We've all probably heard of 'Joker' and I've got to be honest I think the movie is pretty great.
Here's why, it perfectly addresses the growing disturbing lives of men of younger generations, and the twisted parenting of Boomers which lead us here.
Arthur Fleck's mother, Penny, begins as a seemingly normal and loving mother figure, complimenting Arthur and also innocently unaware of any hardships which he deals with. The movie assumes the benefit of the doubt at first, and the story is a sweet one.
But as the movie plays on the main plot begins to spell out that his lifetime of fuckery and misfortune, actually, to no surprise, was not an unlucky series of unfortunate coincidences. They had a coherent cause.
It was penny.
Turns out she was hospitalized at Arkham Asylum -- a mental hospital -- for delusion and neglect. But Arther never knew -- she kept it a secret and sat around the house in poverty putting the burden on her son to take care of her. And he did.
Joker had a tick of uncontrollable laughter caused by permanent brain damaged caused by her mom's abusive ex-boyfriend -- who apparently chained him to a furnace and beat him regularly.
Furthermore, to cover up this treatment, she creates an elaborate lie about Arthur being the son of Thomas Wayne -- or Batman's Half Brother -- via a workplace affair. And that was the reason he never had a father. This turns out to be a lie. He was adopted.
Thomas Wayne fires her after learning of the details of her personal life before Arther grows into adulthood, and presumably she never works again.
As a result Arther obviously does not get a shot at college or higher education, and so is forced into low-skilled labor jobs, where he is constantly treated like shit by his boss, and he gets jumped out in public while working, as well as often on public transport -- because he cannot afford a car.
Morover, throughout the film he is seen eating nothing but bread and water, and perhaps cheap beer. One scene shows the fridge containing nothing but two loafs of wonder bread and one carton of milk. And it never fills up. In fact, Arther is fired from his job as a sign holder for losing the sign after he was jumped and the sign was broken. He never got another job.
As a result he descends into madness himself. In shock over how poorly he has been treated consistently throughout his life, he goes into insanity himself. And this is where he begins a killing spree.
Now, what I'm thinking is that this is not so un similar from troubled men today. And I believe that is the point of the movie.
Which reinforces what I've believed to be the case for a long while, which is the mother-son relationship is probably the number one predictor of how well a young guy grows up on society.
That's all. I enjoy film and movie reviews so I figured I write this.
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