The Joker.

He's corrupt, senile, and disturbed. In almost every movie I have seen, he has been the ultimate villain. But I want to propose a question that the new '"Joker" movie had me questioning.

What if the demented world around us was actually the villain and the Joker was a hero?

In the new "Joker," Joaquin Phoenix allows the audience to live in his world, with him, even as him. When watching it, you feel his pain, hurt, and sorrow that he feels just trying to survive the day. Life kicks him down multiple times, literally. I have seen many other reviews claiming that the movie is "too sad" or "too slow," but what everyone doesn't realize is that was the whole point.

You see, Arthur Fleck (the Joker) suffers from a mental illness that causes him to laugh when he feels any negative emotion. Throughout the movie, he tries to explain this to people when they mistake him for being rude, ignorant, or just different. Instead of allowing themselves to understand the condition, they shut him out, isolate him, and torment him physically and emotionally.

He then finally has enough and snaps, fueling his thirst for murder. He finally feels powerful.

This Joker is unlike any other. The main reason is that it's so much more real. If you or anyone else has struggled with any kind of mental illness, you can watch this film and understand his pain. You live in the mind of someone who suffers traumatically from mental illness. That is why the movie has been reviewed as too sad and too slow.

That is how it feels to live with a mental illness.

A lot of the time, we are stuck in our heads, thinking over and over again how much better the world would be if we were just different, but we aren't. There is nothing we can do about it. The world makes us feel alone, isolated, as if there is something severely wrong with us. There are several aspects of the movie that show you how easy it is to become suicidal when living in that mindset, especially when no one is willing to listen.

The days drag on, one after the other, feeling powerless, engulfed in the sadness. Everyone tells us to put on a happy face and don't show your sadness. Why do you think the Joker always wears a smile?

His condition itself is a metaphor for how people act on a regular basis. We are constantly hiding how we feel on the inside by masking it with the opposite feeling, to fool others, to fool ourselves. So much so that it becomes a joke. So, laugh.

Until mental illness is taken seriously, with compassion and understanding, people will continue to suffer.

The Joker brings these things to light in the worst way possible, so maybe now people will listen.