Analyzing the Societal Role in Shaping Arthur Fleck in the Movie Joker

This essay provides a detailed analysis of the 2019 movie Joker, focusing on the protagonist, Arthur Fleck, and the significant role society plays in his life. The paper explores how societal structures, including inequality, lack of empathy, and inadequate mental health support, contribute to Arthur's transformation into the Joker. It delves into the concept of deindividuation and applies C. Wright Mills' sociological imagination to understand Arthur's experiences. The essay examines how Arthur's interactions with various aspects of society, from street encounters to media portrayals, shape his actions and ultimately lead to his embrace of chaos. It concludes by highlighting the complex relationship between Arthur and society, showcasing how both are affected by the other's actions and the broader implications of societal neglect and misunderstanding. The essay emphasizes that the movie serves as a commentary on the impact of societal failures on individuals and the consequences that may follow.

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

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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

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analyze what it could have possibly made him commit the murder rather they caught it as a
necessary evil that must be introduced to the already evil society. After this incident, Arthur’s
costume and his clown mask become the symbol of protest in the nation. Similarly the way
angry mob gathers around the Royal Bank of Spain putting their red jumpsuit and the Dali
mask on their faces in the third season of “la casa de papel” or “Money Heist”.
The ultimate chaos breaks into the plot of the movie when Arthur appears in the attire
of Joker on the same show of that inhuman host. He almost indulges into a monologue where
he makes the whole world aware of how heartless society has been with him and how the
elites have always managed to ignore him as garbage. He has been ignored throughout his life
that he believes to the reason of his reincarnation as a human being who is proud of
containing anarchy and igniting the fire of chaos at the heart of society. Arthur does not
portray grief but disgust for the society for which he prepares to kill himself amidst the show.
However, the situation flipped in such a stark way that he shot the host instead. He is
unapologetic of what he has done because the society has never apologized before him for
snatching away his identity, for cutting down the possibility of recovering from his
deteriorating mental condition and worshipping his murder as a symbol of protest without
even looking at his circumstances that he has been fighting since his childhood (Marar,
2020).
The movie has two different dimension of the relationship between Arthur and the
society. One dimension can be explained with the treatment of Arthur by the society and how
it affects Arthur to go through a rollercoaster and end up being a murderer. Society makes
him so invincible that he does not feel scared or hesitated to kill his counselor. Another
paradigm is how society looks at Arthur’s action and transforms it into something else that
Arthur wound have never anticipated. The struggle is always between him and the society

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where Arthur has tried to understand the latter initially but finally gives up in understanding it
where the latter has never tried to understand him throughout (Bolea, 2020).
Therefore, it can be concluded that the movie creates a chance to showcase all the
people who are ignored regularly due to the prevailing inequality in the society. The
existence of inequality makes a part powerful while suppressing the other under the shadow
of power. The paper has covered how Arthur is victim of the evilness of the society and how
it assists him to lead to the way of crime and become unapologetic about it. The paper has
elaborated on how an invisible relationship exists between Arthur and the society and how
both are equally shattered and moved by the action of each other. Mills identified that people
are often misunderstood by the society which is affirmatively appropriate and relevant for
Arthur in Joker.

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References
Bolea, S. (2020). Film: Joker. Philosophy Now, 136, 46-47.
Kanerva, K. (2020). Learning to Feel? An Essay on Death, Sex and Tricksterism in Todd
Phillips’s Joker (2019). Wider Screen.
Marar, S. K. (2020). Red, Yellow, Green and Blue for the clown prince of crime: Analysis of
Inner psyche of Joker (2019). Studies in Indian Place Names, 40(50), 5227-5232.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The promise of sociology. Seeing ourselves, 1-5.