I enjoyed 'Falling Down' quite a bit. My recollection wasn't that Foster was deranged, but that he was so traumatized by the cascade of destruction that befell him that he became unwilling to pander; to maintain the illusion that society was ok. He just spoke his mind, and took action - albeit with no social niceties - to effect his goal: to deliver the birthday gift he had for his daughter, who was being kept from him by his hyper-estrogenated ex-wife, using vile family courts to humiliate and disintermediate him from his family.
None of his rants and acts were pathological, nor racist, or bigoted. I found it refreshing, but also deeply disturbing, because the very act of speaking freely was considered not merely rude, but (as you seem to feel, as well) pathological.
The end of the movie, where the cop asks him where he thinks things are going to end up, is revealing. You can see the gears whirring in his head as he realizes no one believes that all he wants to do is deliver the birthday gift. It is assumed he's a homocidal maniac bent on murdering his beloved daughter, and no matter what he does, says, nor anything she might want, he will not attain his goal of letting his daughter know he loves her.
As you note, this is metaphoric for that demographic of men that sought to live the American dream and saw their fantasies become nightmares in the post-modern neoliberal Orwellianism we live in today, rather than the wholesome family oriented America of the 1950s, or what they thought America was supposed to be.
Thanks!
Thanks, yes I think it is about what we bring to the table, or how we think things are supposed to be. Then it is on us deciding how to react. Digging deep and having to find true character and integrity is a bitch, a lot of us don't have the strength to to do it unless we have the promise of something completely worthwhle on the other side.
Good point. He felt free of social constraints and acted, he felt, rationally. However, those yet maintaining society could not comprehend his acts as anything other than psychotic, since they were outside the realm of their conception of rationality.
That ending scene I resolve in my own mind by him understanding that to the rest of the world, to his daughter even, nothing he did, no matter how principled and ethical, could be understood by them within their social paradigm as anything but evil.
Taking the red pill in a world where everyone else has taken the blue pill means you are the bad guy. That is a disturbing truth!