JOKER AND THE SOCIETY

Running head: JOKER AND THE SOCIETY
JOKER AND THE SOCIETY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1JOKER AND THE SOCIETY
The paper is going to mainly deal with a specific movie in which society has a huge
role to play on the life of the protagonist. The paper not only analyzes the role and the
societal structure prevailing in the movie but also is going to justify the movie in the light of
the sociological promise of Mill. Joker, created by Todd Phillips in 2019 has a character at its
heart, who is completely structured the way society has treated him and ultimately evolved as
a creature of the byproduct of the hypocrisy of society. The paper will try to comprehend the
relationship between the protagonist, Arthur Fleck and the society he resides in. Therefore,
the objective of the paper is to find out how the character of Arthur is mended by the society.
As the critiques point out that this movie is nothing but experiencing a willful
unpleasantness. It has brought out a gory truth of society to the audiences. The movie reflects
the trend of deindividuation along with commenting on the contribution of the society upon
the phenomenon. Mills in The Promise finds out that a person is reflective of his and the
society he belongs to (Mills, 1959). The society gives its humans a particular shape and
identity. Sociological imagination is that idea where a person’s background and the history
that has led the individual to this point are understood. Here Arthur Fleck is already
conditioned with paranoid schizophrenia where the society also does not spare him alone.
With the progression of the move and looking at the character of Arthur, it become clear that
he should not judged for what he is doing. Here comes the significance of assessing the role
of society in his life.
Arthur, being the resident of Gotham city undergoes failure in every single level of
society. He is bullied at the beginning of the move by some random young people on a busy
street and then becomes the victim of the removal of free funding of governmental clinic for
mental health. This character, after spending more than five decades on the planet gets to
know about his identity all of a sudden. He has been the portrayal of the epitome of
victimization. The society seems to have considered Arthur to be the platform to experiment

2JOKER AND THE SOCIETY
with all sorts of negativity and misery (Marar, 2020). He absorbs every humiliation within his
heart and channelizes the frustration with his dance moves in solitariness. Even a host of a
very popular show does not let go the opportunity to mock him on national television.
Arthur tries to play with a kid on his journey in a public transport but what he receives
in return is a cruel treatment from the mother of the child. The society never sympathizes
with either him or with his condition. He is poor and leading a life almost without any
empathy. His boss does not show any mercy while firing him from the job and his colleague
does not hesitate to lie for safeguarding his fault. He loses his job and the provision of getting
cured. The society makes him so alone that he starts struggling between the reality and
fantasy. He imagines being in love with his neighbor, a single mother and feels betrayed by
himself when he throttles on the stage on his first stand- up show (Kanerva, 2020).
As Eddie Veddar perceives society to be a “crazy breed”, Arthur is forced to spend his
night and day in this shackled convention of continuous struggle. He protests against the
behavior and the treatment he has been receiving from the society and lands up in committing
a murder. However, the society of Gotham is so brutal and the people are processed in a way
that they find this murder to be a purposeful execution in the form f protest. The society has
always been very atrocious to Arthur that his father being in one of the highest position in the
government denies his existence because of the illegitimacy of the relationship between the
latter and Arthur’s mother. The society has never thought twice to take away everything he
has.
Mills shows that often people misunderstand the individuals by imposing their
orthodox and conventional approaches (Mills, 1959). Arthur’s committing of the murder is
misunderstood by the society once again. The society starts to idealize the murder and
worship him a savior who is going to banish the filth of the society. They do not try to