Beneath the Mask of Helplessness

There is a scene in the movie Joker where Arthur Flek — the main protagonist — kills three men and flees. Not any men, but the men from the upper-middle class. The killing, labelled by the media as brutal, echoes throughout the news. Simultaneously, Arthur’s slow but steady downfall from the so-called normal world gains speed.

The scene begins with Arthur, three men and a woman sitting on a metro train. A few moments ago, Arthur was sacked for having a gun while performing in front of the children. The gun was given to Arthur by his colleague as a means of protection after Arthur had been beaten by a group of teenagers.

The men start to harass the woman. Her eyes meet with Arthur’s, but he remains silent until his pseudobulbar affect (uncontrolled laughter) attracts their attention and, accidentally, rescues the woman. After her departure, Arthur and the men are the only people in the train compartment. The men turn to Arthur for amusement, which shortly transforms into physical violence. With nowhere to run or to hide, Arthur takes his gun out and kills two men on the spot. The last of the three survives only until the next stop. The news labels the men as noble and hardworking, while the person who shot them as a brutal killer.

But for those who have witnessed the actions of the three men before the killing, Arthur’s reaction might strike as natural, given the circumstances and his emotional state. The reaction of a helpless person who finds the gun as his last resort of defense from the endless societal bullying and denial.

Whereas there are many ingredients in Arthur’s downfall, helplessness plays a crucial role, uniquely in the scene mentioned earlier. With Arthur being in a position with no humane option or choice within a hand’s reach, helplessness hands over the control of his fate to the dark instincts of survival.

What happens when you trap an animal in the corner?… You give birth to the Joker: a creation of a society oblivious towards the people like Arthur, expecting him to behave as if he wasn’t traumatised in childhood and hadn’t suffered from the consequences it had left in him. The society bent Arthur up to a point where he broke, and, consequently, the Joker as a djinn from the lamp emerged.

Our reality is not far away from this kind of fiction. On the contrary. In the current geopolitical context, people break people — physically, psychologically and emotionally — on a daily basis. Notably, the people who tend to accumulate bad experiences and don’t resist being confronted. Some of them, finding themselves squeezed into the corner, commit suicide or retreat into oblivion of themselves whereas the others, take a gun and shoot all their classmates. When broken in such a way, helpless people submit to anger up to the point of blindness. Then, it’s too late. The djinn is out of the lamp, giving an opportunity for the person to feel someone for the first time in one’s life. By inflicting fear on his perpetrators, he makes himself recognised. To be listened to. Becomes somebody… Falls into the trap of madness…

Such a person is extremely frightening not only because of one’s internal madness but, more importantly, because one is particularly fragile to the manipulations and influence of external parties, selling the dream of one’s importance and value to the cause. That’s how radicalism thrives: exploiting vulnerable and helpless people. That’s how the Joker eradicates Arthur at the end of the movie when standing on the police car, he draws a smile from blood on his face for the cheering mob surrounding him. That’s very powerful, and no wonder Arthur willingly submits to the Joker: a villain who turned out to be a proletarian hero.

At a certain point in our lives, we all experience what it means to feel helpless in one or another situation. For instance, when reading the news about another war, epidemic or crisis. It’s difficult to escape the feeling of helplessness. What can I do? arises the question. Wherever you look, the madness keeps piling up with the bad news bombarding the media landscape. Just to grasp the scale of the events, even more, associate one’s life with them, alone, act to make a difference are already massive challenges to our egocentric societies.

Not everyone believes in the power of a single person. Or that one’s actions will make a difference. But imagine if the Russian soldiers would have said No to the invasion of Ukraine. No war. Full stop. An action requiring brevity and union, no doubt.

The people have the power. The issue persists when they forget about it. That’s when, through time, the feeling of helplessness takes over in most of us. When our only action is to grumble behind a dining table to our family members about politics or another crisis somewhere out there. The system is too big and hypocritical to be challenged. That’s the general belief of a common person: Arthur Flek of our times, thrust by immense amounts of data, technologisation, bureaucratic processes and the hypocrisy of politicians. With time, such person is undoubtedly pressured to the point of breaking.

Then there is an event. An excuse for such a person to go out in the street to protest. Submit to the djinn and have the famous ‘Two Minutes Hate’ at the expense of a shop, a car, a policeman or a statue erected hundreds of years ago. A chance to be the Joker at least for a moment. To feel somebody and submit to the madness we all carry inside of us. With no consequences or moral compass on site, such person will destroy something or someone at the expense of a ‘feel good’ flash. For many of us, the flash will pass, but the bitterness will stay as our only friend.

The biggest concern is the amount of anger, rage and hatred there is among the people. It didn’t appear in a night. It’s the sum of accumulated helplessness throughout the years. As in Arthur’s case, the Joker wasn’t born overnight. The longer we neglect our inner power to make a positive change, even a little one, and submit to the djinn inside of us at the moment of anger, the more bloodshed and extermination the world will see.