by Christopher Barr
“People do
have special relationships with their families, their communities, and their
countries. This is the standard
equipment of humanity, and most people, in all of human history, have seen
nothing wrong with it.” - Philosopher
Alan Ryan
We’re the Millers is a comedy about a drug dealer who needs to get to Mexico to export a lot of marijuana back into the States. He comes up with a plan of forming a fake ‘Betty Crocker-type’ family to divert suspicion away from this very illegal operation. He enlists the help of a stripper to play his wife, a homeless runaway to play his daughter and a nerdy teenage kid in his apartment building, whose actual mother abandoned him, to play his son. Together, they are the Millers, a nuclear family from the idealism of the 50’s.
Proto-industrialization
marked a point in our history with the preceding development of modern
industrial economy, established a fully industrial society. Family structures were formed much earlier by
the influence of the theocratic governments and the all-powerful church. The modern family was to become a financially
viable social unit, birthing a new form of family, socially conservative and compliant
to a government in the US that was just cleaning up the mess of a second world
war.
By
adopting this social idealized view of a utopian future, many unknowingly, gave
up their desire for an actual meaningful life.
A life filled with wonder and discovery, a life when pursued might have
clashed with conflicting American values, but was more importantly, one worth
living. Unfortunately this wasn’t the
case. Many kept their heads firmly in
the sand, after seeing what happens to those that question the capitalistic
hold the government and corporations had over the population. They have money and investments to protect
along with religious dogma and conservatism to disseminate. Resistance of this was met with intolerance,
which in turn was met with persecution, in other words, black listing, excommunication
from the structure and so called solidarity of modern capitalistic society.
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This struggle between civilizations and the individuals that populate them is not new and will likely never grow old. The function and structure of a society, by its very nature, must smother all hope and dreams, to maintain predictability while mass producing products while consumer purchasing can be properly forecasted. Investors and Wall Street brokers map consuming trends as plans of financial attack against other countries and other corporations, for wealth and prosperity, at the expense of the majority of the population forced to live in poverty and struggle for food and work.
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What
is happening in the homeland while the military invaders move from country to
country, dispatching their very own weapons of mass destruction? What slutty Miley Cyrus is going to do next, what the fashion police after an award
show have to say about celebrity dresses and who will win the next Big Brother season extravaganza? These things matter in a society that has
only expressed its wish to sleep. Mass
shootings and false flag attacks on their own people have become a bi-weekly
event, mass media manipulation and government propaganda insures obedience
while they rape the world and their homeland of the possibility of a meaningful
existence without tyranny.
The
family unit has stayed strong in all of this, in spite of some of its hypocrisy;
it has maintained its hold over those that make up the sum of its parts. The fake family in We’re the Millers is a throwback to the pleasant times, and the
comfort food we still all love and enjoy.
Where the chaos in the world outside our windows will persist, so there’s
no reason why someone can’t find a little happiness in their fake drug dealing,
excuse me, drug smuggling family, while trying to pursue a little piece of the
American Dream.
"There is absolutely no humor in
the Death of the American Dream. I can't get out from under it; we're caving
in... Fuck the American Dream. It was always a lie and whoever still believes
it deserves whatever they get.... and they will." - American
journalist and author, Hunter S. Thompson
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