Falling down

Whether it is in America or the Philippines, there is a manufactured fear of ‘extremist bad Muslims’

There was a Hollywood movie made 24 years ago directed by Joel Schumacher that starred Michael Douglas, who played a government employee named D-Fens.

D-Fens got fired from his job in the Defense department after he was dumped by his wife and kid. His life spiraled downward to violence afterwards as he got pissed by gangsters, traffic and construction works in the highway and lousy service in a fast-food establishment. His self-destruction ended with his death.

I remember this film, titled “Falling Down,” after reading the news on the Resorts World Manila casino last week. The attacker, Jesse Carlos, was an employee at the Department of Finance. He earned P120,000 a month but accumulated debts from excessive gambling and other rackets, which strained his marriage.

Eventually, he went to Resorts World, the place where he gambles, set casino tables and slot machines on fire, and died later on. Falling down is how one can rightly describe Carlos. He was a person with a well-paid job who could end up losing it all.

But aside from the parallelism of the characters, “Falling Down” also is allegorical when taken in relation to the society we have now. When the movie came out in 1993, America was troubled by violence and discrimination such as the Rodney King beating by the police and the anger of the rising unemployed “white” Americans.

Many assumed the movie would show that the “white” American is the victim of the system, But he was actually the villain personified by D-Fens, who acted pissed at everything with a sense of entitlement. But deep inside is a desperation that living the American dream was all gone.

And blame has to go to the system. The times we are in now reflect these problems. Be it in America or the Philippines there is a manufactured fear of “extremist bad Muslims.”

A group led by a local political clan becomes a terror threat based on intelligence information and now the president is fanning the flames of war. We may feel like we are victims, but actually we are blind to see that the real cause of terror comes from within.

When bureaucracy corrupts and divert money from public service, when oligarchs monopolize land and profits, when companies still practice “endo,” when mining firms plunder and leave the land to waste, when generals stoke the bombs and bullets of war that displaces thousands, we don’t see that this is terror when democracy and civil rights come falling down in the name of greed and hate.

At the end of the movie, D-Fens asks the cop who arrested him, “Am I the bad guy?” The answer was clear with the mayhem he triggered all across the city, how one pissed off guy messed a city. I hope we don’t have to ask that question, but I’m afraid the answer is already out. --