Unclear and Present Danger - Falling Down

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

Jamelle, for one, has been very excited about this episode, an analysis of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film “Falling Down.” In the conversation, Jamelle and John discuss the populist moment of the early 1990s, the discourse around the “angry white man,” the class politics (or lack thereof) of the film, and the erosion of the post-war anti-fascist consensus.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front-page for February 26, 1993Carol Clover on “Falling Down” in Sight and Sound magazine.A New York Time story on the “race to win over the angry white male” from 1995.

Bill Foster is an ordinary man, living in the everyday world, a patient man. Can I help you? Yes, I'd like a ham and cheese omelette and wham fries. I'm sorry. We stopped serving breakfast at 11.30. Who's running out of patience? Somebody in a white shirt and tie, gunned down a phone,

be three blocks from the Whammy Burger. Michael Douglas. In America, we have the freedom of speech. They're right to disagree. Robert Duval, in a Joel Schumacher film. What are you doing to the street? We're fixing it. What the hell is it look like? See, I don't think anything's wrong with the street.

I think you're just trying to justify your inflated budgets. Falling down. Let's call it a day. Come on. I'm the bad guy. A tale of urban reality. Welcome to episode 18 of unclear and present danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of the politics of

that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called On Popular Front, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. Today, appropriately enough, we are talking about falling down, a 1993 action thriller type film directed by the late great Joel Schumacher and starring Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Rachel Takotin, and Tuesday weld. Here is a short plot synopsis. On the day of his daughter's birthday, William Foster is trying to get to the home of his estranged ex-wife to see his daughter. His car breaks down, so he leaves his car in the traffic jam in Los Angeles, and decides to walk. He goes to a

convenience store and tries to get some change for a phone call, but the Korean owner does not oblige, tipping Foster over the edge. The unstable Foster, so frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them. If you'd like to watch Falling Down before listening to our conversation, and as always, I recommend that you watch the movie first. You can stream it on Hoopla through your public library, or you can rent it on iTunes and Amazon. Before we get started, let's take a look at the New York Times front page

for the day this was released, February 26, 1993. It's very interesting things going on on this page that kind of resonant. today. First of all, Clinton announces airdrops to Bosnia will begin shortly. Hope's aid will help talk. So the U.S. involvement in the conflict in the Balkans is growing at this time.

Troops suppressed Hindus' protests in the India capital. This is like the photo, which shows a member of a Hindu opposition party retreating under attack and for riot police. This was supporters of the BJP, who was now the ruling party of India and has basically a strike. over that country's politics were protesting the government of the Congress Party, and this had

been shortly after a lot of religious strife in India after the destruction of a mosque that had been a Hindu holy site. And the BJP was in parliament at this time, but nothing like the political force it is now. So this is interesting because it shows the rise of Hindu nationalism, which is a big force today. What else is there? Studies say mammograms failed to help many women, new data, question, benefit for women under 50. Florio is defined on the banning of assault guns. So this is around the time of the assault weapons bans that were happening in the U.S. or attempts to get them on the federal level and on the state level.

This was in New Jersey. The New Jersey Assembly voted today to get rid of a ban on most semioticmatic weapons in defiance of Governor Floreo who wants the state to have the toughest gun law in the nation. this has obviously stayed sadly too relevant. Yeah, there's a lot of things here that are sort of, you know, as my experience of researching and thinking of the 1990s, little shoots that would later grow into, you know, much more substantial issues. So, yeah, that's the newspaper. Anything catch your eye on here? The only thing that really catches my eye is the section in the bottom right inside drug companies' profits criticized as excessive.

The congressional study asserts that drug companies are making excessive profits in comparison to other high-risk industries, in part because of the lack of price constraints on prescription drugs. That, I think, does begin to get into some of what's animating this movie, kind of a, not so explicit, but anger towards big business, towards, you know, concentrated capital or whatever, if you're going to put it, but not so fully expressed. And we can kind of get into that. Yeah, for sure. A very strange politics about, of this movie. Yeah, what a movie. What do you make of this? Yeah, let's talk.

Let's, wait, first of all, I want to ask you about Joel Schumacher because I think your opinion on, like, how do you, would you think characterize his films? Like, right, as a director and is he sort of like a Hollywood artur? I don't know. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I was just about to get into that. Joel Schumacher, who passed away two years ago, actually, almost exactly two years ago, got out what the going was good, I guess. And Joel Schumacher has had a long career in Hollywood going back to the 70s. And I would describe him as kind of a Hollywooduteur of having a very distinctive style, usually very heightened.

You might call it a little schlocky. Some of his most famous films, like A Time to Kill, are known for being incredibly sweaty, like hot and warm. I think this goes for this film as well. But a director who has a distinctive style, who is personally, I just recently read a biography, rather recently read a memoir on Paul Hirsch, a film editor who worked on this movie, actually.

And he describes Schumacher as being very, very flamboyant. very sort of a huge personality, that kind of guy. And I think that comes across in his movies. This is a man who has strong opinions and strong opinions about how movies should look, how they should make you feel, how they should hit the senses. At this point in his career, he's still pretty much on a hot streak. His film before this, Dying Young, 191, was kind of a romantic drama, gross to 18. 82 million on an $18 million budget, the critics weren't so hot about it.

And this is, I think, is a consistent thing about Schumacher's work. Critically, in the moment, reception is often very mixed. But I think down the line, there's a lot more appreciation for what he's trying to do. Yeah. In the 80s, you'll recognize some of the films he did, a pretty gangbusters run, St. Elmo's Fire, the Lost Boys and Flatliners, all very entertaining films, even if they aren't exactly masterpieces. falling down like these other ones had a very mixed critical reception but it did pretty well with audiences making almost $100 million on a $25 million budget and of course it's now I think

one of the emblematic films of the decade yeah and just for some additional context here Schumacher followed up falling down with a few films you will very much remember I already mentioned a time to kill which has Matthew McConaughey famously as Sam Jackson screaming in a courtroom. Yes, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell. And we will cover that film on this podcast because I think it also, I think it kind of is a companion piece to this movie in a lot of ways. And he directed Schumacher Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Film was which we will not cover on this podcast, which if you corner me in a bar, I will happily defend them. Okay, well, yeah, I mean, that's very interesting. I knew that

his reputation had kind of was once as a schlachmeister, but people sort of taking his films more seriously. I mean, I think that the films do hold up. I think that his movies have a lot of value. I also think that the reappraisal of Schumacher is partly tied into kind of like the cinematic monoculture that we're living in right now, that Schumacher was a big Hollywood director. His movies were supposed to be blockbusters. They were released. He was a populist director. And that kind of movie these days is rarely something that has very much personality. Yeah. And so, you know, it's even, even the weaker, even has weaker stuff, right?

