Analyzing Evil: Arthur Fleck, The Joker

hello everyone and welcome to the sixth episode of analyzing evil before we get into the video i'd like to make a brief disclaimer regarding a few things i haven't made clear in my previous videos first i'd like to warn anyone that's unaware that the videos i make do contain a heavy amount of spoilers for the content that i review within them and the content that i do review can be graphic at times and is not suitable for all ages second i'd like to state that i do not have a degree in psychology and any observations i make in these videos are purely my own opinion i've always been interested in going further into a character's background to explore the finer details of who they are and hopefully give my viewers a deeper understanding of these characters through the information i gather i'm also hoping to open up a healthy discussion about these characters down in the comments section so feel free to leave your thoughts ideas arguments or anything really below i try to do the best i can but sometimes i'm sure i miss things and a different perspective can help identify things i may see differently and help myself and others in understanding and learning about these characters now with that out of the way let's begin in this video we'll be exploring arthur fleck as portrayed by joaquin phoenix the titular character from the movie the joker this film in itself could be seen as a character study on dc's joker at least this particular version of him that they've created and it does a great job of providing an expansive origin story for this iteration of the character but as with any film there's always more to look into and the little details in this film that make him into the man he ultimately transforms into are fascinating this character can be seen as two people arthur fleck and the joker he transforms into the mental burdens that arthur carries are many and to get to the joker we first need to break down each component of arthur's psyche and examine the tragic circumstances that have caused arthur's mind to develop the way it has let's start with his laughing condition the pseudobullbar effect or pba arthur's laughing fits are far from the good experience we usually associate laughter to be you can see when he laughs it seems to cause him a certain amount of pain the unnatural way he smiles when he's laughing and the way he holds his throat and doubles over when he's trying to contain it indicates that these fits in their more severe cases are painful experiences for him this can be seen throughout the film whenever he's in a moment of distress such as when he's on the bus with the child and reprimanded by the kid's mother or on the train with the men when he's put under stress when watching them torment the woman nearby stress seems to be the biggest factor in triggering these bouts of laughter whenever he finds himself in a situation of discomfort his laughter becomes unbearable and uncontrollable this laughter is a constant source of pain and ridicule for arthur and may play a large part in shaping another big obstacle in his life his depression in the scene with his counselor in the beginning of the film we get a glimpse of his journal which seems to be a sporadic mess of jumbled thoughts but we're made to focus on one line in particular where he writes i hope my death makes more sense than my life here he also explains to his counselor that he felt better when he was in the hospital then we're shown a brief flashback of him banging his head on the door of an observation room this flashback seems to show that in the chaos madness and tragedy that is his life being confined to a world of bland cold stability is a welcoming and comforting thing for arthur this is actually a common thing for people with depression to experience a deep-seated need for a place of comfort a place you can escape to when you feel the weight of the world weighing down upon you later in the film after he has his confrontation with thomas wayne we see him pulling out the shelves in his fridge and confining himself inside much like when he was confined to the observation room at the hospital further reinforcing the fact that he feels a certain amount of comfort when he's able to hide from the world in such a place arthur doesn't want to feel this way though and he is not above trying to receive help for his issues he states to his counselor that he just wants to feel better and he takes a hefty amount of medication to attempt to stabilize his mental health we can see that arthur's struggle with his ill feelings and how to handle them shape almost every facet of his waking life the fact that he constantly feels as if he's supposed to hide his issues and fake his happiness for the sake of others furthers his depressive feelings as he hides behind a fabricated joy he states to the clerk at the hospital later in the film that it's just so hard to be happy all the time there's even a point in the film where he states that he can't remember ever being happy showing that he's been struggling with his emotions and his need to hide them for possibly his entire life we can see his attempts at appearing happy in several different areas in his life starting with his relationship with his mother his mother refers to him by the nickname happy and he explains a few times in the film that his mother told him that he was put on this earth to spread joy and happiness in a scene where he's writing new material in his living room he writes down the worst part about having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't arthur resents being forced to fit in with the general public and resents the fact that he's looked at as a freak if he can't manage to put on a facade of normalcy to appease those around him we can see a bit of this resentment made physical when he's attempting to contain his emotions each time arthur is trying to keep his composure he does one of two things first if it's a situation of a less confrontational nature and he's trying to stuff down his emotions you can see his legs begin to shake until he can't contain himself anymore and is able to release his pent-up feelings the second is a tendency to go numb when stuck in a confrontational situation such as when he's being reprimanded by his boss for losing their customers sign here we see him fall into his own mind and at a point it seems he doesn't hear the rest of the conversation all the while keeping a smile on his face as he's being berated and then going out into the alley and releasing his anger on some piles of trash this anger that he keeps hidden beneath the surface is another key component to arthur's eventual transition into the joker other than a brief bout we see when he's chasing the kids who stole his sign this scene with the trash is the first time we see arthur's anger boil over but his difficulties with anger are seen many times throughout the film often being a result of the tragedy that he finds himself in perhaps indicating that arthur himself is not