My therapist insisted I write this, so be forewarned. Chuckle, Chuckle. Obviously, Your Humble Author, Narrator, & Fictional Character could not let the opportunity to discuss “Joker: Folie à Deux” pass him by. As the overall impact the 2019 “Joker” was profound upon me, echoing almost like a script from the mirror darkly of my own life. It was a bold, broadcast of the state of mental affairs in the minds of many men; me certainly being among them. It was a gritty and realistic look at Arthur Fleck, descending to a point of no return, giving into the gravity of madness due to lack of proper mental health care. For me and I’m sure many other men who struggle with invisible ailments, seeing Arthur Fleck express upon the screen what we could not, was a catharsis in and of itself. While perhaps the masses detached for a couple of hours to be entertained by a “Joker” movie, many of us were for the first time feeling understood. Not idolizing a maniacal clown prince of crime, but deeply empathizing with a breaking man.
The beauty of comic books, and the stories that come from them, or are inspired by the characters found within the endless pages of colored ink and shared prose; is the diversity and adaptability of those tales being told. Having taught myself to read through the medium of comics books, as a young boy, one of the things that captured my imagination was that it was possible for the same story to be told in a near infinite number of ways and a plethora of points of view to perceive it from. The medium of comic books has always invited a community of creators to collaborate on their vision of things, which has been the secret sauce, as it were, of the longevity in this story telling modality.
A team of writers and inkers come together for a 12-issue run to interpret our favorite villains or vigilantes with their unique touch, only to pass them off to others when their run ended. It is how these characters and worlds have evolved and aided us in doing the same through the lessons, messages, or morals we absorbed through this art form. Perhaps the pinnacle of being able to play in such a way is in the character of the Joker.
They say when you are a kid, you root for Batman but when you become wiser and older it becomes apparent that the one who makes the most sense is certainly the Joker. Then there are some of us that saw the Joker’s point of view from the moment his white, red, and green visage exploded through our eyes and into our mind. For us, the Joker has never been a character identified as one man or another.
The Joker is an idea. A force of nature. A frequency of “super sanity” that becomes the window for the observer into the world of DC and is more than aware that his manifestation within the pages of Detective Comics is purely fiction.
The Joker is the reader that gives the story life and allows or causes the progression of events for all of the characters within the pages to play out the story wanting to be told. Not there to do good. Not there to do evil. Rather there to simply have a good time and share a smile or two. Alan Moore’s genius interpretation of the medium, the Joker, in which we can enter into those stories is pretty much the definitive script when it comes to any kind of origin story with one line. “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice.”
This line from “The Killing Joke” is not only the very essence of the Joker’s purpose, but in my opinion one that demonstrates an optimum state of mental health that everyone should learn from. The Joker is not set in stone with this diagnosis or that diagnosis due to any concrete past given to him or adopted by him. There is no specific series of traumatic events that lock his state of mind in any quadrant of the DSM to give others the convenience of somewhat “understanding” that which they aren’t capable of. This is why any true fan of the Joker would know that any interpretation of his origin story, cannot possibly be his origin story by nature.
From the inception of the Joker in DC comics he has evolved as generations of readers, writers and inkers evolved, as he is the window for us into that world. This is why, quite personally, I have enjoyed almost every interpretation of the character that has been portrayed on screen. Romero, Hamill, Nicholson, Ledger, all valid takes on the Joker. I’m one of the few that believes Leto did a brilliant job, most of which was lost to the cutting room floor, sadly. But still, Jared Leto’s version, to me, was a commendable performance of the Joker.
And then came Joaquin Phoenix in 2019 who absolutely was never playing the Joker in the first place, and Joker fans knew this the moment there were rumors of the film being a Joker origin story. There was an upfront and honest communication from Todd Phillips that while titled “Joker”, and very loosely based in the world of Gotham City, the last thing they were making was a movie about THE Joker. This was well understood before the titles were ever on the screen.