Like you, I recently rewatch Batman Forever and Batman and Robin just, just out of kind of a curiosity kind of thing. Like, are these, like, how does my memory of these match up to the actual films? And they're not great, right. But they just have so much style and personality. And they have, they're very clearly trying to. to do a thing, right? Like, that you just don't see in that kind of, especially not big franchise movies, but in that kind of blockbuster. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, we kind of didn't

know how good we had it, you know, that sort of, yeah. Right. I mean, it's interesting you say populist because that kind of maybe brings us into the film a little bit itself. It does, although I do want to do a quick kind of Michael Douglas sidebar just because he is, he is obviously a very important part of this film and is worth talking about Michael Douglas also are kind of in the same rough point in his career and there are the two men are of similar ages. He is obviously the son of Kirk Douglas. Michael Douglas is Hollywood royalty. And by this point, he's pretty much carved out a very reliable and distinctive movie star persona. He is sort of the rogue, the sleeves, the cad, often the very powerful and untrustworthy rich man is a kind of role he embodies. And I think you can

say this fairly, he was the king of the erotic thriller, a genre of movie that just doesn't exist anymore. You'd be sent to horny jail if you tried to make one. His most notable acting credits in my view by this point are in 1979 is the China Syndrome, which despite its title is not like some sort of, you know, foreign panic movie. It's about a nuclear powerpoint about the meltdown. Romancing the Stone, great movie. Kathleen Turner. 1987's Fatal Attraction in Wall Street. So these two movies basically sort of like capture Michael Douglas' film persona together. Fatal Attraction, he is kind of like a sleaze.

And then Wall Street, he is a rich and powerful and untrustworthy guy. Right. He's in Basic Instinct, 1992, falling down, 93. And then he follows us up with Disclosure, which is another kind of weird companion piece with this movie. Disclosure is the film where it's like, what if it was a. woman who was sexually harassing, a put-upon white man. And then he was in the American president in 95, which is a sorkin joint, a sorken-written.

I mean, that's like everything you can imagine of a sorter joint that is what the American president is. And Douglas has also produced a ton of movies as well. So he's kind of his credits are all over the place. Sure. But he's an interesting choice to get into the politics of the film. Douglas is an interesting choice. for someone who is supposed to be an every man because really in a cinematic persona, he is not

an every man. That kind of description, I think, goes much more to Robert Duval, who is sort of the other protagonist of this movie. Yeah. He's sort of a square white guy from the 80s, though. I mean, he's usually kind of more upper middle class or upper class, but like Michael Douglas is sort of like represents this kind of masculinity that, you know, was present in a lot of 80s movies and this movie sort of like coming to the end of it. And, you know, that also connects with its populist themes. Basically, this movie is like white men, the movie. It's like, politically, it's interesting to approach it because it's like, first of all, let's put in a little bit of historical context. It was shot around the time of the LA riots, so the background of

Los Angeles and the urban dysfunction, the ethnic and racial tensions, and the severe economic downturn that Los Angeles was experiencing as a result of the end of the Cold War, and there was a recession. He was a former defense engineer, which was one of the biggest industries in L.A. that was largely wiped out by the end of the Cold War. And big context for the LA riots, which happened actually while this movie was being shot, was, you know, South Central Los Angeles had been totally de-industrialized over the course of the 80s, and then another, you know, giant economic downturn, which I think, you know, basically a quarter of Los Angeles is populated.

It was depression-level unemployment in Los Angeles. So that's part of the historical context. In Los Angeles, in the whole country, there was a populist moment where you had Pat Buchanan, You had Ross Perrault, where there was a lot of dissatisfaction with, you know, the end of the Cold War and the end of also the kind of big institutions that sort of took care of people and they could count on these jobs. He's a laid off defense worker in this. So he's kind of a white man adrift who was a protagonist of this era and, you know, drove its politics of resentment. And those energies kind of went in different directions. But, you know, you can imagine the character in this movie, Michael Douglas' character,

being absolutely being a kind of Ross Perra guy, you know, this is sort of fed up. Where are not going to take it? Yeah, exactly. Or even Papy Canaan, even though the movie kind of tries to take pains to separate him from the real far, right? But yeah, he basically loses it. He loses it at an immigrant. I mean, you know, which is, you know, the incident that, he has that kicks off the movie with a with a Korean shopkeeper in in LA would read differently

now well I don't know would read a little differently now but at the time you know there was lots of tensions especially between black community and and Korean shopkeepers in L.A. And elsewhere in the country and you know that part of that led to the violence of the L.A. riots. So that scene is interesting because I mean it's xenophobic and he's pissed off that the guy doesn't speak English properly, he gets annoyed with him for being rude, which was, you know, a big complaint that people have with Korean shopkeepers. And then he kind of goes on this odyssey around L.A. where he gets into all these situations of kind of, you know, white male, middle class dissatisfaction with the way the country is going. He encounters gangs,

you know, Mexican gangs. And he encounters a pin. He encounters homelessness, a too pushy homeless person. He encounters a fast food experience that he finds alienating and annoyed. um yeah and um this is basically you know the movie goes from thing to thing and he gets into these violent confrontations and he's sort of like a man on the edge and this is what can happen and he finally cracks and you know he's trying to get back to his like in the odyssey he's trying to get back to his wife and child but his wife and child don't want or his wife doesn't or ex-wife doesn't want to have anything to do with them and you know the the The divorce rate had come down, but a big part of the story of American family life at this time was, you know, no fault divorce was about, I don't mean, maybe 20 years old or 15 years old at this point.

