To say I merely liked the film “Joker” would be an understatement. As someone who has seen their fair share of cinema, I found myself utterly captivated by a story that was psychologically authentic, coherent, and hauntingly complete. Yet, the more I dissected it, the more I felt this work would always whisper truths beyond what words can capture. My exploration here focuses on the individual torment of its central character, Arthur Fleck. I’ll sidestep the psychiatric labels; with multiple online sources offering conflicting diagnoses for Arthur, that path felt like a maze I wasn't equipped to navigate, nor particularly interested in.

The Crushing Weight of Constant Suffering

From almost the first frame until the chilling birth of the Joker, Arthur is steeped in suffering. It’s a palpable force, bleeding into every corner of his depicted reality, making it impossible for an audience to ignore. His struggle isn't just with his grim job or fraught relationships; it’s the sheer, agonizing effort of existing. Two intertwined aspects of his pain stood out to me.

The Mandate to Smile: The Clown's Hidden Tears

Since childhood, Arthur internalized a devastating directive from his mother: you must always be happy. His nickname, “Happy,” wasn't a reflection of his state but a relentless maternal command, an unshakeable introject he adopted: I must never suffer, I must always smile. This very command is a seed of suffering. It’s a cruel paradox, where the denial of sadness ensures its chronic, background presence – a quiet hum of misery Arthur feels ashamed of, blaming himself for his inability to achieve constant joy. “Happy... I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life,” he might as well have screamed. This vicious cycle only breeds more pain.

His mother's prohibition against sorrow is starkly visible in his uncontrollable, pained laughter, so easily mistaken for sobs. Arthur cannot allow himself the release of tears without the contortion of a laugh. The opening scene, where he painfully forces a smile while tears stream down his face, is a portrait of this masochism: I must make myself laugh even when I long for oblivion. This emotional dissonance, this mask of forced mirth, is a hallmark of the clown archetype. We've all heard melancholic tales of performers who hide their desolation behind greasepaint, only to retreat into gloom once the show ends.

Anne and Barry Ulanov, in The Witch and the Clown, delve into this archetype, an obsession for Arthur. "The clown is feelings in their archetypal form," they write. "However, he is not just feelings, but feelings from which he protects himself by focusing on only one feeling — the one painted on his face.” They further explain, "The clown pacifies, calms, jokes to hide his confusion, and still continues to feel extremely vulnerable, of being unable to hold back his emotions or cope with them in any way... His clownish antics, so amusing to an outside observer, are merely desperate attempts to protect himself from his own feelings of helplessness."

A World Reflecting a Wounded Childhood

Observing Arthur, one can discern distinct modes of being: a fragile, childlike state and flashes of a tormented adult.

In his interactions, Arthur often attempts politeness, his speech echoing a child's cadence. He seems to be seeking favor, only to be met with cruelty. His words are naive, his pleas for approval and support directed at an aggressive world. “Not quite, I’m still working on it.” “Don’t be afraid, I’m a good person.” “I’m sorry for barging in, but my mom told me everything.” As Ulanov describes, "His ego is powerless; he is incapable of creating even the slightest element of existence; he has no contact with real life whatsoever. He feels extremely weak, he thinks that life is too hard for him, that he cannot cope with it, that he is too small, too sick, too weak-willed to control his own life."

Arthur exists in a state of chronic agony, stemming from constant frustration, perpetually unable to receive the love he projects onto the world from his parental figures. His childhood, marred by a mentally unstable, emotionally distant mother and a cruel, abusive stepfather, left him starved of maternal warmth and paternal encouragement. This unresolved past traps him; a 40-year-old man yearning for the care and acceptance he never received. He approaches the world like a child demanding support, but the world, much like his rejecting parents, responds with disdain, reinforcing his sense of worthlessness. "The clown does not receive confirmation and approval from himself, and therefore remains painfully sensitive to the opinions of others," Ulanov notes.

Essentially, Arthur projects his deepest wounds onto the world, remaining helpless and vulnerable, like the child beaten and chained by an aggressive caregiver. "The tragic situation of the male clown only exacerbates his resistance to confronting reality," Ulanov continues. "He can neither abandon the illusion of his own omnipotence nor find symbols of an interaction with the world that is more imaginary than magical. His illusions rarely turn into real achievements and tend to regress into increasingly inflated forms... He becomes a victim of what Heinz Kohut would call narcissistic grandiosity, hallucinating a grandiose self and an idealized, perfect, omnipotent parental image that is easily projected onto others."

The Spark of Anger: A Fleeting Glimpse of Adulthood

A semblance of an adult state emerges in Arthur as anger, ignited by frustration and hopelessness. When he speaks from this place – “All I have are negative thoughts, but you still don't listen” – the childlike persona recedes, revealing a man speaking with painful clarity. Anger not only lends him a sense of existence but also pulls him from chronic suffering into a different emotional realm. This very anger is often the fuel for a teenager's separation from parents, a crucial step toward responsibility and self-reliance. For Arthur, however, the path diverged.

Fantasies of Obliteration: Aggression's Twisted Path

Arthur’s anger rarely finds a direct outlet; instead, it simmers, manifesting in small, misdirected acts or turning inward. His suicidal fantasies seem to be a cry to be seen, to imbue his life with meaning, even through death. They also offer a perverse discharge for repressed aggression. Ultimately, even his plan to end his life on Murray Franklin’s show is upended by the impulsive murder of the host, unleashing a torrent of destructiveness upon those he perceives as his tormentors.

