Don't understand why everyone tries to justify D-Fens as a good guy. He is a part of the sick society - Falling Down (1993) Discussion

Save us Obi-Wan DFENS, you're our only hope! /Earth

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[–] Lucia2016 (554) 2 years ago

He's definitely not all there himself but most of his 'encounters' were asking for it

The scene when he holds the family captive showed that he's not exactly good but he would have never harmed them but then he wasn't good with his own family before all this so who knows thats a bit ambiguous,

But just because he might have been mad himself doesn't make him wrong when he tells you 2 plus 2 is 4

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[–] SandyR (7719) 2 years ago

This is the correct response. I could not have phrased it better.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 2 years ago

I think it shows that a lot of people feel as frustrated and angry as D-Fens did. I think it's sad, and a bit of a warning sign that we need to be careful as a society to try and reach out to find these people and provide them with concrete hope and emotional support before they snap.

It is disturbing to see people trying to justify his actions, though. It's like all the people who view Tony Montana as a hero.

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

" we need to be careful as a society to try and reach out to find these people and provide them with concrete hope and emotional support before they snap."

Or punish them for their childhood bullying and earlier crimes, so they don't feel like the law can never touch them. Maybe they don't need support and hope, maybe they need to learn to follow the fucking rules like the rest of us, learn to obey the law, learn that there are consequences to being an asshole.

But no, the white straight men among the assholes of the world tend to get the "Mustn't ruin his future" treatment from the authorities.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 2 years ago

If people have committed crimes, then yes, they should be punished. There's too much nuance to talk about every possible reaction you would have to somebody like this. Law is important and not being a jerk is important, yes. I agree. I wasn't trying to say that.

But if I found somebody like D-Fens who felt belittled and like he had nothing to live for and no possibilities, I would try to present him with possibilities. This is regardless of skin colour, by the way. We mustn't ruin anybody's future. You see the same call for mercy and assistance for non-white persons who are stuck in a cycle of violence, it's just a different group calling for opportunity over punishment.

I think you're leaping to judgements quickly, ignoring solutions and focusing on anger (which is very similar to D-Fens' response to aggravating situations), and while I will be the first to admit that I didn't cover all bases in my initial statement, I will underline again: I don't want criminals let off the hook. I'm thinking more D-Fens before he snapped. If he were given concrete hope (opportunities) he wouldn't feel desperate, and if he were given real, effective emotional support, he would learn to control himself and wouldn't offend in the first place.

Support doesn't mean validate negativity. Support means encourage and correct.

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

Well, when I refer to "earlier crimes", I did refer to the implications of domestic violence, of whatever he'd done to get a judge to agree to a restraining order. Domestic violence is in fact a crime and should be treated as one, and so should any other acts of threat or violence he'd committed in the past, rather than personal issues that the police and courts shouldn't trouble themselves with (when committed by a middle-class white person). Perhaps, if he'd been jailed for domestic violence, or the court had made it absolutely clear that if he ever wanted to see his kid again he needed to scrupulously observe the law and get anger management therapy, then his crime spree never would have happened.

We will never know, of course, and the whole scenario is fiction anyway. And we're never going to see things from the same POV, you identify with the white man who needs support and hope, I identify with his victims.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 2 years ago

So, here maybe is a good point of clarification. If we're talking about people who are identifying with D-Fens, that's different than D-Fens himself. By the time the movie starts, yeah, D-Fens is already a rotter who has bullied and terrified his wife and child. He's already in need of serious rehabilitation, restraining orders, possible arrests, etc. If we're talking about a theoretical real-life version, we'd have to go case-by-case, but I still say that reformation is the best way forward. Punishment is sometimes, regrettably, necessary, but again that would be on an as-needed basis. I believe in justice as well as mercy, and paying for crimes just like I believe in rehabilitation, forgiveness, and redemption.

I identify with people - humanity. I want to see justice done, I want to see mercy and forgiveness, and I want to see all people cared for. Victims should be given care, sympathy, and support, but if we don't break the cycles of violence, all we'll do is throw people in jail and then give comfort to the people they hurt. I'd like to try to get above that and reduce the necessity of punishment by providing programs.

Again, I don't know why you're saying this is a "white" thing. D-Fens' case is, yes, and there's a particular brand of perpetrator who is white and who fits that mould. But there are also desperate people of other races who wind up, for example, joining gangs in LA. Should we just call in SWAT and the National Guard to wipe them off the planet? Or should we work on strengthening those communities so that they have concrete support and hope?

I think you're doing a weird thing here where you're implying that when white people commit crimes it's because they're nasty people who deserve thrashings, but when minorities commit crimes it's because they need support? Or else you're just ignoring or misunderstanding what I've been saying?

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

I'm going to have to come back to this, when I can sit down at a keyboard.

But for now I will say that there is a particular type of asshole that's been allowed to get away with criminal behavior over their life span, from assaulting other kids in school to harassing and assaulting others as a adult, and who receives the "Mustn't ruin his future" treatment from the authorities until he turns into someone like the protagonist of this film. And that not many people of color get that sort of indulgence, so as of now this behavior pattern is fairly specific to straight white men.

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[–] Patman111196 (1332) 2 years ago

That's quite an interesting take. D-FENS never physically assaulted his wife and may not have had a routine habit of being violent outside his marriage and there's nothing that states he has a lengthy criminal record. But I find it hard to believe that he could just turn respond with violence in less than a few seconds to random strangers that he doesn't know without having a history of doing similar things like that in the past. We already know he has a tendency to be rather aggressive with little provocation. Maybe he was juvenile or something.

