(sub)Text: A Discussion of Todd Phillips’ Film ‘Joker’

0:07 Wes: Hi, everyone, this is Wes, and you're listening to an episode of Subtext about the film Joker. This is a discussion that I had at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis on November 22, 2019, with Dr. William Sharp, a psychoanalyst and faculty at Northeastern and with an audience of about 40. We explore the psychology of the effect of this film on the audience, including what it is that explains why a movie like this would be so popular, despite the bleakness of its subject matter and the lack of elements typical of a comic book movie. You'll find video for this discussion on Pel's YouTube channel. I hope you enjoy.

0:47 Seth: Why don't you start? Thank you for coming. Seeing everybody here, it's always fun. This is an interesting film to me because my biggest question that I left with is it's a disturbing movie, but I didn't quite know why it was disturbing. I didn't know whether I wanted to recommend it to people or not recommend people see it. I kind of felt like I would tell people I saw it and that they should decide for themselves if they should have seen it. I don't exactly know why. I'm not sure what it was in the movie that is so disturbing. So I'd love to kind of really get into that.

And yeah, since I don't have much of a voice today, I'm really hoping that people are interested in doing most of the work and helping me understand what's so disturbing about this. I will start with. I found one quote. I was trying to figure out where to go even in psychoanalysis and Freud with this, but I found one in jokes in relation to the unconscious. And then I thought to myself, he's a joker without a lot of jokes. It's really not humorous in a lot of ways. But I found one thing where Freud talks a little bit about two different kinds of jokes.

So I thought I would just start with that and see where people wanted to go and see what you wanted to comment on it. So here's what Freud has to say. Jokes are either hostile, serving the purpose of aggressiveness, satire or defense, or obscene, serving the purpose of exposure. It must be repeated in advance of the technical species of the joke, whether it is a verbal or conceptual joke. There is no relation to these two purposes, which I thought was just as confusing as the movie.

2:29 Wes: I was also hoping the audience would do most of the work. But I told people there wasn't really a talk tonight. It was just a conversation. So I had similar concerns as you, but they were more about why this Film would get such a large audience. So it got an eight minute standing ovation at Cannes. It's the highest, already the highest grossing, our film in film history. Originally, I wasn't going to go see it because I don't really go to see superhero films anymore. There's just so many of them now. And I just. I thought I should boycott them and only go see other types of films, which seem rare these days.

But I. The thing that actually convinced me to go see the film was the preview of the Joker dancing down the stairs in Queens. And just the fact that it was gonna be. There was talk of it being about someone who was severely mentally ill. And I thought that was interesting. And talk of it being dark. So I did not go to the film with high expectations, but I was very impressed by what the director, Todd Phillips, did with it. And the other thing recently, I saw that. That scene where he's dancing down the steps in his very, very triumphant way in full costume after having just.

I forget who he has killed at this point, but it's something that people are. Tourists are now going to those steps in Queens. And in the movie, of course, it's Gotham, it's not queens, but their real steps that exist in Queens. And tourists are pissing off people who live in the neighborhood because they are doing the Joker dance. Some of them falling down trying to do it, because there's lots of kicks. But doing Joker dance down those steps, sometimes dressed up in clown makeup. So I thought that was really interesting because even though it's such a dark film, it really seems to have captured people's imaginations.

And it's not just that they go, this is a great film. Despite the fact that it has dark subject matter. There's an element of joy, I think, and people's responses to the film. And that's because I think that there's an element that it gives us a kind of pleasure that is actually rare in movies these days. And that is some of the pleasures that we normally see in dramatic tragedy. It's not really. The film is not technically a complete tragedy. So in a play like Hamlet or something like that, the tragic hero starts out as a great person, in a sense, and then loses everything and often dies by the end of it.

And in the Joker, it's a little bit more complicated because we will see him fall apart mentally, but there's a counter arc in which he will be triumphant. He will become this super villain. I think that's actually a kind of. Despite the fact that he's a Villain, a kind of triumph that the audience can identify with. So you get a very interesting kind of tragic comedy. And I think there are comic elements as well. So the, some of it really is funny. Although the funniness is just in his goofy dance, for instance, down those steps, or in the goofy chase scene, which is really.

So the chase scene at the very end of the movie where he's just killed, it's implied that he's killed a hospital social worker because he's leaving bloody steps behind. But it's a slapstick chase scene in which he runs from running away from orderlies. So we see him disappear down one side of the hallway and then we see with the orderlys and chase. And then we see him run back down the hallway again with the orderlys and chase. That's sort of a film trope, like an old Hollywood Chaplin-esque type of comedy scene. And there are elements, there are hints that Todd Phillips is consciously doing this throughout the film.

So that tragicomedy element, the filmmakers make, I think, very clever use of the concept of the Joker villain, which is this whole idea of being someone who is supposed to be a comedian in some sense, but who becomes a murderer. And some of what that exploits is the. There is an inherent, you know, as the Freud points out, there's an inherent aggression in humor, but it's aggression in sublimated form. And using it requires a certain amount of social skill and connection to people. And it's the kind that the character simply doesn't have. So he's not going to be able to, as we see in the film, successfully be a stand up comedian because he has too much trouble getting into the heads of an audience in order to successfully use humor.

So the way he overcomes that, the way he sort of triumphs over that, is to turn humor into a practical joke gone too far. So in that case, you no longer have to cater to the pleasure or the desires of an audience. The need to win their approval. The same sort of thing that we have to do in social relations. You can just sort of force something out of people by making them fear you. And then the joke is no longer something for the audience to laugh at, it's for him to laugh at. So he laughs at your. He turns it around and then he laughs at your fear.

And that's his interesting solution to his particular problem, which I haven't mentioned yet, but I think that's his problem. But I think the other clever thing about the film is just the. Its portrayal of mental illness is very realistic. In certain ways. And the portrayal of someone who's socially isolated like that and who can't make human connection is very realistic and dark. And that's one of the things which I think is surprising that people would want to sit through all of that. And again, I think there are various reasons that they want to do that.

One of the other ways in which I think the film accomplishes its goal of getting you to suffer through all of this and yet get pleasure out of it is through its use of dance. So I mentioned the staircase scene in Queens, but that's one of many dance scenes that really defines an arc through the whole movie. So there's an early dance scene in which he's doing it very awkwardly in his living room. And he's very aroused by a sense of power that he's gotten because he's been given a gun and the gun goes off accidentally, sort of highlighting his ineptitude.

But then after he uses that gun to kill people, Wall street bros who have harassed him on the subway, he does really what I think is an incredible dancing. What I thought was really the best part of the movie in a dirty public bathroom or public restroom. And the scoring, I forget the score of the film is done by a Norwegian, I think, young composer who's a cellist. And so the score to that scene is full of both these tragic minor chord under notes, but also little sort of angelic voices which speak to the possibility of his transcendence of a situation through violence.

Some martial overtones with drum beats and stuff like that. It's an incredible way to capture that. At the same time, his empowerment and also the tragedy that he is going this route. Violent brawn, he's going to lose everything he wants, which is social connection. Even if he gains this super villain status, the kind of dancing he does is very ballet like. So you see him in a way, it's his first moment of competence in the film. It's the first moment where you see him because he seems to have complete control over his limbs. He's not just doing something goofy, although it is strange the way he dances.