No, this was a very serious, uncensored, uncomfortable, difficult to watch, masterpiece that forced movie goers to sit down in the feeling of ugliness and for two hours experience the horror of poor, mental health in men. The awkwardness of living in the skin of someone suffering so much, for so long, while trudging uphill their entire life, doing the best they can to wear a smile. Perhaps bring a smile to others.
As a fan of the Joker, I could’ve cared less about this film. But as a survivor of abuse, addiction & PTSD/CPTSD; 2019’s “Joker” is probably the nearest and dearest film to my heart. I don’t think that I would be exaggerating to say that if it did not exist, neither would I, probably. And the timing of when “Joker” was released, for me was an uncanny mirror of horrible events that I had recently gone through in my personal life but had yet to fully come to terms with.
I celebrated “Joker” as a work of art, not in that it gave me some idol of anarchy to look up to, emulate, or aspire to be like, but rather in the simple fact that in its vivid, horrific, depiction of a man whose mind is on fire from suffering one trauma too many, I finally felt as if my story was being told. Not in the Joker. In Arthur Fleck.
I never felt that director, Todd Phillips, was doing a bait and switch with the Joker. It was very clear that he was telling the story of Arthur Fleck, who no one would have ever given a shit about, much less pay to sit in a theatre and watch his struggles unfold, without some glitter thrown over it. Which is actually the primary point of 2019’s “Joker”, made abundantly clear in Arthur’s monologue before giving Murray Franklin what he fuckin’ deserved.
Because historically, if society sees a man who struggles with invisible ailments, it walks right over him. It’s only after a long train of abuses, when the man finally reaches a breaking point and does something loud, destructive, violent, or horrific that he is finally listened to. But like Arthur Fleck, by that time it’s too little too late. And had it not been for this 2019 film, it very well could have been the same for Your Humble Author, Narrator, & Fictional Character as well.
I lost my mother in 2018, to whom I had been a caregiver for several years, and for the first time since I had developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I was alone. There was no one left to look after when she passed away, and for someone with codependency as their primary post traumatic response from childhood; this is a torturous place to be. Alone. With no one but yourself and those goddamn feelings you had spent a lifetime avoiding any way you could, so they never caught up to you. Be it booze or pills or simply telling yourself that maybe after you saved the world and everyone in it first, then maybe…just maybe you would get around to taking care of yourself. While I convinced myself this was noble and virtuous, the truth of the matter was that I was deathly afraid of having to stop for any given amount of time and go within to process a lifetime of trauma and hurt within me. I was terrified of having to “do the work”, as they say.
Doing the work in my case, was going to be like climbing mount Everest backwards, which is perhaps why I put it off for so long. I had yet to process the Post Traumatic Stress from my father dying while I administered CPR on him in 2011. I had put that task off increasingly with the assistance of alcohol and painkillers until 2013 brought more destruction, after Yours Truly actually began searching for some kind of inner peace in the teachings of Buddha and meditation. Which in the eyes of “family”, “friends”, and a 13-year-old contractual, “business partner” that I had unwittingly assumed I was in a relationship with the entire time, considered my new path in life to be a bit nutty for them. Surrounded by southern Baptist ideology, in those entangling alliances, meant that straying away from their illiterate interpretation of the scriptures could only mean I was demon possessed and somehow worshiping Satan with my altar, incense, and affinity for Eastern iconography.
