Joker: In a crazy world, anyone can be a joker

How close are we to being “Joker”? This question sounds ridiculous. The Joker is probably the most celebrated villain in the superhero universe, and Joker is the first movie to center entirely on him. Millions saw him as a symbol of madness and evil. However, in the movie joker, we see Gotham city full of cruelty and darkness, where everyone is living in a self-centered way, watching others' everything coldly. As the main character, Arthur has been ridiculed for his mental illness, and it is these unwilling passers-by on the street or the audience Shouting "not funny, change now" on the talk show that makes the Joker together. The main m of Joker describes how Arthur Fleck is transformed into a Joker, allowing the audience to redefine the so-called good and evil from the perspective of previous "villains". Here joker is no longer a genius villain with a high IQ and a lot of money. On the contrary, the joker is so real and ordinary that it is quite frightening, because it is so close to life, representing an image of the social class fringe and the bottom, who are ignored and cannot fight against the capitalist system. That's why it's so easy to think that in a crazy world, everyone is not that far from the joker.

Is our world an enlarged Gotham city?" Do I think too much, or is the world getting too crazy? This sentence, say how much of the social bottom edge of the people's feelings of survival? It can even be said that this sentence expresses how many people in the real world are constantly impacted by this information explosion. The film begins by presenting a hopeless and chaotic Gotham city through the narration of the news and the accumulation of garbage bags in the scene. In the movie, Gotham city's color palette is mostly blue and somber. Let the audience directly feel the city's indifference. In terms of composition, the distant view of Gotham city or the close-up view of Arthur's home can make the audience feel a sense of oppression. This is because the composition is full. Whether you're walking down the street or shooting from the top of a large vista, you can feel the tall buildings crowding the scene. This also constitutes a depressing atmosphere. The story is set in the 1980s, the worst time in New York City's history. But despite the age difference, this is only a magnifying point of social contradictions, these problems still exist in our current society. Lucas and Sylla (2003) suggests that developing countries are now being left behind as rich countries shift to the "new economy". Not just in a country, but in a society where the gap between rich and poor is widening. The bystanders who are robbed, the people who laugh at the dreams of others, and the selfish colleagues who blame others for their jobs are all real people in the world. And when these things appear in real-world news, do we ask ourselves the same question? The world pushes the boundaries of our understanding of the world every day. Societies with too large a gap between rich and poor are also breeding grounds for crime(Reiman& Leighton, 2015). Braithwaite (2013) argues that economic inequality itself worsens the crimes of the poor and the well-off. It increases the opportunities for crimes by the well-off and reduces the likelihood they will be held accountable to the criminal law. at the same time, inequality increase the humiliation of the poor who are surrounded by visions of “the good life” and feel responsible for their failure to attain it. Quote: "if I were rich, I would be kind", this movie is also about a society where the gap between rich and poor is too large, and people at the bottom of the society live a hard life until they finally take risks and even commit crimes. All of which is to say, if people are in a world that they think is unfair or crazy, they will try to resist, and the resistance can be either silent or violent. After Arthur was arrested, the police said he was responsible for the chaos in the city. Probably because Jokers are the cause of social chaos. But is that really the case? The riot at the end of the movie is actually an uprising calling for socialism, an uprising against capitalism. The joker is just a symbol. It's independent of the sign itself. Their madness is shaped by their experiences, which are shaped by the darkness of society. Not Arthur but someone else is going to be the Joker, the signal that the riot is going to start.

There is a scene in the movie in which an emotional crowd gathers outside the theater after Arthur shoots three members of the elite. Outside, there were chaotic protests, while inside, the rich were watching "modern times" in peace. "Modern times" tells the story of the 1930s economic depression in the United States, Chaplin played a worker Charlie non-stop work, finally to go crazy into a mental hospital, in the process, and became the protagonist of many social events. The most obvious example of modern times is its sympathy for the underclass and its caricature of the owners of capital, which is being watched with laughter by a group of capitalists in Gotham city. The irony of this scene is to send a message to the audience that the two films share a common theme. The rich ignore the suffering of the poor and even see their suffering as a comedy. As Arthur says in the movie, "I thought my life was a tragedy, but it was a comedy.” This scene also corresponds to this line. The gap between the rich and the poor in Gotham city, the people's hatred of the rich, the discrimination and exploitation of the rich class, the blind eye and indifference of the managers, is the real source of the chaos. And in this chaos, everyone is likely to express their demands through violence, because they have no other means.