And then, like I said, there's the triumphant clown dance down the stairway after he sort of really started to fully begin to inhabit the Joker, the Joker character. So that's one of the things that I found to be really fascinating about the film. But I look forward to hearing what everyone else thinks, what it was you guys, because it sounds like a lot of people had a similar reaction and were really pleasantly surprised, let's say, by the Film.

10:21 Seth: So what did you think?

10:24 Dr.: I think for me it was very disturbing. I didn't laugh once in the film. And I remember being in the audience watching it and I only saw it a couple weeks ago, so it wasn't a packed. And I remember there was one scene. I can't think of it off the top of my head, but that one person laughed. And I remember being kind of shocked by it because I've heard gasps in the film. But then someone laughed. And I thought I was disturbed by the laugh too. I was just like. But I remember actually feeling.

10:55 Audience Member: I felt for him.

10:56 Dr.: I think there was many moments where I felt he's been so let down in so many ways. And I guess almost feeling a little guilty about how bad I felt for

11:09 Audience Member: him because he killed lots of people.

11:11 Audience: Yeah.

11:14 Dr.: And how empowered he made other people feel because of the violence he committed. Although the first act of violence he committed where everyone felt empowered by it. I was like, well, that was self defense. Right.

11:27 Audience Member: I mean, he was.

11:28 Dr.: And we get beats with pulp.

11:30 Wes: Like the part where someone laughed. Someone in a character in the film laughed, you're saying?

11:34 Audience: Or someone.

11:35 Dr.: No, someone in the theater.

11:37 Seth: Yeah.

11:37 Wes: You don't remember the scene?

11:38 Dr.: I don't remember now, but I just remember being the kind of.

11:41 Audience Member: I was disturbed by the laugh. I think I remember. Wasn't that when the midget guy couldn't reach the lock?

11:48 Wes: Yes.

11:48 Dr.: On the door. And so did someone. People laughed.

11:53 Audience: Yeah. So he.

11:53 Audience Member: That was a violent scene where. Yeah went off against his old co workers but he spared the short man. And they were laughing because he couldn't reach. Joker had put the chain up on the thing and he couldn't reach it. Yeah.

12:07 Audience: So they left.

12:08 Audience Member: But he ended up sparing him. He had a bind. Right, right, right. But that's what I remember when people left.

12:14 Audience: I do think that was probably like. I mean, it sounds bad, but that was like a really pleasurable scene for me for whatever reason. Like, it was like. I mean, it was like difficult to watch, but it just was, you know, I feel like I felt his apathy or whatever because it just. It looked like it felt so good to do that. I don't know. So, like, when I left the movie, I felt like, high. Like it was like. Like I had a really positive reaction.

12:41 Wes: Which felt so good to do. Which part?

12:43 Audience: Like when he's like beating the guy against the wall. Like before the midget scene. Like, it's just like. Like I had to turn my head away. But like, after I felt like. I don't Know, like a rush kind of from it. I feel like I felt probably not what I'm supposed to feel, but.

13:00 Audience Member: Well, I don't know if you are not supposed to feel it, but I think part of the pleasure of this movie is that we get some sort of social justice into those aggressiveness. Like the violence of it is the result of so much injustice, so much denigration. And I feel that it's disturbing because it's hard to see that we all. To have our part in a lot of the mental illness of others. And then we have all these people and then we condemn them to jail after having suffered all this much. And when you see in the screen that little moment where at least they can go out and then be this violent, it's a bit of a.

13:37 Dr.: Even that when the talk show host, when he called him on it, like you. The reason you invited him here is just to make fun of me, like, just that when he said that and how he summed up the movie, I forget now because it's been a few weeks since I've seen it. But there's a line here, said where I was like.

13:53 Audience Member: I mean, he hit the villain, right?

13:56 Dr.: Yeah. It's just like this is the result of society failing. People like me. I forget exactly what he said. I don't know if you all remember

14:05 Wes: anyway, I think you're thinking of a knock-knock joke, which is the way he leads into the killing.

14:11 Audience: He says, what do you get if you combine a misfit loner with a society that's forgotten about him? Like, this is what you get, you know? Yeah, that's like.

14:21 Audience Member: Kind of like the whole theme.

14:23 Audience: Just that aside from the implied murder of the water lady, which might reflect the transformation at the end, all of the victims, to kind of paraphrase the phrase from the musical Chicago, they all had a comment. And it created, I think, a lot of identification.

14:45 Seth: It created a lot of identification with

14:46 Audience: them, which is part of maybe why you have people dancing on the stairs in Queens and so forth. And also a lot of catharsis against

14:54 Seth: injustice and so forth.

14:56 Audience: When you think about who the victims were, it kind of set up identification with him, too. And it was almost like you wouldn't

15:02 Wes: mind if he found those kids who

15:03 Audience: beat him up and he took care of them too, you know, like, that

would have been okay.

That's how it felt.

15:11 Wes: I think a lot of the reason why movies even exist is so that we can go and enjoy violence. Going to movies just to enjoy seeing people killed is a big thing. And Usually there's a very typical pattern by which that's all moralized, right? You get good guys and you get bad guys. And even a typical superhero movie, you know who the good guys are and the bad guys are. And the violence is never out of proportion to the injury. And often it's a last resort because if it goes too far, if it becomes too sadistic, if it becomes too gratuitous, we will lose the ability to identify with the protagonist who's making use of that violence.

This film has to walk a very fine line because it has to do two things at once. It has to keep us identified with the protagonist, but it also has to illustrate that he's a villain. And so his violence can't be so disproportionate that we completely lose connection to him. And so it has to be moralized. You get the Wall street bros who seemed like they had it coming, but also he hunts down the last one at the end, the guy who's wounded and pathetically trying to crawl away and pleading in a way, and kills him. And that's something that usually would be a deal breaker as far as the audience's connection to a typical protagonist of the movie.

The protagonist will just become straightforwardly a bad guy. What we know is that, okay, this is the. He's becoming a super villain. So we're willing to tolerate a certain amount of that. We understand his role and then universe. And then it's only in the very end that we get a killing that is arguably just against someone who's. Who's obviously innocent. And that is left off screen. So you just get to see. You get the hint that he's killed this hospital worker, and you see the bloody footsteps. But I think that's the right move because I think if the film completely shies away from the idea of his full villainy, it hasn't succeeded.

So in this movie, it's a complicated use of violence, I think. There are lots of movies, of course, in which we see bad guys killing. Killing lots of people. And we identify with horrible, horrible people, but they're usually killing worse guys, right? So if it's a mob movie, the mob character we're identifying with is killing worse mob characters and things like that.

17:28 Audience Member: He's also killing his mother and a father substitute. So that's also particularly interesting in the.

17:34 Wes: She had it coming.

17:34 Audience: You know, that.

17:36 Audience Member: Talk about the fantasy. I mean, that's what to see in a movie. I just wanted to say that the last killing that you're referring to, to me Is like the top of that social pressure where it turns around against us and then kills the social worker which is trying to help all these people like him. And that's like where the circle of violence ends in repeating itself. To me it just makes sense that it would be that first symbol. But there was something about the social worker that she actually didn't see him like all the others didn't see him. And I think he tried to communicate to her that there was something about not being seen, not being acknowledged that he exists, that fuels the violence inside and kind of puts him into bits and pieces, which I kind of think at the end of the movie, all these people that got.

