The first time I watched the movie The Joker, it took me to a very dark place. I was glued to my seat, frozen in a mixture of my own thoughts and memories, and rigid in fighting back the physical emotions that were trying desperately to surface. I am not someone who likes to be seen as outwardly emotional. I am not someone who cries in front of people, I am not someone who allows others to see me as vulnerable, I am not someone who is weak and pathetic - who needs to be told to "toughen up, princess!" I am someone who likes to process my emotions and understand them, but not have them encroach on the lives of others. I don't want other people feeling how I feel when someone cries in front of me, that awkwardness and that inner eye roll. Really? you chose me? I don't know what to do with this! I am not a hug and 'there there' kinda person. I am a 'lets fix this problem so you never have to feel this way ever again' kinda person. People call me hard and rude, but if I didn't care I wouldn't feel urged to fix your problems. Aaaaaaaanyways, back on track....
I saw the movie The Joker pop up on my Netflix options. My hubby said yay, lets watch it. But for me, a movie that I know is going to drum up inner feelings is a personal thing so I wanted to watch it alone. But this time, I wanted to understand more about why this movie moved me so deeply.
So I watched it again. This time armed with my laptop open, and a blank blog page ready to be filled.
So here it goes.....
"I hope my death makes more 'cents' than my life. "
I hope it makes sense. Perhaps it might make cents too. Maybe when I am gone finally someone will be interested in my thoughts, maybe even me. That's what happens when people die, suddenly they are cast as this perfect human who has never done anything wrong. Just watch crime shows. Every single deceased victim is described as "they light up a room, their smile radiated happiness, they helped anyone in their path, they were loving and caring, they did good deeds...." people remember all the good stuff and label them an 'angel'. Ive been to funerals. No one ever says "they were a moody irratable bitch" or "they would rip your head off and shit down your throat if you crossed them" or "they lied and connived but hey, that's ok, they always shared their beer" Maybe when I am gone people might see the few good things I have done. Then again, maybe there are none and I will just slip away forgotten. Maybe the things I think are good are just meaningless nothings to the rest of the world? It sure feels that way now. People are so ready to tell you your faults on a regular basis while you are alive. Die and they suddenly find some good shit to say. Maybe this is why people are suffering the kind of depression where suicide is a daily thought process, maybe they don't actually want to die, maybe they just long to hear one positive remark from someone. Or maybe those positive comments are actually coming but they are torn between that neverending tug of war of wanting to hear them but not for one single second actually believing them when they come. Maybe what they need is something that helps them believe that they are good, are capable, are able? Does this make sense to you? Maybe it will one day. Maybe the only person who this makes sense to is me.
"Can you up my medication?" Nurse: You are on 7 drugs already. Why do you want more? "I just don't want to feel so bad anymore"
The drugs don't actually help. They don't fix anything, they don't cure you, they don't give you a sudden burst of happiness, rainbows, and frolicking in the bloom filled meadows on a warm sunny day. They just numb the senses. They have you walking around in a neutral shade of grey, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, being nothing, living for nothing, and noticed for nothing. Nothing. If someone says the word 'prozac' to me, the first thing I think of is grey. I couldn't wait to be free of it, free of the nothing. Free of being caught in a place where the dearest person in your world dies and you feel nothing. But sometimes feeling nothing is way better than what you felt before which is a whole lot of something - something terrible. Imagine your whole life and every second of your day (even on the happiest days) being consumed by that physical pain you feel at that split second someone rips your heart apart. That pain you feel where you would rather be dead than exist with that pain. But there is no reason for it so you can't just 'get over it' or rely on 'time heals all wounds' because there is nothing to get over and nothing to heal, you just hate yourself so deeply that your every breath feels like your body is betraying your dearest wish not to take another. So upping the drugs, that is real. It is that or take that last breath. Taking that last breath is such an inviting thought, but what if one day you wake up and that pain is gone? Could that happen? You live in hope. But then again, you could also live many more decades in this insufferable pain.
