"Dana, I enjoyed the eloquent case you've mounted against the formation of the Safdie school of anxiety-inducing art, even as I simply cannot relate to it at all. I love an interesting abrasive experience at the movies, I have a thing for a compellingly repellent protagonist, and I have cherished many a film that acts downright hostile toward its viewers, something I should probably talk to a therapist about (and not the kind played so excellently by Conan O'Brien)."
"In terms of wallowing in discomfort, Frownland makes Marty Supreme look like Forrest Gump, following the travails of a wet-lipped homunculus of a door-to-door salesman named Keith, played by a brilliant Dore Mann (who never made another movie), who is abused by everyone around him, but who is also an inherently grating presence himself, something he seems anxiously aware of and helpless to change."
A taste for abrasive, repellent cinematic experiences and protagonists that provoke disgust is described. Anxiety-inducing films have attracted cinephile followings because they resonate with a precarious present that feels ready to collapse. The Safdie school is named as an exemplar of that aesthetic, linked to hustlers, scammers, and bullies scrambling for survival. Ronald Bronstein's Frownland (2007) is presented as an early embodiment of the approach. Frownland centers on Keith, a wet-lipped door-to-door salesman whose abusive environment and grating presence produce simultaneous sympathy and revulsion, creating discomfort that can feel perversely satisfying.
Read at Slate Magazine
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