That he got surrounded by are these bits and pieces. And I think that, you know, the cycle that it didn't get interrupted with the social worker because she failed to seek him as well.

18:49 Wes: Well, there's two, there's two social workers, right? So one in the middle.

18:52 Audience Member: Oh, they're the one in the middle

18:53 Wes: early part of the film and then one in the later. But they, for him, they might as well be the same. So.

18:57 Audience Member: That's right. Which has something to do with it exist like the core of like existing in someone's mind in the first place. I think she does need it.

19:07 Seth: You know, she does say, he says, how am I supposed to get my medication?

19:12 Audience Member: Who am I supposed to check in with? And she does say, they don't care

19:16 Audience: about people like us.

19:16 Seth: They don't care about people like us. She goes with them in a way, but I think she misses what he's saying and it, it doesn't.

19:23 Audience Member: He can't see her anymore. Like he's the one that becomes flying now to the other.

19:28 Seth: No one sees anyone until the very end of the film when he leads basically an entire riot in the city.

19:34 Audience: Well, that's actually what was kind of most interesting to me is like this end riot scene and this idea of being being seen because the role that the face painter, this mask is playing in the film is very significant. And then Mr. Awan mentioned that people in Queens are dancing down the stairs. Then I was like, okay, so part of the end of the film when everyone's in this clown mask, everyone is the joker. Then you know, this is also actually happening as a real response to the film. People are dancing down the stairs, getting a costume. And I'm sure it was one of the most popular Halloween costumes of the year. So I mean, to the degree of identification, like really playing the role, it's definitely resonated on a really Real level.

20:16 Audience Member: Well, I think you need a triumph to be able to enjoy the falling. Like, he's literally going deeper and deeper into his fall down the stairs. And that's where he gets the glory as the deeper he goes and the

20:32 Audience: more precarious it gets.

20:33 Audience Member: Yeah, but it's like people identifying him or identifying with his mask. Like, with something empty. There's nothing. Like, what are they identifying? Right. The mask.

20:47 Audience: But he even put the mask on to hide. He had his makeup on, but then he had to put the mask on so he could hide from the cops too. So he didn't want to be seen

20:56 Wes: for who he really was at that

20:58 Audience: point in the movie. I feel like if I was gonna dress up as the Joker because of this movie, it wouldn't be to, like, because I identified, but rather because I'm like. Or maybe because I identified. I'm trying to, like, push it away from myself and kind of make it funny and make it not as serious. Because I remember, like, when I saw this movie with my roommates and, like, walked out of the AMC and at, like, 1:00am or something and then, like, walked through Boston. It was very, very uncomfortable. And, like, trying to get those ideas out of my head.

And I ended up having this, like, long conversation with my roommates about, like, what? Like, violence. And, like, when violence is okay. And, like, if violence is okay. And, like, oh, what would you do if, like, someone, like, did this to your girlfriend? Like, because when you identify with the Joker, it's like, oh, well, he does this. And sometimes when he does that stuff, it feels like a normal thing. But I think the people dancing down the stairs, maybe an uncomfortable identification with the protagonist is really what's going on.

I think that's the significance of the film highlighting. I remember even when I. Before I saw the film, I saw the trailer and I labeled it and said, this is the making of a psychopath. I have to go see it. And now the whole world sees how the system fails somebody who can control his paranoia, tied to medication. Had he not, he becomes a criminal psychopath when pushed to that level, unmedicated, where the paranoia and the illusionary world. And it's done in such an artistic way when it pretty much guides him through life and it opens this person who goes on a vengeance.

He loses self. There is no more reality. By the end of it, we see Joker that we've seen in those villain films. But it's really this whole path of not being able to control his hallucinations, learning about violence and trauma, which is Usually statistically, right. There's a high childhood abuse when you lead into a path into like a criminal psychopathic life. There's that there's so many things that add to it. And then you're off your meds, you lose your head. And we see him losing his head. And I remember this is probably the most important film.

I have no doubt. I hope it will get an Oscar not just for the role. Joaquin Phoenix did an incredible job for the directorship, for writing the music, the combination of it. I could relate because when I left the theater I got in my car and my partner laughed like the joker. He did this. And I turned around.

23:33 Audience Member: Did you just do that?

23:35 Audience: Because I felt like I was in this film where the shade of a tree didn't look the same. I felt disturbed. That whole translated to me and it was really scary.

23:45 Audience Member: The world seemed like a scary place. Please tell me you just did this, that I didn't just imagine that you had left.

23:50 Audience: And that laughter shook me.

I would agree that like yeah, society definitely failed him. But I'd also say that like he's intensely happier when he's off his meds and going crazy and killing people. So like what really was his quality of life when he was on his meds and not hurting anyone? He was kind of like pushing in and pushing in and pushing in and then he was off his med. And he's probably a more self fulfilled person killing everyone.

I mean the only pleasure he could

get is like beyond what is like,

you know, if he lives a life that's totally desolate and like sorrowful or he like goes beyond. The only place he gets is transgressive. So it's like the jouissance, like beyond the thing. And I think that's again why people are dancing down the stairs. They're filled with that sense of like this guy did it. Whether someone had it coming to him or whatever. He like he went beyond what's permissible. And that in itself, that freedom, this

24:46 Wes: is a way that he can connect to people. So if someone really is. If they really have lost all connection to humanity, then unfortunately violence by, you know, violence does make sense. I think we tend to think, well yeah, we can help them. And so it doesn't. And of course we have to stop them anyway because we care about the well being of ourselves and society. But from the standpoint of someone who really has lost all connection, if violence is the only means and it makes sense to make sense internally to pursue it, the movie needs that. Like the protagonist, if he's not to become dramatically inert, has to be doing the best that he can under the given circumstances.

So it's important that we don't just see him as a victim of society because then he's without agency and that becomes uninteresting. He has to be more than a function of social circumstances. And yet there are real boundary circumstances under which, which curtail his options, options for his agency. But I think we, as perverse as it might be, we can identify with his social alienation or the fear of that type of social disconnection, the ostracism. We can all at a deep level identify with that. And so we can identify with the vindication, the violent vindication that would restore us.

26:06 Audience: Well, I want to talk more about, because you just brought up the word alienation. Well, this is in the first place is a Hegel's term and it was like used by Karl Marx. Well, Marx's way to use this word alienation is that he first said that the workers are alienized. Their labors, their works are alienized because the works no longer serve for themselves, they serve for the capitalists. And the more they work, the capitalists become stronger. The bosses, the rich become stronger. And in contrast they become like weaker. The more they work, the weaker they become.

And in this case the laughter. Well, there is one criticism in like Žižek or something like that is like we need some kind of like a surplus enjoyment to maintain this whole society structure. But the Joker is not the case. Because Joker, he alienized not only his work, but also his enjoyment and his laughing. He provides other selves with laughter, with joy, with enjoyment. But at the same time as an alienation, he lost it for himself. There is an elimination of his laughter. He has to provide laughter for other people in order to earn money or something like that.

