Arthur Fleck is not The Joker.
Arthur Fleck is a mentally ill man failed by society.
Arthur Fleck’s madness and rage lead him to commit heinous acts of murder, for which he becomes famous.
Whether he actually commits any of these acts, whether he actually appears on Murray’s talk show, doesn’t matter. It may have happened, it may have all been in his head, like his fake relationship with his neighbor Sophie. Violent thoughts and delusions of grandeur are hallmarks of psychotic breaks. The other hallmark of a psychotic break is not knowing what’s real and what’s fake.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is Arthur Fleck inspires others to take violence upon strangers.
And what REALLY matters is we do not see Arthur Fleck shoot Thomas Wayne. A random protestor from the crowd wearing an Arthur Fleck-inspired mask does.
Arthur Fleck, who looks vaguely like the character The Joker from the Batman universe, had a mad spiral that inspired someone to kill multiple people.
Arthur Fleck’s final line after his psychiatrist asks “What’s the joke?” is “You wouldn’t get it.”
This is the writer taking to the audience. The joke we “wouldn’t get” is that Arthur Fleck is not The Joker.
Arthur Fleck is James Holmes, the man who committed a mass shooting during a midnight screening of The Dark Night in Aurora, Colorado seven years ago — numbed and inspired by violence, failed by everyone around him — while looking vaguely like the character The Joker from the Batman universe, motivated by madness, elevated to fame.
JOKER makes a statement about a failed society that enables psychotic people to commit horrendous acts.
JOKER asks us to question why atrocities happen.
JOKER does a lot of things, but it does not introduce the viewer to The Joker.