REVIEW | A SOCIAL ANALYSIS OF JOKER THE FILM [CONTAINS SPOILERS]

By • On Uncategorized

“The worst part of hav­ing a men­tal ill­ness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.”

I watched ‘Joker’ dur­ing men­tal health aware­ness week, and I was blown away. As films go this was a piece of art at its finest. It was thought pro­vok­ing and much much was left open to inter­pret­a­tion, every­one watch­ing this will take from it some­thing dif­fer­ent based on their per­son­al life exper­i­ences. It was raw, bold and not for every­one but some­thing every­one is affected by.

Against a very icon­ic 1970’s Gotham City (that New York feel), I loved the little things like see­ing the graf­fiti on the sub­way! We also see news about rat infest­a­tions which have plagued New York for a while. The scene is set perfectly.

The main prot­ag­on­ist – Arthur Fleck played by Joa­quin Phoenix (who asks to be referred to as ‘Joker’ later on) is a loner, strug­gling in his day job as a clown and stand-up comedi­an by night. He is bul­lied and left feel­ing isol­ated from soci­ety. His story is a very insight­ful look into the for­got­ten class and explor­a­tion of socioeco­nom­ic divides, and I think this is the reas­on which has made many people feel uncom­fort­able about the film.

This film has received a very polar­iz­ing response for its viol­ence and take on men­tal ill­ness. Many labelling it insens­it­ive in light of ‘lone wolf’ ter­ror­ist attacks which have taken place. Whilst these have been tra­gedies, per­son­ally I do not see the con­nec­tion with this film. I feel it is an import­ant time to look into the root causes of men­tal ill­ness and this film does a very good job of explor­ing that through the isol­a­tion of people with the media being a con­trib­ut­ing factor. Com­ing from a refresh­ing angle – not one of race the mes­sage should have mass appeal to any groups who feel they have been neg­lected by soci­ety, this makes it powerful.

I think it’s a very real reflec­tion of Amer­ic­an soci­ety where health­care comes at a price not every­one can afford. Men­tal Ill­ness often doesn’t get treated (as we saw fund­ing cuts in the film). This can lead to fur­ther ali­en­a­tion from soci­ety and its con­structs. Arthur also devel­ops a strong dis­like for Thomas Wayne who doesn’t help his dying moth­er in poverty after she had spent many years work­ing for the Wayne’s.

Today social media has a heavy influ­ence on our lives, and it was inter­est­ing to see the use of media in Joker. At first Arthur was a fan of a cheesy talk show host Mur­ray Frank­lin played by Robert De Niro. He then real­ised, he had become manip­u­lated and turned into its laugh­ing stock for rat­ings. This real­isa­tion caused him to regain con­trol of the situ­ation by killing Mur­ray live on air which is what sparked mass move­ments. I felt this was a sym­bol for the up rise of the under­dog in soci­ety to pull against the mass media for social justice and expos­ure of the truth. It was unclear if this happened or was just a hal­lu­cin­a­tion, per­haps some­thing often ima­gined by those neg­lected by the more well off in society.

A dark and gritty film, but a beau­ti­ful reflec­tion of reality.

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