Have you seen Joaquin Phoenix's Academy Award Best Actor acceptance speech?
If not you should. He speaks a message which humans need to hear right now.
But that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about the movie that won him the best actor award, The Joker. A lot of people have not and will not see this movie. I understand. It's disturbingly violent. This blog is not about convincing you to see the movie. But the question is, what are you missing by not watching The Joker? In this blog I will tell you.
Giving Voice to the Voiceless
Arthur Fleck is struggling. He's been in emotional pain all his life. He was abused as a child, his stepfather and mother chained him to a radiator. Currently he works as a clown, bouncing a discount sign with a smiling face outside a Gotham storefront. A gang of kids run by and steal the sign. Arthur takes off running after the kids, down an alley. The kids turn on Arthur, kick the shit out of him and destroy the sign. Arthur gets reprimanded by his boss for losing the sign. One of his coworkers gives Arthur a gun to protect himself. Riding home on the subway three young men who have cushy jobs with Wayne Enterprises are drunk and get their kicks by throwing food at a young woman. Arthur has had a strange behavior all his life. When he is under stress, he laughs uncontrollably. Dressed as a clown from his day at work, Arthur starts to laugh as these guys torment the young woman. The guys turn on Arthur, beating and kicking him. Arthur takes out the gun and shoots two of them. The third runs away. Arthur follows him and shoots him as he's trying to escape up the stairs to street level. Somebody has taken a video of this incident. It is posted on the internet and TV and soon there's thousands of people wearing clown masks and protesting for their rights. Unwittingly Arthur has become the voice of the voiceless.
The Power of Archetypes
Three versions ago, Batman, directed by Tim Burton, cast Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Several years later Heath Ledger was cast in the version directed by Christopher Nolan. While Heath was filming he was warned by Jack about the Joker character. After the filming the Dark Knight, Heath died of a drug overdose.
The Joker is an interpretation of the archetype called The Trickster. The Trickster is a harbinger of truth but often reveals this truth in bawdy unconventional ways. In The Joker, Arthur Fleck becomes an instrument of this Trickster energy, balancing the scales of a society riddled with class inequality. As Arthur finds his voice and release from his own pain, the rest of the downtrodden find a salvation of revolt in the example set by him.
I'm not suggesting that You and I should open ourselves to diabolical energies. I am suggesting that we can become instruments of impersonal energies that can further the evolution of the human race. Some examples of these are the Magician, Hero and Sage.
Here are two examples of the Trickster from modern film.
Jack Sparrow
Beetlejuice
Crazy Wisdom
When I attended Naropa Institute I learned of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and the "Crazy Wisdom" associated with it. This wisdom is born of advanced insight and the courage to step beyond the norms of society. I will let Colonel Walter E. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now explain it.
"I've seen horrors ... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that ... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face ... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember ... I ... I ... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized ... like I was shot ... like I was shot with a diamond ... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God ... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men ... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love ... but they had the strength ... the strength ... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral ... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling ... without passion ... without judgment ... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
I realize that this monologue is disturbing. These are words spoken by a man who has seen horrors that have changed him. The change has taken him beyond the constructs of normal society. He has seen truth that severs the threads of ordinary human thinking.
This is why the truth embodied in Apolcalypse Now and the Joker is important to me.
I am writing a book called Gwella. The book is about a man who must shamanic-ally travel to all his past lifetimes and right the karma of each in order to save himself from death. What I've realized in the process of writing this book is that the way we think about life and death is all very tame, very conditioned by political correctness and our sense of humanity. What I've realized is that there are no mistakes. Furthermore the events that we think of as mistakes are actually the catalysis for the most learning. Carl Jung says when you can hold the tension of opposites new consciousness is born. The bigger the tension, the bigger the consciousness. The first two characters in Gwella's lifetimes are a man and a woman who deeply love one another but have diametrically opposing needs. The man stands for principle and the woman for love. He winds up killing her which sets up a cascade of lifetimes that resolves in inevitable oneness and forgiveness. The initial act seems so tragic. But the evolution that ensues is gold.
Now this is wisdom but crazy, mind expanding and horrifying, that we can kill who we love and it somehow still ends up right, if we wait long enough, if we eat our actions and have remorse and truly open to how fricking big we actually are. Are minds are such small containers for something as big as all of creation.
Tools of Transition
One of the most remarkable things in The Joker was the way Arthur stabilized himself, transitioning from a state of chaos into purpose. After experiencing disturbing things that he had done or had been done to him, he would start to move very slowly like the time lapse photography of a tree twisting and contorting, from crooked and dwarfed into expanded and upright. He would then walk away transposed, serene and confident. Sometimes this movement would morph into outright dance.
This speaks of the integrating value of movement and how it can help us all in the modern world.
Tips on Thriving During Transition
Conclusion
The need to matter runs deep in the human condition. Not only that, but this need is supported by the universe. When large groups of people lose their voice in a society, you can be sure that the forces of nature will conjure a way for them to be heard. This way can be an archetypal energy that possesses an individual who comes to be the voice of this voiceless people. This energy has a wisdom but often has a "craziness" that breaks through the structures that have kept these people voiceless. The way this individual stabilizes the energy working through him can be very creative and instructive to the average person. We all have the potential to be instruments of energies bigger that ourselves.
What energy bigger than you are you willing to stand in?
Read other blogs by Christopher