The Joker came out in 2019 and has been an incredible success. It goes without saying that the Joker is the most psychologically interesting character. He’s known for being the villain’s perfect embodiment. As said in The Dark Knight, the joker does not care for revenge, his only interest is bringing chaos. Why? Well, why not, after all, “madness is like gravity, all it needs is a little push” (The Dark Knight – Heath Ledger)
But how could a man turn into the monster we all know? The Joker gives us a new explanation of how a man could have turned into such a Chaos Creator. Indeed in 1989, creating the Joker required to throw him into huge chemical waste, but in 2019 creating the Joker is only about throwing him into society.
We could speak for hours on how the Joker is mentally twisted and how damaged he is. But today we’ll work on the impact of society on mental illness and mainly on society’s lack of caring about mental illness, here leading Arthur Fleck to become the Joker.
Arthur Fleck suffers from a Neurological disease that causes him uncontrollable laugh after a cranial trauma. This disability excludes him from society in many ways, he’s being misjudged and treated as a lunatic. Eventually, this disease and the social environment he’s living in, causes him to also suffer from depression. He’s followed by a social worker only to get his medication. These sessions are supposed to be the replacement for therapy but Arthur himself expressed a lack of listening. “You never listen do you?”. The fact that Arthur is not followed by a qualified professional as the means of therapy, is proof of society’s lack of investment in health care. Every week she asks the same questions, part of a protocol but in no way a therapy because Arthur’s answers do not matter. It will only ensure that Arthur is still depressed enough to have access to the medication. Arthur has never tried to hide his pain, his depression, or his daily struggles. Neither his feeling of none existence “All I have are negatives thoughts”. But somehow, nothing ever changes. During these sessions Arthur says something very alarming: “I didn’t even know if I existed. Now I do. And people are starting to notice” Indeed, after a long time of feeling neglected and transparent, he is, all of the sudden, the centre of attention. If people are starting to notice his existence, this must have been because of consequences or actions. In his case, it’s murder. Here, none of his words were taken into consideration nor his emotions. A true professional would have asked “What happened that made you exist again?” or “What differences in your behavior or your actions made you noticeable to people?”.
Furthermore, Arthur expresses many times, through jokes, the struggles he must face with society. Two of his jokes are: “I hope that my death makes more cents than my life” and “The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t 🙂”. They’re both absolutely heartbreaking. They represent a high level of depression and should alarm the social worker on suicidal thoughts. Those quotes are one of the many societal criticisms expressed in the movie. Indeed, it might feel like society teaches you how to hide your illness rather more than dealing with it and making sure you are safely taking care of.
Our job as psychologists is not to convince the patient that he’s not suffering nor to teach him how to fake “normal life”. We guide the patient as much as the patient guides us. We’re here to work on how to deal with the disease, how to achieve the patient’s goals, and achieve his purpose. The whole purpose of therapy is to help the patient realizing his capacities and resources within himself. The patient is nonother than any human being, untitled to his emotions and his way of life. We help him having the most secure and stable environment.
And yet, in modern society shown in this movie, the only way to own status, the only way to be someone is by pretending. Arthur will follow this rule of trying to be like everyone else, trying, again and again, to just pretend. But this will be a huge failure and it will get to a point where suicide feels like the only and best “option”. He plans to kill himself during a Live Show. But at the last humiliation, Arthur gives up on sadness and on being society’s trash “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you deserve!” And instead of shooting himself with a gun, he shoots at the Host’s head. Those will be the last word as Arthur Fleck and the first word as the Joker. His criminality is due to the lack of mental health care, lack of education, lack of treatment, and lack of listening.
At the end of the movie, Arthur has been hospitalized in a mental facility. During his interview with a psychologist, he laughs and sings to himself. When the therapist asks him why he simply answers out of a whisper “You wouldn’t get it”. Indeed, Arthur embraces being an “outcast” and being abandoned by society. He decides to pursue his whole idea of bringing chaos. He does not care for revenge because the life he lived made absolutely no sense, and all he cares about is to enjoy and having fun by destroying life around, the way his life was destroyed. Arthur abandoned the idea of a cure and all hope he had to ever live a “normal” life. Instead, he chooses to be his own cure and dissociates himself from reality as the only means to survive “I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realized it’s a comedy”.
In conclusion, even though The Joker is a Marvel character, the movie perfectly reflects society’s way to deal with mental health. Indeed the action happens in the United States but this should remind us that even nowadays, a mentally ill person could still suffer from loneliness and lack of caring.
Words I have learned: “rather more than”: plutôt que/ “Chemical waste” : déchet chimique/ “neglected” : négliger/ “nowadays”: de nos jours