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

Do we know that Foster never assaulted his wife? Since there's a restraining order in effect and she's terrified of him, I would assume that he had.

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[–] Patman111196 (1332) 2 years ago

No, she says he never hit him, but feared that he might. The restraining order was because he wouldn't stop showing up on the wrong day and he would repeatedly come in the middle of the night pounding on the door, probably while they were asleep. In other words, he kept on coming over without her permission a bit too much and that freaked her out. She only went through with it after the judge tried to reassure her by telling her "Let's make an example of him". She probably began to sense that might have been the wrong move to make.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 2 years ago

From the footage of D-Fens in his home movies, it looks to me like he was abusive. Not physically - you rightly point out that his wife denies that (although sometimes people lie about that, but I don't think it's a lie in the film) - but I think he was emotionally abusive to the wife and kid. I don't think he always knew he was doing it, he just lost his temper. That's no excuse, but I get the feeling that the video footage is the tip of the iceberg with ol' D-Fens.

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[–] Patman111196 (1332) 2 years ago

Yeah. I'm amazed how many people think the wife was in the wrong for complaining about their daughter not going on the horse as he wanted, when she was clearly freaking out for dear life to not go on it.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 2 years ago

Oh, yeah. This was also a pattern of behaviour. This wasn't D-Fens having one bad interaction with the kid, this was him regularly being a big problem.

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[–] ehewitt (31) a year ago

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[–] JosephQCat (706) a year ago

Different people are used to different things. Everyone losing their temper and shouting was quite normal in my childhood but not everybody went through that. What's really bad is when you hit dating age and everyone around you knows your home life and figure you will carrying the same behavior (I did not). Girls treated me like I was radioactive. I envied the kids that grew up in homes like the Brady (Bunch) kids did. I kind of worry about you if you think blowing up emotionally happens everyplace and all the time.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) a year ago

That sucks that you were shunned like that, but I'm glad you have broken the pattern. Cycles of bad behaviour need to be broken since they are a major factor in abuse and household trauma. Be proud of being the end of some of that!

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) a year ago

Losing your temper is not necessarily abuse, but it can be, it can lead to abuse, and it can run the gamut from "minor lapse" to "major problem," and if you think that normalizing bad behaviour is acceptable, then you're enabling extremely nasty people. I'd rather err on the side of living under a rock or holding people to a high standard than err on the side of allowing parents to harm their children.

Of course, I don't think I'm living under a rock, I didn't say that just losing your temper was abuse, and I don't really think you'd enable a truly nasty or abusive person, either. But I don't really appreciate having that "under a rock" worldview ascribed to me.

We're talking abstractly right now, though, and my posts on this thread aren't. They're specific to this film and to Bill as a character. The film clearly shows Bill having a pattern of angry, violent behaviour. We see how terrified his wife is of him, how afraid for her child she is. This isn't somebody who's losing his temper once in a while, and these bursts of anger aren't small. They're making his wife and daughter afraid of him. That's clearly a pattern of behaviour which is poisonous and abusive. He needed to get help instead of getting angry.

PS
I recognize that there is a complex conversation about how he also couldn't get help and how society was ignoring him which lead to his major break during the movie, so I'm not saying there aren't other factors.

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[–] SamNoyoun (4601) 2 years ago

He is a hero! The world would be a better place if there were more like him...

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[–] Ranb (7975) 2 years ago

I think he was trying to be deliberately evil.

1. He trashes the store after being told to leave.
2. Shoots up a restaurant after being refused the breakfast menu.
3. Murders a store owner. Can't do that even when the store owner is a filthy racist.
4. Blames a road crew for excessive spending, then threatens them with a rocket launcher.
5. When Foster tracks down his wife and daughter, his daughter is terrified. This implies he was threatening or abusive towards his family.

Foster was scum.

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[–] Patman111196 (1332) 2 years ago

I can sort of agree like that, and his gestures and dialogue seem to imply that's hardly the first time he has done crap like that. Also the daughter wasn't the one who expressed any fear towards her dad at the end (she's still very young), it was the wife.

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[–] 123Guy (6494) 2 years ago

isn't he the anti-hero-ish? good writing puts him in a sympathetic position where we SEE what drives him over the edge, and we all relate to it.
obviously killing is wrong but at least he targeted the much worse people.

I'm not making excuses for obvious criminal actions... but in THIS film he is playing a good guy. But he's the bad guy? How did that happen? He did everything right.

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[–] Patman111196 (1332) 2 years ago

Actually, there was one thing he never did right. He never looked at himself in the mirror and said to him "My god, what the hell am I doing?". He wasn't even able to see himself for the wrong things he was doing. Based on that alone, it seems to me the wife probably had very good reason to leave him ASAP and be skeptical around him being around their daughter.

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

Some people identify with him, mostly angry white straight men on the asshole spectrum.

Never let yourself get close to these assholes. Avoid them, keep them at arm's length, and refuse to engage on an emotional or social level if you're forced into their company. Everything they get close to becomes a focus for their anger and abuse. You can't change them, you can only protect yourself from them.

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[–] Bossdog677 (1479) 2 years ago

But its you liberals bumping the board

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[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the people who'll have to deal with you in real life.

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[–] JosephQCat (706) a year ago

The guy lost his job through no fault of his own. This pushed a guy who already had problems over the edge. I think regardless of background a person who lost a job and was already poorly adjusted socially has a great chance of an emotional breakdown. This was an early movie to comment on age discrimination. Foster knew that unless he could make a company millions of dollars that his future jobs would pay far less than his previous job.