Examining the Personality of Arthur Fleck in Joker 2019: The Shift From an Innocent Man Into a Supervillain

Ahmad Mahmoud Ashour

Abstract


Todd Phillips’ film Joker, a 2019 psychological thriller, has displayed the main character, Arthur Fleck, as a perplexing, eccentric character. Arthur appears to be a poor, marginalized man at first glance. But as the plot progresses and we witness life from Arthur’s perspective, we’re left questioning whether he’s a good man, a bad man, or just schizophrenic. In this research, Arthur’s perplexing personality will be examined using Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. The study aims to uncover Arthur’s true personality and his shift from an innocent man into a supervillain by analyzing his Id, ego, and superego. The method used to study Arthur’s character dimensions is the descriptive qualitative method, by watching the movie and reading the script thoroughly. The study revealed that Arthur suffers from mental illnesses that affected how he was treated and that the tough circumstances Arthur has been through have shaped him into becoming the Joker.

 


Keywords


Joker; Arthur Fleck; Freud; Personality; Psychoanalysis; Empathy

Full Text:

PDF

References


Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn. (1975). The GULAG Archipelago two: an experiment in literary investigation (Vol. 1, pp. 168-173). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1973)

Britannica. (2019). Superego | psychology. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/science/superego

Brolin, J. (2019, October 5). To appreciate joker. Www.instagram.com. https://www.instagram.com/p/B3PXR6gADbe/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Center, K. C. (2021, April 7). Psychoanalysis: In theory and in practice. Kentucky Counseling Center. Retrieved from https://kentuckycounselingcenter.com/psychoanalysis-basics/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20mind%20is%20like%20an

Dimensie, S. (2021). Blog. Dimensie. https://www.svdimensie.nl/blog/sympathizing-with-serial-killers#:~:text=Simply%20speaking%2C%20people%20sympathize%20with

Eagleton, T. (1996). Literary theory. Great Britain: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Empathy Gap. (n.d.). The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/empathy-gap

Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2009). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (4th ed.). Pearson.

Joker (2019 film). (2022, May 2). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(2019_film)#:~:text=According%20to%20Phillips%2C%20Joker%20was%20created%20from%20his

Kunst, J. (2011). Are We Good? Or Bad? Or Both? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/headshrinkers-guide-the-galaxy/201108/are-we-good-or-bad-or-both

Mcleod, S. (2019, February 5). Id, ego and superego. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html

Nehrig, N., & Wong, P. S. (2018). Secondary Process. Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences, pp.1-3. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_629-1

Phillips, T. (2019). Joker. In Warner Bros.

Sibi, K. J. (2020). Sigmund freud and psychoanalytic theory. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342610778_SIGMUND_FREUD_AND_PSYCHOANALYTIC_THEORY

Skryabin, V. Y. (2021). Analysing Joker: an attempt to establish diagnosis for a film icon. BJPsych Bulletin, 45(6), 329-332. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjb.2020.146

Thurschwell, P. (2000). Sigmund Freud. Routledge.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12784

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2022 Author(s)

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share us to:   

 

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard


Reminder

How to do online submission to another Journal?

If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture