The Psychological Paradigm of Anger in “Falling Down” and “Crash”
Introduction
Because racism and violence play a crucial role in any determination, description, or appraisal of American society, or American social history, an expectation has arisen among film-critics and audiences of films alike, that American movie-makers will deal with the issues of racism and violence at a serious, cinematic level. Two films which address this expectation with varying levels of cultural and sociological insight are Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film, Falling Down, and Paul Haggis’s 2004 film Crash. In each case, the films forward what can only be construed as cautionary themes involving the idea of race and racial integration in America. Central to the impact of both films is the idea of a “failed democracy” or a “failed system” which is integral to the sense of alienation and anger which is depicted fictionally. There is an underlying sense, in both films, that individualism, itself, may contradict the doctrines of democracy; individualism, which is in any case, frustrated by the racially “tainted” democratic society portrayed in the films.
Both films attempt to connect the abstract notions of freedom and individualism to a dynamically depicted and “realistic” vision of modern society. The following discussion will focus not only on the extraordinary sense of realism which is used as an expressive (and thematic) device in both films, but on the propagandistic aspect of both films which arises out of the projection of realism. Both films attempt to view the issue of race by depicting social microcosms set against urban landscapes which, as will be demonstrated in the forthcoming, discussion, are best qualified as “noir” settings. The connection between a dystopian sense of the urban world, anger, and the issue of racial alienation are closely allied in both films. In both cases, the degree to which the filmmaker can be said to have achieved “success” can be measured, in large degree, by the how convincingly the film represents the individual struggle for freedom and liberty and in what light this struggle is depicted. The idea of individualism being brought into violent or tragic conflict with social realities and cultural biases is an idea which reveals deep, historical roots, most notably in the historical conception of the heroic “outlaw.” The depiction of individuality, particularly, by American filmmakers, evidences plentiful allusions to the outlaw motif, which is, itself an emblem of individual angst and anger directed against perceived social injustice. This motif plays a central role in Falling Down and it plays, to a lesser extent, an underlying role in Crash.
The important qualifying factor in both cases, regarding the use of the outlaw archetype to interpret and give expression to societal estrangement, is the issue of race. One question which is relevant is whether or not the issue of race, necessarily, compels a propagandistic function in any film which tackles race as a theme. Another key question is whether or not the propagandistic function of filmmaking, as it associates to issues of race and violence, follows any demonstrable pattern of stereotypical association. That leads to the fundamental question of propagandistic filmmaking in a democratic society — and also the issue of the influence of capitalism and money on the infusion of stereotypes in high-profile films.
In the case of Falling Down, the thrust of the movie seems to center around the individual incapacity to resist corruption and the individual ability to protect one’s liberty, life, and material possessions. The agency of corruption is, of course, anger and violence. This anger and violence is, however, brought out by way of obvious racial and economic conflict. The film is widely acknowledged to portray the gritty, crime-infested Los Angeles inner-city, but is the portrayal of this setting at all realistic? or dies it merely partake of a very strong, very well-executed sense of aesthetic verisimilitude, which, in truth, has very little connection with the reality of the now-historical city and time the film ostensibly represents? Race and realism also form the center of the aesthetic thrust of Crash. Obviously, the film drew a great amount of interest and attention for its non-linear, yet realistic, approach to telling a modern, urban story which reflects the realities that face a vast-array of ordinary people who live in a common city. Again, is this projection of realism based on objective reality or is it a dramatic “boost” for an otherwise propagandistic intent?
Literature Review
The most recent scholarship associated with the two films evidences a sophisticated understanding of the thesis of the present paper, namely, that the two films in question represent culturally prejudiced propaganda rather than realistic modes of sociologically incisive art. One strong and very important article is Hsuan Hsu’s “Racial Privacy, the L.A. Ensemble Film and Paul Haggis’s Crash” (2006), which in addition to thoroughly explicating Crash from a propagandistic perspective, also discusses how “a subgenre of “ensemble films” set in Los Angeles” (Hsu) helped lay the ground work for Haggis’s film. Hsu’s conclusion, that “Haggis’s own use of racial melodrama in creating a film whose unblinking representation of prejudice reduces the complex dynamics of racial formation to the scale of interpersonal relationships and privatizes race in insidious and politically reactionary ways” (Hsu) can be regarded as a specific explication of film’s (racially-connotative) propagandistic mode.
Another key aspect of the aforementioned thesis — that realism in racially-relevant films can be construed into a propagandistic function, is the reality that filmmakers, and especially American filmmakers, are subject to the prejudices and “blind-spots” which are inherent to the social position they occupy and to which they owe their ability to make high-profile films. In ths context, Elizabeth G. Traube’s Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, and Generation in 1980s (1992) while, obviously, predating the films in question, offers fascinating background to the mores and machinations of the filmmaking industry in America and her observations are important for understanding that movies are, in fact, propagandistic and often they represent the experience of only a very small segment of American society. This narrowness is obscured, according to Traube, beneath a veneer which can be thought of as a traditional moralistic package. Traube points out that, in reality, “audience preferences are only one of many factors that influence production decisions. Producers also shape their work to conform to dominant sensibilities and values, including those of the producing community itself” (Traube, 69). This reality combined with Traube’s complex but insightful understanding of “fairy-tale” motifs in movies is crucial to elucidating the way that anger and racial conflict are expressed propagandistically in film.
Archetypes are crucial to any fairy-tale. As mentioned previously, the archetype of the outlaw factors in the discussion of the films in question. The outlaw archetype, as elucidated by Charles Kelly in his study, The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch (1996) helps to establish how and why the outlaw motif is such a powerful influence in American history and American culture. The idea and myth of the American Outlaw. according to Kelly, permeates the modern American cultural, economic, and social landscapes. Although the historical basis for the outlaw myth may be, in point of fact, a far different thing than the myth, the power of the outlaw myth is such that it has attained an iconic or even archetypal status in the American psyche. In truth, the “heyday of the cowboy-outlaws was short, lasting only about thirty years, and their actual numbers were comparatively small” (Kelly 4) but the myth which has grown out of this brief historical period has endured for over a century.
Falling Down
Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film, “Falling Down,” sparked controversy on its release. Those who objected to the film often expressed the opinion that they found it overtly racist. Some felt the film was a thinly-disguised political “fable” which mourned the termination of white-male global dominance. As with any film, the urge to pinpoint specific “morals” or a set of ethical ideas which could be gleaned from Falling Down is tempting. The film deals with racial issues, most notably with the issue of “white rage” or “white anger” and also with issues of social neglect and economic injustice.
Central to film’s thematic impact is the portrayal of the city of Los Angeles. One controversial issue is the question of whether or not Schumacher’s apocalyptic and angry portrayal of Los Angeles is a realistic depiction of life and, if not, whether his attempted at realism had another purpose. To determine the latter it is necessary merely to note Schumacher’s images and scenes and compare them to established data on crimes and with psychological profiles of actual vigilantes and serial killers. To determine the former, it necessary to closely inspect not only the structure of the film’s events, but also the film’s plot and character development. It is within these cohesive elements that it is most likely for a viewer or critic to determine whether or not the city of Los Angeles, as depicted in Falling Down represents the director’s attempt at a realistic vision.
At first glance, the film certainly seems to be attempting a realistic and socially relevant depiction of Los Angeles. The gritty, violent and weapons-ridden city seems to be yanked directly form the newspaper headline of 1993, many of which were devoted to riots and urban-decay. Gun-control and violent crime, always crucial issues in American society, seemed at a crescendo during the era of the film’s creation. However, the film is after-all a story and not a documentary, so the viewer may question whether there is anything immediately discernable in the plot which would indicate something other than a naturalistic or realistic approach on behalf of the film’s director. One feature of the plot springs to mind: that it happens to be an inordinately hot day, not just any normal day. In one of the opening scenes there is the line “Anything can happen today,” (Falling Down) which also sets the film’s events on a unique trajectory, informing the viewer to expect the extraordinary, the unusual.
During the film’s initial scenes, the action looks and seems very realistic. There are crowds of poor, drug-addicted minorities and sarcastic cops, noise, pollution, degeneration of property, traffic, and fear. But, like the fact that the day is inordinately hot, Bill Foster’s early confrontation with gang-bangers in a territorial “dispute” evokes an allegorical or mythic progression. This stylization is evident in the spoken exchange between Foster and the gang-bangers. Obviously, one would rarely expect an inner-city gang-member to say “You should pay a toll” (Falling Down). The stylized language cues the viewer in that Schumacher’s film is intended to be a study of the quest-motif— one which undoubtedly employs the techniques of realism and verisimilitude, but nevertheless is a film which is more interested in revealing the progression of a symbolic character than in representing a realistic urban landscape, per se. The fact that Falling Down uses intense realism throughout its allegorical and symbolic story is a testament to the director’s resourcefulness in convincing his audience to suspend their disbelief, thereby becoming more receptive to the thematic and social commentaries he intends to show through the film.
Crucial to these social commentaries is his portrayal of Foster as an evolving archetype — the outlaw archetype. Foster as an outlaw bears little resemblance to authentic historical outlaws, but the emergence of the outlaw archetype in America is an intersecting sub-text of Falling Down. The historical basis for the 19th century American outlaw came with the “Completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869” (Kelly 6) which allowed for the development of significant acreage (millions of acres) of land which had been previously inhabited only by Indians to be settled by cattle-raiser.
In order to help settle the new land, cowboys were “recruited from among the wilder element of the frontier and had to be tough to survive” (Kelly 6). Trouble came when cowboys began to start ranches of their own and found their attempts “violently opposed by the large ranch owners, who had claimed all public domain[…] Young men who resented this attitude often retaliated by rounding up and branding mavericks with their own mark[…] From branding mavericks to genuine rustling was but a short and easy step” (Kelly 6). So, even from its deepest historical beginnings, the outlaw in American history had a number of identifiable traits: he was independent, enterprising, resented authority, and in some way stood against the establishment. In fact, the outlaw lived outside of conventional society and used means and ways which the normal citizen resisted or did not understand: “An outlaw’s greatest asset was his intimate knowledge of dim trails and widely spaced water holes” (Kelly 7).
The most prominent aspect of the outlaw legend is , of course the notion of the heroic struggle of the “outsiders” to fight against the evil influence of established (and corrupt) power. Although murder is often associated with famous outlaws such as Jesse James and Butch Cassidy and the Sun-dance Kid, the facts of history often tell a different story: “Butch Cassidy proved that this is not necessarily true[…] In his later years he was leader of an outlaw group known as the Wild Bunch[…] But Cassidy never approved of bloodshed and, so far as the record shows, never killed a man (Kelly 3) which hints at the heroic aspect of the outlaw myth: the gallant outlaw. Schumacher’s Falling Down, about an ordinary man turned vigillante/outlaw represents the symbolic and if you like, allegorical, progression of hero to ruin and idealism to suicide; however, the backdrop against which this epic (if classically inspired) is played out is one of invention, not documentation.
For example, the scenes leading up to the suicide-by-cop denouement of the film which brings the film’s main characters together for the first time in the story offers this line from Foster: “I’m the bad guy?” That line meant to incite profound ironic resonance also sheds light on the merged techniques of myth and realism employed by Schumacher. Foster’s vigilantism takes place over such a short span in actual time that such a profound state of self-realization seems entirely unlikely in realistic terms. In symbolic of allegorical terms, the line makes perfect sense: the character of Foster as it stands for good “old America” and for the ideals of family and self-protection, have resulted in the state of the ruined city previously depicted throughout the film.