But at the same time, because it's an alienation, he provides all the jokes or something to other people. At the same time, he lost it for himself. He no longer feels enjoyment in it. Enjoyment and in himself. I mean jokes or jokes in any, anything that the society provides to maintain the status quo. Well, the society, like the cultural capitalists or something like that, the cultural thing like the movie, something like that. For example, in our society, our like movies, superhero movies, maintains some kind of like hallucination or fantasies for ourselves.

It is a product for ourselves in order to maintain the tension between the classes. However, this is kind of a compromise. But this kind of compromise lost its effect on the Joker. So the Joker became like. Well, out of this society, became like Alienized people or something like that?

28:53 Wes: Well, I'm trying to think through what you're. It's a very complex comment, but interesting. So I'm trying to think it through in real time.

29:04 Seth: I had an association. My one association while he was speaking was that somebody was making money selling all the joker masks. So it was really hard to escape capitalism in that particular way.

29:16 Wes: Yeah, just thinking out loud, I'm not sure this will be helpful. So labor, in order to not be alienated, has to be a way of achieving recognition. So the sort of thing that Raskolnikov was talking about, his feeling of invisibility, some of our sense of self. And this goes to. Hegel's psychological theory is built up of the recognition of others, which is a very fraught relationship and involves what he calls a master slave dynamic. The kind of obsessional need to try and control the recognition of the other. And then working out of how you're going to resolve all that stuff.

For Hegel, what the slave got out of their position is the ability to know themselves through their work. So to actually sublimate, to actually have that kind of maturity and in the position of mastery, that manic defense, you don't get to sublimate even if you get to dominate other people, even if you, if you do succeed in controlling them. So now I'm trying to connect this to. For Marx, it becomes hard to sublimate, it becomes hard for you. Your day job no longer becomes something satisfying and pleasurable and enriching in your life if it's driven by a division of labor where you're doing horrible industrial jobs.

Right. You know, repeatedly doing something on an assembly line or something like that. So in the case of Arthur Fleck, the joker character, obviously he's looking for that. You know, he has an off the beaten path kind of job and he aspires to it. So he wants to be a stand up comedian. He's being a clown. He's doing, in a way, all the right things. He just lacks the. He lacks the social capacity to do it. I'm not sure I see a clear connection to capitalism in the film. There's a circumstantial connection in the sense that he's not provided with mental health services.

Anyway, sorry, I'm trying to think out loud. Maybe that's helpful. But he also represents society.

31:13 Audience: I mean, he is an individual, as an individual, he's mentally ill and he goes through all of that. But what he does represent society. And I think the comment about Marx, I don't know Marx Very well at all, but just as a member of society. And at the end, when he is dancing again on top of the car and all these people are kind of, like, looking. He's created all this chaos by his actions, fighting against the man, as it were.

31:38 Wes: You would deny this, though. And he does deny it, and I believe him in the film. So, no, he totally denies it. Ambitions are not political. No, they're not important that they not be political. It's important that other people be providing the political. It's important that the populace of Gotham be politically aroused by what he. He's doing. But for him, the objectives can't be political because that's not the way he thinks of people. He thinks people are, as he said in the talk show, awful. Universally awful. And that's a very important conclusion for him psychologically. But go ahead. I think people disagree.

32:14 Audience: I mean, he's not political, but the fact, like, he's basically, like, in a clown assembly line that's disconnected from his laughter. Like a clown makes laughter. He doesn't laugh at what's funny. It's like that. That disconnect is kind of like what you were just talking about. Like, the alienate. Like, the alienation. Like, what he creates is laughter is something that he has no connection with anymore in, like, this kind of society.

32:39 Audience Member: So I don't know.

32:40 Audience: I think that is what I saw.

32:42 Wes: And he also caused the riot on

32:43 Audience: the subway as well, when everybody's wearing the masks and he needed to escape and somebody with the gun accidentally went off and they started beating on the cops, and the cops ended up getting beaten.

32:53 Seth: And he caused that.

32:53 Audience: He didn't know that he caused it, or I think he was actually pleased

32:57 Wes: that he caused that.

32:59 Audience: But, you know, he's apolitical.

33:01 Wes: Absolutely. If at any point in the film the directors had had him purposefully lead a riot.

33:06 Audience: No, they didn't.

He didn't.

33:08 Wes: It would have been a dramatic mistake, but. Sorry.

33:11 Audience: Yeah, he's right. The film does try to make the connection that, like. And I think it ties into the victim of circumstance kind of thing that keeps getting brought up. But I don't. Like, while it's like, oh, he didn't have his med. And he. None of this, like. I think that he would still feel equally, like, powerless even if he was in a higher social class or powerful. Like, if you look at, like, a narrow or Caligula or something, like very, very powerful figures who are very, very crazy, who ended up just being, I think, killed by people around them.

So I don't think like social class really plays into it that much. I think Joker's supposed to function sort of as a Rorschach test where you're supposed to impose whatever enemy against Joker that you would like to see. You know, I guess maybe if you're left leaning, you see him as a victim of capitalism, or if you're, you know, right leaning, you see him as like a victim of a godless society. So it's really for the audience to

34:11 Seth: make up their minds.

34:13 Wes: It's a complicated issue because we're all victims of capitalism. But he's also the victim of a very severe developmental trauma. So then it becomes a difficult, a very complicated question of how those play together.

34:26 Seth: I'm not in the psychoanalytical world or anything like that, but I very much saw it as a critique of capitalism. The class edge, I thought was pretty clear. He's poor, he's, as he was saying, alienated in a menial, low paying job. The alienation was clear. I thought it was very tangible. He's angry at billionaires. The people that run society, they play

34:55 Wes: on this a lot.

34:56 Seth: In the movie they have pictures of

34:59 Wes: these wealthy, successful people talking about how

35:02 Seth: their, their belief in a meritocracy, they got there because they deserved it. The other people don't really know how to save themselves. And they need these. Basically the aristocracy, right, rule by the best who need to save these pathetic underlings that can't somehow figure it out.

35:20 Wes: I mean, that whole conception of society

35:22 Seth: is placed in question by this film. I mean, and then, yeah, you pointed out. I didn't correctly. The they drew a direct link between

35:32 Wes: the types of things we're seeing under

35:34 Seth: capitalism now and mental disorder. We know there's a correlation. I mean, I don't know all the technical research, but we know there's a correlation between the two. We're seeing it now in reality. That's surely part of the reason why

35:47 Wes: the film's so popular is people see

35:49 Seth: it's going to fight further elements because of that. But you pointed out like he got his. The funding cuts, he couldn't get his meds. They're trying to draw a direct link between the way this social system is working and his problems.

36:05 Wes: They don't portray him as just an isolated.

36:08 Seth: In my opinion, they don't portray him as just an isolated freak with problems. Like there's a reason his problems and his revenge that he takes on these Wall street guys inspires a mass movement. Like his problems aren't his problems.

36:26 Wes: I mean, he has a severe case.

36:28 Seth: He has lots of trauma, but his problems are felt by lots of people. I. I just don't see.

36:35 Wes: That's very well put. Did you thought you were going to say something?

