Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Coen Project: Raising Arizona

"I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I dunno...they say he's a good man, so maybe his advisors are confused."  -H.I. McDonnough


Blood Simple's claustrophobic Texas noir introduced moviegoers to the bleak, windswept southwest of the Coen brothers, a place where everyone is "on their own.'" The Coens' second film, 1987's Raising Arizona, broadens the frame to take in Reagan's Sunbelt in all its grotesque wonder. This time, in a live-action Warner Brothers cartoon.  Nathan Arizona is a blustery, vest-wearing avatar for the crassly materialist 80s entrepreneurs who fatted themselves on low taxes and vulgar defense spending.  The fact that fertility treatment allows his previously barren wife to spit out five healthy baby boys taunts simple trailer folk like ex-con H.I McDonnough and his wife, Ed, who want nothing in life more than a "critter" to share their happiness with.  As H.I. says, "we thought it was unfair that some should have so many while others should have so few."  And so, Ed and H.I. set about to score one for the vast multitudes left behind by Reaganomics by swiping one of the Arizona quints.  But in a distinctly Coen-esque touch, the downtrodden proles are fueled by the same small-minded acquisitiveness as the Arizonas of the world.  When H.I. gets Nathan Jr. into the car, he remarks that "I think we got the best one."  The Coens aren't interested in a standard Marxist critique of capital distribution, but rather a system of value that prizes status and consumption as the highest of values and touches the minds of everyone, rich or poor.  Much of the contempt that the Coens' are accused of harboring for their characters is in fact contempt for a culture that builds cardboard subdivisions where every room in the homes has a television blaring, where every clerk may meet in packing heat, and the lethal services of a Lone Biker of the Apocalypse like Leonard Smalls can be purchased for "what the market will bear."

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