Category: readers

Those that know me, know that I frequent the cinema quite often. I love action movies; Fast and furious, Star wars, and all of the superhero films. However, I have never really been a fan of Batman and so I have no real knowledge of it other than what I remember from the TV shows of my youth.

And I recall the Joker, I think Jack Nicholson played him in the last film that I saw, but I don’t really remember much about him. So, I went to see the Joker last night with no real idea of what I was going to see. Was it a superhero spin off with lots of fight scenes and chases… was it going to be comedic explosions and Pow flashed up on the screen…or was it going to blow my mind!

Joaquin Phoenix is an actor I know very little about. He had a famous brother called River, that’s about my knowledge of him. His performance as the Joker is, in my mind, and I think also of many of my friends who have seen this masterpiece…. was epic! If he doesn’t win every award there is to be won, then its a travesty!

And my American friends who are being scared into staying home and avoiding seeing this… don’t fall for it! There is a message here that you all need to hear. They don’t want you to watch it, they don’t want you to see it how it really is.. because when you watch this and you understand what you are seeing is real… its happening, then maybe, just maybe you might start thinking differently about the people that run the world from their ivory towers.

We have all seen a Joker.

We all walk past them on the streets.

The people in this world who are damaged. The people who are pushed aside as nobodies, ridiculed, abused. People who need medication, but either can’t afford it or have fallen through the system and now they are just doing all they can to survive their trauma. We all see them, and yet, we all walk by and pretend we don’t. And then we cry outrage when a mentally unstable person is pushed to their limits by the unjust, unfair and unnecessary way they are treated by society. When one of them finally steps out of line and acts on the impulses they have been trying to suppress. We all scream how did it happen? We all know how it happens!!

Volatile people are scary, I do get it. But the system is letting them, and us, all down. We might not be able to help these people ourselves on a personal level, but we can insist that our politicians start providing better care for them. Because any one of us is capable of being pushed to our limits. We can give just a moment of our time. We can share what we have with those who have nothing, cos trust me, they would share with you if you needed it. But its bigger than us. Its not about the poor helping the poorer… there are people in this world who have far more than they could ever need and they want more! Greed is the biggest problem this world has. And they convince us that we are the problem, that people worse off than us are the issue when all they have to do is stop being so damn greedy and share just a tiny fraction of what they have.

Open your eyes to it. It isn’t the immigrant with nothing more than a suitcase to call their own. It isn’t the man sleeping in’a doorway who smells funky and talks to himself. Its not the kid who is selling her body to pay for crack to numb the pain of an abusive childhood. It isn’t the person of colour. It isn’t the gays, the gender queer or the trans…it’s none of those people, its the system. The system isn’t broken, its just not made to work for us. It’s set up to work for the greedy.

We can do better, can’t we?