Divorces were much more common. Women felt more comfortable leaving family situations and supporting themselves. So there's a kind of collapse. It's a story of the collapse of American white masculinity on his side. And I think on Robert Duval, the cop, who's chasing him through the city, sort of shows a different angle. A comment on Michael Douglas' defense's defenses, his license plan on his car is defense. Right. So that's how we just refer to him as that.

But a comment on how he looks, I mean, he doesn't just look like a square white American male. He looks very much like a square white American male out of the 1960s. Right. It's one of those, the world has changed, but this guy has not. he very much is sort of wants to hold on to the establishment to basically his like father. Right.

And once to sort of the order and the esteem and the respect that he perceives would have gone to someone like his father. Just we're kind of reading into the costume. But I think that's what that's supposed to evoke the square haircut, the short sleeve white shirt, the

pens in the pocket. I think it's supposed to evoke a very particular image. I recently watched for all mankind. the documentary about the NASA launches and it's sort of like rooms full of guys who look just like that. I mean, that's, I think, I think that would have been legible to viewers of the time. For sure, for sure. And then on Robert Duvall's character, I mean, this is what, it's worth saying a bit about the critical response to this movie, which kind of had, has two sides to it, which I think if you were to scroll through letterbox, the film social

network, you'll see something very similar, which is on one end, I have a, in my little research document here, I have a quote from Robert, Roger Ebert, who you love this movie. Critics praising this is sort of like a kind of groundbreaking social satire, social criticism from Hollywood. And then on the other side, kind of, well, this is, you know, this is just like reactionary nonsense. This is sort of, you know, proto-maga, as we might describe it now. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, I think, I think, I think the latter reading works if you downplay Robert Duvall's character. And if, if you downplay Robert Duval's character and if you kind of like sideline the neo-Nazi character somewhat, if you kind of think of them all as existing on a continuum, right, of sort of like American white mailness, I think the reading of the film becomes a little different because Robert Duval's character, who also, I mean, also the film establishes very, immediately is similarly, not like grieved, but like put upon by various sort of like racial

minorities and people in society that are like asking for things, right? His co-workers are black, Latino, and Asian. You see like one other white cop, two other white cops in the film, but all the other cops are non-white, and they don't take him seriously. His wife is, I will have to describe her as shrill. That's just how Tuesday well plays her. And, you know, in the opening scene on the freeway, Deval's character looks up at a billboard that has like a busty woman showing her cleavage.

And someone that's drawn a little man stuck inside the cleavage saying help. And Duval chuckles at that. And I think that's sort of like, that's like Deval. That's like Deval sort of like whole thing. Kind of he feels, even if he can't express it, he feels emasculated. And so his journey through the movie is regaining his sense of masculinity. When you compare and contrast it to Michael Douglas' character, Duval is much less toxic, right? Like, he doesn't seem to have a sense of entitlement about it.

He wants to feel like he is doing something constructive, but he doesn't, like, resent other people necessarily for the lack of that in his life. he kind of has, has accepted it. But nonetheless, he represents sort of a kind of, sort of, like, if the Michael Douglas character were more chill, he'd be Robert Duvall, basically, and more kind of like, you know, willing to let things go and such. And I think it complicates a movie, a reading of the movie as reactionary. I mean, the movie is still very much concerned with, like, the inner lives of, you know, the middle class white man.

But also, the movie very clearly puts up Duval as actually someone who is worth emulating or at least like someone worth respecting in a way that I'm not sure it does for Michael Douglas's character. Yeah. Let me think about this for a second. So, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. It's like, oh, like he has the less pathological response to these issues, which is like, you can still stick up for yourself and be a man, but you don't have to be total react in this

insane weight of all these things. I mean, he's a cop. Right. Yeah. He's also revealed to have had an affair with an attractive younger co-worker. He kind of tells his way to shut up at one point of the movie. The movie seems to celebrate that. So he kind of reasserts his masculinity in that not so nice way. But yeah, I think the other thing that kind of reads or is against the grain of this movie just being purely kind of like you're rooting, you're supposed to enjoy and root for the white guy. you know, not going to take all the bullshit from the minorities who can't speak English

properly and the annoying corporate shit and all that. I think it's like because he's pathological. Like, and it shows him to be that way from the beginning because it's revealed when he gets to his, he's trying to get back to his ex-wife and daughter's house for her birthday. He watches a tape of them and it shows that he had, you know, his wife was frightened of him and he was like a nearly kind of abusive and controlling. Okay, that's a subversive message, which is like, this guy looks like a square you feel bad for him things aren't going his way and he just cracked and then the movie says well actually he was always fucking nuts and and basically the you know you could say that that it's i don't know if you want to use such a high flutant term but it's it's it's

critique which is which is interesting in a way it's like well you know if you look beneath the surface this person who's this upstanding citizen who does everything right and then decides one that he's had it. There's a little bit more to the story. He was always controlling. His wife was frightened of him. So his pathological behavior has deeper roots. So, I mean, that's a pretty interesting comment for the movie to make. It's like, this guy didn't just crack. He had an unsustainable relationship to the world around him to begin with him. It was already showing signs of cracking. He wasn't just like, oh, I got divorced. Things didn't work out between me and my wife. like to see my daughter like he's actually menacing in a number of different ways because the guy

has serious issues the other thing that along these lines is he's not just path law school he's sort pathetic right he's he's a he's a pathetic guy and though throughout the film there were these moments where it seems like it's about to build to this crescendo of him really asserting his masculinity in the fast food the fast food sequence and the kind of the McDonald's ripoff where he has the semi-automatic weapon and he's putting it to the ceiling and he's trying to sort of like calm people and also threaten people. Then he accidentally pulls the trigger and kind of just like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Right. Like a similar thing happens with the bazooka towards the end of the film where he is, where some like little black kid is trying to show him how to use a

