Here's a paper I wrote for a class on the movie and the Ronnie Barnhardt character last fall. Can't believe I didn't post this:
Right Now, the World Needs a Fucking Hero
The Bipolar Experience of Observe and Report
I believe every man has a path laid up before him. My path is a righteous one. I've been chosen to be the protector. In these dark times, the world has no use for another scared man. Right now, the world needs a fucking hero.
These are the words of Ronnie Barnhardt, a savage, antagonistic moral degenerate who leads the mall security team at the doughty, suburban Forest Ridge Mall. He is the protagonist of Jody Hill’s Observe and Report, a film that virtually came and went theatrically without the controversy a film as virulent and incendiary like this truly needed. A dark comedy as black as coffee unrefined by cream and sugar, newly minted comic superstar Seth Rogen portrays Ronnie as an ever-evolving creature, at first a high-handed joke, then a larger joke for all the wrong reasons. In the end, he becomes exactly the hero he proclaims himself in his voiceover—a savior of the crippling recession, of the disposable fluff and mentally overcooked swine who odor our existence, of the psychological shortcomings and narcissistic rage that always slowly churn around in our minds.
That bubbling of the surface is exactly what Ronnie represents. He suffers from bipolar disorder, a mental dysfunction which functions like the top and bottom of the planet. The “north” end represents delusions of grandeur and happiness so profound it becomes surreal for the people surrounding him. His “south” end is a world of despair, frighteningly carnal desires, and personal madness driven by social disorder. The uneven flux of Ronnie’s mind is his essential roadblock in his true aspiration of employment: police officer. When the mall imposes a ban on firearms for security officials, his only defense is his Maglite flashlight and a taser gun. As a police officer, Ronnie would be able to solve his problems with the threat of a gun—perhaps not firing a bullet, but the sight of a firearm to scare off potential wrongdoers.
Unfortunately, without a gun to defend himself, his non-fatal weapons make him more prone to violence and an unsatisfactory fit for law enforcement.
With this in mind, the idea of being trapped in his cornflower blue uniform only pushes his madness further. According to a review of the film in the April 13, 2009 issue of the New Yorker, his “broken family……bad genes…a gun culture, sexual frustration exacerbated by stacked blondes in short dresses, and the accumulating spiritual effects of working in a mall and eating fast food” are what drive him to the place of his final destination, which makes his brain a mental and emotional pendulum (Edelstein, 2009). When the girl of his dreams, the repulsively loose makeup counter girl Brandi, falls victim to a flasher plaguing the mall after arriving to work to the sight of the rotund, nerdy delinquent masturbating in front of her, he becomes absurdly driven towards justice by any means necessary. Ronnie goes as far as to declare that “this disgusting pervert is the best thing that ever happened to me,” referring to either the case of his career which will lead to becoming a cop, the perfect avenue to a romance with Brandi, or both.
Ronnie virtually cons Brandi into going out on a date with him, which leads to a night of her downing strawberry margaritas and countless shots of tequila. When she notices Ronnie taking his medication, she angrily questions him why he takes the medication. In a bipolar fit, the meds he “parties every four to six hours” with are given to Brandi, leading to a disgustingly lethargic sex scene where Brandi is half-conscious from her own stupidity and Ronnie’s “sexual frustration’ culminates into not a bang, but a whimpering, awkward panic. Ronnie’s satisfaction is null—the night he was expecting to happen does, but it backfires, and later, when he catches Brandi having sex with the grizzled bulldog of an actual police detective he finds himself at physical and psychological odds with, the subsequent confrontation at her job leads to his termination.
The relationship with Brandi shows him not as a sexual predator, but a man in desperate need of love and sexual gratification. He obviously has no personal connection to her, and his fractured psyche may make it easy, perhaps too easy, to draw the conclusion that he assaulted her, but the truth is that his mind wants only what it desires at the moment, and with this in mind, Brandi was the heat of that moment. Her promiscuity and his reaction to it also says that he showed disappointment in their first encounter.
Perhaps the most discussed part about the film—and the character of Ronnie—is the shockingly and darkly humorous ending. The fired Ronnie arrives at the mall to get coffee from the sweet natured food court girl (whose boss had been assaulted by Ronnie earlier for his harassment of her surgery-related handicap). Nell is a broken soul too, herself a “born-again virgin” as a result of an abusive relationship, and the couple’s kiss is interrupted by the flasher. After chasing him throughout the mall, before the flasher can pull an encore act of depravity against Brandi, Ronnie arrives as some sort of gonzo white knight and guns down the flasher. He lives, but leaves behind a pool of blood. Ronnie is elated; he sticks it to the cops for being the one to bring the flasher to justice, his job is reinstated, and suddenly, the scary, dark-gray clouds that govern the dark parts of Ronnie’s mind have cleared. With his instability in mind, however, the rain will surely fall again, we can only assume.
“The key to its success is that it neither excuses nor celebrates the behavior of its ‘hero’,” says Ethan Alter in his review for Film Journal International. “Both Rogen and Hill are well aware that Ronnie is an awful human being” (2009). Released in the wake of its blockbuster Bizarro counterpart, the safe, family-friendly comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Observe and Report was not a financial juggernaut. Nevertheless, the film is a risky gamble, a ridiculous idea told in such a way that the odds impose against it.
The psychological nightmare of Ronnie Barnhardt is the centerpiece of the story, and he puts the audience in exactly the catch-22 audiences not seeking to be challenged do not want to be in, but precisely the type we rarely see in films today. We sympathize with Ronnie because he’s played by a very funny and talented man, we hope his dire situation has a satisfying catharsis, and if we look deep enough, he has a soft side, and he’s a man worthy of redemption. Conversely, we must recognize him as a despicable icon of moral bankruptcy: exploitive, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic, a physically and ideologically ugly knight of fascism. Fortunately, as the media finds itself more and more dependent on political correctness, the challenge of a protagonist like Ronnie Barnhardt is a much needed shotgun blast to our times.