The ruinous landscape through which Foster journeys, then, represents not only physical space in the film, but psychological (or perhaps even spiritual) space as well. As such, the depiction, while partaking of realism at times is not strictly realistic. Foster terrorizes a work-crew in the street, the inhabitants of a golf-course, his ex-wife, and finally, the LAPD who must confront him with force. The odyssey he embarks on is psychological and emotional and thus, the cit as depicted in the film moves with similar imagery depicting the progressive deterioration of Foster and his correspondent increase in weapons and armaments.
Foster’s conversation with Detective Martin Prendergast evokes (allegorically) the specter of nuclear holocaust, far departing from a realistic depiction of event sin Los Angeles, and clearly indicating something more symbolically resonant:
Foster: You wanna draw?
Prendergast: Let’s not. Let’s call it a day.
Foster: Now come on. It’s perfect. Showdown between the sheriff and the bad guy?
(Falling Down)
In a final gesture of irony, Foster is depicted as being of more use dead than alive, with the insurance money from hsi death benefiting his daughter. The symbolic association seems to be that renewal is also possible for the hellishly depressed and crime-ridden city depicted in the film. The film-maker’s close depiction of genuine urban conditions and circumstances depends upon dramatic exaggeration and compression. The events and conditions of cities throughout America and the events within them spread throughout populations of millions are compressed by the film-maker to produce a work of art which distills images and events to their essentials and compressed into the events of a single-day.
Rather than representing a realistic city-scape, Falling Down presents a sort of mythological Los Angeles, although it is a dark and foreboding myth of alienation and personal disintegration. Fast-food, drive-by-shootings, guns, homophobia, racism, unemployment — even golf , all are compressed into Schumacher’s mythic L.A., with the most high-profile and topical national issues compressed into his fictionally portrayed city. Foster’s odyssey represents the symbolic and if you like, allegorical, progression of hoe to ruin and idealism to suicide; however, the backdrop against which this epic (if classically inspired) is played out is one of invention, not documentation. One should not mistake Schumacher’s film for social-documentary. That, despite the film’s realistic imagery and social themes, would result in the possibility of extending the sense of endemic realism to the film-maker’s explicit and personally held political and social beliefs. In that case, the film’s perceived realism might actually serve to obfuscate the very social and political issues it most certainly seeks to elucidate. For despite any degree of realism in film-making, a film can only represent a slice of true reality and can demonstrate only a subjective perception for any given subject matter or theme.
Crash
Although it seems reasonably obvious to assert that Crash represents the filmmaker’s effort to combine visual, sound, set and plot techniques to generate a cinematic microcosm of urban society, the specific aesthetic and sociopolitical connotations of Haggis’s narrative microcosm are explicable only through an immersive understanding in Haggis’s use of the modern city as a central, thematic symbol in the film. The use, by Haggis, of the city as a stratified symbol: that is, a symbol which functions at multiple levels of meaning must be recognized as being, strictly speaking, non-allegorical. The allegorical resonance is, however, limited to that which forwards the social microcosm which is Haggis’s central theme. In this regard, the film depicts “a vortex of corruption, a world fallen from the state of grace that blessed an earlier imagined […] community was the bedrock of democratic order” (Clarke 83).
One added aspect to Haggis’s approach toward establishing a social microcosm is his use of a fragmented narrative structure with many interlocking sub-plots and characters. By adopting this method, Haggis is able to amplify the suggestion of realism by giving the continuous impression of fast-paced multiplicity and fast-plotted change, the beat of expression one would naturally associate with an urban setting and theme. This kind of story-telling is part of what some observers have called a modern movement toward , “”forking path” films” (Berg).
One of the most interesting aspect of the multi-dimensional approach to plot and character offered by Haggis is the obvious fact that the film will ultimately bring all of the apparently disparate elements of the film together in an harmonious conclusion. This is a built-in expectation for the average viewer even if the conclusion does not bring about an “uplifting” resolution; it is till expected that the various strains of plot and subplots and the myriad characters will all be revealed to be connected in some convincing fashion. This construction in itself expresses meaning, even without any specificity of plot, character or theme. The simple proposition that a narrative will be told which will unite previously “unrelated” lives and stories, extends a correspondent theme of closure and wholeness. This is a theme which, when coupled with the attempted realism evidenced in Crash, would seem to wed the realistic and objective world to the world of abstract (narrative) forms. In other words, Crash, no less than Falling Down represents a fable-in-realistic-clothing.
