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I love movies like Halloween 2007 and falling down.

Darkorigins7323 · 2023-08-13T05:40:25+00:00

Movies like Halloween 2007 and falling down make me feel represented in entertainment and I genuinely enjoy both of those movies...

Darkorigins7323

August 13, 2023

5 upvotes

/r/ExRedPill

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Title	I love movies like Halloween 2007 and falling down.
Author	Darkorigins7323
Upvotes	5
Comments	7
Date	August 13, 2023 5:40 AM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/15pqljl/i_love_movies_like_halloween_2007_and_falling_down/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/i-love-movies-like-halloween-2007-and-falling-down.1228148 https://theredarchive.com/post/1228148

Comments

[–]Locutus-of-Porg 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]Red_Trapezoid 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

Falling Down is a really odd film. Also one of my past favorites although in retrospect the message came out a bit clumsy and confused.

One could argue(and I would) that this was an early film calling out toxic masculinity before there was even a term for such a thing, William Foster is definitely not a good guy, but he doesn't even know why or how. He was just being what allegedly men are supposed to be in society. A sentiment that countless men can relate too.

On the other hand, the film does portray almost every other character as a grotesque caricature. That kind of conservative boomer web comics style bigotry if you know what I mean. Many fans, myself included, couldn't help but feel like William was at least partially justified. And that's dangerous.

I think it's a very important film but one that should be criticized and analyzed carefully. I don't think it was made with bad intentions, I think that's just where our collective headspace was at during that time. But while the film remains important the collective discourse has also moved beyond it to a large degree. William Foster was not a hero or even an anti-hero, he's just another one of the many villains, one who we may feel for due to relatability but still no less an evildoer.

[–]Locutus-of-Porg 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Totally agree that many other characters are significantly 'worse' that the protagonist and that it makes his descent into chaos feel natural and inevitable, if not exactly justified. But I think that's part of the point of telling these stories, because falling to their level and "fighting fire with fire" is a gradual, insidious process and it's easy to not realize that you're becoming the very thing that you've hated all along. Sure, it's great to tell stories about villains getting their ass kicked, but we also have to tell the stories about how villains are made, or else we're going to keep making them.

Falling Down is also a good description of partly swallowing that proverbial red pill (in its original "waking up to the painful realities around us" sense). William sees how shitty everything around him has become. From the standstill traffic with an obvious solution he's not allowed to use, to the protestor at the bank to the gangbangers robbing people just for walking though their turf, to the mindless, heartless bureaucracy at the fast food joint, to the collector of Nazi memorabilia to the entitled pricks at the golf course, everything is unfair, cruel. Opening your eyes means seeing many things that just plain hurt to see.. And that can get overwhelming to the point we try to stop parkway through, and that's the turn to the dark side... Yes, those people are doing shitty things, but me reciprocating that shitty behavior right back at them doesn't make the world a better place. Truly swallowing the red pill (not choking on it halfway down your throat) includes recognizing that despite that fight instinct that makes us want to kill the baddies, that kind of 'justice' actually ends up perpetuating the problem or making it even worse in the big picture. This is where are are forced to choose the right way (feel the pain and get through the suffering anyway, survive, get stronger and smarter and try to understand the problem well enough to address it at the root causes), or the easy way (blaming others, going numb and narcissistic and looking out or Number One at the cost of everyone else as necessary). This is the Hero's Journey but flunking out partway through.

"Pass on what you have learned. Strength. Mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is." -Yoda

Villains don't appear spontaneously; they are the product of prior injustices and trauma, and that can happen to the best of us (e.g. Anakin Skywalker) if we're not careful and we don't lean on our friends and allies for support when we need it. If we try to run from the pain of existence instead letting it teach us to be better than our forebears. Like Madalan Duke said, no one ever starts that way.

Joaquin Phoenix' Joker is another great example of this story arc... Arthur spends most of the movie trying to be a decent person, with no help from anyone, but eventually his pain and lack of support gets the best of him and he says fuck it and goes full dark instead. And that works out better for him because the rest of us have created or tolerated a world where crime does pay, at least for those who otherwise get left behind. When we leave the least of our brethren dying on the side of the road, we leave them no choice but villainy to survive.

Then we act all surprised when they do.

[–]bluemagex2517 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Villains don't appear spontaneously; they are the product of prior injustices and trauma

That's great in movies and books where everyone needs clear motivation, but in real life the "villains" most often don't have any injustices or trauma motivating them or at best they massively overreact to small setbacks. Most of the time it's just the culture around them or their own greed or entitlement. KKK members aren't and weren't motivated by trauma and injustice, they produced and magnified the trauma and injustice. White collar criminals steal millions of dollars every day, not because they were victims at some point, but because they are pushed to ever more greed. The incel community see themselves as victims of an unjust world, when really they are proof of fair world (because women having free will means they don't have to choose to be with those guys, and that's true justice).

To a degree these bad actors all "feel" like they are the victims. Just like the truism that "everyone is the hero of their own story," everyone justifies their own actions and they're own behavior. But, just because bad actors have their own justification internally doesn't mean they are actually in any way justified. From an external perspective the best way to understand them is not to get into their head and understand their motivations, because their motivations are weak and irrational and often post-hoc (justified after the fact). Removing or fixing the things they use as their justifications wouldn't change their behavior. Thus we are better off ignoring their internal justifications, and instead looking for what traits and social mores actually drive their behaviors.

To bring it all back to the movie(s). There are certainly people stuck in cars in that traffic jam that have suffered far worse injustices in their life that William, why is it then that William ends up a spree killer and those other people don't? What was it about him that made him break in this particular way as opposed to someone who might just have a good cry or decide to move away or some such? Why doesn't Arthur in the Joker just do decent things because it's the decent thing to do instead of expecting some kind of karma or payoff? Those to me are the real questions, the questions that neither movie really get far enough into. To me the problem is their sense of hyper-autonomy. Their need to finally "control" their situation, so much so that they resort to violence to achieve that control.

rest of us have created or tolerated a world where crime does pay

For me it's that we've let these guys think that they are so special and important that if they "act a certain way" they will receive their "just deserts." And society gave them the entitlement to think that if they don't get them, they should take them. They weren't dying on the side of the road. They were just caught up in some misfortune, but instead of trying to think of creative solutions or to simply move on with their lives, they decided that if "acting how they were supposed to act" lead to misfortune, they had the right to pay that misfortune forward on to others in order to gain the sense of control they think they are entitled to.

[–]bluemagex2517 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]SweelFor- -1 points0 points1 point 2 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link