36:39 Audience: I was going to say because we were talking a little bit about, like, the mental health components of the film. And, I mean, it was. It did directly tie in in terms of, I mean, having a social worker, but even, you know, eventually went into kind of his history and the mother as being a schizophrenic and a few other things. But I remember. I don't. I can't recount exactly what the case was, but, like, I remember it didn't make sense. It seemed kind of, like, conflicting in a lot of ways in terms of the psychological background they were giving.

And for me, it seemed like the film, if anything, like, was a critique of or it showed our lack of ability to actually understand mental illness, like, on a very basic level. Because in a sense, I was like, oh, I don't know, like, what this guy. Like, what this is about, like, what his situation he's presenting. There are all of the sociological elements in play, but as far as, like, getting a sense of this character, like, clinically, I was like, oh, I can't touch this. It's all really convoluted, and we don't know what's going on. The cases don't make any sense.

I was like, oh, that's actually pretty accurate. We, like, really don't know what this type of thing is, and we make a really good attempt with our particular work to arrive there. But something about it was, like, seemed beyond what could be conceptualized. And that's why the Rorschach comment really resonated with me, because it was like, oh, we're creating the meaning. This is just all there for me.

38:04 Seth: One of the saddest moments in the film was when he was on the bus and he was playing with the kid. He was entertaining the kid with all the different faces, and the mother yelled at him, saying, like, why are you messing with my kid? And then he starts laughing, and he passes that card saying, you know, I have a condition that I just laugh sometimes I have no control over. And I thought that was actually, like, a real tragedy, which I connected to the end when we were getting a litany of things that he had experienced with his mother. I mean, the thing that. It's always interesting for me, the phrases that stick in my mind, how he was chained to a radiator and probably had brain damage from not only the mother, but from the mother's boyfriends and series of men that came through the house. I mean that's tragic.

38:53 Audience: Do we know what happened to his imaginary girlfriend? Do we think she got hurt?

38:58 Wes: So I can tell you what the director said. The director of absolute person. Yeah, that's.

39:03 Seth: Maybe it's.

39:04 Audience: It looked. Because the door was unlocked. She didn't lock the door. So he opened the door freely and he sat on the couch and by that point he was. That's it. The meds were out of the system. And there were all those moments where you could see he was actually by himself.

39:20 Audience Member: But he imagined her.

39:21 Audience: This whole relationship was beautiful. And she comes out and says, I know you. You're the neighbor from upstairs because that. That scene with the elevator and this is the moment where we know that was not real. That's a very clear illustration to the audience that he imagined the whole thing. And she says. And he looks at her and says, I had a very bad day. I was so afraid that to me it looked like she had gotten. She didn't come out alive because there was no follow up to tell me that maybe she was okay.

Did he leave?

I don't see him leaving at that point. Did he have a gun with him? I don't remember if he did. He probably. Definitely. When did that happen?

40:03 Dr.: What was the sequence where did that bomb.

40:06 Audience Member: He had just figured out that he

40:08 Seth: had been adopted and then he left

40:10 Audience: the place and there was a ring.

I think he just killed. Did he just kill his mom with a pillow? It was right after. So he came to the closest next person to him, which was his imaginary girlfriend. So he just murdered the closest person, his mother. So they didn't show that because had they done that, that would have been. I feel like it would have curtailed

40:31 Audience Member: the movie into a whole another thing. But what did this.

40:36 Wes: Do you guys really want to know? Anyone have the opposite feeling about whether or not he killed her?

40:44 Audience Member: I think she would have stayed alive. Yeah. Because she said the kid, dad. So the reaction if I just had a bad day is to protect her. Like don't get close.

40:56 Seth: I believe she was. I want to believe she's alive.

40:58 Audience Member: She's alive.

41:02 Audience: Basically. I think it doesn't matter because he is now.

41:06 Seth: She never wronged him.

41:09 Wes: Just like the.

41:10 Audience: Just like the little band.

Yeah.

Speaking of which, that's an interesting thing. In another way, the little man. Because he does express pretty high empathy toward the little man. And it's one way when you were talking earlier about if it goes too far, it won't Work well, he's just gone very far with a former co worker. They sort of bring it in both for humor and also. I mean, it's sort of a very empathic response at that point.

At least.

It keeps you identified with him too, at that point.

41:45 Wes: Yeah, I think that's another subtle and clever scene because he's sparing the little guy. But also he has a very cavalier attitude. He doesn't fully grasp how afraid the little guy is. So I don't know if you remember just sort of the tone of his response. It's like he doesn't. When the little guy can't reach the doorknob and comes back to ask to be helped out, he's afraid of being killed. And Arthur Fleck treats it in a very cavalier, like, you know, laughing sort of way. But on the other hand, I think your point is right. He's highly empathetic in his own way

42:20 Audience: because I saw him being put down by society as well, by making fun of him.

I would understand this way because I remember that I saw in some kind of, like, TV series something who said that it's. It's powerful to kill somebody, but it is even more powerful to spare somebody. So he is now the one who has power. So it is his right, his power to spare his or her life. The little guy. He can kill the big guy and spare the little guy, but he can also, like, kill his mother and spare his imaginary girlfriend. It's up to him. And he is now he becomes someone who has power. So it is. Actually, I think it's some of his game.

I still think some humanness comes through there, that it's not just the power trip because he is identified with a small guy who's been prejudiced against and so forth. And there is an empathy and a connection.

43:20 Wes: I honestly, I did see it as a mix of those two things. I found something sadistic about how cavalierly he reacted when the guy came back to ask to be let out. And it was really disgusting and horrifying in a way. Just the Fleck. Lack of comprehension in a way. It's like he failed to comprehend how awful and traumatic what he's just done is to another person. But on the other hand, I think you're right. He's observing a kind of code there about who deserves to be spared and who doesn't. So, again, I think it was walking that kind of line that I described before.

But it's trying to go over it enough that you feel. I mean, at least I felt really disgusted and horrified by all that, the violence is moralized. The guy betrayed him, gave him the gun, got him fired, all that stuff. But still, it's repellent, and it's not the type of things you would see in many of these types of movies. It's a graphic, violent scene. It gets some real complexity in there with all that stuff.

44:18 Seth: I think there are a lot of

44:19 Audience Member: things about this movie that you don't know what's real and what's not. And I love that about this movie because it really stays true to the Joker, where his past is unknown and

44:31 Audience: it's a multiple choice.

44:33 Audience Member: And Arthur is not a reliable narrator. So, like, the entire girlfriend scenes were not real. What else wasn't real? I looked at, like, some YouTube videos,

44:42 Seth: and if you go back and watch

44:43 Audience Member: the movie, all the clocks say the same time.

44:47 Audience: That's wonderful.

44:48 Audience Member: It is not your thing. There's that scene where he's talking to the social worker, and it does a quick clip to him just banging his

44:55 Seth: head against the wall in the white room.

44:57 Audience Member: So how do we know that that social worker's real? Is she the same. His idea of the same woman at the end? Like, there's just a lot of things going on where, like, you just don't even know. You can't trust the actual story, which is one of my favorite parts about the movie.

45:12 Wes: Did you see the twist coming with the girlfriend being imaginary? I didn't.

