The Dark Truth Of The Joker Movie

Gotham Falls

The Joker trailer already shows Todd Phillips giving those Gothamites their voice and we've seen hints of their movement. They are the clowns hinted at in news footage. They are, somewhat shockingly, the inspiration for Joker's look.

Joker is a story of how there's a revolution, French Revolution style, focused on "eating the rich" or dethroning them or equaling the playing field. Briefly, the trailer shows Shea Whigham's character being attacked on the subway while in evening wear. Later, you see Thomas Wayne as the personification of the rich elite. And there's very much a grimly fitting idea of the Waynes' later murder being a killing not just as a means to rob them, but as a means to do the same thing the clowns are seeking: to level things out.

The clowns are clearly trying to take back Gotham, and they - unwittingly probably - inspire Arthur.

When we meet him, Arthur Fleck is ostracised, abused, vulnerable and he finds his place and validation amongst the mob after being cast off by his therapist, abandoned by his mother (who dies) and shunned by his neighbour who he is in love with. He's beaten up in the street for seemingly no reason while at work and then laughed at when he follows his dream of being a stand-up comedian. He is, unfortunately, keenly available as a target for indoctrination or to use it another, more popular word these days, radicalisation.

In the clowns, he sees his own people - rather bluntly drawn together by his job requiring him to dress as a clown and their adoption of the imagery for their movement - and more importantly he sees a community he can feel comfortable in that also actively wants to amplify his voice. They nourish his fears, twisting his own experiences into the results of what the elite have done. They weaponise him and he adopts their image in a more extreme way, becoming not just a man dressed as a clown but Joker.

This is all very smart, but there are dangers here, because we are actively being told that Joker is the portrait of a man with mental health problems who becomes the Joker. Not, as The Killing Joke says more overtly, a man who had the absolute worst of all possible days and broke. No, an already "broken" man.

We're being shown the portrait of a man - a fantasist, seemingly - who warped a real political movement that saw a recruitment opportunity in him into a true calling. By the end, don't be at all surprised if Joker imagines himself to be the leader of that protest and is validated by their agenda for change to do whatever he personally wants to do. So he'll take out everything from his past - his relationship with his mother, his link to Thomas Wayne, Murray Franklin mocking him and yes, his existing mental health issues - under the pretence that he is some sort of revolutionary in his own head.

But at the same time, you really do have to question what that's saying about people with mental health problems.

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