God Bless America is a sharp, lucid satire about the pop culture decline and other unhealthy obsessions of the Western civilization, utilizing imaginative monologues as empowering weapons to awaken our redoubt of decency and common sense.
Frank: "I refuse to objectify a child... I mean, that's part of what's wrong with everything. I'm not American Apparel, I'm not the creep that came up with those Bratz dolls. I mean, fuck R Kelly, fuck Vladimir Nabokov, and fuck Mary Kay Letourneau while we're at it. Fuck Woody Allen and his whole 'the heart wants what it wants' bullshit. Apparently that erudite genius’ heart wants the same thing the run of the mill pedophile wants, a young hairless Asian. Nobody cares that they damage other people."
Frank represents a mix between the Everyman, the Overman prototype and the resilient outcast (as Howard Beale in Network or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver) and his journey has parallels to other films as Natural Born Killers, American Dreamz, Idiocracy, Rampage, Super, etc. Particularly, there are similarities depicting the antihero enduring intense alienation and outbursts of catastrophic speeches in the same vein that Falling Down (1993)--a film that Goldthwait considers 'terrible'--similarities that disappear in their respective final acts, since Frank remains morally unbeatable. Roxy lying to Frank recounting her family background can remind us of another revenge fantasy flick: Freeway, starring Reese Witherspoon in 1996.
Goldthwait denies the character is literally based on him, but he partly identifies: "I guess maybe I snapped in a way, that I turned my back on the whole Hollywood system."
There is an underlying, insidious theme in God Bless America that maybe escapes the average viewer: the effects of a post-feminist environment triggering male despondency. In expounding the links between pop culture, masculinity and depression, we see how hard is for a middle aged guy (stigmatized by a PC society) to break free from the chains of determinism. Isolation, or the varying cluster of depressive symptoms is a condition attributable to a context of undermined self-esteem.
When Franks murders Chloe, a part of him wants to kill what he identifies as the very harmful cause of his daughter's detachment. He hasn't got any girlfriend or future prospects of a stable relationship. Frank's only companion is his confidant Roxy, but as he's reiterated, she's an impossible romance. Some criticism to Diablo Cody (Roxy detests being called 'Juno') could further suggest the fear of a ubiquity of angsty young females who threaten to limit the modern male's scope. The word 'Feminazi' (a term popularized by talk-show host Rush Limbaugh) appears during a showdown with a famous TV host who promotes xenophobia and misogyny.
There are many more thought provoking references all during the film, enhanced by Stonesiferas's tense cinematography and Matt Kollar's musical score, that culminate in a confrontation via "American Superstars" live-show, where Frank and Roxy will reunite on stage after having broken up their strange liaison and abandoned mutual plans of fleeing to France. The French feminists Catherine Clément and Hélène Cixous in "The Newly Born Woman" (1975) decried the "dual, hierarchical oppositions" set up by the traditional patriarchal philosophy of determinateness, wherein "death is always at work" as "the premise of woman's abasement."
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Article comments
1 - Crise D'Angoisse
I saw the movie last weekend and I loved it! I won't spoil the movie for those who didn't see it, but the scene in that movie theater was epic. Who doesn't hate noisy people who are clearly not there for the movie. Who wouldn't want to kill them...o well...that may be a step to for, but I loved it when he took action...for all of us :-)