45:17 Audience Member: I didn't see it at all. But when it happened, it just. Especially after the fact, when I kind

45:22 Audience: of watched all the YouTube videos, Joker,

45:25 Audience Member: it's just like it was not only that, but so many other little things

45:30 Seth: that just could have just not happened. A little closer to the answer of why is this movie so disturbing?

45:38 Audience Member: Well, I wanted to respond to your comment. I kind of actually kind of thought that the girlfriend was imaginary because wherever you have the image of the mother who's kind of horrible, you're gonna get the imaginary image of someone who's wonderful. And, you know, in that sense, I kind of thought, you know, I guess he kills his father and his mother, which is. I kind of looked at the movie as this big, giant wish. Wishful thinking in terms of, like, the Joker is, you know, maybe a little bit of each one of us. There's, like, a joker, and we want to kill our mothers and fathers in a certain sense.

But then he actually goes off and does it because he's out of control. And then he also gets his imaginary, you know, kind of friends to support him in the whole ordeal. And then the more he imagines like the more imaginary they get, the more his actions become more and more horrible. Like eventually he kills people. So there's like the split grows and grows and grows.

46:37 Audience: I mean, but in terms of like the fitness and the reality, which is definitely like up for question. Like the film, I mean it's a dream. It's. I mean a film is someone's dream. I think again, that's what's kind of maybe like how it can resonate with so many people on so many levels again in this sort of very idiosyncratic way is because like a dream, it kind of certain parts stay with us while others leave.

46:59 Audience Member: I was just wondering what was the motive behind going to the talk show? Because like he goes in so emotionally charged and he, he thinks that's why he's going to kill himself with the joke. But then like he kills the host. I was just wondering like what did he expect? Did he really think that he's. He will be well received with the show?

47:24 Dr.: Like did he not think of the

47:26 Audience Member: possibility that he'll be make fun of

47:30 Wes: on the surface level? It's set up as he is going there to avenge himself because the talk show host took a video clip of him doing stand up and ridiculed him for that.

47:43 Audience: So.

47:45 Wes: Yeah. And then invited him to ridicule him some more. So he is going to get revenge for that. And doesn't in my view, doesn't seem to be thinking a lot about what's going to happen next.

47:57 Audience Member: He revenge by killing himself.

48:01 Wes: Think I thought he had gotten a plan. I thought he had just planned to kill the talk show host. Am I wrong about that?

48:06 Dr.: But I never believed that he would actually do that.

48:09 Audience Member: I thought,

48:13 Dr.: I never believed he would actually like shoot. I thought it would be like a blank, whatever you call it.

48:18 Audience Member: I don't know the term, a blank bullet.

48:20 Dr.: I don't know. It's called a blank.

48:22 Audience: Yeah, a blank.

48:22 Dr.: There you go.

48:24 Wes: And then it would just be like

48:28 Dr.: when people say he killed the father. Is that, is that what they mean? Is the talk show host. Yeah, the talk show host is the imaginary father.

48:37 Audience Member: Oh, the wished for father.

48:39 Dr.: Yeah, the wished for father.

48:40 Wes: He has that earlier fantasy, guys, remember

48:43 Audience: the earlier which had a son like you.

48:45 Wes: Yes, I wish. Dr. Wagner.

48:48 Audience Member: I think it illustrates well the revenge mode motive in suicide is essentially equivalent to the revenge motive in homicide. He could punish this failed father by shooting himself on his television show or by shooting him. Either of those would be a triumph in the mind of this character. So like what Turned that around for him. That. I don't know. I don't think there was any indication of a turning point point there. But I think that the director did set us up to think he was going to shoot himself.

49:22 Audience: I would say, like, it's almost like. Which is like the healthier choice. Like, he, in the end, he chose to not kill. You know, like, it's like, I feel like he had to make a choice, and I feel like he did the right one. Like, I don't know, like he did the right thing.

49:37 Dr.: I think, like, sitting there, he was able to actually see him as a separate person and not his father. I think he had, like, a moment

49:44 Audience Member: of clarity sitting there. And when he was making fun of him, he was able to see, like, he's not my father and he's not

49:51 Dr.: me, so I will kill him and not kill myself.

49:53 Audience Member: Yeah, that's kind of how I. Yeah,

49:56 Audience: no, I. I agree with that.

49:58 Wes: It's always healthier to kill other people.

50:03 Audience Member: I think that's why,

50:06 Audience: like, the most honest illustration of. Compared to everywhere else, where we see. See a little bit of empathy and a little bit of humanistic. This is one scene that is most honest of a psychopath who has no empathy. They would not kill themselves. They would kill others. The narcissism doesn't allow you to go and shoot and direct this to itself. The only way you can avoid doing that is by murdering others. And he did it publicly on tv, which actually kind of translated into a wave to people. How many people watch television. It inspired and brought the making of Creation of a Joker.

I feel like the timing. Somebody mentioned the time, the timing of this film and the timing of his circumstances in life, how depressed society was. And they needed a crazy leader. They needed a motivation and inspiration. And his appearance on TV inspired a war against the man, right? Against the government, the wealthy, the capitalist. And it's so significant because all he had to. He did it on television. That was the creation of a wave

51:18 Audience Member: of a political infrastructure. Like a question, I guess I wanted to say. I don't see him as a psychopath. I think actually I was really taken by the. The film as an illustration of what we study here all the time about the breakdown of schizophrenic defense. Because his defense was working well for him in the beginning. And he was living in a very delusional, illusory, delusional world which was intruded upon. He got off the medication, but also he was just intruded upon by reality in various ways. The schizophrenic defense broke down and he became in touch with his rage and very, very violent.

So I thought it was a brilliant portrayal of mental illness and psychotic breakdown. The other thing that really disturbed me was how. I mean, the social context was important, but showing how given enough rage and disempowerment and oppression, how any leader will do, including a really mentally ill one. And I think the parallels to where we are today escaped. So I found that really disturbing. The appeal of the id, I was thinking of that in this movie too. If you have grievance to have the appeal of the leader who is operating pure destruction.

And he's the leader that did that. I was thinking of our training here too, in the sense of the first half of the movie. We're trained here to sit with all sorts of feelings and to sit with and be with the patient. It's a very challenging thing because it challenges every part of our minds. And so to sit with all sorts of the whole range of feelings. And the first hour for me was intolerable. I kept looking at my watch. I love movies, but I was like, this has got another. This is two hours. I couldn't stand it. And I think I was thinking of how that's how the page.

He was a wonderful actor because you were with him in that department. Depression and hopelessness. And I kept thinking, well, this guy does live, though, because he's in a

53:49 Audience: lot of other movies.

53:49 Audience Member: I kept trying to go, but no good can come of it. So I kept feeling like there was just this buildup and build up of the depression. So the resistance or the tension that was building up in me and in him simultaneous cell. The relief when he started killing people was just fabulous for me. And I think it was another way to be with him. It was a break. It was a psychotic break. But the pleasure of not having that depression was really made me understand why people go there. And he just did it in such a wonderful way. So I left the movie also feeling great.

