MovieChat Forums > Falling Down (1993) Discussion > Racism?

Racism?

posted 10 years ago by e_k_cinephile
74 replies | jump to latest

It can't be a coincidence that most of the characters that "madden" our man are non-white people. Initially, we see him getting disturbed by the laughter of black girls, then many times he looks at other black people in hatred. The guy at the grocery is a Korean man, who insists on not giving 50 cents. The two guys who try to rob him are Mexicans. And we see Michael Douglad yelling at them like "Learn our language well. Write yur message in our language. You come to my country and blah blah." And the same man, when confronted by the sick ideeas of the bald Nazi guy, says that he does not agree with the Nazi guy's ideas and that he thinks people should have freedom in America. Moreover, in the end, the same guy is showed as an "ordinary man" gradually sickened and destroyed by a sick society. I can't really understand that.

[–] JosephQCat (706) 2 years ago

Not racist. He had issues with the golf course codgers, fast food management, and the neo-nazi among others. He shows empathy for the black guy carrying the "not economically viable" sign outside the bank.

[–] Ace_Spade (9419) 2 years ago

I agree that it's not a racist movie and I don't think Bill is really racist, either. He's mostly just tired of putting up with a-holes and with an uncaring society that rewards people at random (like plastic surgeons), and he's struggling fitting in with a society that he can't relate to and that won't relate to him, and he snaps.

I do think he's got some (mild) racist or perhaps jingoistic attitudes, though, since part of his rant to the convenience store clerk is about immigrants "coming over here" and he seems to feel like Koreans owe Americans something because of a vague debt he's "sure" they owe. The most ironic part of his convenience store rant, to me, was the irony that his major issue was sky-high prices, but that kind of gouging is the dark side of the American capitalist system, not anything coming out of Korea. (I'm not anti-capitalism, by the by, I just thought that juxtaposition was ironic).