The fable element of the film is most obvious, as mentioned, in the almost unreal sense of closure and resolution which is endemic to the film. This is an intentional expression of subjective fantasy, rather than objective realism:
Crash is a fable in the manner of Life Is Beautiful, American Beauty, and Magnolia; it is not realism. The impossibly frequent encounters among characters in the film are not due to poor scriptwriting […] They are part of Haggis’s attempt to portray through vignette the notion that we are all connected and that our individual actions have consequences for those around us.
(“Haggis’s Fable” 38)
When considering the film as a form of fable, a modern form of fable, but still a fable in every functional capacity, it is important to remember that fables serve an instructional and educational purpose: they have “morals.” A fable is, in fact, like a coded message which reinforces cultural adn social mores. A fables is generally regarded to be “a tale that teaches us simple but pointed lessons about life” (“Haggis’s Fable” 38). If this is true, what exactly, is Haggis trying to tech us with his “forking path fable?” If we answer that question by first examining Haggis’s portrayal of the city in the film, and then examining the interpersonal relationships depicted in the film, we will be able to more thoroughly understand how the fable-function of the film operates and what themes or morals are forwarded by the movie.
To begin with, Haggis’s depiction of Los Angeles is a study in reduction; that is, the foremost technique for depicting the massiveness of Los Angeles and its extraordinary number of diverse people is the “forking path” narrative itself. As to the rest, Haggis reduces rather than embraces L.A.’s immensity. In effect, Haggis “reduces the city’s sprawling geography, its lack of a definite center, its incredibly diverse and systematically segregated populations, and its monumental freeways and roads to what feels like a small town” (Hsu) and in doing so, creates what might be regarded as a “traditional” or even “antiquated” setting for his fable. If there is a traditional setting, there may also be a traditional moral, masquerading beneath the veneer of realism and gritty urbanism.
When examining the interpersonal relationships depicted in the film, the broad, sweeping plot-arcs are almost unmanageable in regard to finding a concise example of how interpersonal relationships are used in the film to forward stereotypes. One way to clearly demonstrate this is by an examination of a typically racist bit of comic relief which is offered in the movie. Here, as
Hsuan Hsu observes, Ria forwards a racially-loaded “straight-line” for Graham’s equally racist ‘punch-line:”
Ria: How ’bout a geography lesson? My father’s from Puerto Rico. My mother’s from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico.
Graham: Ah. Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?
(Crash)
The simplification toward stereotype which is implied by the lines above is also a part of a typical fable’s construction. It is necessary for fables to simplify in order to deliver a linear set of moralistic themes. A typical fable is linear even in narrative construct. Obviously, Crash departs from this convention, but retains convention at other, possibly much more important and consequential, levels, most notably those of theme and characterization. If the reduction of Los Angeles from a sprawling, diverse metropolis steeped in modern crises to a “laboratory for carefully controlled ethical experiments” (Hsu), Haggis relinquishes claim not only to realism but to authentic social commentary.
What remains is moral and mythological commentary; perhaps psychological expression and the wish-fulfillment expression of s select demographic. In this case, one assumes that the select demographic would be that group of industry-insiders alluded to by Traube who “conform to dominant sensibilities and values” (Traube, 69) and who do not represent or necessarily seek to represent the vision or views of the population at large. Ironically, the ostensible theme of Crash is to address precisely those themes that, as a fable, it must ignore.
Rather than elucidating the urban and racial conditions that should be present in a film like Crash, Haggis opts for a fairy-tale steeped in the appearance of modernity and, like Schumacher with Falling Down, he, according to many critics, attains a propagandistic voice rather than a voice of genuine social criticism or commentary. The conclusion reached by the fiercest of those critics is that Crash “does not try to comprehend the totality of racial and economic relationships that both unify and segregate Los Angeles; instead, it imagines a false totality that substitutes melodramatic plots–mid-life crises, sin and redemption, the loss and restitution of white masculinity–for demographic scope or historical depth” (Hsu) and in this regard it must be viewed as being as reactionary and prejudiced as Falling Down.