And I was thinking, this is interesting. I was all wired up. It was tragic. But I was like, okay, this is okay. I'll be a group leader. And there's Bruce. There's Bruce Wayne. He's gonna run into him again. That's interesting how that was. And then I see. I wonder if he really is that guy's son. Because I believe that he could have impregnated his mother very easily and set up the whole adoption at all. Doubt was there too. And I'm going on. But those tolerating all of those feelings is what you work with when you're

55:09 Seth: a clinician to help people understand how other people get there, but also having the awareness that we can get there. Yes, that's the mirror part. The film for me is how if you really honestly sit there, you have to put yourself in the role of the joker and how quickly any of us could slide in there. And that's, I think, what's really disturbing to a lot of people. I said, I saw it once. I immediately told you, I think we have to do a movie thing on this. And then I was like, okay. Once we agreed to do it, I'm like, I need to see it a second time. And I spent about four weeks of avoiding it. So I have not seen it second time. You've only seen it once. But some of the imagery just stays with me so much.

56:01 Audience: My experience in watching this movie is, like, good all along because I think. Well, I have read a lot of Marx, so I think I was traumatized before. I was like, traumatized by Marx.

Yeah, you're right.

In Marx criticism, actually, I'm sorry. Seeing like a lot of, like, facts that. That's really disturbing. For example, like, how much does the worker's work actually goes into himself? That is like a very little percentage. They're like Marxist economists analyzing and calculating all that. So I was like, traumatizing like previously. But, like, I built up some defense on it. So I actually feel like really 100% good in watching this movie.

56:52 Wes: Revolutionary action.

56:55 Audience: I recommend you all read some Marx. I think it is good for like a second.

I can have a Marx in the joker class. I have a question.

57:07 Dr.: Following Dr. Snyder's comment was when you said the breaking down in the schizophrenic defense, it. You said it was the break, the illusion, the illusions no longer were illusions and delusions. Enough.

57:17 Audience: Yeah.

57:17 Audience Member: He's okay in the beginning in this very misery world.

57:21 Dr.: Right. But then it made me think so with the father he wished for the talk show host that idealized father. So is that part of the connection is once he saw that this man that he idealized was making direct fun of him, was that part of his. The unraveling, the once he realized, like,

57:44 Audience Member: wake up, call them.

57:45 Dr.: Yeah. He learned his mother.

57:48 Audience Member: He had this. He really idealized his mother also and taking care of her and turned out she was a horrible mother when she found out.

57:56 Audience: Right.

57:56 Audience Member: And then he killed her.

57:58 Audience: Right.

I'm just.

58:01 Dr.: Because I'm wondering what happened right after this.

58:03 Wes: Don't bathe her because you might have to kill her.

58:06 Audience: Yeah,

58:09 Wes: I'm just wondering.

58:10 Dr.: I'm not watching. I just want to know what happened once he saw that in the hospital room. That scene of the talk show host. He was so happy. And then you just see him crumble

58:20 Audience Member: as he watches it.

58:22 Dr.: What happened after that?

58:23 Audience Member: Is that.

58:24 Dr.: Does anyone remember?

58:26 Audience Member: I'm gonna watch it again. I don't remember. I was wondering about the refrigerator. When did that happen? Was that related?

58:36 Audience: That was like banging a head against the wall. That was a clip that.

I think we went inside the fridge.

58:43 Dr.: He was preparing for the.

58:44 Audience Member: To go to the talk show.

58:45 Wes: Yeah,

58:48 Audience: the scene like he was still in the kitchen. But then like that happened and they. There was no like follow up of like what do a new scene.

58:55 Wes: That was a completely improvised scene by the way. That was not in the script. That was just Joaquin Phoenix did as was the dancing scene in the bathroom.

59:04 Audience: Can say something about. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Roland Barthes, the French.

59:09 Wes: I thought it was going to be a Marx related.

59:16 Audience: Marx. He is the one. He is a French philosopher and he suggested a theory of like the author is dead.

59:25 Wes: Definitely the author is dead.

59:28 Audience: You don't actually have to like interpret all the details of this work because. Because even the director himself doesn't have the full right to explain it all. Because it is not made by him his own, but also made by, you know, all the ideology, all the society, all the like the basic things. So he is not the only author of this. So he does not have the full rights to interpret it. Also, it is actually everybody's right to interpret it or even you can put in some plot into it. I mean you can put your own plot into it to make your own version of stories. And many people's stories can make like variation, something like that. I think you can understand this way instead of like discussing about what really happened here. I think that is not that meaningful.

1:00:32 Audience Member: Maybe.

1:00:32 Wes: Well, it's a very complicated topic and I'm going to plug my podcast Partially Examined Life. We did a big episode on authorial intent and we read that essay and many others. I'm not sure. I think that might be a false dilemma. I think you can look at it in both ways. You can vary very anti authorial intent, which I share that with you. But you can also be interested in what really happened in some other sense. I thought some other people were getting ready to respond.

1:01:02 Audience Member: Speaking of the author and speaking of the dream. I'm thinking that. And I think you said this in an earlier context that the Joker character in the Batman films is in the mind of the audience, not in the mind of Fleck. So if you think of whose mind the story is taking place in part of the. We are, you know, by the hand of the director writing that part of the story into the psychotic decompensation of this individual person in the social context that we see in them. And I think that's really interesting in and of itself and also as a way to understand how empathy works and what we are bringing, what we're adding, that we know.

And the other thing is, you could read it. You had mentioned the dream movie. You could read it as his retelling of his life, his imaginary telling of his life while he's in the hospital. What if he's in the hospital the whole time soothing himself by telling this story about how he became a cultural icon and so on, Telling and retelling. So again, that could go to what you're saying about the suicide and the homicide. He's playing, I think, with ways to tell his story. If you're looking at it as a retrospective telling. And in that way, it's very much like, you know, someone coming to analysis and telling you the emotional story of their life.

It's not always the same story. There are new things that occur. There's a context that you have as the analyst that you're bringing that the person speaking to you doesn't necessarily know. And it's very much like experience of watching the film. The layers of empathy, therefore. Well, that possibility is raised at the end. But the ending, it might all be a story or a fantasy.

1:03:09 Audience: So that did happen.

There was.

Because I couldn't remember if that scene was there. And I was like.

I think everything.

1:03:14 Audience Member: A whole different dimension.

1:03:15 Audience: Yeah. So I think that in itself, like, I mean, one is almost reflective of the conversation. Kind of dreamlike crop up because I couldn't remember exactly, but it occurred.

1:03:27 Wes: So, yeah, it's all. It's kind of like Alice at the end, you. What are you talking about?

1:03:31 Audience: That, like. Like there's some scene, at least that where we have a sense he's back in the hospital or he's there and it is. It becomes a bit perplexing if any of this occurred, if any of it was real or if it was fantasy. And I think that pivot point is, like. Also shows a lot in our responses to that. And, like, what really happened in this film and is that meaningful?

1:03:52 Audience Member: Dr. Wagner, can you say a little bit more about how you're using empathy? I don't understand quite what you're saying about empathy. Well, I think I'm using it in different ways. But one answer to Dr. Sharp's question about why the film is so disturbing is that we are feeling sympathetic with a character who is a murderer and out of control maniac. You know, it's necessary to be able to connect empathically with anyone and everyone. Right. If we're going to survive our current condition, if we're going to talk to another person, if we're going to be an analyst, if we're going to be an analyse. And these things are. We have to feel everything and we have to feel ourselves into the subjectivity of the other person. Be affected by them, be occupied by them. And the movie really occupies the audience.