The scene on the train where the three business men are harassing Arthur then physically hurting him. When he shoots them I was washed over with such a sense of happiness and satisfaction. This is how I play out scenes in my mind when I am dealing with people I despise. People who hurt. People who ridicule. People who lie. People who use and abuse for personal gain. Shoot them in the foot, watch them crawl away crying in pain and in what you hope is remorse for all the evil they have scattered throughout the world and everyone they have come across along the way. Then shoot them in the head to silence them forever, never to make a sound again. Their silence is satisfaction beyond all relief. I remember in school sitting there looking at the people who taunted and teased, the people that thought it was hilarious to make an already misearable and beaten down person even more humiliated and sad, imagining how I would physically hurt them should I have the chance, if I had the courage. I sympathised with Martin Bryant when I read his life history. He acted out what I wanted to do, but I didnt want to hurt unknown people, I know exactly who I wanted to hurt and to be honest I still want to, I just don't (I have that human instinct called 'a conscience'). That is why I dont have children. The only difference between Arthur and me is that I am a coward. I am a law abiding citizen, I sit around hoping there is such a thing as karma and it is doing the work for me. I walk away and let the bad people keep doing what they do. He solved the problem and rid the world of that vile filth.
"Until a while ago it was like no one ever saw me. For my whole life it was like I didn't even know if I existed." "You dont listen do you, i dont think you ever really hear me" "You ask if I have any negative thoughts. All I have is negative thoughts, but you dont listen anyway". This is my life. This is every day. You know, there have been so many times when I have just needed someone to hear me, I have been so washed over with relief and joy that someone has offered to come over and listen, they give me 3 minutes of their time and then spend 3 hours telling me their own problems, their own feelings, their own issues, health complaints, mental health issues. Bullshit, it is all bullshit. People simply do not honest to goodness care. They see your downfall as an opening to offload their own issues. Me me me. Sadness and negativity is all about selfishness. Have you ever met a selfish happy person? No. You look at people who are powerful, rich, successful, they got there at the expense of others, theyre not happy and they do not care about the happiness of others. I no longer reach out, it only ends in more disappointments. RUOK day is the biggest crock of shit that ever was invented. Sure, people ask the question, but unless you say "yes" they wont stick around for the answer, or they shift on their feet in uneasy awkwardness if you tell them why you are not. Sometimes you do not know why you are not. That wasn't the answer they hoped for. They don't truly want to know the rest. They just want to be SEEN to be asking the question, to raise themselves up as some trendy modernist complying with minority issues. Let's be trendy at the expense of beaten down people. Watch the celebs all put up their social media posts. How many responders get a reply? My bet is none. They just want to be SEEN caring, but not actually care. Besides, most people who are not OK are beyond the help of the average person, so Joe Blow in the office is not going to fix someone who is not 'ok' with a 3 minute conversation at the water cooler on RUOK day. And so those who are not OK live their solitude lives in silence, like Arthur, behind that face paint. That mask of theatre paint, thick enough to hold in an entangled mess of stuff not even he understands and no one else ever will.
Rejected by his father, Thomas Wayne. There is nothing that consumes a child more than being rejected by a parent. You feel the hatred consume your body like gangrene, turning your pink healthy flesh into black unfeeling dead matter. Slowly it reaches your heart and soul, the epicentre of your feelings factory and when that goes black then you are capable of anything. Or nothing.
Imaginary supportive friend. Someone who rubs your back and gets you coffee when you are going through trauma. Wouldn't it be nice to find that person who has true honest to goodness non-judgemental, unconditional, support. You eventually kill them off too. Even imaginary friends let you down in the end. It is easier to just go it alone.
Nothing boils your blood more than seeing those who wronged you rise to success. It all seems so easy for them, them with their popularity, their normality, their likeability, their support and backing. They are the 'nice people'. The ones who tore you down in school for absolutely no apparent reason (to you) and who everyone cheered on because they looked good, they wore the cool clothes, they had the perfect bods, they won the sport races, they sung well, they danced well, they drew well, they wrote well, they got good grades, they probably just gave good head. Fucking cock suckers. They walked through the school like the kings and queens of sheba and now sit on their thrones in their pampered homes training up their packs of brats to be just like them, mini versions of their fucking ugly souled selves. The normal people. So fucking normal. It is enough to turn your flesh black - black enough to imagine that loud BANG! I spent my school life dreaming about that. I have the most amazing imagination. But you never want to see it, you couldn't handle it. The world is not ready for truth. Nor to face the fact that 'the nice people' are the core of the problem. And then they are the ones who invent RUOK day, HA! Trending.
