The Day of the Locust / YMMV

Diagnosed by the Audience: Homer has No Social Skills and exhibits a variety of strange, obsessive tics. He is also dealing with trauma from a sexual experience.
Harsher in Hindsight: There's a paragraph critical of how the newspapers and movies of the time thrived on sensationalistic stories, with "wrecks" listed as one of the common topics. Nathanael West died in a car accident a year after the book was published.
Hilarious in Hindsight: When you read the novel, the first few times you see the name Homer Simpson, you will find yourself chuckling. But he's a strong enough character that this fades after a while. Still, there are actually a few intriguing similarities in the two Homer Simpsons: they're both amiable, but extremely dense, and they're both vexed by a Bratty Half-Pint. (And, yes, in case you're wondering the shared name is actually a complete coincidence; Matt Groening named the Simpsons character after his father, though The Simpsons would eventually reference the book in "Penny Wiseguys".)
Nightmare Fuel: The film's depiction of the climactic riot sequence was one of the most harrowing put on film at the time, and still packs a punch today, playing off a natural fear of being caught in a dangerous situation over which we have no control and from which there is no escape.
- The nightmare fuel starts with Homer releasing his pent-up rage on a screaming Adore by stomping on him until he dies with blood pouring out of his mouth, and moves on to the mob literally tearing Homer apart, his bloodied and broken body occasionally rising above the heaving crowds, with Tod unable to get near him to save him... and, as the mob grows more restless and destructive and he spots Faye across the street, he is equally unable to save her from the caprices of the crowd as they are swept off in opposite directions.
- And then the crowd's destructive rampage really takes off; terrified film stars rush out of the premiere and into their car, only for the driver to be pulled out before the car is tipped on its side and set ablaze, the film stars only just getting out in time by climbing out of the "top" window. The patrons of a coffee shop barricade the door as the lights flicker and go out, while people on the outside hammer on the door to be let in to escape the chaos, to no avail. Windows are smashed, shops are looted, and a sobbing girl is dragged off by two men despite Tod's futile attempts to rescue her.
- We get a gorily detailed shot of Tod's broken and bloodied leg after he manages to get into some empty space by a parked car, and then his own Sanity Slippage provides more nightmarish images; he hallucinates the people in his sketches for The Burning of Los Angeles standing by the side of the road or sitting on benches, faces of white plaster with empty black eyes and mouths. Blazing telephone poles and palm trees topple to the ground. The empty-faced people go from standing still to lurching robotically in unison toward him. Images of Hollywood glamour, including the promotional photo of Faye in Ali Baba Goes to Town that Tod stole for her, are shown burning to ash in close-up, while the Hollywood hills explode in a firestorm and the crack in Tod's apartment wall is torn wide open as nature itself unleashes its apocalyptic fury on Los Angeles. All while Tod screams at the top of his lungs, insane with terror. Even though most of these images are only happening in Tod's mind, they are still scary.
- And all of this is given a further nightmarish quality by the fact that it strongly resembles a Nazi rally, complete with a screaming, Hitleresque radio announcer exhorting the audience and a Kristallnacht-style shattering of shop windows.
One-Scene Wonder: Homer and Faye take Harry to an evangelist/faith healer named Big Sister (a Take That! aimed at evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson) in a sequence written especially for the film that skewers churches that place more emphasis on donations and showmanship than on enriching the souls of their congregation. The larger-than-life Big Sister is played by Geraldine Page, and although she only appears in this single scene (which has no significant impact on the plot or characters), she gets the And Starring treatment on the movie's poster, and is billed fifth in the credits.^note
Retroactive Recognition: In the film adaptation, Adore Loomis was played by Jackie Earle Haley, then in his early teens; he had mostly done television work at the time but went on to more high-profile child acting success as Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears the following year, and has since transitioned into adult roles that include Rorschach in Watchmen.
Values Resonance:
- A few of the particulars have changed, but West's criticism of mass media sensationalism and how it affects the audience is still frighteningly relevant today.
  Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars.
- Even with changing technology and trends, the character types in the novel are still quite familiar. No doubt these days Faye Greener would fancy herself as an "influencer" and be all over Instagram and TikTok.
Vindicated by History:
- The novel sold just 1,480 copies in its initial printing in 1939; while it may have depicted the Hollywood that needed telling about (as quoted by Dashiell Hammett on the cover of the first edition), it wasn't the Hollywood the American public were ready to read about. But within a decade of West's death in a car accident in 1940, The Day of the Locust was being identified as part of the American literary canon, and it made several "100 Greatest Twentieth Century Novels" lists in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
- The film opened to a mixed reception from critics and audiences; it eventually turned a profit, and several of the performances, particularly those of Donald Sutherland and Burgess Meredith (who was Oscar-nominated), were praised, but 1970s audiences on a 1930s nostalgia kick were once again not ready to see just how grimy the film industry really was in its supposed golden age, while some critics felt that, compared to the novel, the film pulled its punches. Its standing has improved in the years since its original release, although the existence of a more famous Homer Simpson will likely always overshadow it.
The Woobie: Homer, a terminally shy man with No Social Skills (and possibly mild autism) serves as everyone's Extreme Doormat throughout the story, particularly for Faye, who milks him for every cent he has and never misses a chance to insult and humiliate him. It's sad to see what becomes of him when the near-inevitable happens and he finally snaps.

YMMV / The Day of the Locust

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