(May 14, 2023 ● Oslin Pierrette)
I did everything right, I did everything they told me to do. And it didn’t work. They lied to me. I spent so many years of my life doing what I thought was right, and it was wrong. Now I’m here, way too far gone on this lie I rode all the way down here, what now. And Falling down speaks a lot to these lies and illusions of society. You’re sold on these fantasy dreams, you do your best to fit that role, to accomplish the dream, and by the time you realize that the dream was a lie, fraudulent dreams, you’re left unviable for anything else.
And it’s a harsh reality. I tried, and tried, and tried to do right, and zero progress. Society has abandoned me, left me to internally and soulfully rot. The best days of my life are just memories in the past. I’m in a rotting deteriorating despair, and that’s all I have left for the rest of my life. And there’s just this breaking point that people have. Where they are at the point of no return. They are now on the dark side of the moon, with no more contact with humanity. And they mentally just freefall down this spiraling chaos. I lived a lie, so I abided by all these rules that I know now are made up bullshit as well. I have no care in the world to hold on to those ideas anymore. What do I get for being a law abiding citizen for society, when society chewed me up and spit me out.
So that’s it, I take no more bullshit anymore. So that was what this film was, done with the bullshit, and a downward spiral journey for him to see his daughter. You see that he lost his sense of humanity. You see that he has gone fully mad. He’s completely lost the grips to society, and it’s all a product of society. And sadly, it’s probably the only time he’s had a sense of control. Introduced to the power of agency and control over his own life way too late.
The point is, as crazy as this looks, it’s a natural human response to the madness and callousness of society. If you try a million ways to do right, you put the effort and the work in. In hopes to achieve your ideas of “success”, and it doesn’t work, it literally makes you insane. And then society just deems you unfit, in the most callous fashion. That’s a complete assault on someone’s sanity. No reward for trying, but all the shame for failing. No humanity in any of these systems in society. It’s not that he was an unfit human being, society itself is unfit for humanity. What do you expect to happen to someone like that, for them to stay orderly? To remain docile, and constantly drown in the constant pain, sorrows, and resentment, now that’s crazy and insane. It makes perfect sense, a rational response to go MAD. It’s an equal equation, the lack of humanity in society creates someone who loses humanity in themselves. This can happen to anybody. This is not a unique situation. He’s the representation of what is currently happening within so many internally, they just haven’t reached their breaking point to go fully MAD, and many have reached that breaking point. We’ve seen multiple real iterations of this downward spiral manifest like in Falling Down. Then you see, at the end, he probably has some understanding, but he was fully realized to the fact that on his downward spiral, that he was “the bad guy”. But really, he may truly not be a bad person. Just an innocent person that went mad due to the madness of society.
People have to wake up to the madness of society. Like people will partially acknowledge the absurdity in the systems, but when there’s a product of the absurdity, they look at the person who is the product of absurdity and callousness of society as crazy “worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it’s dismissive. I don’t understand this person so they’re crazy, that’s bullshit. People are not crazy, they are strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick”-Dave Chappelle
In a sick environment, it’s inevitable that some people are going to end up sick, simple logic.
Some people like to tell people when they’re sick, that they need help. What is help? What is the cure for someone who is the product of the madness, callousness, and absurdity of society. Who lived a lie told to him by society for decades, and by the time he realizes he was lied to, his heart was already too cold, he already passed the point of no return. This isn’t the stage in your life where you can just start all over, and try again. Life is on the other side of being almost over. You can’t get that time back. It’s that harsh cruel understanding that you live one life, that was the only opportunity, and it’s wasted. No true love was found, I can’t gain the heart to connect to any passions that’s needed to make life viable, not while decades of pain and resentment would lie under it. Completely internally destroyed. So what’s the cure for that? That’s where you also see the callousness of society. There’s no help, just more bullshit. The only help they have is numbing solutions. We live in symptom hiding society, a society that doesn’t address the core or soul, and leave the core issues to rot and metastasize, to the point where many can’t numb it anymore, and they either go overboard or just end it themselves.
And it’s a dark reality, many people pass the point of no return, where they feel it’s better and easier to get to the end of the road, and end the misery. That there’s nothing to return to. To the point where they feel it’s pointless and meaningless to live.
This was a great film. Great depiction of this Madness downward spiral, and how this is potentially in so many others internally around you. Loved what this film spoke to. I understand that this analysis may have been repetitive, but so many people are reminded of this realization everyday. Constantly drilled into them, indoctrinated and imbedded in them. This inescapable hell created by society. Then the hell the person may become as a result of that.