"Im so tired from trying to be happy all the time" Do you know how hard that is? SO HARD. Is it normal for life to be this much hard work? Exhaustion is 47 years of waking up and thinking why the hell did I wake up. Why do I have to do another day of hard work.
The battered child of a deranged mother. How does it affect a child to grow up in a home where the person they rely on for security and protection is the one they fear most? To love someone more than anyone in the world and hate that same person more than anyone in the world is another all consuming evil that contributes to that gangerous flesh eating darkenss that numbs your soul. Those children grow up and move away but those memories follow them. Pushed aside to be forgotten but the occasional sound, event, image, thing, it brings the memories flooding back. Sometimes you don't remember the actual event as much as how it felt or how it sounded or how the parent looked when the rage took over and they became the epitome of evil, taking out their own issues, their own frustrations, their own past, their own lack of emotional intelligence, their own sadness or hatred on a defenseless child. People call them 'defenseless child' until they grow up to become Charles Manson or Martin Bryant, then they are 'monster'. Well, you made that monster. If you don't want evil among you don't create it. Be kind.
"They used to tell me that there is something wrong with me. But there isnt. I havent been happy one minute of my entire fucking life. I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise, its a fucking comedy."
"I stopped taking my medication, I feel a lot better now" I think this is because he has finally made the decision to stop trying to be 'normal' and to accept who he is. No more medicine to be someone else, just celebrating uniqueness, no matter how that is percieved by the world. And then the real smile begins. "Now they can't hurt me anymore" Joy is found when you are free of your demons, and those demons are imposed upon you by a society that wants you to be exactly like the majority, be like the evil 'nice people'. Maybe you are the normal one and the majority is the freak show.
"You decide what is right and wrong the same way you decide what is funny and isn't"
It seems like it is always someone else making up the rules. You have no control over what is normal and what is not. What is right or wrong. You have no control over anything at all. For someone like me, a control freak, you spend your whole life in turmoil because you are always battling for that control but you never really have it. Not control over the world, just control over yourself, control over how others make you feel, how others treat you and percieve you. Control over the things you know you could do well at but can't. Control over the things you know you could be achieving but arent. Control over your house and garden and how people percieve it and judge you for it. Nothing ever actually get you there. You've never ever had first place, not once. Because there is always someone more likeable who is being propped up, financed, trained, assisted and supported to get there. And because you are just not good enough. You are an underachieving nobody who is just there to make the achievers feel so much better about themselves - to be second to their first, to be the first to lose.
"Would you like to hear a joke Murray, What do you get when you cross a mentally ill person with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash.... I'll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve!" Wouldn't that be nice. They never do tho. They get their rich husbands, their first million, they get their fame and influence, their degrees, they get right up to the top using the underdogs as their stepping stones. But those stepping stones dream so vividly about them getting what they deserve. On the rare occasion they do, they laugh and laugh and laugh. On the inside. Because the outside isn't proper, and we need to be 'normal', courteous.
In the end the cast aside loner, the nobody, the hated, The Joker stands up and is cheered on by all those who understand. All those who are nobodies, who would be stepped over if they died in the street, who are jeered at and ridiculed, those who are ignored, those who get 3 minutes of disinterested audience when they need to talk to someone. He finally finds understanding and kinship in releasing his true self, in all its dangerous and ugly glory.
The Joker is a product of you. You created the dark side of Arthur. You made The Joker. The human race is what turns delicate people into dark people. You tip them over the edge and make them act out their frustrations, their anger, their revenge, their hatred, their loneliness. Without that element of people interacting negatively with him he would have lived his life without the need to go to the dark side. The people he killed, they fucking deserved it.
Afterword: "The Joker" would have been nothing without the haunting sounds of Hildur Guðnadóttirs soundtrack. I feel she is the most spectacular composer of our era. A modern Beethoven or Mozart. There are not many in this world who can move you to those depths with a string of notes like she can, she paints a picture with song. #HildurGuðnadóttir
Please support artists by purchasing their music - The Joker Soundtrack is a MUST in every persons collection. Just close your eyes and listen. https://youtu.be/8xxl0_qW9kk