are passed down to one’s offspring much the same way that our DNA is passed on.
Imagine if you will, what just a single generation can pass on through epigenetic heritability to an entire population in the relative blink of an evolutionary eye. Add to that the environmental, learned aspects of children being raised by parents or caregivers or an entire village with PTSD, and the picture quickly becomes alarming.
Despite basing the premise of the movie upon a comic book action figure, JOKER stands alone as a brilliantly executed societal wake-up call couched within the genre of a psychological thriller. A two-hour imaginatively crafted montage of a story arc that never actually happened. But could. And will, if we continue along the familiar path of collectively turning a blind eye to those among us who are most in need.
JOKER has just been nominated for 11 Academy Award Oscar nominations
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