bazooka and he messes up. So like these moments which look like they're going to become cool for him always end up not going the way he wants them to because he is kind of just like he's a pathetic guy he's a pathetic pathological guy and he's lasting up the reason why i think this movie is also a little confused is that the movie seems to want to want you to have some sympathy for him as well it doesn't cleanly make him a villain no i mean this is this is this is where i think that the point in favor of like the reading of this movie is like kind of reactionary trash is that it's there's a there's a there's a real element of this guy kind of has a point and maybe not so much of a point that he that he that you should sympathize with the neo-nazzi who he kills right sort

of the movie he kills the neo-nazi character um who is like super over the top as very much a very obvious attempt to say like he is not michael douglas is not that guy but he may have something something of a point the problem right though is if you understand these three characters as being kind of on a continuum than kind of like a somewhat more pathological Michael Douglas would just be the neo-Nazi. Yeah, exactly. But that's, as you said, is sort of just a way to longer the character, which is like, he's not a Nazi, he's not a Nazi. He's still just a plain old American. The Nazi character is, yeah, really crazy. But, you know, like, the thing is obviously there are those subcultural neo-Nazis who are very kind of like anti-you know like

anti-borgeois in their lifestyle and so and so forth and our creeps and weirdos but like fascism is perfectly respectable like it tracks people from the falling middle class like this guy so like it seems to be a little bit too much like protesting too much to to be a little bit to be like well he's not a Nazi and like you're supposed to cheer that he goes and gets a Nazi which is a classic like American movie thing to be like yeah and we meet up a Nazi and you're like okay I mean the other thing I in that regards to there's a scene where um Douglas witnesses a character played by Bondi Curtis Hall who has an extremely familiar face like you see this guy's face like I've seen this guy in a million movies yeah but it's Bondi Curtis Hall and he is

holding a sign saying not economically viable he's a black guy, and he got a loan rejected to save his business. And Michael Douglas kind of looks on at this scene. Curtis Hall's character is arrested by the police. And that's, I mean, I feel to me, I read that scene as the movie kind of trying to say, well, there's some kinship and sympathy between these two men. Right. Right. They're in a similar kind of situation. I don't think the movie is quite smart enough to make what I think is the obvious connection, which is that they might be in a similar situation, but like one of those guys can kind of like wander around L.A., like beating the shit out of the people,

and the other guy promptly gets arrested by the police. Right. But that's, I think that's another attempt of the movie trying to, trying to, recognizing that Michael Douglas' character is set up to, in this way, in trying to soften the edges. And if I remember correctly from Hirsch's book, there was actually a scene cut from the film where Douglas, like, straight up murder someone. And audiences, like, really didn't like it.

Right. And so they were going to cut it out the film to, again, soften him a little more. Yeah, I mean, like, it's really weird that this took place during the LA riots because, like, that was an explosion of kind of frustration, anger, rage, whatever you want to call it, with a system that had failed. You know, it was after the Rodney King verdict and it was in the midst of an economic downturn. And the way that that was presented in the media was not like, these people had it. They finally cracked, you know, like, and, you know, it was going to happen one day. It was absolute horror because most of the people who rioted were black and Latino.

So it's sort of like he's having his own individual L.A. riot, but he's just, he's just one white guy kind of going around L.A. But the same sort of things happened, you know, attacks on shopkeepers and so on and so forth. And, yeah, I think that the movie tries to make you sort of feel bad for this guy and feel like there is a plight. But, you know, it's strange because, like, there are people, and he encounters people, like, the homeless person who's shown to be, like, pushy and terrible. But this is, this is classic American populism, which is sort of, like, in the middle and always, like, attacking up and down, like, poppers who want handouts and also. You know, the, the billionaires on top, you know, there are people in much worse situations than this guy, and the country has come to more desperate circumstances since. It's just strange to see what was considered to be like, this guy couldn't take it.

The taxi driver, like, here's a man who would not, you know. It's kind of interesting to compare a taxi driver. In a way, I was thinking about this movie. This time I was watching it, I was thinking about taxi driver, which is another movie about, like, more of a working class guy who goes crazy and loses it. But I think like that movie's a little more truthful about the degree of alienation on the type of person that goes on a rampage like this and the degree to which like we don't really recognize their, I don't know, we can sort of recognize like their grievances. But at the same time, they seem highly strange alien. And like this

person is obviously an insane person. I think that's that's another interesting thing about this movie also in the context of mass shootings and and all these people who cracked. And I also just rewatch Fight Club, which made me think of this too, is like how do we respond? We all have these movies that sort of valorize or make us interested in these kinds of individuals that that like go suddenly start to exhibit extremely antisocial behavior because they're alienated or you know they've experienced some kind of trauma or whatever on the one hand we're very frightened of these people they they can be extremely frightening and are responsible for you know explosions of violence and the other hand we have this like deep fascination almost folkloric celebration of them

you know there's all these t-shirts with the with the walter whatever the guy from brink Breaking Bad. You know, we have all these, you know, the, these sort of, I mean, this is a long part of American culture, but these kind of like, and taxi driver posters and so and so forth, you know, this fascination and almost celebration of these kind of antisocial rejects and weirdos, at the same time, like, you know, when they actually do occur, we don't have any, you know, we don't have any system in which. to kind of reintegrate these people into society and be like, well, you know, like you lost

your job, but you're, you know, you're available for, you know, there's, there's a stronger welfare state and there's mental health treatment and so and so forth. It's like we, we have this weird fascination and, and revulsion at the same time to these kind of, um, uh, antisocial individuals. This movie is kind of in that tradition. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the something to which Travis Bickle is kind of an icon. I mean, it's weird. Yeah. Um, you know, Todd Phillips's Joker film from a couple years ago. It's very much consciously mimicking, aping, you know, barring from taxi driver. And in a sign of how the Travis Bickle character has been, has come to exist as an anti-hero. Wachene Phoenix's Joker is like an anti-hero. He's not like a, a

a murderous homicidal maniac. He's sort of like a guy who you're supposed to root for in the context of the film. Oh, he cracked too. Right. Yeah. So one of the reviews I read from 93 is from Carol Clover in sight and sound. And there's a sentence here that gets to some of this. By locating genocidal viciousness and insanity and the non-Nazi and indeed having defense

to kill him, moralizing about freedom of speech as he does so, the film can define defense as your average short-tempered neighbor who just happened to break one day. And what blows then is his self-control, not his sense of reality. No Travis Bickle, this. And I think that's right. I mean, you can make a comparison to Travis Bickle, but because the film is trying to have it both ways, his sense of reality is kind of intact.

