>>110063427Both of those can fit within a male power fantasy. Quite easily, in fact: being the provider of the household, even for your own mother, is pretty basic Oedipal stuff, while demanding rights at a protest is in itself a power fantasy. In concert with the rest of it, yes, it's reasonable to call it a male power fantasy, unless clown is a gender now.
Ultimately that all this is set within the context of a revenge plot by a man who feels life in general is his enemy does make it a power fantasy, and a male one at that - because he's male.
Compare and contrast with Falling Down (1993) which got similar reactions from the press and is largely forgotten today. It's ultimately not a very good movie; people make implausible choices, there's very obvious use of narrative coincidence to push the story forward, and it relies on the even in 1993 discredited "superpredator" bullshit that informed so many garbage movies of the 1970s/1980s. But it also had a big-name star and was able to ride the controversy to what would today be a $71m domestic take (with the international something like the same on top) even with an R rating, which was impressive. Yet at the heart of it Falling Down is just a male power fantasy, a revenge movie in which all the little things that cause distress or irritation in any ordinary life are the literal fault of specific individuals who are targeted for harassment, terror, or death by the protagonist, who survives by sheer dumb luck. Very much a comic book movie in that sense, and very reminiscent of Joker, which is not at all a comic book movie in any other sense, unless, again, clown makeup is vitally important to you.
