Striving to understand comedy pt.2

 Hi.

I woke up today and didn't want to go back to sleep. One step to choosing to be. Listening to the Rite of passage by Yanni.

In the previous post, Striving to understand comedy I went from the beginning of the joker movie from the introduction of the character to his arc when he transforms into his real character.

Here the movie gets closer to the most abstract meaning of what a joke is. Because Arthur has such a limited range of expression, his perception of the world leads him to plan to make a joke on himself by literally shooting himself in the head with a gun.

couch scene

But let's pull back a bit from this extreme and examine what a joke is. Killing the self can be watered down to killing the ego. It means a joke can be made by questioning someone's ego. Ego, in the meaning of a set of attributes defining who someone is to themselves. In this case, Arthur took the extreme and is planning to make a joke by questioning his whole existence in front of the camera.

Let's move around this point one more time and make it more clear. I think it's a brave thing for someone to go in front of an audience and make a joke about themselves. A normal person has their own insecurities and simply wants to present a good version of themselves to the outside world. This usually happens by amplifying the positive attributes and hiding the lower value attributes of the personality. Now, on the other hand, some comedians take the opposite path. Louis Ck talks about his divorce and jokes about himself and his choices. Norm Mcdonald holds his genius mind back pretending to be just an old piece of coal and wisely putting jokes in his words. 

In these types of comedy, the comedian looks to be doing the opposite of what seems to come intuitively. Instead of feeling the power through empowering the ego, they make other people see how harsh they can be about themselves and making tension by doing what is unnatural. "He must be brave to make such a joke about himself" also they get a laugh from the audience which gives them a feeling of acceptance. They become good as they are. Life becomes comedy instead of tragedy.

So maybe Arthur wanted to prove how powerful he is by killing himself in front of millions. I think this could strongly make his point clear but he slowly realizes he wants to see himself after it. Because if he dies, how can he enjoy his era of empowerment? 

He kills himself in his head and transforms into the real joker. He dances and loses himself.

Now it's time to make his first joke. To question someone who deserves it in front of an audience. When his two coworkers come for a visit he puts one of them who bullied him under the question mark.

Randal scene

And the pinnacle of the movie, when he is sitting with Murray in the live show,

Interview with Murray

The beauty of this scene is both of them are symbols and clowns and gods of the city at this point. This scene is the power play of the two main characters of the movie together. Murray makes fun of Arthur and humiliates him by showing the video of his bad presentation and bad jokes. 

Murray with his charismatic face, shows himself on the side of order and policemen, expecting Arthur to have reasons for what he is doing, questioning him for what he did

Arthur speaking from his position of powerlessness and how he expects other people to empathize with each other, maybe at the root of it, sees himself not being able to feel how powerful people feel and expecting them to bring themselves down to his level. Questioning their authority and why they must be the ones who set the rules when they don't know what people out there are going through. Questioning the atmosphere of society can make anyone go crazy and look for the reason for it in the decisions of the powerful people.

They both don't understand each other and that brings both of them to the verge of losing control. Murray, not being as likable as he always is because he had to put a serious face on. For the audience, maybe like a child seeing their teachers outside of their class mask talking seriously with another adult. And Arthur shaking and confronting how he is losing the game even though he has a point. Losing the game because he doesn't have power like always. But this time he has a higher card in his deck. He pulls out the gun and shoots a bullet into Murray's head. That's the joke. Now he has the power, for a few seconds. He presents his subjective comedy which he learned throughout his life. Humiliating someone by taking their life away from them when they don't have the power to stop it from happening. The same which happened to him. Being asked for something he could never provide and be judged for it. 

They both kill each other and themselves. In Arthur's mind, he could be funny and artistic but presenting himself and experiencing his true emotions in front of the camera and feeling nervous and shaking was his way of shooting himself in the head. That was his joke to himself. Seeing the imperfection of himself and how it is far from what was planned in his mind was his humiliation of the self.