It's sort of like, yeah, maybe he is right about this kind of stuff. And I think a more honest movie would say that, no, this is all kind of delusional. He's either imagining that the world is out to get him, by virtue of the fact that it isn't affording him the kind of respect he thinks he deserves by virtue of being him. And his, I think his anger is sort of displaced in the wrong direction.

Although there is some gesturing at kind of the classic American populace, as you said, sort of the producerist ethos of kind of like, you know, obviously people at the bottom, but also they're the two ritz guys playing golf, who he has something but content for. That's like one scene. Most of his targets are people on the bottom.

Yeah. And for being an unemployed defense worker who's, like, angry about capitalism, his targets really aren't the people responsible for that whatsoever, right? Like, it's all just a set of scapegoats for that anger. I say anger about capitalism because of the fast food thing. In the, in the Korean shopkeeper seat, where he's like, why does this cost so much? It's like, it's not that dude's fault. Right.

It's not his fault that stuff has to cost more money. Yeah. And he has to charge more money for it. Right. Yes, exactly. You know what, this really about the kind of political economy of L.A. It's like the funny thing is during the L.A. riots, like, you know how there was the famous beating of Reginald Denny who was like the revenge beating of the truck driver who drove into South Central into like the heart of the riot? Yeah. And he was attacked by some gang members. He was rescued by some unemployed defense workers who were who were black. But they were like, you know. defense were, or yeah, defense engineers who were black, who saw actually on TV and then, like, ran out to help this guy. And also, most of the people who were arrested for looting were from the poorest parts of Latino Los Angeles, where basically they were on starvation, like level.

Like, they were not integrated into the U.S. economy. They were barely were. And then when the bubble births, they were extremely precarious and people were, you know, like on food lines. The defense workers in L.A., unlike people, a lot of people who had been unemployed for an enormously long period of time in South Central or in Central American neighborhoods, were eligible for unemployment. And like, they weren't at the very bottom of the socioeconomic problems in L.A. I mean, it was, I'm not going to say that they didn't experience hardship. But, like, when the explosion happened in L.A., it wasn't a middle-class guy who had enough. It was places with the most desperate economic situation.

And then, like, it was, like, the people who were kind of more, you know, socially integrated and, like, had ties to labor unions, had ties to, you know, all of these things that were tried to put the communities back together afterwards. So it was like it happened at the very bottom and the people who had been forgotten and let drop to the very bottom was where this, you know, like, oh, these are the people who couldn't take it. Those people are rarely depicted on screen because middle class, you know, audiences can't relate to them.

I mean, there was a spade of movies about South Central that did try to deal with that intelligent way. But yeah, I mean, like, it's interesting, like, this movie came out after there was an actual mass uprising in America because we have let the economic and political situation in one of the great cities get so bad. But the fixation was, even in that year, was on, like, white anger as being like, oh, like, they've had it because the country's, like, not, not doing what it's supposed to do. But like, and then the way it was portrayed when it happened in the L.A. riots was, you know, highly pathologizing.

Like, oh, what is going on? Is it the rap music? It's like, no, I mean, like, this is a desperately poor area for years and years and years and has been set upon, basically by police constantly and harassed. And, you know, like it was, it was something like this was bound to happen. So I don't know where I'm really going with that except to say it's weird. to turn it back, first of all, into an individual who's having this, like, experience and not being like, well, there was actually social upheaval because of what the country

was going through after the Cold War during this movie. It interrupted the filming of this movie. And it didn't take place. I mean, the violence, there starts to be, as we've discussed, you know, kind of domestic white terrorism, which is this movie, how it relates to things like Waco and Ruby Ridge and stuff like that is something you think about. But the phenomenon of social breakdown appears in more desperately poor and politarianized places. And the way it kind of represents itself in the white middle class at this point was mostly things like Ross Perot and Papi Canaan,

which is like kind of angry populist rhetoric. I was sort of curious. And so I did kind of a quick Washington Post and your Times archive search for articles on the angry white man. And it's kind of a whole genre of writing in this exact period, this sense, as a result, I suppose, I've got the nominal inclusion of women and minorities, and really especially women. In this movie, defense is like very clearly as anger is fueled in part by misogyny, angered his wife. But this genre of writing about the angry white man is the white American men put upon. Are they losing their place in society and so on and so forth? It's very much a part of, I think, the discourse in the 90s. I tried to find this on YouTube. I have this memory of like

a talk show. Maybe it was sort of like, you know, maybe it was Phil Donahue or something on his show of kind of broaching his exact topic. But I have a memory of this in my head from the 90s of talk shows. and talk news, talking about this exact thing. And what's, I mean, to go to the structural level that you were operating at, I mean, what's so interesting about this is that, I mean, there's like real economic dislocation happening. We're in the neoliberal moment, right? The devolution of state functions, the gutting of state capacity, the kind of, you know,

unleashing the discipline of the market on ordinary people. And that is, that creates stress, that creates, you know, anger, creates fear. One of the articles here is about Governor Pete Wilson of California, the Republican governor of California, who in 95 announces that he's, you know, that he's going to move to eliminate the state's affirmative action policies. And it's, it's like there are these economic dislocations and so, dislocations as a result. And as fitting the moment the country's in, the response is to blame all these minorities and women. It's like, well, they're taking the thing from us. And so Pete Wilson

ending affirmative action in California is like, well, this is how I'm going to deal with the problem of like all this anger, white male anger, is to kind of like, you know, say, well, I'm going to take away these unfair advantages. But in fact, it is the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the issue has much more to do with sort of like the state deciding that it isn't going to worry too much about what happens when, you know, the market moves against ordinary people and more people are left to drift by the market and let people kind of fend for themselves and sink or swim without the help of the federal government. Learn some personal responsibility, I guess.

