Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring former Grammy Award winning Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro, is about Arthur Fleck who seemingly has a mental illness called Pseudobulbar Affect, which causes sudden bursts of uncontrollable laughter at random times throughout the day. 

Arthur is perceived to be dangerous at times, demonstrating realistic expectations of crimes. This is the problem the mainstream media has with this film. They believe it will inspire violence. However, not only will this movie not inspire violence, it will prevent it. 

The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem, and the same goes for this movie. The fact that Joker addressed multiple real life issues that have occurred over the last ten years is critical to learning how to prevent them. 

Joker shows how a man can be mistreated by society, forgotten by the public, and embarrassed by the wealthy. And that man turned into a monster. The real message in the movie is how a Joker-like-character can be created on any day by anyone. 

Don’t believe me? A real doctor, who is a professional in neurocriminology, or the study of the criminal brains, was quoted in an interview with Vanity Fair saying, “For 42 years, I’ve studied the cause of crime and violence. And while watching this film, I thought, wow, what a revelation this was. I need to buy this movie down the road, make excerpt clips of it to illustrate […] It is a great educational tool about the making of the murderer. That threw me.” 

Don’t believe in the nonsensical claim that video games cause violence or movie violence will correlate to real life events. That is simply not true.

Movies and video games that address the brutally honest reality of the world that we live in everyday are truly helpful in preventing these disastrous events.

It is these types of movies that benefit society, not hurt it.