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Notes -
Imagine the following hypothetical movie:
The protagonist is a middle aged white divorcee, whose ex-wife has unjustly poisoned his daughter against him, leaving him with very little to live for. He is very bitter about the state of the modern world, and believes America has gone down the tubes. Finally, he snaps, and with the help of a female accomplice, goes on a cross-country Natural Born Killers type murder spree, mowing down all the people he blames for the deterioration of society. And it's not a dark Oscar bait psychological drama, it's a light-hearted comedy that encourages the audience to cheer on the bloodshed.
First of all, such a movie would almost certainly never be made. Second of all, if by some miracle it was, it would be abundantly clear to everyone that it was shamelessly partisan wish-fulfillment produced by particularly bitter, particularly edgy right-wingers.
In fact, such a movie does exist. It's called God Bless America and it came out in 2011. But no one who saw it when it came out would have mistaken it for a right-wing manifesto; just the opposite, the Bush-era liberalism of the film's creators is so unabashedly on display that it feels like a screed from the other side.
I saw this movie back then when I was in middle school. Most of the politics went over my head, and I enjoyed it on the level that most teenage boys enjoy movies where a lot of people get shot. I rewatched it recently and found it fascinating what a political time capsule it is.
The protagonist, Frank, is exactly as I've described him above. While "middle-aged white man who thinks America sucks now" is a wholly and purely conservative caricature in 2023, the film is almost totally on his side. In the opening scenes, before Frank embarks on his killing spree, he gets to deliver a few author-insert monologues about how society has gone to hell. This scene is pretty interesting. "What happened to America?" is firmly right-coded, but the things Frank is angry about in particular are things that 2000s liberals didn't like. He's ranting about the vulgarity of "gay-bashing" and "xenophobic" radio shock jocks, which he views as emblematic of the decline.
What finally sets him off, is he gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. Since his life already sucks in every other way, he decides to commit suicide, but while he's about to shoot himself in front of his TV, one of those "Sweet 16" reality shows that were big a few years ago comes on, and he finds Chloe, the bratty, spoiled star so annoying that he decides to kill her first. So he tracks her down to her school and murders her, and then goes back home to commit suicide.
However, one of Chloe's classmates, Roxy, who also hated Chloe, witnesses the murder. She follows Frank home and ultimately convinces him that there are so many more people who need to die. So together they embark on their killing spree.
Not all of Roxy and Frank's targets are political (for example, people who won't shut up at the movies, and inconsiderate drivers), but filmmakers' politics come through pretty clearly when they mow down thinly-veiled stand-ins of the Westboro Baptist Church and a thinly-veiled stand-in for Limbaugh/Hannity type conservative commentators.. In the finale, they go down in a blaze of glory while shooting up a thinly-veiled 'American Idol' stand-in show.
This wasn't a monster hit or anything, and as far as I know it got pretty mixed reviews when it came out. But I think it's sort of fascinating in that filmmakers with the same politics, apparently mainstream US liberal, would never make a movie like this today.
The basic premise of likable spree shooters you're supposed to root just wouldn't fly now for one. Which is interesting on its own. Mass shooters have been present in the national consciousness for decades, but this sort of plot feels more taboo than it would have been even a decade ago. Nowadays "spree-shooter" is more likely to suggest in the popular imagination a political extremist, while back then it was more something that people just did because they were nuts or because they had personal grievances at work or school.
Frank's murderous hatred of modern American society and longing for the good old days, even if the specific things he calls out are things liberals think are bad, is much more firmly right-coded now. And some of the specifics, such as railing about consumerism and the shallowness of modern entertainment, have also become more common on the right over the past couple of years.
When Frank kills Chloe, we're supposed to get some cathartic enjoyment out of it, because who doesn't hate reality TV stars? Nowadays with sexual harassment having so much more salience in political discourse, I doubt any director would film a scene where a middle-aged man murders a teenage girl because she's just so vapid and annoying, and portray him as the good guy in the situation.
There are a bunch of jokes through the movie about how Roxy and Frank are totally not fucking, which would be unlikely now for the very same reason.
Watching this movie in the 2020s is a very bizarre experience for me. It was like a time machine. I don't have any more conclusions to draw from this, just that it's interesting how strongly art can reflect culture, and how strange those reflections can look a few years down the line.
A few years ago I finally got around to watching Falling Down, because I'd heard it was funny, disturbing and thought-provoking; and also because Michael Douglas always has a magnetic screen presence even in bad films (e.g. Basic Instinct and Wall St. Yes, the original Wall St., not the sequel with Shia LaBeouf. Fight me.).
Falling Down, huh. What a weird, insipid and unfunny movie. There's this spree killer who, after years of petty frustrations and disappointments, has snapped, gone postal and is plotting to murder his estranged wife, right? How do we get the audience to identify with him? Why, we'll just have him spout inane observational humour about the petty irritations of modern life in between vicious indiscriminate violence. "What's the deal with fast food chains, amirite guys?" This inane observational humour is never funny, never feels remotely in-character and essentially just feels like it's there to pad out the runtime, but - well, how else are we going to get the audience to sympathize with such an unpleasant character? What, explain his situation and motivations to such a degree that we can understand them even if we don't think his behaviour is justified? Bro, I'm a screenwriter, I'm not Cormac McCarthy.
The thriller parts aren't thrilling, the comedy parts aren't funny, the "satire" falls flat on its face, the plot and how it's depicted is so exaggerated, cartoonish and contrived that you could practically call it a preemptive adaptation of Grand Theft Auto V. Baffling how the filmmakers thought they were making some kind of profound statement about American society, masculinity, consumerism, whiteness etc. Even more baffling how so many critics apparently bought it.
I thought the exact opposite. The protagonist only killed the nazi guy on purpose, and accidentally killed the golfer. You seriously think he was planning to murder his wife? He had no plan; the ending is basically the dog who caught the car. The guy is just a regular guy who lost everything, his job, wife, house, daughter, and everything he might have worked for in his life. When he snaps, he says exactly what he wants: "I'm going home." He's lost everything and wants to cling desperately to the only thing he knows as happiness.
The petty annoyances aren't about the annoyances, but only an emphasis that the protagonist truly has nothing - that not even a single person in the entire city gives a damn about his existence or circumstances, and won't give him an inch of accommodation or an ounce of sympathy. When you have a place in society, the system working as intended is somehow comforting, even the little annoyances. But when you have no place, they just deepen the wound.
The movie isn't a commentary on society or anything, but a story of the protagonist's downfall. He was a regular guy, with a professional job and a family, just like you once, who lost his place. Even as a violent maniac, nobody gives a shit and he's just a piece of trash to be taken out.
Absolutely. He has a severe temper and the reason she left him was because she couldn't tolerate his emotional abuse and the implied threat of violence. The whole movie is him lashing out at the world that denied him the things he felt entitled to (good job, respect). Of course he's going to lash out at the woman who (as he sees it) denied him a stable family. The fact that he abducts the wife and daughter at gunpoint only demonstrates my point.
Its social commentary may not have succeeded, but it was certainly intended. Quote Wikipedia:
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