Joker Article Summary
This article explores how The Joker uses the concept of the unreliable narrator to showcase how the film leaves its audience wondering what really happened. Questions can be asked about Fleck’s, the ‘unreliable’ narrator, like is he sitting in the audience of his favourite talk show. Historically, the concept of the unreliable narrator was established by Wayne Booth. Booth suggests that the narrator may consciously be adding elements that never happened to the story.
The beckons the question: is Arthur Fleck reliable? The first presentation of Fleck as an unreliable narrator is offered at the start of the film. He sees himself in an orange room, banging his head against a reinforced glass window. The scene is almost over before it can begin but its significance to Fleck’s unreliability only becomes apparent at the film's end: Arthur has been arrested for at least six homicides and is now incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital, a situation presented to the audience as Fleck sits opposite his psychiatrist discussing how he feels. While this ending fits the chronology of the narrative so far, the clothes Fleck wears and the orange room he now sits in are the same as the very early flashback. The visual connections between the flashback and the ending broadly indicate the unreliability of Arthur’s narrative, suggesting that, for the durations of the film, Fleck has not lived out the events the audience has so far seen but has been sitting in the orange room for the whole time, recounting his (unreliable) narrative to the psychiatrist.
The film leaves its audience wondering what has really happened – what's “real” in the world of the film and what is a figment of Fleck’s fractured mind.