And it's sort of, like, I don't think this movie is necessarily operating on that wavelength. And I think you can kind of even understand this movie as kind of dramatizing the sense in which Americans are personalizing and individualizing and projecting downwards, anger and fear and anxieties that are better understood in a structural sense. And there's no political, there's not really any mass political party. at the time that's like really trying to do this right like the democratic party isn't trying to communicate to people that like your problem isn't your black co-worker no personal responsibility

was the big message from from the clinton democrat right exactly it's funny as i as i as i think about this movie a little more it is it emblematic both in both in how it captures this this discourse of the angry white male and how it even probably in the way that media often does both sort of like reflects it and also reflects back on it. But I think it also captures something about just sort of like the political economy of the United States in the 90s, in this moment of, of, you know, state withdrawal, of the state kind of jettisoning as much of its sort of like, you know, New Deal Order self as it could.

Yeah. In this decade. Except for the cops. Except for the cops. And there's that funny scene towards the end where. The cop is speaking to Michael Douglas' character's wife who wants some protection. And the cop says, well, you know, next time there's a ballot initiative on how many patrol cars are out, just be sure to vote no. In terms of, like, reducing the number of patrol cars.

I thought that was sort of a funny. The movie kind of has a very, not very friendly attitude towards the cops, which is interesting. I mean, it kind of shows a lot of them to be assholes, which, I mean, particularly the LAPD had a very, I mean, his boss is. obviously kind of like a Daryl Gates stand-in. Yeah. I mean, basically what happens in L.A. is that to make a long story short, the industrial basis of the city slowly collapses. A bunch of black working families are left behind in this post-industrial kind of rust-belt

environment. They get increasingly desperate. The police are just used to harass and keep them under control. There is the emergence for the first time of black political figures. They're mostly from a kind of upwardly mobile black middle class. There is some political figures that represent, you know, the proletarian, you know, black parts of L.A. But the COPS is one issue that black middle class and black working class voters have both kind of agree on because they both experienced harassment and mistreatment,

but the process of reforming the LAPD is extremely difficult and hard. That LAPD is totally through a series of reforms, quote-unquote, walled off from any kind of accountability. And this begins to kind of shift after Rodney King, but basically the cops are like a state within a state in L.A. And they're sort of blacks and liberals have taken over the government, the city government, and the traditional white Anglo, as they call them in L.A., bourgeoisie kind of retreats into the police department as its center of political power.

So the power in L.A. is divided between the elected government and the police department, which is sort of this state within a state, you know, that's very much supported by these white predominant business associations and homeowners associations in the Valley. And they're very interested in keeping, you know, basically blacks and Hispanics away because it affects the values of these things. And the outcome of all this is Rodney King, which was not an aberration, which was just the standard operating practice of the LAPD when they stopped, when they dealt with black suspects or black people that they stopped was just to employ brutalizing violence, you know, all the time. And this time it was caught on video and it was after, you know, the acquittal of these cops who had been moved to Simi Valley kind of copland suburb of L.A. for this trial. So basically this movie kind of, it's like it's frustrating because the way the 90s has sort of dealt with all this and is like L.A. a weird, wacky place with all these different crazy people. Like in this movie kind of continues. story like it was all you know like people just kind of went nuts one day it was like no it was a deeply dysfunctional political situation and economic situation and eventually you know led to a catastrophe and this movie the more I think about the actual context of Los Angeles in this era the more it annoys me about how like this doesn't really deal I mean it's a lot to

ask. It's a lot to ask. But when you read about it and you read about what the interesting things that the country is going through in this time, historically, and then you kind of see the way it's treated on screen or the way it's kind of mulched through Hollywood, it does be like, it's something that happens all the time, which, as you said, it turns structural issues into these individualized things. And it also turns everything into a cultural problem right it's like it's the problem is guys and they've got to you know well it's true in a certain sense but it's always like this guy has mental problems and he's got to get with the times because times are changing it's like well that's maybe true on the one hand but like this movie as we've

mentioned hints that they're being deeper structural things going on but then kind of doesn't deal with them. And it's basically its solution at the end is suicide. You know, this guy just self-destrocks, doesn't do too much damage, self-destructs. The good white masculinity of Robert Duvall is allowed to survive and retire with his Jewish wife that he tolerates. And that's sort of the future it envisions. It doesn't say there's going to be some kind of revolution or something right right yeah so one thing i mentioned to you when we started that i put this on just on mute and sort of like i've been glancing over to see where it is and right now it's it's we're in the um we're in the neo-nazi store the consignment store the you know the gears or

whatever it is which i feel like as an aside i a couple years ago i once outside of richmond went into like a little you know like antique store um which it looked kind of cool there's some cool stuff to photograph. I'm kind of like walking around and there's a little corner and it's sort of like war memorabilia. And I look over and it's just sort of like Nazi shit, like nonstop Nazi shit. And it was very much a moment where it was like, I need to leave. Oh, absolutely. I've experienced this several times. I mean, I need to, I need to, I need to, I need to promptly exit this establishment. Yeah. Those military stores hobby shops for some reason. Yeah. I mean, so this character even though over the top like i definitely we've all had maybe an encounter with somebody like this yeah uh but

there's there's recently been some conversation on the internet about sort of the trajectory of conservatives and like young conservatives in particular sort of like why so many of them seem to be embracing stuff that's like you know not that far away from um what you might find on like the Unz review or you know kind of the white nationalist side of things and I kind of think if you're ever if we're just thinking about this movie and these

three characters Deval Douglas and then you know Nazi the actor whose name I probably should find thinking about this movie in those terms it's almost like you're seeing a trajectory of we're sort of like you know American conservatism is going

from a kind of like stayed in traditional kind of like authority and hierarchy as represented by Duval kind of like still kind of embodying some of the slights and resentments but like not sort of letting them kind of like you know completely take over um the body of the thing to you know barely sublimated and then like lashing out uh like michael douglas to sort of like an open and forthright embrace of all of this stuff um as represented by the neo-Nazi character. Right.

