Self DFense: The Retribution Of The Middle-Class Movie
Every five or ten or so years starting in the 1970’s Hollywood impels onto movie goers a movie about a white man losing his country. Disguised as a revenge of the middle or working-class movie these films are vigilante films often of white men who are seemingly driven to the edge by the pressures of work and family yet in actuality it’s by their own racism, sexism, and hatreds as they are always forced to commit violent crimes. In 1970 it was “Joe” starring Peter Boyle as a business executive who kills his daughter’s drug dealer after she overdoses. Joe doesn’t stop there either. After he and a friend are robbed by hippies, they decide to attack a hippie commune and commit a mass murder of Hippies. Much to Joe’s shock his daughter who lived through her overdose was one of the hippies that he and his friend murdered. Shot on a modest budget Joe was a sleeper hit at the box office which of course means Hollywood had to create a string of these types of films to cash in. “Save The Tiger” in 1973 Starring Jack Lemmon and directed by the director of “Joe” John G. Avildsen about a garment store salesmen driven to burn down his own failing business for the insurance money. “Death Wish” in 1974 starring Charles Bronson as a man whose wife is raped and then he goes on a killing spree. One of the audience members who sat through and admired “Joe” and was inspired by it was a Film Critic named Paul Schrader. Schrader then turned to writing his own Screenplays and wrote 1976’s Taxi Driver about a New York cabbie named Travis Bickle played by Robert De Niro driven to madness by urban decay who goes blowing away black stick-up men and white pimps. It even co-starred Peter Boyle as Travis’ fellow cabbie friend 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 union. “Hardcore” in 1979 where George C. Scott tracks down his daughter who is caught in the grips of the porno movie industry. Throughout the 70’s there were many variations of this sub-genre. Including “Fun With Dick And Jane” in 1977 and “Going In Style” in 1979. Dealing with white people who decide to take-up robbery. In 1983 There was “The Star Chamber” starring Michael Douglas about a gang of 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 blowing away any criminals they could find while other’s delt more with themes of the loss of the American dream or at least the misuse of the American dream. But and American Dream for white people only. Blacks and people of color were almost always the perpetrators and just scenery for the important white man to have his important painful breakdown. They of course didn’t have dreams. There was “Promised Land” in 1987 about a group of high school friends who fall apart and meet with violent fates after the American dream lets them down. In 1992 there was “Glengarry Glen Ross.” About white salesmen under the gun driven to robbery by their oppressive employers. In 1993 there was maybe the worst movie the genre has ever produced and the maybe the most hazardous “Falling Down.” With Michael Douglas sporting possibly the worst most out of place haircut in movie history doing some of his most over acting as another white man pushed to the edge by expensive 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 job. The movie finds itself edgy and gritty and even original, yet it is just a boring retread ripping off all of all the other films in the middle-class revenge genre before it. Adding in another cliché of the detective who’s retiring after one more job, trying to track Douglas down as he goes about his rampage doesn’t help. 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 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 on of these jobs. Falling Down is just one scene after the other of Michael Douglas blowing his stack. It’s heaped with cliches and stuck with a highly formulaic script, and some good actors doing some of their worst work. Barbara Hershey literally phones in her performance and thankless, throwaway part as Douglas’ estranged wife who’s there just because he needs one. He also needs a daughter in order for the audience to sympathize with him just like “Joe.” He also needs Duvall who plays every other detective we’ve ever seen on the last day on the job in movie history. 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 call it an important movie and that it exposes Douglas’ actions as the horrible thing they are and he as the villain. I say It’s just a way for Hollywood to have their cake and eat it too as usual. It’s an hour and forty minutes of minority bashing with a ten-minute sermon slapped on the end of how Douglas shouldn’t be doing this to people. Well thanks for that I never would have guessed that on my own without this film. At the end Douglas is blown away by Duvall and falls dead into the Ocean. Some people may need Falling Down to expose to them white men’s racism, I don’t. Take this movie and this genre into the bottom of the sea with you, please don’t let it come back up.
