Joker, a movie released in 2019 which centers on a semi-employed clown living with his mother, dealing with mental illness and an unsympathetic world, who later channels his frustrations into violence and becomes a criminal. Being a movie about the birth of Batman’s most renowned adversary, it was expected to do good at box-office as fans around the world were waiting for this movie for a long time. While the majority of critics did rate Joker positively, the reviews the film received were highly polarized due to the different themes portrayed in the movie and the problems with the messages it gave out to the viewers.

One of the main concerns of the critics is that the movie is gathering a fan following among the incel community. Arthur dreams to become a well-known comedian but only manages to get a humiliating job as a clown with grinning makeup and floppy-toed shoes twirling an advertising banner outside a store. David Edelstein echoed the idea that “Joker” is “an anthem for incels” in his Vulture review. David Ehrillich of Indiewire says it is a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels". 'Arthur’s a classic incel candidate’ quotes Chicago Tribune. Involuntary celibates aka incels is a group of men who find it particularly difficult to get a partner in life and ultimately end up releasing their anger on women with insults, rapes, acid attacks, death threats and even murder. These people already praised joker from the dark knight movies because they could feel the oppression he suffers from and relate to him at different levels. He is seemed to have a crush on his single-mother neighbor which at the start of the movie can be observed to be reciprocated. However, this turns out to be an imagination of Arthur fleck as once he enters her apartment she asks him to leave as she is scared of him. This confirms the incel community’s belief that women lead men on into relationship and once things go awry, the women leaves. The oppression Arthur fleck feels is the torment an average incel puts himself through, making the film a cult favorite within this community. However, we should re-focus back on Sophie because she is much more disadvantaged than Arthur Fleck in many ways, as a woman, a single mother and a black person .In that scene my sympathies were for the startled Sophie. She didn’t just “ask him to leave” as one of the reviewers blandly put it. I felt her surprise, her fear, her panic, I felt her mind flit from her own safety, to her child’s safety, to that rapid mental calculation about what she should do; run back in the room and hide, or fight off the attacker, or just ‘beg him to go’. Why? Because every woman I know has been there. The possibility that he left isn’t the point – the terror had already been inflicted; the violence had already been committed.

Another issue of our society highlighted by the movie is the issue of mental health and its awareness. Joaquin Phoenix’s joker suffers from an inexplicable condition which makes him laugh at inappropriate times. This type of case can be identified as a special case but the character is given no leverage and gets beaten up on the subway by a group of men. The message that there is a lack of metal health awareness and the absolute lack of social provision is conveyed as his therapist tells him, when explaining to him that cuts have meant that the service he receives is being pulled: ‘listen, nobody gives a shit about us. They don’t care about you and they don’t care about me either’. “The worst part about having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t”. The lack of mental health awareness was criticized as being too blunt by Chicago Tribune, ‘the weary social worker lays it out to him… ‘they don’t give a shit about people like you, Arthur’. This also adds to the society’s beliefs that mental illness can never be treated. It rather showcases that people having mental issues/problems just have to embrace them. This message is portrayed by the character’s acceptance in the end which results in the murder of innocent people fulfilling his fantasies. Racism is also a theme portrayed in the movie as Arthur Fleck suffers from physical and mental tortures from the fellow civilians. This theme is reflected by the scene where Arthur tries making a little boy laugh in the front seat of the subway he was travelling in and the kid’s mother as she tells him to stop irritating him. The portrayal of people of different racial backgrounds such as Latinos and Blacks are displayed by outright thugs beating up Arthur fleck in the streets. The subway murder scene from the joker is inspired by a real-life incident which took place in 1984 where a white man attacked some black men who were unarmed. However, the movie made it a non-racist attack by replacing the black boys with white businessmen. The scene where Arthur is telling his psychiatrist “you never listen, do you?” shows us how that his psychiatrist is unsympathetic towards him and does not care about his well-being. However, racism is not deeply portrayed in the film and other areas are focused more. This could be due to the “fear of alienating the target audience” as said by the New Yorker. Also, the movie would not exist if Arthur Fleck was a black person because if the movie was based on the realities of the world, Arthur fleck would have ended up in jail or worse killed by the police. This film does nothing to govern the hurtful stereotype of the blacks instead it implies the blacks are bad for the sake of being bad.

Another aspect of the film which was never discussed in Joker’s previous appearances in movies such as The Dark Knight was the portrayal of how the poor survives in the world. This aspect was given importance to gather sympathy for Arthur Fleck as he was presented as a poor guy with many life problems like his mental illness and his irregular job. This failed to please a lot of critics and was seen as “tedious and forced material” by the Guardian. They argue that this difference of the poor and rich could be showcased in a much better way. The anti-capitalist message of the movie was not appreciated enough. “At various moments it’s a bit like The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, only not as good” says Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian. However, some of the critics praise the movie by terming it as the beginning of a new way to “reimagine what a comic book movie can be” as quoted from the Toronto Sun.

The movie portrayed many problems faced by the people in our society, though it failed at some places in conveying its ideas. The movie received many negative reviews and even dealt with controversies because of concerns that it could inspire violence, and because Phillips made comments about how "woke culture" made it impossible for him to continue making comedies. However, many critics really enjoyed the movie as it proved to be a good source of entertainment with outstanding dramatics and cinematic. Rolling Stone says “As entertainment and provocation, Joker is simply stupendous”. Hollywood reporter says “…It's arguably the best Batman-adjacent movie since The Dark Knight”.