He's the real dark id of, you know, where this could go. Right. Where this all could end up. I guess the movie implies that wouldn't we rather have Robert Duvall than the real Nazi? Right. I mean, not Robert Duvall, but Michael Douglas is preferable to the real Nazi. Right. I guess I have all this in mind as well because right before recorded, I watched an ad from a Republican Senate candidate

in Missouri, Eric Griton's, Griton, doesn't say his name. Oh, yeah, that fucking shit, man, wow. Yeah. And the ad, if you, if you haven't seen it, is, it is, it's,

Gritin's saying we're going to go rhino hunting, R-I-N-O, Republican in name only. And it's sort of like a paramilitary death squad kicking in the house, and Griton's being like, we're going to, or Griton's saying, you know, we're going to, we're going to murder people who are, I guess, like, opponents of Donald Trump or don't worship him as God emperor, it's really

disturbing. I mean, like, it's one of those things where you see and you're like, I can't believe this is real, but then you're sort of like, any temptation to want to crack jokes at it, for me at least, it's tempered by the fact that, like, this guy stands a real chance of being a United States senator. Look, I researched this time period extensively, and there is, you know, which we've talked about, you know, there are neo-Nazis. was far right politics. Nothing was this crazy from from this era of the 90s. I mean like you had

obviously like these screen representations of armed people losing it and so and so forth. But this bringing of death squad aesthetics into politics would would have would have caused you know it was this is my sad worry. The war was in living memory. the Nazis were in living memory. Right. And as that fades, is it just that fascism just stops being such a taboo? And no one knows what the word means anymore. And we've talked about this, I think, on this podcast.

But like, this is it, it's just like it doesn't have the same effect. You know, when people called, when people said Pat Buchanan is flirting, well, David Duke was a neo-Nazi who ran for office. I mean, this is, in my opinion, the beginning of a lot of things. things were seen. There's deeper roots in American history, but the beginning of this particular iteration of this kind of politics. You know, when people pointed out their connections of these things to fascism, it was a big deal. Like, the news went crazy about it and was like, and that was meaningful. It was a meaningful conversation. I mean, look, it's politics. It's a, it's mass media. It was that used, one could argue, as a slightly demagogic political attack. Yeah,

But it had a grain of truth. Now, I don't think that that really even, my worry is how much does that even work? Yeah. You know, and the movie, this movie even had to include the Nazi character to make sure you didn't get the wrong idea about the main character, right? I don't even know. And then if you go through later movies, like I was watching Fight Club, which is, you know, an interesting movie and has multiple things going on politically. but that movie didn't even need to make you feel like there are some slightly fascist things going on in Fight Club, let's just say. That movie didn't really feel like it needed to tell the audience, like, no, no, let's not touch the third rail there.

So, yeah, I don't know. I worry that the fading memory of that is a problem. I mean, there's obviously all kinds of structural things in America. politics that are leading to this but I think it's also just and I don't like explanations that rely too heavily on amorphous things like culture but I mean that's a material thing in a way like the loss of a memory historical experience going out of you know weirdly enough the filmmaker who I think is also concerned about that and and is trying to deal with it and he's like very dorky and strange and stupid sometimes but it barely away is Quentin Tarantino yeah like

he's like always trying to be like let's make sure that the things that were like good about the propaganda of American movies like remain there and we remember like what's right and wrong and like yeah I guess I don't know where how to conclude that thought except to say like I wonder how much this just has to do with the memories of the war era and the fascist era fading yeah and to connect this to sort of just the the 90s I mean part of why an accusation of fascism could land wasn't just that the war was in, was still well within historical memory, right, that the President of the United States, you know, before Clinton was a war veteran. You know, the post-Cold War moment, the triumphalism of it was of a part kind of like

over the country that we defeated communism and we defeated the Nazis. So that was kind of in the air. And then just the literal 50th anniversary of D-Day, right, is in 1994, right? The middle of the 90s is this period of like nationwide war commemoration, commemorating the greatest generation, kind of like obsessively, you know, making documentaries, written books, creating movies, sort of the greatest generation is just part of the cultural conversation in this really kind of ubiquitous way. And I think I've talked before about some critiques of that, but it's very much there. And so it's just like it's in the atmosphere. And that's just not the case anymore. Hasn't been the case for a while.

World War II has gone from being something that as an event, Americans sort of generally could participate in thinking about and like consuming media about to very much like a niche interest. And yeah, I mean, I think I think you're right that it's the fading memory. It's the literal fading memory, people actually dying. and then also sort of like the remove from a moment of triumphalism when that stuff was like

kind of forced back in the memory as a result of us celebrating American greatness and there's this funny way too just in how there's no moment there's no historical moment that could really replace it

I mean you don't see people talking about the civil rights movement in this way like civil rights people who live through the 60s the 50 and 60s are alive and well you know it's not like that's particularly far away. But Americans don't, are not in the habit of thinking about our history of

segregation and racial oppression as sort of like on the same continuum with European fascism, even if, even though I think, I think you should. I mean, I think that's like, yeah, I think you should keep those things. They're not the same, but I think you should be thinking about those things together. I mean, if you're thinking broadly. But because we're not in a habit of thinking that way, it's hard to kind of bring that to the fore, too. I mean, the

thing that, you know, is striking is John Lewis died in 2020 and it was like, you know, I want my friends and colleagues in the Congress to pass the voting rights bill. And, you know, all these Republicans who knew the guy was like, yeah, yeah, we're going to honor your wishes. And then after he died, they're just

like, yeah, fuck off. Yeah. And I think that... Right. The lip service paid to it. Right. I think that speaks to sort of how that moment isn't thought it isn't necessarily carry the same moral imperative right that like the World War II moment does for the broad mainstream of Americans I don't know I think they're kind of of a single piece and look of my way I internalized American ideology was that there was an anti and this is a lot of gaps and problems with it but basically very roughly speaking

there was a anti-fascist hegemony, which was, first, we did the New Deal, then we did World War II, then we did civil rights, and we're progressing from issue to issue, and we've created a society and a political consciousness that has cowed, even the, and this is why it's hegemonic, even the right now has to accept Martin Luther King Day, it has to accept, you know, that the Nazis were bad, and we fight. on the same side against the Nazis. America first has been destroyed. Segregationists have been destroyed. There's a very old, New Deal, liberal, optimistic view of American history, which views these things as all one and struggle. And there was an aspect to early civil rights that, you know, kind of viewed it as a continuation of anti-fascism as well. And there was lots of people left who had, you know, gone from one to the other, you know, black communists who had promised a better war and so on and so forth. So I always thought my childish view of American politics was there's bad things in the meantime, but there is a kind of anti-fascist hegemony that will

win out and slowly grind away at the forces, at these forces, because it's just too culturally and politically powerful. That's the thing that has sort of broken down and what I find disturbing, which is like eventually the walls would fall. The segregationists would defend their ground, but the balance of forces was against them and they would eventually fall.