an angry person by nature but rather contains a great amount of pent-up anger within him and lashes out in response to the difficult situations he finds himself in it's in these key moments of great distress that his anger blossoms and usually results in him enacting violence on the people who have wronged him one little detail that's never really talked about in the film but can be seen if you take a look at arthur's writing is that arthur is either poorly educated or has a learning disability writing in a very poor hand and frequently misspelling words in his journal this possible learning disability could have had an abnormal effect on his psyche as a whole and while it might not be a direct cause of any of his issues it certainly may have had an effect in sharpening the edges of some of his conditions and of his world views to help himself deal with the storm of negative emotions inside him arthur has managed to invent his own coping skills within his own mind and that's the ability to fabricate different events and relationships with people to provide himself comfort we first see this when he imagines himself on murray's show and places himself as a discovered guest in the crowd one that murray compliments and showers with attention we can see here that arthur views murray not only as an idol but as an imagined father figure a detail which becomes important later in the film the other way he uses this coping skill is with his imagined relationship with sophie in reality the way he mimes the gunshot to his own head after the elevator scene and the way he stalks her for an entire day is very concerning creepy and awkward behavior but he manages to turn the stalking that he did into the beginnings of his imagined relationship with sophie this relationship and his murder of the three men on the subway are the catalysts that start sending him down the path to become the joker the fabricated relationship in particular is the essential tool he uses to bolster his newfound confidence and happiness he acquires from his murder of those three men from the time he invents their relationship until it comes crashing down after the discovery of his abusive childhood and adoption arthur imagines sophie being in a supportive role in his life that he uses to reinforce and bolster his own self-esteem and to improve his overall mental well-being we see this in several scenes scenes where he imagines himself bursting into her apartment and making love to her after the murders imagines her watching in the crowd of the comedy club and supporting him when he's on stage and imagines her reinforcing his elation at the anonymous attention he's getting from the murders he's committed calling the clown vigilante they see in a headline a hero now something that arthur seems to do only when he's happy is dance we first see this when he displays his first bit of confidence after receiving the gun from randall he dances in his living room and seems to be playing at the thought of shooting someone in a club after he murders those men on the subway arthur finds himself in a public bathroom where he begins to dance once again this time in a somber ballet routine a show he seems to put on when he truly feels himself and feels true happiness something that seems to trigger his happiness more than anything else is death and the murders he commits along with the discovery that murder is almost second nature to him giving him a certain freedom to release his feelings and unleash them onto those that have caused them wrongs now coupled with his delusions about sophie these first murders can be seen as a positive thing for arthur taking away some of his insecurities and edging him towards a better state of mind but as we all know these are not positive things and are only a veil of false mental security that will serve to help replace arthur and bring out the joker these are the components of arthur's psyche that are the most fragile and had they been left alone and arthur simply kept working at hahas and lived out a mundane life perhaps his transformation into the joker would never have occurred but unfortunately more and more tragedy seems to find arthur shortly after the confrontation with his mother about thomas wayne his mother has a stroke leaving the only person close to him in his life now lying in a hospital bed in a coma then in the hospital room with his mother his imagined father figure murray presents a clip of his stand-up routine on his show and proceeds to make fun of him and expose his shortcomings to the world further injuring his already fragile self-esteem he then goes on to find out that his mother was either lying or delusional about her relationship with thomas wayne and that thomas wayne is not his father and his mother isn't even his mother when he finds out that he was adopted in three terrible strokes arthur completely loses all notions of any parentage his adoption papers even stating that he was abandoned indicating that it wouldn't even be possible for him to find his birth parents no longer does he have a mother a hoped-for father and thomas wayne or an imaginative father figure in murray coupled with the revelation that his relationship with sophie was entirely fabricated this renders arthur utterly alone and without a soul in the world who genuinely cares for him those few others we do see give any semblance of care for arthur during the film namely the clerk at the hospital and his former co-worker gary aren't anywhere near the sort of relationship he could have had with his parents though arthur seems to have a general disdain for the world and people around him he does show a certain amount of kindness to those who treat him well in the case of gary and a willingness to open up to anyone who shows him even a little shred of kindness such as with the clerk in the hospital being totally alone might have been enough to send arthur down a dark path but what really sends him over the edge is the revelation of his childhood abuse his mother's mental health issues and his adoption arthur has had an identity crisis his whole life not really knowing who he is and trying to make sense of his life and fit into the world these revelations reveal that all along he really didn't have an identity to begin with initially he's arthur fleck a man with many issues who strives to become a stand-up comedian while taking the time to take care of his sick mother then that identity is challenged when he's led to believe that he may be the son of thomas wayne that notion is quickly shattered by thomas's denial and then by his adoption papers not only is he not the son of thomas wayne but he isn't even a flick or arthur or anybody for that matter his mother who up until now had been one of the only good and consistent things in his life is revealed to be a mentally unstable liar who is likely the cause of all the terrible conditions that he's developed in his lifetime this person who was up until now a force for good in his life actually stood by while he was abused and