Fear of Falling: White Middle-class Masculinity in Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down

Abstract

Joel Schumacher’s highly controversial film Falling Dawn zooms in on the rage of a white, male, middle-class citizen who has lost both his job and his home. Since D-FENS — this is the hero’s telling name we glimpse from his license plate — is unable to come to terms with this double loss, he develops the fixed idea of forcing his way „home”, he will do so more and more violently, from downtown Los Angeles to Venice Beach, where his ex-wife, who inflicted a restraining order upon him, lives with their little daughter. However, D-Fens’ identity is not only threatened by the loss of his job and home; as a heterosexual, white, middle-class male he has also lost his place in a society split by political discourses of ethnicity and gender, i. e. by so-called identity politics. D-FENS’ opponent, police officer Prendergast — the other white, male, middle-class protagonist in the movie — succeeds at least in identifying the runner of amuck when he sees a giant advertisement (he remembers D-FENS passing in front of it) that recommends a sun lotion with the slogan „White is for laundry”. The ad displays significantly a tanned Asian woman disfigured by a little graffiti man who is crying for help between the model’s breasts. Could there be a more succinct way of alluding to the theme of Falling Down?