Violence changes your social power in society. Once Coretta Scott King said that ‘Revenge and retaliation always perpetuate the cycle of anger, fear, and violence.’ It wrecks and shortens lives, causes suffering and pain, and it’s often part of rapid social change. Some people use violence for revenge, and some (as a way to release their pain) achieve what they want.
I chose the movie Joker to answer my essay question because this movie and how director Todd Philips represented nowadays affairs touched me and made me think of most things I have not thought of before just because I was in my comfort zone, but after this movie, I felt different. I realized just how much one film can change you. In this essay, I will critically examine violence and revenge in Joker (2019).
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Violence - the use of physical force to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. The plot of violence encourages terrorism, wars, securitization, domestic violence, crime, and hate crime. There are many types of violence: self-directed, interpersonal, collective, physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional violence. With this word always goes revenge.
Revenge is defined as the act of committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Everything begins from feeling physical or mental pain, this kind of pain makes most people go insane and forces them to do terrible things and use violence.
A lot of violence was discussed this year in the movie Joker directed by Todd Phillips and the phenomenal role embodied by Joaquin Phoenix. Todd Philips is an American filmmaker and actor. He is best known for writing and directing the comedy films Road Trip (2000), Old School (2003), and The Hangover Trilogy ( 2009, 2011, and 2013) When he was preparing for the Movie ‘Joker” he wanted this movie to be different from all other movies related to Gotham and comic books. He thinks that people as a whole are waiting for a target they can pounce on and the ‘Joker’ may be an obvious one. Philips was never afraid of criticism and what people would think about him, a good example is when he was in his early life, he attended New York University Films School but dropped out to focus on completing his first film. Talking about the risks the same thing he attempted to do with the film Joker. Talking about the Joker as a character he is a supervillain created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson in comic books he is portrayed as a criminal mastermind. Introduced as a psychopath with a warped, sadistic sense of humor, he became a goofy prankster. The Joker possesses no superhuman abilities, instead using his expertise in chemical engineering to develop poisonous or lethal concoctions and thematic weaponry. But Philips otherwise did not look to specific comics for inspiration. The director himself took a lot of risk with this movie, the music was written down based on the script, not the movie, he did that because he wanted the music to affect and infect the set, he made tough decisions with unusual shots, but that worked the most, because it was something new something that not most have been already done.
In one of the interviews after the movie, they (Philips and Phoenix) were asked what they think is ‘ Joker’ an insensitive movie to release?’. Todd Philips took as an example, the Colorado shooting and said that no one is blaming the movie for what is going on in Aurora, because if you do your research that gentleman wasn’t even going in as a joker that was misreported, he was having mental breakdown, but it was not related to it outside to the fact that it happened to the movie theatre. But this is not a thing that a movie is trying to represent the movie still takes place in a fictional world it can have real-world implications and opinions but it’s still a fictional character and world. But what bothers him more is that there is a character who kills 300 people and everyone still laughs and he does not understand why Joker gets held to different standards. Furthermore, Joaquin Phoenix responded to the question saying that the movie is really good and he thinks that is rare when movies make us fell uncomfortable or challenge us or make us think differently. He is pleased about that part because it was how he felt making that role.
Violence most of the time is used by people who want to achieve a fair from others to get and feel more powerful. A good example of this would be Adolf Hitler. Under his leadership and racially motivated ideology that he forced everyone to follow, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of at least 5.5 million Jews, furthermore in his pocket was 19.3 million lives of civilians and prisoners who were killed during the war which he initiated. Those numbers are horrifying. Every single civilian during that time was afraid of what he could do if they did not obey him. Some may say he used violence to hide his weaknesses, some may say he was a psychopath and he thought that that was the only way to keep discipline.
In the movie Joker Arthur Fleck suffers from a disorder that causes him to laugh at inappropriate times, because of that he experiences constant bullying from his co-workers and life in general, everyone thinks that he has mental problems. For all his life he heard from his mom that he came into this world to bring happiness and joy and that he has to put on a happy face, ironically, he thought of his life as a tragedy ‘ I just hope my death makes more cents than my life’. The saddest thing about him was that he wanted to cry, but he laughed every time. In one scene he kills his co-worker who came to talk with him, and he takes revenge on them, because of how they acted with him before, the scene is graphic, which scares you even more, After that something changes in his looks like he thinks that he started to live his life for the first time. He enjoyed the fair that he saw in those guys' eyes and the power that he felt. He felt like from now on no one can touch him or make him feel less human than he is. He liked that people were scared of him because that meant that they were not going to muck him anymore, he did not have to explain himself and act how the society wanted him to act.
Between Adolf Hitler and my favorite movie character, there are similarities, in the way they acted and the way they achieved what they wanted was - violence.
As human beings in a world where you have to survive most of the time you are put in life-and-death situations, not necessarily have to take it as it is, but violence can come with self-defense. For instance, Brett Osborn, a 23-year-old casual laborer was put in prison for five years for acting in self-defense. He was protecting his girlfriend because he heard how she screamed outside and when he went to check on her he so a guy pushing his girlfriend against the car, he said that everything happened so fast that he did not have time to think. Now he is in prison for an action that he did not mean to do and he just wanted to make sure that his girlfriend is not going to get hurt. Most of the time society does not care what you mean and what you do not if you use violence in any case scenario you are cruel and they do not look at you as a human being, to society you become nothing.
Self-defense and anger were used in one of the Joker movie scenes on the subway he was beaten by 3 drunk young men, because he was in his clown costume and laughed weirdly just from his life and position where he was, thus bullying emotionally so Arthur killed them. When he admitted during a TV show that he killed those 3 young guys everyone was horrified but no one cared why and how it happened. They judged him the first second he told them. He used violence as revenge for all the bullying that he experienced during the years for being different. He said ‘For my whole life, I did not know if I even really existed, but I do, and people are starting to notice.’
In conclusion, as Jim Marrison has said ‘ Violence isn’t always evil. What is evil is the infatuation with violence. I think that a person who uses violence can rise and get so much power in society but not as a person who does good influence for everyone and not as a person that everyone would like to follow his lead, more likely they would gain notoriety. On the other hand, you can become really small or even nothing to society for the violent actions that you have taken on other people or even yourself. But the one thing I understood, violence does not give you a better life and it does not make your image as a person better.
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