After Watching the Movie, Joker

The movie, Joker

I was heavy-chested the whole time I was watching it..
To call this a villain origin story felt like it was not someone else's story at all. From now on, I don't think I'll be able to call the Joker a villain.

It felt like nothing more than the flailing of a small individual toward the ordinary people — an individual with no money and no connections.
What surged beneath Arthur — this one individual — as it turned him into the Joker was none other than the hate-culture soaked into society as a whole.

Arthur smiled even at those who were rude to him. Constantly suppressing and denying deep inner anger, he forced his own mouth open to manufacture laughter. He wanted to give laughter to the people around him. That was his only joy, his profession, and his dream.
But he — he in his entirety — was ignored. By friends, bosses, neighbors, family, even by the comedian he looked up to..
Through the runaway moment that broke out by accident, he opened his inner eye. He chose not to simply keep being on the receiving end. Don't force a smile back at the rude — fight back. That was Arthur's choice — to become the Joker.

Who would dare call the Joker, giggling after committing murder, merely inhumane? If so, maybe they've only seen the lurid surface. They're ignoring the very cries Arthur keeps shouting out, just like the flat, dispassionate therapist in the movie. Arthur's laugh stands closer to sadness than to joy. The Joker doesn't harm the unsuspecting public. What the Joker — and Arthur — want is one and the same thing: "please, just listen to me."

The ones who treated the weak rudely were not only the powerful. Similar weak people were just as rude. They didn't feel kinship or empathy toward those in a similar situation. They simply didn't want to be lumped in with people receiving rude treatment.

I can't help thinking that behind the worldwide rampage of extremes sits the hatred ordinary people direct at those on the opposite side, and the flailing effort to avoid becoming the target of that hatred.
Citizens aren't only blaming the government. Citizens are blaming citizens. And, using the fight between the socially weak and ordinary people, the powerful always look down from the same perch.
The same anger, I think, must also sit behind the political aversion ordinary young people feel. Everyone stands in a different place, looking in a different direction, and shouting.
I also shouldn't forget that I can become the Joker, and I can become one of the rude. A reflection that is less reflection and more vow.

The Joker can come from either side — far left or far right. "Attack is the best defense" — that self-protective attitude might itself be turning someone on the other side into a Joker. I thought about that.

Wherever we stand, we need to listen to the other side's lament, not with eyes of hatred, but with sincere interest.

To have your justice or your authenticity recognized, you don't need to turn other people into sinners... I don't know why everyone keeps popping their veins and pointing accusing fingers.. I think it's because they're all that lonely and that afraid.

In a world of hate — one individual who does not want to be left out,
pushed and pushed until they stand on the cliff's edge — an individual who, worn out, simply lets themselves fall,
an individual who went into a rampage at another individual's rudeness — the bigger the atrocity grows, the more other individuals finally turn their gaze

If we must give the villain the name "Joker," honestly I don't know who to pin it on.
"Isn't it rather 'not one Joker, but many Jokers'?"

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