How Marxism was Represented in Talladega Nights

One of my favorite movies is Talladega Nights, released in 2006 with Will Ferrell and John Reilly as the main characters. The movie portrays accession and how a quick climb to fame can affect one’s perception of themselves. What I mean by that is people who make a fast accession to fame can be unaware of their power and what it will do to their egos. Early in the movie, we see a young Ricky Bobby at school for career day when his drunk father, a failed professional racer, drives onto the school's grass and starts talking about an explicit and rockstar-esque lifestyle in an elementary school classroom. After being escorted out by school officials, Ricky’s father tells him to remember, “If you ain’t first, your last!” Which is a motto that he had lived by for quite some time. 

The movie advances to his early 20s, where he is a pit crew member for a NASCAR team. After coming in multiple laps down, the driver essentially forfeits the race, enabling Ricky to finish the race that he finished third in after overcoming a multiple-lap deficit to the cars on the lead lap; this begins Ricky’s accession to stardom. 

This star lifestyle was carried over to his two sons, whom we were first introduced to at the family dinner table afterward. Early on, you can tell they are pampered and given whatever they want as they talk about their day. His youngest son starts talking about pranks he pulled on his teacher and the vulgar, followed by Ricky’s oldest son talking about cruel pranks on his grandfather and neighbors. Once the grandfather responds, the entire family targets him for being upset, and Ricky says they can talk to him and do whatever they want because they are his sons. 

I mention his sons because they go through significant character development, as well as Ricky’s character development after getting in a bad wreck that had him out of races for quite some time. This led to him moving back into his mom’s house with the boys, where they could see structure, be punished, and go to church because their grandma would not deal with delinquents. This leads me to a scene where their grandmother drops “granny law.”  

Later in the movie, the boys are seen in the church choir and many other positive activities compared to what they were doing before the “granny law” scene. We can see the boys descend from money, which creates more structure and less freedom because they need it tremendously. However, this helped them morally and ethically to become upstanding young men. This is a prime example of Marxist themes as Ricky and his boys could see each social class's good, bad, and ugly.