1:04:49 Seth: We have about 10 more minutes, so if you haven't said something, here's your 10 minute warning.

1:04:58 Dr.: I think there was so many uncanny

1:05:01 Audience Member: moments in the movies that I found myself feeling like I know stuff about this, I know the reality of it.

1:05:09 Dr.: But then I found myself lost again. And I think they did a great

1:05:13 Audience Member: job in terms of positioning the audience in a place where some of the

1:05:18 Dr.: very primal fantasy would come up that

1:05:21 Audience Member: we all know of, but at the same time we don't want to know about. So I think that's part of the

1:05:26 Dr.: reason the film was particularly very disturbing and we don't want to go and face that again.

1:05:32 Audience Member: It really talked to the unconscious. I think I want to piggyback on that comment that also the character was really well made because there were so much overlap of different characters. You could see Quasimodo, you could see there are so many different overlaps of the ugly parts of us that we don't want to see. And I think that's part of it.

1:05:57 Audience: This is really a movie about the shadow and shadow repression where the Joker has just been repressing all these violent tendencies with the exact opposite about making people laugh, making people smile. When in reality he fails to properly integrate his like aggression and really, you know, stand up for himself in a healthy way, you know, like. Whereas a scene in like the Wall street scene where he, you know, viciously guns them down, where he could have just ended it, you know, in a less brutal fashion and he becomes sort of, you know, possessed by the shadow

1:06:32 Wes: and he continues to kill. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. There's lots of aggression and healthy self assertion. And that's one of his big problems is socially right, it's doing that. He doesn't know where to draw the line. And the only place he can be is in a completely overcompensated place of aggression.

1:06:55 Audience: Yeah. Earlier on, one of the things I was thinking about was I was gonna ask a question, like, why did this make me think of the way I, like look at homeless people so much? But I think like, with the reflection stuff, it really helps because, like, you see especially if it's like an assertive homeless person, they're like talking to and stuff and you have to really interact and like, it's the same way where it's like something that you could be that you don't really want to.

1:07:20 Wes: What is the feeling. Sorry.

1:07:22 Seth: That you got?

1:07:23 Audience: Like, I don't know, the same feeling when I left the theater, like the dread. Like, I never want to watch this movie again. That was like really good.

1:07:31 Wes: With a homeless person, I mean.

1:07:33 Audience: Well, like, not like someone who dealt with like someone who, like, you can tell they're kind of whack. And like, I remember I was outside a liquor store once and this dude, like walked up to me and like, big dude. And then he started talking about some random thing about aliens and stuff. And it was like, alright, well, you know, what's he gonna do if I'm a little neurotic or if I'm a little anxious? Could I end up being that way or fall that far? It's almost like when they, like in high school when they would bring a guy who's like, I had my whole college career ahead of me and then I got a heroine and I come from a great family and all this stuff.

1:08:14 Audience Member: Yeah, there but for the grace of God or whomever.

1:08:21 Seth: I think we invoke the idea of the shadow in an archetypal way too, that the stuff we try to get rid of. I'm not going to remember the old quote exactly, but it's something about how we fear them and if we just let them kind of fester in the corner, they'll form a mass and come out and he'll be the return of all that stuff that we're trying to not see in ourselves that we only see in other people. And that could become a real problem. And I think that kind of also gets to what your comment, Dr. Snyder, about how people impinged in a way that they just kept upping the tension level until we get to what Dr. Wagner was saying. There's just so much pleasure in finally killing. At least it relieves the tension, drops it down.

1:09:03 Dr.: These two lines in the movie are coming to my mind where it's like the Line he says, where his mom tells him. His mom says that you were put here to bring joy into the world or something like that. And then there's another line where it's like, you're gonna take this like a good little boy or something.

1:09:19 Audience Member: Does he say that? That's the talk show host.

1:09:21 Dr.: Like, I'm just supposed to, like, take this like a good little boy. There's something to. I don't know why that's coming in

1:09:27 Audience Member: my mind right now, but yeah, he never learned to integrate his aggression.

1:09:31 Dr.: It was just.

1:09:32 Wes: He says, you know, when he's disclaiming any political motivation in the talk show scene, he's saying it's not because of that. It's just because you're awful and everyone is awful. Which. There's an element of truth in that, right? There's an element. There are elements of truth in everything that he's learning to do. He's developing perverse variations of developmental necessities, being able to stand up for himself, understanding that people are awful. But, you know, he should also understand that they're not completely awful.

1:10:01 Audience Member: So was the.

1:10:03 Audience: Do you think, you know, when they pull him out of the car at the end after the crash, was that

1:10:06 Audience Member: like, Jesus symbolism or. Oh, rose from the dead?

1:10:12 Seth: Yeah.

1:10:13 Audience: Good.

1:10:14 Audience Member: I'm realizing in thinking about it that,

1:10:16 Audience: I mean, there was a lot of

1:10:17 Audience Member: violence and some of it was disturbing. But the worst thing for me was hearing his history. It's child. Yeah, it was. That was perfect.

1:10:24 Seth: Yeah.

1:10:25 Wes: Was it. Was there any point where people teared up or what was that? Was that the childhood part?

1:10:31 Audience: Yeah,

1:10:34 Audience Member: yeah, yeah. The point in the bus where he was actually trying to interact with the child and the mother, just. Which I kind of wonder what the mother.

1:10:45 Audience: Does that imply that anybody with a childhood like that is going to be a mass killer?

No,

but what was it about him that drove him to do that versus somebody else who has a similar childhood

1:10:58 Audience Member: that doesn't do it?

1:10:59 Seth: You have a case, a kid who was. Worked with for about two years or so, who was adopted and who makes very little contact, sit and lay down, and just doesn't ask much from me. Things had escalated and then finally got his parents and began to understand. This kid talked about how his parents never got it right, everything he did was wrong, and that there's no hope in the future. It's never going to get any better. So the past was horrible, the future is going to be horrible. And the one thing that he said, and this is a weird kind of association where he just said, you know, if you break a phone, like if you break a phone, you can break a phone like a hundred times or 500 times, and then that's it.

After it's been broken 500 times, you just can't do anything more. In that particular moment, I really understood that this kid feels like he's broken beyond repair. Being able to get him to accept what he actually has in this adopted home is part of the work. But he's in an environment. If we can help him stabilize in it. Because I think his tendency is to want to get out, to destroy this home and to prove that he's just no good. You know, we have that tendency to over repeat this destructive rejection because it's actually much scarier to think about being in a place where he actually is loved.

And these people invited him into their home through adoption.

1:12:22 Audience Member: You know, Freud, when you talked about Rorschach, Freud said the purpose of drama was for the idiosyncratic experience of each of us to use the drama, have a little distance because it's not real, but enough connection with the feeling that we can work through a lot. We can identify with all sorts of people and also experience a lot of feeling that we might not in an intellectual way. And I think this evening it's an idiosyncratic tapestry. I always love our discussion of movies because everything people say has value and it weaves into something. And we could see spend a lot of time talking about this movie. I wanted to remember all those songs that were in it. That's Life at the end was like perfect. I wanted to go download that. And you two really made this. What you brought to this discussion was really, really wonderful. Thank you very, very much.