And that was something that happened. There was a kind of a revolution that happened in the New Deal and then was consummated in the civil rights period and has just been kind of continuing and continuing. And this is the way, right, wingers view too just think it's bad you know like real reactions are like the new deal the civil rights act these are all like the communists or whatever take over of america you know and i have the

i just had the the opposite consciousness of it which was just like that stuff's all great and like you know that's like what what we've sort of been marching towards and i think what happened in my lifetime which i find disturbing and i've been trying to deal with with in my writing and my thinking is like what happened what can replace that anti-fascist hegemony i mean it had its gaps and problems and it blind spots and wasn't dealing with every problem um but it's been i think it was better and i think some weirdly way a subtext of our entire podcast um like that like what do we do in the absence of that i mean i i have no I have no idea

what can replace it but it is it is very worrisome and yeah I don't know I think we're coming up on the end of our conversation here any last thoughts on falling down

interesting movie disappointing ultimately and it's superficial treatment of an interesting period but a good entry point to lots of historical matters of historical interest, that was what I would say. Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, like we said, kind of at the top, Joel Schumacher is very much, he's a Hollywood director, he was a Hollywood director. And I think this movie is interesting in that Schumacher clearly perceived something happening. Schumacher and his collaborators here clearly perceived something going on within kind of the American culture at the time. And this movie is an expression of what they thought that was. was a perfect expression, but I do think it has a lot of material. It's something that is that is worth watching both as like a cultural artifact, but also as sort of funny to think

through what that something was and how it relates to us today because it very much, it very much does. Donald Trump kind of kind of what it was, like ran as the angry right man. I put upon angry right man who is aggrieved and feels that he is not entitled to the respect that he deserves. I mean, he is that guy. I mean, that's what he is. And it is, I guess it's perhaps fitting that the guy who sort of unleashed so many of these forces in the Republican Party and create them, but kind of like let them, you know, fly their freak flag is a guy who is largely indifferent to the history of this country, indifference to everything except his own narrow advancement and aggrievement.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. Super, super, super uplifting way to end this episode. I thought we ever end things upliftingly, but usually we can end on the table. No, sorry, sorry. I don't want to be a bummer, but it's been a rough week in the news. No, no, no.

And this, I mean, this movie, this movie isn't a bummer, but it's a bummer, but it It also doesn't lend itself well to a super upbeat conversation. No. But that is, it is, it is what it is. Yeah. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcast, and wherever else

podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It helps people find the show and be read. the reviews. They're nice to read. You can reach out to both of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie. John, you are. I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from Mark titled Sniper Thoughts on the movie Sniper, not just general thoughts on the profession of being a snipers. Hi, Jamel and John. Just listen to your sniper ever.

episode, and thanks for your great analysis of films in the genre of T&T on a Saturday afternoon. You're welcome. It got me thinking about the rise of commando-type heroes and action movies right around the 50th anniversary of World War II, which of course spawned a sometimes overlapping action genre. If the tradition of valorizing warfare was built around pitched battles of equal armies, but in the 90s, that was no longer plausible for Americans. With no plausibly equal foe, we get all these military movies that take an American super-soldier,

isolate him and make him the underdogs surrounded by expendable villains and commandos and snipers are perfectly that setup. Anyway, love the show, always excited for new episodes to drop. I think that's I associate that much more than 1980s. Yeah.

With, you know, the movie literally called commandos starting Arnold Schwarzenegger but also the Rambo films, the Delta Force films with Chuck Norris and so, you know, plenty of C and D-tier movies. I really associate that with the 80s. The 90s, not so much. I'm trying to think of

movies in that vein in the 1990s. And there really aren't that many of kind of the lone commando mowing down heroes. That just, or mowing down enemies. That just wasn't the action star had moved in a different direction in the 90s from the ultra-buff, ultra-masculinegger and and Stallone types to, you know, Bridge Willis, to Nick Cade, who had a moment as an acting star. I mean, that's Will Smith, who is very much not in that mold. So I think this fits more the 80s, yeah. But it's interesting idea because there is a thing of it's like the, I mean, forgive me

for saying this, but the kind of neoliberal conception of war, which is that it's like an entrepreneur, like a clever entrepreneur, an individual, a special individual not a communal effort of an army that has to deal with it. And that was very much in line with like Reagan, foreign policy, privatizing things. So it's like everyone's their own little private army and stuff like that. And I think it continues, maybe less macho, but still like, oh, it's a clever individual who's sort of like fighting the war on their own. Right, right.

Thank you for the note, Mark. And thank you for listening. Episodes come out every other Friday. And so we will see you in two weeks with a. I don't even know this was a theatrical release. It feels like it was a TV movie, but the movie is Ambush and Waco in the line of duty

about the Waco siege. Here is a very short plot synopsis. Religious fanatics are barricaded in a building and surrounded by police, but they're not going to surrender it. They prefer to die. This sounds like it might be problematic. Yeah. But it'll be interesting

to watch. It's available for streaming on Peacock for free with ads. I'm also going to watch the American Experience documentary on Ruby Ridge. Yeah, I will do the same. And I'm going to, there's another documentary called Waco, the Rules of Engagement. So I'm going to check those two out just for additional context on this one, because I think it will be worth having that in the back of our minds. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this. I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation about slightly neglected history. I really should mention more often. the other people who help us put this podcast together, so I will. Our logo is courtesy of

the great Rachel Eck, who you can find on Instagram at Rachel E. Lettering. And our producer is Connor Lynch. Thank you, Connor, for your help. For John Gans, I am Jamal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. See you next time. We're going to be able to be. Thank you.