Everyone has a Joker in their heart, just don't know when will appear. Most of the scenes about Arthur in the film use close shot and medium shot, let the audience focus on the emotional expression of Arthur, the environment factor is weakened. It brought the audience closer to Arthur. At the beginning of the movie, there is a thirty-eight-second long shot. Close shots and set shots are used to capture Arthur's guffawing, and a single shot sets the mood for the film. Also, Arthur doesn't suddenly become a Joker in the movie. Arthur and the joker seem to be two different personalities, they exist in one body. This can be seen in the character's emotional struggle from the close-up shot of Arthur trying to pull the corners of his mouth up while wearing Joker makeup, but falling into tears. Arthur and the joker seem to be two different personalities, they exist in one body. Until a series of events allowed the joker personality to break free and become the master of the body. One obvious example is when Arthur was writing a diary. First recorded with his right hand, "the worst thing about having a mental illness is...".Arthur suddenly switched to the Joker's left hand and scrawled, "people want you to act like a normal person. "The process soon revealed that two people were living in Arthur's body, one himself and the other a Joker. They're taking over the sovereignty of the body. This process is also the process of people's self-struggle. The content of this sentence not only shows that many people in this society are suppressing their inner life, but it is also difficult to follow the inner life. But for Arthur, if he is suffering from mental illness, it is not the most painful thing, the most painful thing is to behave like a normal person, and not be able to fully release his mental illness. But why suppress yourself and act like a normal person? Because the world cannot accept it. According to Arvaniti et al.,(2009), A's research shows that the less familiar people are with mental illness, the less acceptable it is. This shows that people are always used to resisting unfamiliar things, and the more they resist, the less familiar they become. This leads to prejudice. It causes people to suppress themselves in order not to be viewed with prejudice. The emotional transition between the joker and Arthur can also be felt in-camera language. The same steps. At first Arthur, on his way home, passed the steps and went up. At this point, the camera is shot by looking down, and Arthur's image is a down-hearted and fragile clown who is bent by life. At the end of the movie, when he was about to go on a TV show, the director gave him an upward look. He looked as if he had found himself. Although the overall style of the film is dark, which belongs to the commonly used style of depressive films, the mood of the characters is precisely conveyed by the two main colors of blue and warm yellow. The tonal whole at the beginning is very cold, only in the home just can appear warm light. With the liberation of the joker, the tone also slowly developed towards the warm tone. 

All it takes is one bad day for the most rational person to become insane. In this fast-paced and ludicrous world, most people have experienced unfair treatment. And everyone has a bad day and feels like something bad happened at the same time. Some people choose to compromise, some people choose to revenge society, some people choose to escape, some people choose to face up to. And the Joker's psychological process is most people have had the extreme psychological process. Social stress is one of the biggest threats to people's mental health in the world today(Schwartz&Meyer, 2010). Bad experiences eventually lead to mental health problems in society. From this perspective, Arthur is just a victim. If Arthur hadn't been robbed of the billboard, or if the therapist had been more serious, or if the mother on the bus had been more polite, would Arthur not have ended up a Joker?

The most controversial thing about the film is that many people say it rationalizes violence. Or it's very incendiary, it makes the audience empathize with the people who commit violent ACTS, or it makes the people who are unfortunate in their lives use violence. In the preview has caused a considerable degree of controversy, and even became a concern of the U.S. Department of Justice. But I don't think so. On the contrary, I think "the joker" is very cautionary. Although the film is full of extreme violence and bloody scenes, when we face the violence, we can avoid violence, because the film violence behind, is to let people see the real cruelty and disgust. In fact, every time the Joker kills someone, he is extremely painful and twisted. The audience does not get the pleasure of revenge from the killing perspective of the Joker. The film is told more from a neutral point of view than from a demagogic point of view.

People can be Jokers. In this apathetic and class-segregated society, every one of us can have a bad day. And the inner Joker may wake up. This Joker represents the negative values of violence, disorder, chaos, jealousy, greed, etc., but we can also choose to sympathize with him and change him. Instead of being controlled by a Joker in a movie. Human nature is a constant tug between good and evil, we need to control themselves, in order not to be the Joker control. That may be the message of the joker.

References

Arvaniti, A., Samakouri, M., Kalamara, E., Bochtsou, V., Bikos, C., & Livaditis, M. (2009). Health service staff’s attitudes towards patients with mental illness. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 44(8), 658-665.

Braithwaite, J. (2013). Inequality, crime and public policy (Routledge revivals). Routledge.

Lucas, H., & Sylla, R. (2003). The global impact of the Internet: widening the economic gap between wealthy and poor nations?. Prometheus, 21(1), 1-22.

Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2015). Rich get richer and the poor get prison, the (subscription): Ideology, class, and criminal justice. Routledge.

Schwartz, S., & Meyer, I. H. (2010). Mental health disparities research: The impact of within and between group analyses on tests of social stress hypotheses. Social science & medicine, 70(8), 1111-1118.