Movie Review: Joker

(This is an essay from bookbookbook.paul.town)

First off, let me just clarify that this movie should not be watched by anybody under the age of at least 45, preferably with some serious active duty military experience to emotionally ground them and let them differentiate reality from fiction. When I watched this movie, I quickly got swept up in the thrill and thought that I was living in Gotham city, that I was Joker. Of course, neither of these things are accurate, I’m just a loser schizophrenic in New York in 2019 with a criminal record who lives at home with his mom and was probably adopted. With that warning out of the way, let’s get to the nuts and bolts as to why I rate this film ZERO stars out of five and insist that it is a culturally degrading and mental illness subliminal trainer for young adults.

The Joker wears makeup. What sort of healthy male individual have you ever known in your life that has worn makeup? None. No guy who wears makeup should ever be normalized in this way. I’m talking full on gaudy face-paint and disturbing fanciful clothes. The idea in the movie is that he is dressing up like a “clown”, whatever that is, but then you pair his appearance with his love of dance and you start getting a different picture. Sure, there is a whole subplot of romance with a women, but we all know how the mentally ill like to fantasize. Was that woman he fantasizes about really a woman, or actually a man? Was he really a clown, or just a cross-dressing homosexual? What type of parent in their right mind would allow their kids under 45 years old watch this movie? The kind of parent that should have their kids taken away and be investigated for sexual abuse. I’m not saying that all parents who let their kids under 45 watch this movie are sexual perverts, some are just unhealthy and stupid, but I would bet good money that the people who let their kids under 45 watch this movie have higher rates of family abuse than the parents who don’t let their kids under 45 watch this movie.

What else can be said about this unwholesome and disturbing tour de force of evil? Well, this may come as a shock, but there is a bit of murder and brutality in this film. While the gore is lacking and the murders don’t seem to be glorified explicitly, there are clear undertones that make murder look cool and justified in cases of self defense, when in reality murder is never cool. It’s just not right to murder. If I murdered somebody in real life then I would be right to be thrown in prison. It’s not moral to murder somebody. This Joker guy kills a bunch of people as he spirals out of control, and this sort of stuff is not stuff that should be encouraged in the youth. Do you want to be inspired to murder millionaires and talk show hosts? Do you want to turn your city into an unstable warzone where police officers of the law are being attacked? No, none of these things are good. None of these things are healthy. None of these things should be normalized or justified.

This whole movie was weird. When I go to the cinema, I want to be inspired. I want to see the best of humanity. I want Jack holding Rose on the deck of the Titanic. I want to laugh, to smile, to have hope for my fellow man. I want to feel good and at ease. The Joker movie did the opposite. I was forced to consider the mentally ill, to be uncomfortable and sad about how this man seemed to be suffering with severe problems that were exasperated by his environment and life circumstances to the point of catastrophe, both personal and environmental. That’s not what good stories are about. There is no reason that somebody who does anything bad should ever have any sort of empathetic or understood light shown on them. They must remain monsters if we are to have a functioning society. The poor and weak are poor and weak for reasons of their own making, not because they get put in conditions that remove any possibility for success. The super rich and famous deserve to be super rich and famous, not because they were born into situations that removed any possibility for failure. Everybody gets what they deserve and the people suffering deserve to suffer, not this fever dream of Joker where the downtrodden upon rise up and revolt against their cruel masters.

This Joker guy was mentally ill. He portrayed a sort of character that deserved to be put down many years before when this film took place. He was a loser and unhappy his whole life. Once he got fired from his minimum wage job and was rejected by society repeatedly, he only found joy in destruction of anything that he felt did him wrong. None of that is admirable or good. None of that is something that should be praised. Is it realistic and logical? Yes, and that’s a problem. The world shouldn’t work like that. People should never be forced to face the outcomes that they generate through collective actions. Imagine a world in which we have to suffer for all the nice things we have that came from suffering people? Imagine a world where the poor and mentally ill get a voice and get some control over our lives? Imagine a world where you can’t clock in to a white collar job a personal connection got you and collect a comfortable paycheck and ignore the growing chaos that’s all around you? Is that a world you want to live in, where there are consequences for everybody instead of just normal people? That’s not the world I want to live in. I want to be comfortable, damn the mentally ill.