Essentially, Adam Rifkin's The Dark Backward is a performance piece. With a budget of roughly $700,000, its release in 1991 earned a mere $28,654 of gross revenue and generated mostly negative critical reviews. Critics rebuffed its exaggerated characters and situations, its indulgence in the grotesque, and accused it of blatantly copying the surreal imagery of David Lynch. This overwhelmingly negative response, and the substance of its content, closely parallels Marty Malt, the protagonist's, journey from amateur comedian to performer of wholly original material. But the imagery, which has been the focus of some reviewers, and which impresses itself upon the audience at first glance, represents in picture form Rifkin's core criticism of the entertainment industry.
This imagery is a creative manifestation reflecting the characters' innermost desire. By desire, I mean the human need for utter liberation, i.e., expression, of primordial instinct and potential energy. Humans, i.e., possess a drive whose sole purpose is this utter liberation, but this desire has its opposition in the idea and real-world application of social order; and it, being opposite, contains it. In Dark Backward the audience is introduced to a world on the precipice of becoming a complete mirror image of real-world social order. It is steadily instituting a new world order based on disorder. Indeed, the movie's tag-line reads, "It's the world inside out", in which this innermost desire, or drive, has become explicit for society. In Dark Backward society has become accustomed to its own decadence in the shape of a world become inside out. On one level, Rifkin's decision to incorporate tons upon tons of garbage on-screen points to a critique on the director's part, of this general trend approaching mindless desire, instant gratification thereto, and consumption. This critique also extends to people's behaving casually in the face of the steady disintegration of its social fabric, where deceit and "looking out for number one" supersedes the trust in law, order, empathy, etc., and where people have effectively become blind in this regard. On another level, the incorporation of such tonnage is the simple aestheticism which, in addition to Rifkin's use of Lynchian post-industrial white noise (See: Eraserhead) and of make-up highlighting an oppressive heat-wave, reflects this fiery, albeit disordered, expression of energy which has escaped willy-nilly the individual's core.
This foul condition in which Marty Malt and his sidekick, Gus, find themselves has both a universal and particular significance, the former with respect to the preceding discussion, and the latter in terms of the dynamic governing Marty and Gus's relationship. Which will be characterized as being dysfunctional. Now, this drive which contains an excess of animal energy linked to primordial instinct, being preserved in an opposed relationship, finds its dramatic portrayal in Marty and Gus. Conceptually, they are identical in spite of differences. As garbage men, they wear matching uniforms. Together they are individual; "individual" itself, containing the prefix "in-", which means "to express negation or privation", expresses an opposition towards being divided ("in-, prefix3"). From the preceding discussion, we have essentially moved from this idea of social harmony confronting animalistic desire as it manifests itself in a grander, more universal scheme, to a particular instance which takes on the form of Marty and Gus's relationship, or oneness.
On the face of it, Gus selflessly aids Marty in his quest to achieve stardom. Always, though, the audience gets the feeling that Gus's cheerleading is quietly overruled by another, self-serving desire, and in Dark Backward's concluding moments, the ostensible reversal of their fortune, and Marty's being totally abandoned by his peers and talent agent, Jackie Chrome, confirms this suspicion. It is Gus's constant deceit, in this capacity of either Marty's hype-man, Marty's best friend, etc., which eventually leads to his new-found success in Hollywood. On the contrary, Marty prefers to err on the side of truth. At a critical moment, Jackie, in a sigh of relief, says, "Honesty pays", to which Marty adds, "That's what I've always believed". Of course, Marty's recommendation, that Gus and Jackie be truthful for once, instead of "acting like it", delivers Gus and Jackie into the hands of Hollywood, which is personified in Dirk Delta, who sports a glaringly false nose, which sniffs up local talent, rotted teeth, and a luridly colored, though fitted, suit. Marty's stand-up attire, a suit which looks roughly two sizes too big, shows that Hollywood's sleazy culture is a bad fit.
Marty's final performance on-stage, which closes The Dark Backward, receives a positive response from an audience which up until now has been largely indifferent at best, and hostile at worst. When his routine consists mainly of not-clever non sequiturs , the general feedback he has earned can be summed up in the phrase It stinks. Syd, at whose nightclub Marty performs, and Jackie both agree that, originally, Marty "stinks". And here lies the crucial and doubled, though united, aspect of Marty Malt. Both as a stand-up comedian and garbage man does Marty "stink", but this foul essence has in itself a metaphorical and literal aspect. Marty, who is opposing to his "significant other", Gus, by virtue of his being truthful, is likewise antithetical to the world and the people around him, though he is no less a part of this inside-out world, and behaves according to its having virtually no law or predictable order, for he indeed is as much a part of Gus's journey as he is a part of his own, either in the Spirit of desiring fame at the cost of his humanity (for he does indeed become the prop to his own stand-up routine) or in the Spirit of being a garbage man whose occupation has become a fruitless and Sisyphean exercise in pointlessness, i.e., nihilism. That said, Syd and Jackie's judgement, that Marty "stinks", is just as confused as the essence of Marty and Gus's relationship, in that they exhibit a clear blindness to their own and society's decay, which values "crappy" and readily digestible entertainment above truthful substance. Once Marty "drops the act", eschewing haphazardly constructed jokes, and instead focuses on the pain which has been the substance of his arc,-- Once he does this, he then finds deliverance prescribed by his own terms. Once his act is "cleaned up", the audience's response appears uncharacteristically positive, and this is Rifkin's making allowance for the possibility of humanity rising over this pathological imbalance which leaves very little room for order in the face of mindless self-indulgence.
Thus, in the age of social media, through which apparatus people are constantly bombarded with cheap entertainment, at the expense of productivity and originality, this social criticism of The Dark Backward, whose stark imagery represents that very decay, remains significant.
Originally published on Fri Jul 03 17:02:44 2020, & last updated on Thu Aug 13 00:49:17 2020