Author Archives: jessicam

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole of Societal Dysfunction

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Falling Down (1993) provides a snapshot of the dysfunction in society during the race wars that were at the forefront during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. As the film begins we see that William Foster (Michael Douglas) is stuck in traffic and is experiencing some sort of mental break. His palms are sweaty and every sound and sensation is magnified. It is then that he decides that he is going to walk “home” to his little girl’s birthday party. He grabs his briefcase, ditches his car in traffic and starts walking. As the movie progresses we find out that he no longer lives at “home” with his family. His wife is now his ex-wife and that he has been fired from his job as a defense engineer which has rendered him unable to make his child support payments. On top of that he is now forced to live with his mom who is mentally unstable and loves to collect miniature glass animals.

Along the way William encounters several people with whom confrontations ensue easily. He wants to call and talk to his “wife” and daughter so he stops at a liquor store where he asks the store owner to make change for a dollar so he can use the payphone outside. He picks out a Coke but the store owner says that it’s 85 cents which won’t give William the 2 quarters he needs for the phone call. William, who is now thoroughly aggravated, asks the Korean store owner why he has mispronounced the word “five” like “fi”. he wonders out loud, “What, they don’t have v’s in China?” The store owner is nonetheless appalled and responds that he is from Korea. William retorts with “Eh, whatever! You come to my country take my money and then don’t even have the grace to learn how to speak my language?” then goes on a tirade asking him if he knows how much money his country (The U.S.) has given his country. When the owner tries to kick him out he responds by stealing his bat from behind the counter that the store owner was about to use on him.

In a following scene he encounters an army surplus store owner who knows the cops are looking for D-Fens as William has decided to call himself. The surplus owner takes advantage of this knowledge and lures him down to his basement to show him his Nazi and war memorabilia. At this point the store owner is somewhat infatuated with D-Fens and admires him as a vigilante. Unfortunately, D-Fens disagrees with the store owner and tells him he is not a vigilante and he’s just trying to get home to see his little girl. The store owner gets violently angry and D-Fens tells him that there are very distinct differences between them. D-Fens considers himself “an American” and he calls the store owner a “sick fuck”. When the store owner tries to steal his guns and breaks the snow globe, a gift for his daughter, D-Fens is forced to defend himself and proceeds to stab him and shoot him until he is dead. Throughout his walk through urban Los Angeles D-Fens experiences racial discrimination, disrespect and violence. But the question in this case remains why.

Why has D-Fens fallen down the rabbit hole of societal dysfunction? How big of a role does it play that he has lost his job and is no longer economically viable? D-Fens is a broken man, his job has been taken away and therefore he has also lost his family including his beloved wife and his beautiful little daughter. D-Fens has lost his place in society and has taken it upon himself to take his anger out on those he thinks are responsible for his downfall. The Korean store owner represents the foreigners invading his country and taking jobs away from the “real” American people. The Nazi Surplus store owner exemplifies the people in society that D-Fens considers un-American, those who preach about American culture and values but truly don’t know anything about their own country.  In his mental break he is going to right every “wrong” that society has done to him. In trying to escape his own bleak outlook for the future, he becomes hypersensitive to the injustice all around him. Maybe, as Michael Omi suggests in his article entitled In Living Color:Race and the American Culture, “dramatic instances of racial tension and violence merely constitute the surface manifestations of a deeper racial organization of American society- a system of inequality which has shaped, and in turn been shaped by, our popular culture” (549).

Who do you identify with the most? The Korean store owner who is harassed by some crazed white man on the verge of a nervous breakdown? The white man who has lost his job/family? The racist surplus store owner that believes that we should support vigilantism?

 

 

On Twitter @jess_miller_310

Crashing at the Intersection of Class, Gender and Race

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When we speak of Intersectionality, we are forced to not only interweave the oppression in society that includes classism, sexism, ageism, and racism but also how they are continuously affected by one another. As an IDS Major I often wonder what can be learned from our prejudiced notions that we have acquired throughout our lifetime and how does the social construct of race affect the world around us? What stereotypes are we conditioned to believe that they have become almost just knee jerk reactions to daily events?

In the 2004 movie entitled Crash, we become engulfed in the perspectives of different types of people whose lives are touched by the racial and social class discrimination that is unavoidable in a city as diverse as Los Angeles is. Diversity in a city could very well be seen as an asset, and you’d think that we could get along with each other in a more communal way. However, when you consider the context of which this movie is set in, we can see that the aftermath of 9/11 has clearly played a role in the development of the plot and characters for this film.

The film starts off with a car crash that Ria (Jennifer Esposito) and Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) are involved in with an Asian driver. Ria insists that the accusatory Asian driver is only blaming her because she couldn’t see over the steering wheel. In her broken English the Asian driver says that Ria should have braked which she mispronounces as “blake”. Ria takes this and runs with it and greets the Asian driver with derision and contempt.  This opening to the movie is only the very beginning of a film that explores a myriad of other possibilities, all of which are open to interpretation based on one’s cultural and ethnic background.

In a subsequent scene, Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter Waters (Larenz Tate), 2 African American men are shown leaving a bustling restaurant when they start up a conversation about discrimination and how they were not served coffee like all the other white patrons. Anthony says they were not served the coffee because they were not going to tip because they are “black”. Even though the waitress was also African American Anthony says that she discriminates against her own race. He wonders why they shouldn’t be scared when they are in a neighborhood where they are outnumbered by “over caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger happy LAPD”. Peter replies that they are not scared because they have guns and they proceed to car jack a white couple, Rick and Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock and Jason Fraser). This particular scene is disturbing because the very stereotypes that these two African American men are so aware of and trying to avoid, are the same stereotypes that they play into. It’s almost like they are just trying to live up to those standards set forth for them by the society that they live in. If they are so bothered by it, why not change it? Like many situations, it is easier said than done. The fact of the matter remains that even though they are fully aware of the prejudice that African American men face, their lives have led them down this path to where they see no other option but to car jack people for money, drugs, or whatever the case may be. There are other factors in this situation that may be lying under the surface if we just take a closer look. Perhaps poverty, lack of education, and other types of limitations have led up to this one action. Instead of generalizing so much maybe we should ask more as to why and how this situation came to be.

One thing is for certain, when a person of a different ethnicity/race hurts us in some way, it is possible that we can internalize this event and develop a negative connotation that leads to othering. This is shown in the following 2 clips where Jean Cabot who has been car jacked is now scared that the guy who comes to change the locks at her house may come back to rob her home. It is also exemplified in the clip where wealthy, African American, Christine and Cameron Thayer (Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard) have been harassed by the police officers on the street and now generalize that all “pigs” are racist and corrupt. A discourse for this new type of racism post 9/11 is necessary to say the least.  At the intersection of the Class, Race, and Gender, where all these issues collide perhaps we should make a conscious decision to judge based on individual character and integrity rather than continuing the endless cycle of phenotyping that our society has ingrained in us.

 

On Twitter @jess_miller_310