Conclusion
All fables rely on a straightforward, linear narrative due to the fact that complex stories tend to obscure the thrust of the intended moral. Because the author of any fable is able to transform “topical news and politics into universal predicaments” (“Haggis’s Fable” 38), a fable carries with it the dangerous connotations of stereotype and oversimplification. With respect to modern American cinema, it can be amply demonstrated that films such as Falling Down and Crash represent modern articulations of classical fable-narrative. This fact, combined with the public perception that the films represent not only the attempt of serious filmmakers to extract meaningful ideas (and possible solutions) from the complex set of urban and racial problems which confront American society, enhances the propagandistic function of the films in question.
If in the long run, filmmaker like Haggis “doesn’t ask us to give anonymous faces a closer look” (“Haggis’s Fable” 38) despite his energetic embracing of a diverse and numerous set of characters, what we receive instead are “stereotypical masks” (“Haggis’s Fable” 38) which fulfill the same didactic function as the archetypal symbols of classical fables. If similarly, Falling Down glamorizes the outlaw archetype and seems to embrace white-rage and urban alienation as an heroic climate for the reassertion of traditional morality, both films can satisfactorily be called fable-lie, if not outright fables. However, the question remains: what of the real, objective world which these movies purported to examine but actually eschewed in favor of myth?
The sad fact is that while Hollywood movies may have been busy perfecting a modern narrative strategy for dispersing cultural stereotypes in place of sociological insight, the actual social and racial conditions in America can be clearly demonstrated as being both urgent and increasingly more tragic. To gain insight into the actual conditions of Los Angeles, evidence can be cited from sociological data which gives a startlingly but unflinchingly realistic appraisal of life in the modern urban landscape, particularly for racial minorities.
For immigrants, victims of violent crime, minorities, and the working-poor, movies such as Falling Down and Crash are no more representative of their everyday real-life experience than Star Wars. Recent studies show that “we are witness to a distinctive new process of ‘hyper-ghettoization’ — the development of discrete urban territories where the mass of residents are permanently excluded from legitimate employment ” (Taylor 31). Furthermore, the impact of the dissolution of the urban social-structure is obvious: ” the effects of these combined processes of racial discrimination, racialization of neighbourhoods (‘hyper-ghettoization’), accelerating joblessness, poverty and inequality, and the masculinist culture of the black neighbourhood are unambiguous” (Taylor 31). Are there reasons, other than those of a “corporate” or capitalist basis, why movie-makers continue to offer fables and fairy-tales in place of genuinely insightful material? Is it the case that the mass-audiences which are necessary to drive demand for high-profile movies are only gained by recourse to broad, classical narrative with obvious closure and blatant moral? Unfortunately, the examination of the function of propaganda in these two films must stop short of a more thorough inquiry into the function and durability of propaganda as a whole. It may be the case that there is no form of mass-communication which is not propagandistic; in the films we have discussed, Falling Down and Crash, that element could arguably be considered dominant.
Works Cited
Berg, Charles Ramirez. “A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the
“Tarantino Effect”.” Film Criticism 31.1-2 (2006): 5+.
Clarke, Davit B., ed. The Cinematic City. London: Routledge, 1997.
“Haggis’s Fable.” Commonweal 15 July 2005: 38.
Hsu, Hsuan L. “Racial Privacy, the L.A. Ensemble Film and Paul Haggis’s Crash.” Film
Criticism 31.1-2 (2006): 132+.
Kelly, Charles. The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch. Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Love, Robertus. The Rise and Fall of Jesse James. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press,
1990.
Taylor, Ian. Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1999.
Traube, Elizabeth G. 1992. Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, and Generation in 1980s
Hollywood Movies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.