Inevitably Misunderstood

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2019)

What happens when sickness finds itself in a world without physicians?
Joker is a film that asks this question in three images: the individual, how he's treated, and money, in the city. From the outset, Arthur Fleck is presented as a mentally ill individual whose therapist doesn't really listen to him. This is the film's first theme, what are the sciences of the mind supposed to carry out? If there are two kinds of mentally ill subjects: those born sick, and those sickened by our hand, clearly Arthur Fleck is an example of the latter. For those who are born ill, there is admittedly little that can be done. Surely it's a task suited for a scientist. But those corrupted by us, by our idea of education or lack thereof, are creditors to our debt. Precisely in this conundrum lies the heart of the problem in Joker. Can the sick cure the sick? Unlikely. Can the ignorant cure the sick? Still less. The film begs the question, what is psychology and psychiatry?
A science that purports to cure the mind, no less. There was once an art that aspired to this end, the ancient Greeks did their best to perfect it; albeit they didn't call their subject the "mind" but the "soul". They felt in their bones that to cure the mind is to cure its education, and to cure education is to cure politics, and vice-versa. Keenly aware that the individual depends on the city and the city on the individual, they identified Politics - the art of creating and applying the best laws - as the true means to a healthy city, and Justice (or duty, or ethics) - the art of paying all of one's debts - as the true means to a healthy individual. If we were to ask if the many can be effective at turning unhygienic minds or behaviors into healthy minds and behaviors, we might as well ask if the many can be effective philosophers.
Does Arthur Fleck, then, deserve our sympathy? Not our full sympathy, mainly because in his sorry state he commits matricide. But why did he do this? Anyone watching the film up to that point would agree that he loved his mother dearly. As a famous Genevan philosopher would say: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things, everything degenerates in the hands of man." Arthur committed this crime because he couldn't reconcile two things he knew to be true: that he was good, and that people had treated him quite badly. Deep down, he knew he was good. He knew he was warm, caring, and decent. His upbringing, a house of horrors thanks to his mother's abusive partner, which he apparently erased from memory, corrupted him. Even if Penny Fleck was lying about Thomas Wayne being Arthur's father, the fact remains that Arthur - a victim - killed in his madness she who was a victim along with him. It's an image not meant to be right, it's meant to be a mirror. What can't be expected from the Joker, or any incurable like him, is healthy behavior, as he himself writes in his journal. How could he be expected to understand what sane people barely do? That the solution to the problem is not violence but adequate understanding, speech, and legitimate means.
Then there is the possibility that Penny was telling the truth about Thomas Wayne; that he did make her sign a non-disclosure agreement; that his power and money swept her case under the rug. In order to understand the film's imagery on money and power, perhaps the best question to start off with is the following. Why did Penny believe Thomas Wayne was the hero of the city? Was he an eminent speaker? Evidently not. It's because what the city values most, what it holds in highest esteem is money. Therefore, a rich man must be city's sage. Trampled and traumatized by this barbarity, it's no surprise that Penny and the rest of the city would conceive of the hero not as he who cultivates reason but he who is rich. The brutality of the city's values shows itself in Arthur's condition - incongruence between what he felt and what he expressed. He was desperate to express himself but was too maimed and mutilated to do so, hence the dancing. The one moment in the film in which he laughs at the laughable, his mother tells him it's not funny. But it's the climax of the film that contains the desperate expression of this idea, he reproaches people for believing that whatever they think is right is what's right. His aesthetic is indeed classic. He doesn't understand why people would think that the truth can be whatever they want it to be. What Arthur would have said if he were healthy is that money unhinged engenders incongruence. When excellence and virtue aren't held in the highest esteem, when they do not inform aesthetics, money will determine values and aesthetic. If any of this seems exaggerated, remember that since 2010 money is considered speech in the United States.
The New York Times, the premier newspaper of the city Gotham is based on, published their star critic's review of the film. In it, A.O. Scott writes: "To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be interesting: it must have, if not a coherent point of view, at least a worked-out, thought-provoking set of themes, some kind of imaginative contact with the world as we know it. Joker, an empty, foggy exercise in second-hand style and second-rate philosophizing, has none of that." I would like to know, what does Mr. Scott know about philosophy? It's not a mean question; rather, one that must be asked because it's an important subject, and important subjects must be treated with utmost care; in some cases, life-long dedication. After all, in order to know what a second-rate version of something is, acquaintance with its first-rate version is required.
That Arthur may be undeserving of our sympathy does not mean Joker is not one of the finest films of our time. It is. It's polarizing effect, how it is so misunderstood, only lends credence to its message. The reason we don't understand Joker, or at least don't know what to do with it, is the very same reason why the Joker was born, the same reason this character is an image of what's wrong in the modern city. Ignorance cannot cure ignorance, and nobody can cure a city that doesn't want to be cured.