The Three Faces of Laughter

Director Todd Phillips highlighted three distinct laughs in Arthur. I've come to see them as:

1. Pathological Laughter: This is his disease, a reaction to insult and humiliation. It’s pain, sadness, and tears denied direct expression due to his mother's ingrained prohibition. It's a laugh easily mistaken for sobbing. Ulanov observes, "He becomes a master of mimicry and caricature. The purpose of his identification with the parts of external and internal objects that he parodies is not humor, but desperate attempts to gain at least some degree of control over the sensations that overwhelm him from the outside world, archetypal images, and emotions that overwhelm him from within."

2. Adaptive Laughter: This is Arthur’s attempt to fit in. When others laugh at jokes he doesn’t grasp, he joins in, often abruptly, before withdrawing again. In his desperate attempts to make others laugh, was he perhaps trying to make himself laugh? To find a mirror reflecting his existence, confirming his reality? "The clown holds a mirror in his hands in which people can discover and experience emotions, but he never finds such a mirror for himself," Ulanov states.

3. The Joker's Laughter: This is the insane cackle, an eruption of horrifying "happiness" and rage when Arthur, as Joker, annihilates the perceived sources of his suffering. By destroying them, he seems to find something genuinely, terrifyingly amusing. This, of course, signifies the complete engulfing of Arthur's fragile ego by his destructive shadow. "The clown is an inverted version of what, according to conventional wisdom, is considered a desirable, stable ego capable of achievement and harmonious coexistence with social tasks. The clown is the complete opposite of an orderly, well-functioning ego."

Liberation into Madness: The Dance on the Stairs

No one who saw the film could remain unmoved by Arthur’s descent of the stairs, dancing with an unnerving, newfound effortlessness. Every character arc has its turning point, where something breaks or shifts, and the hero becomes who they are destined, or forced, to be. We’ve seen Elsa's joyous release in Frozen, Furiosa's profound disappointment in Mad Max: Fury Road, Red's quiet determination in The Shawshank Redemption. Here, the viewer feels Arthur's liberation, senses his climax, but must tread carefully. The great trick is that this liberation is a release from his sanity, an inundation of consciousness by accumulated destructive forces born from chronic frustration.

A confusing mixture of relief and horror can wash over the viewer; our empathy registers his unburdening, yet his actions are terrifying. This is why "Joker" is so singular: it forces us to confront the duality of the world and the evil within it. A similar unsettling theme appears in "The Cell," where a psychotherapist enters the mind of a comatose serial killer, finding both the cruel maniac and a small, innocent child hidden within. When the maniac is wounded, the inner child bears the same injury – a stark illustration that no one is purely evil, nor purely good. Life is more complex than our desire for clear polarities can bear.

I’ve seen online debates where some sympathize with Joker, while others condemn them, pointing to his victims. This film, I believe, isn't for everyone, but for those who can grapple with the intricate, unsettling duality of the character portrayed.

The Clown, The Trickster, and The Hero's Shadow

Arthur’s ego is fragile, immature, almost childlike. Thus, his suppressed shadow aspects overwhelm him, transforming the suffering clown into a mad Clown-Trickster, unbound by laws, rules, or morality. He avenges the suffering clown, and the lightness of madness, a sensation he’s never known, is undeniably captivating.

"The figure of the clown is the complete opposite of the stereotypical male hero, the opposite of the archetypal masculine principle embodied in the image of a wise and effective king ruling the country," Ulanov writes. "The clown is in every way opposed to those images and emotions that society has constructed in its attempts to understand what it means to be a man... Where a reserved man would, at best, allow himself to smile...the clown explodes with peals of laughter or bursts into convulsive sobs...vividly and violently expressing his feelings."

This makes the Joker a chillingly perfect counterpoint to a hero like Batman – the unemotional, noble archetype against the wildly emotional, insane trickster. They are complements. It’s no accident that Joker often tries to provoke Batman into an emotional response. Some male viewers found the film repulsive, extending that disgust to those who appreciated it. I suspect the very essence of the clown – imperfect, unmanly – triggered this discomfort. As Ulanov suggests, “The clown expresses feelings that most men in most situations cannot or do not want to allow themselves to feel, and even if they do, they would never admit it in public.”

In essence, “Joker” is a potent, unsettling cocktail of empathy, disgust, depression, and anger that washes over the viewer – an explosive offering from a mad clown who forced us all to confront our own suffering, even as he was consumed by his inability to navigate his own.

References

• Ulanov, A., & Ulanov, B. (1982). The Witch and the Clown: New Images of Religion in a Secular Age. Chiron Publications.
  This book is central to the article's analysis of Arthur Fleck. It provides a deep, archetypal understanding of the clown figure, exploring its embodiment of raw, often suppressed emotions, its use of a facade for self-protection, and its inherent vulnerability and alienation. The Ulanovs' insights illuminate Arthur's internal world, his forced happiness, his relationship with suffering, and his eventual transformation, as discussed throughout the analysis.

• Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders. University of Chicago Press.
  The article references Heinz Kohut's concept of "narcissistic grandiosity" when discussing Arthur's tendency to hallucinate a grandiose self and project idealized parental images. This seminal work by Kohut introduces and elaborates on such concepts, providing the psychoanalytic underpinning for understanding this aspect of Arthur's psychological makeup, particularly his retreat into illusion and his distorted perception of reality and relationships.