perhaps even abused him herself he was beaten and underfed left to starve tied to a radiator and all the while was expected to put on a happy face his mother even going so far as to say he was always happy in her interrogation this abuse can obviously tie into a multitude of arthur's problems but one small detail we receive earlier in the film directly links his laughing condition to his abuse in his mother's file it showed that he suffered head trauma on the card he gives people to make them aware of his condition it says that his condition can appear in people who have brain injuries what in the beginning appears to be a relatively insignificant detail is revealed to be the link to arthur's pba and the abuse he received not only this but all of arthur's other issues can now be traced back to their roots at the neglect he received when he was a child building more and more as he's grown older due to the terrible circumstances he finds himself in the irony in this is that had he been his mother's natural-born son we might think that his issues came from his genetics but in reality his issues are still derived from his mother though in an abusive and circumstantial way rather than a genetic one interestingly enough this type of childhood abuse and head trauma has also been linked to the development of serial killers in real world studies in almost every background for serial killers their childhoods had either a heavy amount of abuse head trauma a documented abuse towards animals or a combination of all three arthur could be seen as more of a spree killer but the lines between serial killer and spree killer are often blurry and i believe that whether or not he's one or the other the abuse and his issues give credit to either distinction and either one fits the bill for arthur now with all of this melding together arthur is well on his way to becoming the joker but it's after he kills his mother that arthur's transformation into the joker is accelerated his ascent into his new persona heads in a different direction at first being that he plans to end his life on murray's show intending to instead end arthur rather than continue on to become the joker but that very scene on murray's show is the final moment where he's teetering on the edge between arthur and the joker here we see his confidence showing full force dancing onto the stage kissing dr sally acting as if being on stage is an almost effortless thing for him the murders he's committed the shedding of his previous realities and his resolve and his life have bolstered this confidence and given him the capability to appear as he does now however arthur's plan to kill himself is slowly eroded as he's confronted with the terrible person that is murray in the moment where he looks into his journal we again see the line i hope my death makes more sense than my life and the movie seems to come full circle in the beginning his life made no sense but now he has resolved to kill himself and finally his planned death is beginning to make more sense than his life ever had here we see the plan being set in motion as arthur admits his guilt telling murray he has nothing to lose nothing that can harm him anymore after he's lived a life enveloped in pain and torment bearing everything he's hidden before the world because in a few moments he'll be free of the ramifications of life but this course is averted when murray continues to berate him much in the same way that he did when he featured arthur's comedy bit on a previous episode of his show arthur has already become more and more disgusted with the world and is again made to feel inferior and is ridiculed by a man he idolized as a father figure and his anger is continuing to rise the more the show goes on he goes on to state that everyone is awful the world is awful that nobody is civil anymore and doesn't stop to consider what it's like to be the other guy and that the higher-ups in gotham like thomas wayne expect everybody to just take it like good little boys it's here we see arthur's anger overflow his mind resolving itself to the point that he's forgotten his plan to end his own life and instead bringing to the forefront his satisfaction with what he's done to the world and the intense emotion that he's been building over his entire life the overwhelming feelings of hatred and loathing for the world around him that culminates in the shot to murray's head laughing with perhaps the most genuine laugh we have seen from him the entire film and taking with that bullet all that was arthur and transforming him fully into the joker the moment before he kills murray where he states that murray gets what he deserves brings light to the core reason for the murders he commits giving people what they deserve he again dances and looks into the camera and ends the show by saying good night and always remember that's life after this arthur is arrested and in the back of a police car he gets to witness firsthand the chaos and destruction that he's caused we again see the pure joy and happiness that he's feeling now that he's entered into this new world he's created when he's taken from that police car and showcased in front of a crowd of people his people he revels in all that he has caused basking in the adoration that these people shower him with dancing and posing in the same way he had before when he'd felt the first tendrils of this utter happiness earlier in the film the end of the film shows arthur reflecting on the inadvertent revenge he gets on thomas wayne by causing his death and leaving his son without parents linking bruce to himself personally and leaving him in a similar parental situation as himself now the murder he commits here at the end is up for interpretation does he kill the mental health worker because she deserves it as the others did or just because we may never know but with everything we've learned there's a few things we do know we know we have a severely neglected child and adult who has gone through a life of tragedy and trauma in a city that is uncaring and cruel a city where the less fortunate are left to rot and fester in its underbelly where this tortured soul undergoes an evolution through violence and suffering becoming an entirely new man that thrives in this world of chaos and macabre happiness he has created for himself in the end arthur fleck is the joker is undoubtedly a murderer and a villain but his evil is a tragic one that has been nurtured by circumstance and abuse transforming a poor forgotten and mistreated soul into a vengeful and disturbed killer i hope you all have enjoyed this episode and i'd love to hear what you think down in the comments below if you liked this video and want to see more of my content feel free to subscribe and give this video a like thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 716,905

Rating: 4.9546452 out of 5

Keywords: Joker, Batman, DC, DC Comics, Villain, Evil, Analysis, Joaquin Phoenix, Arthur Fleck

Id: 19AtR-6bAcc

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020