What Joker Teaches Us About Empathy and Its Absence

When a film based on a comic book character wins the Golden Lion, the highest prize at the Venice Film Festival, the world takes notice. When that film is directed by Todd Phillips, known for comedies like The Hangover, it generates even more buzz. But with a billion-dollar box office and two Oscars, Joker cemented itself not just as a success, but as a cultural phenomenon. The film struck a nerve, holding up a mirror to a world simmering with discontent, and in many ways, it felt like a prophecy for the turmoil that would soon follow.

What makes this telling of the Joker's story so special, so frighteningly relevant? It’s because it dares to ask: how does a person break? And what happens when society is the one doing the breaking?

The Man Who Laughed Too Much

The film introduces us not to the iconic supervillain, but to Arthur Fleck, a profoundly lonely man. He's an unsuccessful stand-up comedian trapped by an incurable psychological disorder that causes him to laugh at the most inappropriate times. His life is a cascade of ridicule. The world doesn't laugh with him; it laughs at him.

This constant humiliation, both moral and physical, comes to a head one night on a subway. After being brutally beaten by three young professionals from Wayne Enterprises, something in Arthur snaps. He pulls out a gun he was given and kills them. This single act of violent retribution ignites the film's two central narratives: the slow, agonizing birth of the Joker and, in the streets of Gotham, the rise of a rebellion against social inequality.

Rewriting a Legend

The Joker has always been a character without a definitive past. In the comics and previous films, his biography is a collection of confusing, contradictory tales. The most canonical origin story comes from Alan Moore's 1988 graphic novel, "The Killing Joke," where an unnamed, failed comedian falls into a vat of chemicals after a tragic series of events.

While Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck borrows from this narrative, Todd Phillips makes a crucial change: he strips away all fantasy. There is no vat of acid, no cartoonish transformation. Instead, Phillips shows us how, in our own reality, an ordinary man can be pushed to the brink. It’s a story about systematic failure—a society that abandons its most vulnerable, that misunderstands mental illness, and that offers no support. The Joker we see at the end is not born from chemicals, but from neglect, cruelty, and despair.

This isn’t really a story about the Joker, who only appears in his final form at the film's triumphant, terrifying conclusion. It’s the story of the man who became a symbol. The classic confrontation with Batman is absent because this film isn't about heroes and villains; it's about the decay that precedes them. Arthur Fleck lives in a tragedy until he has a terrible epiphany: his life isn't a tragedy at all, it's a comedy. And now, it's his turn to deliver the punchline.

The Reluctant Face of a Revolution

One of the most compelling aspects of Arthur's transformation is how passive it is. He doesn't set out to create the Joker persona or to lead a movement. The world around him does it for him. The secondary characters in his life—his fragile mother, his dismissive colleague—are drawn in grotesque, exaggerated strokes because we see them through Arthur’s distorted, pained perception.

His passivity is most evident in the popular rebellion that unfolds in the background. After the subway killings, the wealthy Thomas Wayne publicly condemns the unknown killer and dismisses anyone who envies the successful as "clowns." Because a witness saw Arthur in his clown costume, Wayne's statement unintentionally gives the burgeoning movement its symbol. The marginalized people of Gotham don clown masks, effectively saying, "If you see us as clowns, then we'll show you what clowns can do."

The Joker becomes the face of the people, but he does nothing to earn it. The elemental force of public anger simply latches onto the most convenient and vivid image it can find: Arthur. When he finally sees the riots he inspired, he doesn't lead them; he is absorbed by them. In that moment of chaotic acceptance, Arthur Fleck’s story ends, and the Joker’s begins.

A Reflection of Reality

This narrative of social anger felt eerily prescient in the spring of 2020. On May 25th of that year, an African American man named George Floyd was killed by a white police officer. His death, a moment of senseless cruelty, sparked a massive wave of protests across America and the world. Just as the fictional Joker became a symbol for Gotham's disenfranchised, the real-life tragedy of George Floyd became a symbol for a society reckoning with deep-seated inequality.

Historically, racism often functions by creating a "universal" image of a person, with all rights attached to that standard. When European culture established itself as the default model of civilization, the "white man" became this universal image. Anyone else was an "other," their very humanity questioned, and their rights deemed negotiable. This mindset gives a green light to oppression and violence.

In this context, Arthur Fleck is mocked and abused simply because he is different—he doesn't fit the mold of a "normal" person. The mass unrest in Joker is fueled by the same dynamic: one part of the population disregarding another on the principle of "you are not like me." Though the film doesn't explicitly tackle racism, it was accused of glorifying the violence that underpins mass protest. When people feel unheard, rebellion and destruction can feel like the only way to make themselves seen. Arthur’s on-air murder of a talk show host is his ultimate act of smashing through the screen, directly into the consciousness of every viewer.

The Freedom of the Mask

The phenomenon of the mask is central to the film. In Joker, we witness a rebellion of anonymity. A mask removes personal identity and, with it, the burden of responsibility. It liberates. Think of the Venetian carnivals of the Renaissance, which were not just holidays but also periods of uncontrolled social license.

We’ve seen many Jokers in cinema—from the extravagant prankster in Tim Burton's Batman to the anarchic agent of chaos in The Dark Knight. But the value of the 2019 Joker is his raw relevance. For the first time, the story places the antagonist, the humiliated and ostracized man, at its very center. He is not a foil for the hero; he is the story.

By showing us a realistic path to his creation, the film makes the Joker an avatar for anyone who has suffered from trauma, struggled with their mental health, or felt left behind by society. The film taps into the modern world's deep-seated struggle for respect and dignity, using art to show us a fictional image of our world so that we might finally see it for what it is.

References

• Moore, Alan, and Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke. DC Comics, 1988.

  This seminal graphic novel provides the most widely accepted origin for the Joker, which served as a clear inspiration for the film. It establishes the "one bad day" concept—the idea that any ordinary person, through a series of tragic events, can be pushed into madness. The film adapts this core theme but grounds it in a more realistic, socially critical context, replacing the chemical accident with societal failure.

• Žižek, Slavoj. Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World. OR Books, 2020.

  In his analysis of the global landscape during the pandemic, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek discusses the film Joker as a potent symbol of social unrest and systemic cracks. He connects the nihilistic rage of Arthur Fleck to the populist anger simmering in Western societies, arguing that the film captures a moment when the existing social order begins to crumble. (See Chapter 2: "We are all in the same boat now—no, we are not!").