Films of the white backlash
In addition to Joe and Taxi Driver, what are some films which come out of the late 60's, early 70's white backlash?
shareEasy Rider, for one.
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MovieChat Forums > Joe (1970) Discussion > Films of the white backlash
death wish, fighting back, the park is mine, walking tall, born losers and the billy jack series.
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The description of the thinking of those believing white backlash is right sounds like a speech by Hitler. Joe was like the other mentally ill people who shoot up the post office he works at and other places.
You will actually find in Hitlers speeches about Jews "threatening their world,traditions,higher quality of life,civilizations" While Joe can't commit genocide he can murder a lesser number of people. The Holocaust is a case of whites fighting back and sick thinking in action as Joe was a case of sick thinking in action.
And I write the above even though I have never taken drugs and don't go with the hippie lifestyle, etc. Just saying racism and hatred has always led to horrible things (genocide, lynching of innocent people...)
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I wouldn't try talking sense into "oldschoolwhitey" he's is obviously (like most bigots) a loser, who has to try to build himself up by believing that millions are automatically inferior simply due to their ethnicity.
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And as the last 40 years have proven, Whites were right to fight back
Wow, what a perfectly fitting username for you, racist freak.
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Taxi Driver? I seem to recall Travis Bickle killing white people, not black people.
share"Taxi Driver? I seem to recall Travis Bickle killing white people, not black people."
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I think the OP means the backlash of a white character against society at large. And if that's the case, there are PLENTY of films like that. You could put Mike Leigh's "Naked" on that list. If the genre is restricted to a more violent sort of drama, then "Defiance" (with Jan Michael Vincent) qualifies. And maybe "The Exterminator." And how about "First Blood?"
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They don't have to necessarily involve racial killings. Travis Bickle is a disaffected white person who espouses seemingly traditional morality and ideas while embodying virtually none of them. He may not be aware of how marginalized he is, and how apart he is from the conservative world as well as the "white liberal" wing of the overall establishment, embodied in this case by Albert Brooks and Cybill Shepard.
He sees himself as somewhat fighting against what he views as detrimental social change. Not civil rights or political things, but moral issues that are only somewhat related to things political. But it's still a form of "white backlash" if you read American society as a whole as a primarily white construct and forces of change as threatening that.
You know, even though he frequents porn theaters. That's one messed up dude.
Falling Down
shareThe description of the thinking of those believing white backlash is right sounds like a speech by Hitler. Joe was like the other mentally ill people who shoot up the post office he works at and other places.
share"a disaffected white person who espouses seemingly traditional morality and ideas while embodying virtually none of them."
But enough about the Fox News viewership...
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killed white drug pushers but gave dirty looks all the time to black people.
shareWhite backlash. What a dumba** stereotype worthy of the simplistic and jingoistic viewpoint of those who create such ignorant cimena sub-genre.
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The Eyes of the City are Mine! Mother Pressman / Anguish (1987)
I simply could not agree with you more.
shareI wouldn't put Rolling Thunder on this list. There never seems to be any culture wars subtext to the film. The people Devane and Jones are after are criminals who murdered Devanes's family, pure and simple. The only real subtext is that the returned soldiers don't feel at home in peacetime America, but that sentiment has been true since the Continental Army.
shareLast House On The Left
and, for a French version of the "white backlash", "La Horse" with Jean Gabin going out to kill hippies after his son, who's fallen in with them, ODs. There may be other Euro films of said genre given that fears about the hippies and the counterculture were hardly confined to the US.
Some other similar films
Death Wish (1974, Michael Winner)
Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper)
Falling Down (1993, Joel Schumacher)
Medium Cool (1969, Haskell Wexler)
Targets (1968, Peter Bogdanovich)
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader)
Black Legion (1937, Archie Mayo)
I Stand Alone (1998, Gaspar Noé)
Edmond (2005, Stuart Gordon)
"Edmond" was a very strange film; I'm not really sure it qualifies. Its funny how Peter Boyle played a starring or major role in three of these films ie., Joe, Taxi Driver, and Hardcore. Of course, he was a great actor, but it still seems like an unusual coincidence.
Been making IMDB board posts since the 90s, yet can't bring up any from before December of 2004.
Easy Rider had nothing to do with any other race, neither did some others on list, what are you talking about?
shareExactly! Easy Rider was simply anti-hippie. Who kills Jack Nicholson, and later Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper?
White trash losers.
Hell, Fonda can't even get a motel room. Turned down by a middle class white guy.
I saw no "racism" in that movie either.
"Loser", yet another word that means nothing anymore. Used to be a term of endearment among misfits of all stripes. Now anybody an individual has a negative opinion about is a "loser".
The people you call "loser" from Easy Rider normally consider the bikers in ER "losers" because they'd rather not waste their lives just fitting in and/or working their lives away for someone else's best interest.
I call a moratorium on "loser". It means nothing anymore.
But white blue-collar audiences went to see Joe and cheered him on. It's the main reason Peter Boyle turned down The French Connection.
share"Joe" would seem to be an ambiguous case ie., it wasn't intended as a "White backlash" film, but was never-the-less interpreted in that manner by a substantial segment of its audience. Realistically, its a fairly maudlin bit of transparently leftist propaganda...but audiences have a way of creating their own interpretations.
What's this about "The French Connection?" Did Boyle turn down Gene Hackman's part ie., the "Popeye Doyle" role? And if so, are you suggesting he did so because he didn't want to be seen as endorsing police brutality, and the like?
Been making IMDB board posts since the 90s, yet can't bring up any from before December of 2004.
What's this about "The French Connection?" Did Boyle turn down Gene Hackman's part ie., the "Popeye Doyle" role? And if so, are you suggesting he did so because he didn't want to be seen as endorsing police brutality, and the like?More like he didn't trust audiences to interpret that Popeye Doyle was not a good guy, as they didn't with Joe. And he did turn to comedies exclusively for the next three years. share
ALL IN THE FAMILY was a white backlash show with aspects of resentment over the perceived values of the liberal upper-middle class. Once upon a time "ethnic" referred to WWII urban whites rather than to virtually anyone who isn't of European ancestry.
shareI have absolutely no idea what "Medium Cool" is doing on the above list. Doesn't belong there.
"I don't deduce, I observe."