Personal Demons, Anarchy, and the Joker

I know I'm late to the discussion, but I needed some time to let my thoughts germinate.

First, to those who freaked out about the Joker movie glorifying the "mass shooter profile", stfu you silly, simple, hyperbolic morons. Did you even see the movie? I'm just dumbfounded at that response. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Through the duration of the movie, he kills 4 or 5 people and not all with guns. He's not a mass shooter, he's a supervillain, a purveyor of chaos. Any old instrument of destruction will do. #eyeroll. 

Second, I have a canonical criticism. Making Bruce Wayne's father a morally bankrupt figure was a disappointing departure from the canon of Batman. As a friend pointed out in his reaction to the movie, Bruce Wayne not only becomes Batman because he saw his parents shot, but because his parents were morally good people who were unjustly shot. Turning Senior Wayne into a morally bankrupt, heartless, "rich, white man" was an obnoxious narrative departure from the psychology of Batman that could only be pleasing to one crowd. We see you progs and we're not impressed. Leave previously established storylines alone, you propaganda artists. Go make up your own super villains and heroes who can push your world view and stop destroying all the things with your revisionist bullshit.  

Third, no matter what you're feeling about the message and/or theme of the movie, Joaquin Phoenix's performance was astounding. He did an excellent job portraying a crazy man.

Fourth, let's talk about making the Joker "mentally ill". Well, of course, he's some form of mental, he kills people en masse, and he enjoys it. Something is, obvi, not wired right.  However, I agree with the friend, with whom I discussed the movie, it's too easy an explanation to blame "mental illness" for the Joker's proclivity toward chaos. Where my friend and I departed was over the matter of exploring the Joker's psychology, the reason he is chaos. 

My friend surmised that we're not supposed to understand the Joker because he typifies chaos and we shouldn't ever understand that. I disagree. If we know why Bruce Wayne becomes the typification of order and justice, why would we also not understand why there is an antithesis to him? Do we have, in us and observe around us, order and justice? Of course. Do we have, in us and observe around us, chaos? Yes. To say that we should understand the one, but not the other is to give chaos an almost Voldemort status: "The state of being which must not be understood."

Being an anarchist, and having had discussions with other anarchists, the point was once raised that movies alway depict anarchy as bad and establishment order as good. Even when there's corruption within that order, the solution is to right the corruption, but a corrupt order is still preferable to chaos. That may be the thinking behind not wanting to understand the Joker. He's chaos. That's 'bad'. We don't want to be bad so, we only explore and deeply understand the 'good'. And, the antithesis of 'bad' chaos is 'good' order.

While progs were losing their shit over the imaginary 'mass shooter profile' glorification, my political views, and my own personal journey from faith to sluttery this past year caused me to understandingly smile at and internally cheer the Joker on throughout the movie.

The mental health industry let him down. The politicians let him down. The magical promises of medications and behavioral therapy let him down. He was miserable and exhausted from fighting what was in him. And, that point at which the Joker gave up and let his inner demons fly free was glorious to me. "I get you, Joker, I get you." It was one of my favorite movie moments of the year.

Can a purveyor of chaos be a mental patient? Sure. But, Superheroes and their villains are both unrealistic excesses that exist to help us make sense of our real world. As was shown in the movie, people are beginning to feel the unnecessary, unhelpful control of the established order while increasingly understanding that there are fewer and fewer alternatives to which they may escape. When who you are doesn't fit in the one, domineering, controlling, and oppressive order but that order refuses to give way to other options and/or refuses to be corrected, the result is a call for the undoing of that order or, in other words, chaos. 

Why should we understand chaos? Because it's not always bad. Sometimes the order is bad and an agent who tries to fix it, while laudable, is not defending what can always be labeled intrinsically good. 

To everything, there is a season. Sometimes a season of chaos is the thing that is necessary to cleanse an unjust and untouchable order. In this case, even though the Joker, himself, was showcased as mental, by breaking free of the order that didn't work for him, he sparked a revolution, albeit in his own mind, of breaking free in others. One person breaking from the pack, at the time others wish they could, always lights a fire in those who were not previously brave enough to embrace the need for chaos growing in them. Enter my other favorite point in the movie: when he looks out the window of the cop car and smiles, knowing that embracing his inner demons gave his life purpose. He impacted others for the change he needed.

Despite a rather clever attempt at making fun of those who see their rebellion against the system as delusions of grandeur, chaos is one, of a few, natural human responses to order that is not good, and chaos is coming in our real world.

I'm late to the discussion, but I hope my point of view was worth the wait.