Witch hunts weren’t quite enough for those around me to dodge any attempt of understanding PTSD or the change that happens in a traumatized person. Before long, allegations of infidelity on my part were lodged, which culminated in the epic climax of Your Humble Author, Narrator, & Fictional Character getting pistol whipped with 15 blows to the skull and stabbed with a butcher knife about five times by a person he slept safely beside for 13 years. Before the wounds had even clotted, it only took three signed statements in front of a Georgia Judge, that read like a decree from the Spanish Inquisition, to have police drag Yours Truly off to a psychiatric hospital against his will, because thinking reincarnation might be a thing, is evidence ‘round these parts of mental instability. Add legal abuse syndrome to the pyre in the mind, then subtract a home, a career and any opportunity to climb out of the pit that I was sinking down into.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is unique from PTSD, in that it requires back-to-back traumas that touch on multiple contexts over a period of time, as opposed to the formers’ one traumatic event in generally one context. From the time of my father’s death, through the assaulted, battered, systematic, stabbing in the skull of my life by the people around me and the institutions they worshipped; CPTSD was silently growing within me. In art, While Arthur Fleck suppressed the worst parts of himself through medication bottles, I was doing the same in life with cheap beer bottles.
Doing what I could to publicly “Put on a Happy Face” and not inconvenience others with the reality of my ever-present negative thoughts, especially in media engagements, was looking back, very much a splitting down the middle of who I was. When the red light of an “on air” sign blinked, my clown makeup was perfectly painted. When behind microphones, in front of crowds I was sure to always land the punchlines precisely. But when the show was over, I was in the alleyway kicking trashcans to death as proxy people, I had yet to finally snap on. I didn’t even have a word for what was going on inside of me, much less any illumination of understanding to do something about it. Therapy was completely out of the question because after all what would that do to a reputation of “being so strong”, right? Nope, rather than seek help, I white knuckled it until after my mother died beside me. A bookend that emulated the event that left me with PTSD to begin with, now marked the full onset of CPTSD. Which again, I didn’t even know existed at the time.
So, clearly when I sat down in October of 2019 to watch Todd Philipps’ “Joker”, the nervous jittering of my leg and foot matched that of Joaquin Phoenix with perfect synchronicity. The strained smile, stretched beneath the glassy eyes of wrath just behind them were micro expressions I knew all too well, having mastered them myself. The journal pages of woe after woe in scribbles and scrapes were certainly familiar waters to me. Being labeled “strange”, “insane”, or “weirdo” was certainly, like Arthur Fleck, no new phenomenon to me. And the only moment’s peace in the day, came from the cylindrical ash of a cigarette whose smoke was puffed and chuckled away. 2019’s “Joker” was far less a film to me as it was a mirror.
By the conclusion of the film this fact was obviously quite terrifying for Your Humble Author, Narrator, & Fictional Character. I had yet to cross the threshold of blowing Robert DeNiro’s brains out…but by the roll of the credits I was certainly aware that if left unattended, the storm of mental health issues raging within me could in all likelihood make a Joker of me yet.
Thankfully, the one thing I did have right at the time was having removed all of the former toxic cast of characters that choked me like quicksand for my whole life. In their stead was a very small circle of people who genuinely did care about me and the struggles I was going through, and in that a path of recovery was made possible. A safe space was made for me, unlike Arthur Fleck, to be heard as well as vulnerable. And in a society that abandons men with mental health issues, and treats them like trash, those things are usually the ones that create an outcome much less grim than 2019’s “Joker”.
For many men like me, Arthur’s journey was not merely entertainment, but proof of empathy. His story was the narrative for those of us whose lives had become defined by a series of betrayals, abuses, and the overwhelming silence that surrounds mental illness. Arthur Fleck, at his breaking point, was almost me. He wasn’t the Joker. He was just a man who had tried for too long to keep it together, to be “normal,” to function in a society that expects those who have mental illness to behave as if they didn’t. Perhaps many believed the success of the 2019 film was due to its riveting portrayal of a comic book character; but the truth of the matter is, it was a fatally accurate depiction of the nightmarish experience that flesh, and blood men like me battle every day. Not Todd Phillipps, Joaquin Phoenix, nor any other filmmaker that worked on “Joker” can be thanked, or awarded enough for having the courage, dedication, and talent to tell the story of Arthur Fleck. Because for those of us who cherish the movie, it was never about the Joker.
…to be concluded…
A SONG TO PLAY US OUT…
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