Hey Joe, Go Home With That Gun In Your Hand: The Revenge Of The Middle-Class Picture.

George: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.

Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened. Hey, we can’t even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel, you dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or somethin’. They’re scared, man.

George: They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em.

Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.

George: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.

Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about

George: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what’s it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different thangs. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.

Billy: Well, it don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.

George: No, it makes ’em dangerous.

Even today Hollywood continues a longtime convention of presenting movie goers with a motion picture concerning the exploits of an angry white man who feels like he is losing his country. These films come every few years sometimes in clusters and appear to be inspired by the patriotic fever dream of white men needing to defend himself, his family, and his country from hoods and brutes who he considers born out of multiculturalism and the changing of society from the civil rights movement. Think Archie Bunker with a gun. Pictures such as these have become their own lucrative genre in Hollywood. Cloaked as a reprisal of the middle or working-class against the wealthy establishment elites. These films were in actuality mostly vigilante films often of white men who are seemingly driven to the edge by the pressures of work and raising a family yet in actuality it’s by their own racism, sexism, and various bigoted hatreds as they are permanently enforced to commit violent crimes against minority groups. White men inherit money privilege and racial grievances. In part these films helped to breed the super patriotism genre of the 1980’s with movies like First Blood, Red Dawn, a slew of Chuck Norris and Steven Segal movies. As well they spurred the innocent white man behind bars Picture. Such as “Lock-Up” and “An Innocent Man” these particular films were paranoid illusions that white men might actually be wrongly blamed for being the bad guy and they required the white male victim characters to be swooped up by the state and taken into the world of all the different colored criminals who committed the crimes that they have been wrongly blamed for. In essence white middle class men don’t belong with guilty black and brown people. The White Middleclass warrior genre itself sprang up almost immediately after “Easy Rider” in 1969. One of the timeliest movies in history “Easy Rider” followed two anti-establishment, anti-war freedom birds who jump on their motorcycles and hit the wide-open American highways looking for adventure. Their conservative establishment counterparts though didn’t have time for adventure, they were too busy fighting in Vietnam and working and raising families and running the country. The anti-heroes of Easy Rider are shaggy, long hair hippies taking mind expanding drugs and living life on the go filled with free love and no constraints. At the end of Easy Rider, they, and their motorcycles which are the symbols of their freedom are beaten horribly with baseball bats by a group of conservative establishment homophobic men who are resentful of their freedoms and terrified of the changing America. Almost as if these characters jumped right out of Easy Rider, they began their own genre in film In 1970 with a movie called “Joe” starring Peter Boyle as a conservative factory worker named Joe who hooks up with an ultra-right winger named Bill whom he meets in a bar and who confesses to Joe that he killed his daughter’s drug dealer after she overdosed. Bill and Joe find they share the same madness, and it doesn’t stop there. After Joe and Bill are robbed, they decide to attack a commune and commit mass murder of Hippies returning to their Easy Rider days. Joe is in for the shock of his life when he realize that his daughter was one of the hippies that he and his friend have murdered. Joe is hypothetically a dark comedy and a sendup of middle-class white men who hate anybody who’s different but the movie relishes so much in its dark subject matter and violence that it’s supposed to be spoofing that it manages to blur the lines between taking a stand and condemning these characters or actually passive aggressively endorsing them. Coming off as another way for Hollywood to have its cake and eat it too. Talking the big game of taking a stand against an issue and yet just becoming another part of the problem. Shot on a modest budget “Joe” was a surprise hit at the box office which of course means it gave Hollywood even more reason to create a line of these types of movies. Some of them were more subtle about their intent toward the changing of America having to do with the rising of some kind of racial equality but the intent remained in the contours. “Save The Tiger” in 1973 Starred Jack Lemmon and was steered by the same director of “Joe” John G. Avildsen. With a story regarding a white garment store salesman who is facing a midlife crisis and an emotional breakdown over the loss of his American dream as he is driven to burn down his own failing business for the insurance money because life just isn’t fulfilling anymore. The men of these 1970’s movies seem to be constantly paying the price for the men of the 1960’s good time. “Death Wish” probably the definitive vigilante move which reproduced several sequels and a huge variety of blatant knock offs that continue being pumped out today arrived in theaters in 1974. Starring Charles Bronson as a man who after his wife is raped goes on a killing spree all over New York City wiping out all the scum of the streets because the justice system has failed him and continues to fail others. One of the audience members who sat through and obviously admired “Joe” and was obviously inspired by it was a Film Critic named Paul Schrader. Schrader left his film critique job and turned to writing his own Screenplays. He wrote 1976’s “Taxi Driver” The Martin Scorsese directed classic about a New York cabbie named Travis Bickle played by Robert De Niro and who is driven to utter madness by the urban decay surrounding him. Travis can’t take the degradation of humanity that he sees every day a minute longer and he arms himself to the teeth and he goes blowing away pimps and black stick-up men with a huge gun. He’s Death Wish in a cab. Travis plans to assassinate a politician who represents the government which is of course is a major target of middle-class white men rage. Travis ends up being credited for saving him instead of becoming a hero instead of the villain. The parallels of “Taxi Driver” to “Joe” are obvious as can be. Taxi Driver even co-starred Peter Boyle as Travis’ fellow cabbie Wizard in a not-so-subtle tip of the hat to “Joe.” himself. After “Taxi Driver” Schrader wrote and directed back-to-back middle-class revenge movies. “Blue Collar” in 1978 about auto workers who rob their corrupt union who’s stealing their money and “Hardcore” in 1979 where the conservative and religiously strait-laced George C. Scott tracks down his daughter who is caught up in the horrifying grips of the rising porno movie industry possibly even having sex with black men. Throughout the 70’s there were many variations of this middle-class revenge sub-genre. Including lighter comedy fair like “Fun With Dick And Jane” in 1977 and “Going In Style” in 1979. Mostly dealing with white people who decide to take-up robbery because working hard is hardly working for them anymore. In 1983 There was “The Star Chamber” starring Michael Douglas about a gang of federal judges who are tired of criminals getting away and decide to take matters into their own hands and blow them away themselves. 1983 saw Clint Eastwood as “The Death Wish” character with a badge in “Sudden Impact” and then again in 1984 in “Tightrope” Some of these movies were just white men killing any criminal they happened upon while other films delt more with themes of the loss of the American dream and the misuse of the American dream. But it was an American Dream for mostly white people. Blacks, women, and people of color were almost always related to being the perpetrators who were ultimately ruining this dream for Caucasians who felt they were the ones who had been promised it. Blacks were mostly used as scenery for the important white man to have his imperative painful breakdown. Blacks of course didn’t have dreams. The 1983 Michael Ritchie movie “The Survivors” was a movie that actually managed to parody the middle-class revenge genre as a character played by Robin Williams is fired from his executive job and then is drawn into one a survivalist group filled with these types of men who have retreated to the mountains and train with guns for the upcoming collapsing of society. In the film a white professional killer robs a diner and while hidden behind a ski mask speaks in “black voice” trying to throw off his identity. Spoofing the idea that black people really don’t commit all of these crimes and all white people really know it. Crimes that have white people all running from the country to get away from them. The movie charges these middle-class white men of really hoping that society does break down so they can kill the people who they believe are replacing them and costing them their jobs and families. “Promised Land” in 1987 was about a group of white high school friends whose lives fall apart as adults as they meet again with a dark fate in a final violent collision after the American dream has let them down. Regret of the past is entrenched within the plotlines of movies in this middle-class sub-genre whether there’s violence or not. That regret is subliminally tied to the civil rights era. The comedy “Best Of Times” is about adults living in the same blue-collar town they grew up in and still living the consequences of losing the most important high school football game of their lives. In the film they get a second chance in the form of a rematch. “The Longshot” from 1987 is about four white friends who hang out losing their money at the horse track together who get involved in a cheating scam to cash in a big score they fell they’re owed because life and lady luck is always cruel to the working-class stiffs and peons. In 1992 the middle-class revenge genre received a strong kick in the pants reboot as there was “Glengarry Glen Ross.” About a group of white real estate salesmen who are under the gun to make big deals and are driven to robbery by their wealthy and oppressive employers. The culmination of all of these films likely hit its peak In 1993 with maybe the worst movie the genre has ever produced and the maybe the most harmful as it began to contact a new generation “Falling Down.” With Michael Douglas sporting possibly the worst haircut and wardrobe in movie history doing some of his most over the top acting as a white man only known as DFense who is pushed to the edge by overpriced convenient store donuts, measly fast-food burgers, and non-English speaking people. Douglas uses baseball bats and guns to pick on Korean grocers, Mexicans, and fast-food workers just trying to do their jobs. The movie finds itself darkly satiric, edgy and gritty and even original, yet it’s just a sloppy, boring and messily presented retread that rips off all of all the other films in the middle-class revenge genre before it. It’s a little bit of Joe, a little bit of Taxi Driver, a little bit of Save The Tiger, a little bit of Death Wish and a lot bad. The film adding in another cliché on top of cliche with the detective who’s retiring after one more job, trying to track DFense down as he goes about his rampage doesn’t lend any support. The movie while maybe well intended by Director Joel Schumacher became something of a conservative masturbatory fantasy figure movie for ticked off white men trapped in their cars all day driving to work