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🎙️ EPISODE 593: 11.08.22
There is a major contradiction swirling around the heart of this and that seems to be the point. The Ruth character — played to perfection by the legend, Laura Dern — being directly in the center of these two fucked up sides definitely still resonates today. This person in the middle is often the worst off and is constantly being used as a pawn for righteousness by the forces at each end. Ruth is the perfect avatar for America. She doesn't give a shit about anything especially herself. She just wants to huff chemicals to feed her insatiable need for destruction. $15,000 (and then 30k) are the perfect amounts of money and it’s sad that if they remade this in 2022, I don’t think those number change in service of the exact same point (a HUGE part of the underlying issue!). "I got four other kids and I didn't get a cent," Ruth says. It’s so funny because it’s true.
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This joint review (of sorts) with Alexander Payne's other 1990s near-perfect black comedy,
Election, is coming out on November 8th, 2022, the big midterms election day here in America. They're both unique political send-ups that deal with apathy and selfishness and all the fucked up human emotions in between that this country manufactures in droves. The abortion saga of
Citizen Ruth is actually more explicitly political, the rarest of satirical works that manages to skewer both sides equally and genuinely. It doesn't give much credence to the pro-life movement, but it also doesn't shortchange the notion of how someone could so easily land on that side by the shear glimmer of some personal gain. Ruth is just a pawn and we can easily see how the majority of us are too (even if we're not paint and gas huffers lol). In the great final tracking shot, the two sides yell at each other as Ruth walks right out of the abortion clinic undetected, having an experienced a miscarriage no one know about. Nobody sees her. They never did. It's always been like this and it still is.
Citizen Ruth is a 1996 American satirical black comedy film directed by Alexander Payne, in his feature film directorial debut, and starring Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz, Kelly Preston, Burt Reynolds, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kenneth Mars, and Tippi Hedren. The film follows a poor, drug-addled, irresponsible pregnant woman who unexpectedly attracts national attention from those involved in the abortion debate. It was released on December 13, 1996.
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