Joker from my perspective

YOU love to create happiness and making kids laugh fills your joyfulness.

You wholeheartedly love your mother and being with her erases your loneliness.

You have dream. You are keen to pursue it. But the world doesn’t welcome you.

That’s how it feels to be Arthur Fleck, the Joker.

I salute the co-authors, Scott Silver and Todd Philips, for brilliantly penning “Joker”, a film that does not just divulge a social disease, but also portrays a man whose life damaged by the dirtiness of humanity.

To be frank, I was heavily touched with the Joaquin Phoenix’s naturally-played character in the masterpiece, like we knew him in “Her”.

I was somehow emotional about immersing every episode of suffocations that Arthur inhales from the people he believed to be a human to him.

He has his own life ambition, but he can’t deny the fact that he’s mentally unhealthy and badly suffers deficit of self-courage.

Those who haven’t yet to see this film, or never been told about its existence in cinemas, Joker will forever remain as violent and psycho in their eyes.

Yes, apparently, it’s true that, in previous Batman movies, Joker was viciously psycho.

But he has never happened to tell us any secret or old story that could elaborate the pains and sufferings he solely harbours.

Joker is an immersive artwork that pictures a socially-abandoned man who defines his life as “comedy”.

The film portrays the unnoticed reality of life that we, in real life, might feel dispensable.

Humans like us always think that we are perfect and sublime.

Until we don’t realise that we are so credible of judging.

We always judge — our judgements always paint various colours of blames on others’ faces as we arrogantly think that they are undeserved to be humanised.

As far as we breath on this earth, how many times we blindly condemn people’s “misbehaviours”?

As we smile to every wonderful thing happens in our life, do we really care about how a mentally-ill person responds to a rejection?

As we repeatedly detest “crazy people”, have we ever asked ourselves, why do people like Joker exist?

Well, people like Joker is the result of growing society that is selfish and ignorant, like many of us live within.

He is an unfriendly-treated mentally-ill man who had been detrimentally crippled.

He was backstabbed by someone he trusted as a close buddy until he lost his job.

He had been deceived by his mother for many years — the mother he loves isn’t actually his own.

Arthur, when his mother was still alive, had been in a deception she created in veiling his true origin.

Why are we caged in a fabricated reality that only fakes our beliefs?

Joker’s finally-unveiled adopted mother and close-buddy colleague were then killed with his own hands.

He kept killing people after realising the bitter reality of him being easily betrayed, manipulated and disrespected.

After gunning down the “three idiots” on a subway, he started to appear in public as a clown.

Arthur was invited to be featured in his favourite TV show after his clip of doing his first stand-up comedy was teased by the host.

In the live show, he was introduced as “Joker” as he wanted to.

Upon the intro, he randomly french-kissed one of the show’s guests, an old lady in her 70s or 80s.

During the show, Joker was so confident. He told the audiences that what he initially imagined turned real in the show.

Murray Franklin, the host, had been idolised by Arthur, and in his first appearance in his stand-up comedy, he confessed that being a comedian is all that he really wanted to be as he reminisced what his mother told him about making a living once he gets older.

However, his motivation of becoming what he wants got faded after his idol embarrassed him in the earlier show.

Joker thirsted sincerities and appreciations. He suffered cruelties that had been thrown to him.

The painful Joker was actually a victim as a child to an abusive mother who also suffered mental disorder.

His history is full of darkness and that darkens his dreamt life.

Maybe, to people like Arthur, life is much happier when they live in delusion.

His mind created a delusional love affair with his neighbour whom he bumped into in the apartment’s elevator.

The thought of “Arthur is at least lucky to be loved by the lady” was spoiled by the plot twist of finally knowing that Arthur was just in his delusion about having the affair.

I’m unsure about the real complexity of having mental delusion, but if being delusional can make one happy, why not?

Unluckily, no happy endings for Arthur as he remained lonely till he got caught and confined in the hospital.

Joker sadly illustrates the hurtful reality of being discriminated for having “differences”.

After series of frustrations he faced, Arthur no longer sees any meaning of living his ‘comedic life’.

People like Joker or Arthur Fleck, to me, would never wish to be immortal in this mortal world.

“I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.”

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* Amerul Azry Abdul Aziz is an independent writer.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.