listening to Rush Limbaugh and other AM Hate Radio windbags scream and rage about how the country was falling apart under “The Clinton’s” and white men were losing footing. The movie lays out a list of white men’s demands. They want to be put first; they should have first dibs on the easiest highest paying jobs, every cheap convenience, allowed to have any women they want even one who doesn’t want them and otherwise have everyone else wait on them hand and foot and walk forever around them on pensive eggshells. Younger people have seen the movie and some believe it to be about retribution for consumers who are being ripped off by corporations and The Establishment yet DFense is the establishment as the white middle class was always the establishment yet they believe they aren’t. The movie still seems to impress mostly white men as it even plays into that white progressive notion that anyone who has a job is miserable and on the verge of killing or dying. Even though it’s about a man who loses one of these jobs because of course white people get it both ways, whatever works, works. Working or not working is the end all and be all of losing. Apparently, DFense can’t just get to the unemployment office to find another job. “Falling Down” is a missed opportunity that doesn’t expand on its initial idea and never blooms any petals. It’s just one scene after the other of DFense blowing his stack for any reason at all. It’s a film heavy with every revenge cinema chestnut and bogged down and stuck with a meandering and highly formulaic script, and some good actors doing some of their worst work. Barbara Hershey literally phones in her performance and thankless, castoff part as Douglas’ estranged wife who’s there just because he needs one to be there. He also needs a daughter in order for the audience to sympathize with him just like “Joe.” He also needs Duvall who sets his performance from the mold of every other detective we’ve ever seen in every other movie who is on the last day on the job and has the toughest case of his career. All the characters Douglas confronts along his way are just cartoons of real minorities just existing to set him off. Some fans of Falling Down stake down the claim that it’s a damned important movie and that it exposes DFense’s actions as the horrible thing they are and he as the villain but it’s just a way for Hollywood to continue to have their cake and eat it too as usual. It’s an hour and forty minutes of allowing the audience to enjoy minority bashing followed by a ten-minute sermon which is haphazardly slapped on the ending of how DFense is really the bad guy and shouldn’t be doing this to people. As if nobody would have guessed that on their own. The movie is so flimsy and cowardly it can’t even make DFense deserve his death, the movie cheats. When D Fense pulls a gun on Duvall and fires first it turns out to be a squirt gun. D Fense seems thrilled that had it been a real gun he would have killed Duvall and “won” At the end D Fense is blown away by Duvall and falls dead into the Ocean. 1998 brought a movie which upped the stakes of the middle-class revenge genre as the main protagonist was a literally Nazi. Withing the movie “American History X” The irony is that the blatant Nazi character who’s young doesn’t do anything different than the older buttoned-down conservative men from the revenge movie past. He doesn’t say anything you haven’t already heard on AM Hate Radio or Fox News. He kills a black man in brutal fashion who he finds robbing his truck. He goes through it all even ending up in Prison. America History fancied itself an expose’ of radical racism yet the movie only succeeds in the margins as the criminals in jail are still people of color and the hero still white and only a hero. The Obama era inspired another wave of these movies. In 2007 as resentment toward the first black president of the united states heated up real quick. There was “The Brave One” Starring Jodie Foster whose boyfriend is killed during a robbery. The movie relied on reversing the gender of the “Death Wish” character and otherwise wasn’t very interesting and had nothing fresh to add to the history of the genre. There was “Death Sentence” with Kevin Bacon. There was a remake of “Death Wish” with Bruce Willis. The most current movie that appears to be born out of this genre is the QAnon loon job fantasy Sound Of Freedom from 2023. It argues the “Death Wish” overview that the government just isn’t doing its job of protecting children and families from predators and south American traffickers. Tied to Republican hysteria Hollywood pedophiles and the ongoing self-created calamity about the border the movie as usual concerns a white man who just has to take matters into his own Patriotic hands to do the job the system has supposedly failed at. Yet the system hasn’t failed and in involving the stories told in Sound Of Freedom the Government was already in place doing its job before the white man who turned out to be a fraud showed up. The argument that these types of films are important falls apart when you realize that appealing to people who have the same opinions as you do to begin with only reveals that you might have a good movie or an entertaining movie but to have an important movie you really need to change someone’s mind. Someone who has an opposing viewpoint. “Joe” and “Falling Down” are still scored by conservatives as movies that let them put their feet in the shoes of the characters and vicariously live through their horrible actions and same disturbing ideas that they endorse. It remains glorification of the second amendment and the fetishizing of guns that’s an attachment to a white’s only nexus. These are powerfully attractive components these films didn’t do a good enough job of repelling. Some people may need “Falling Down” and all the other middle-class revenge movies to expose to them all of white men’s burdens, racism or prevalent, political, societal and class issues. I don’t. Take this movie and this genre into the bottom of the sea with you DFense and please don’t let it come back up.