Apr. 14th, 2008 10:06 pm
Lost youth
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
textualdevianceSurfing around tonight, I found this and felt compelled to watch.
I wouldn't call it a favorite movie, really. As a film, it's not that great. But there's something about the culture it captures that is so familiar to me that I can't help but watch every time I get the chance.
I wasn't quite on the generation this was about--I was only 9 when the film came out--but I was close enough to it to feel it filtering down to me, and to recognize in this film so many people and situations I knew growing up.
I didn't grow up in California, but I was pretty damned close--Reno was a little more redneck and a lot less hippie, but a lot of the overall vibe was the same. We sort of got all the SoCal trends a few years late (NoCal, of course, got them just before we did.) Plus, a lot of folks came from there, or had family there, or visited often. So there wasn't a lot of hardline definition. And for some reason, the California culture of the '70s and early '80s was like a perfect storm of place and era. The laid-back and trashy vibe of the time meshed seamlessly with the constantly-stoned and sleazy vibe of Cali. I'm sure folks from elsewhere have their own iconic memories of the time, and I'm sure previous eras were also indelibly place-identified, but really, Cali was just sort of ground zero for so much that was both wrong and right about the time.
And what's so unique about this film in particular is that it sits right on the edge of the blending of two distinct eras. It's slightly disco, but still slightly hippie, too. Things haven't yet meshed into the neon glitz of the '80s, but they've definitely left the soft, gauzy feel of the '70s. Perfect example is the contrast of what they wear to the concert with what they wear to the wedding. Deirdre is the most fashion-forward of all of them, having moved beyond the soft waves of everyone else to the tight perm of the next fad. And Jeannie, well... OK, so no one who saw this film should've at all been confused about Jodie, yes? ;)
Something that we early Gen-Xers don't really share with our later generational peers is that we had to bridge that cusp in a way they didn't. Our childhoods were steeped in the politics of Vietnam, the peace movement, the Nixon impeachment, the Bicentennial. We cut our teeth on Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute and I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke. Yet by the time we'd grown up and were starting to establish ourselves as individuals, that era of peace, love and macrame had been obliterated by Reaganomics and video games. What we'd been taught was useless, because none of it mattered anymore now that people were snorting coke and making a fortune in the stock market instead of smoking pot and selling organic vegetables at the farmer's market.
But we adapted. Not that we had a choice, of course, but we did. We grabbed the joystick with both hands (OK, with just one. We needed the other for the fire and thrust buttons.) We put on the hot pink sunglasses and dayglo socks and grooved on new wave and punk, and pretended that we didn't also have The Carpenters' Greatest Hits. We hacked off our long hippie hair and spiked it up. And by doing all this, we also helped usher in the techno revolution, for which you should all be grateful. (And you are, yes? ;))
But I think many of us still have a soft spot in our hearts for the time and place of our earlier years. We may have embraced MTV and consumerism, but we still ache, from time to time, for John Denver and a belief that peace would truly come.
So for me, watching this film is like watching the moment that those things slipped away from us forever. It's deeply melancholy not just because of the tragedies of aimless teens--those have always been and will always be--but because those tragedies befell these particular ones because their culture was in such a sharp and disorienting transition.
I wouldn't call it a favorite movie, really. As a film, it's not that great. But there's something about the culture it captures that is so familiar to me that I can't help but watch every time I get the chance.
I wasn't quite on the generation this was about--I was only 9 when the film came out--but I was close enough to it to feel it filtering down to me, and to recognize in this film so many people and situations I knew growing up.
I didn't grow up in California, but I was pretty damned close--Reno was a little more redneck and a lot less hippie, but a lot of the overall vibe was the same. We sort of got all the SoCal trends a few years late (NoCal, of course, got them just before we did.) Plus, a lot of folks came from there, or had family there, or visited often. So there wasn't a lot of hardline definition. And for some reason, the California culture of the '70s and early '80s was like a perfect storm of place and era. The laid-back and trashy vibe of the time meshed seamlessly with the constantly-stoned and sleazy vibe of Cali. I'm sure folks from elsewhere have their own iconic memories of the time, and I'm sure previous eras were also indelibly place-identified, but really, Cali was just sort of ground zero for so much that was both wrong and right about the time.
And what's so unique about this film in particular is that it sits right on the edge of the blending of two distinct eras. It's slightly disco, but still slightly hippie, too. Things haven't yet meshed into the neon glitz of the '80s, but they've definitely left the soft, gauzy feel of the '70s. Perfect example is the contrast of what they wear to the concert with what they wear to the wedding. Deirdre is the most fashion-forward of all of them, having moved beyond the soft waves of everyone else to the tight perm of the next fad. And Jeannie, well... OK, so no one who saw this film should've at all been confused about Jodie, yes? ;)
Something that we early Gen-Xers don't really share with our later generational peers is that we had to bridge that cusp in a way they didn't. Our childhoods were steeped in the politics of Vietnam, the peace movement, the Nixon impeachment, the Bicentennial. We cut our teeth on Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute and I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke. Yet by the time we'd grown up and were starting to establish ourselves as individuals, that era of peace, love and macrame had been obliterated by Reaganomics and video games. What we'd been taught was useless, because none of it mattered anymore now that people were snorting coke and making a fortune in the stock market instead of smoking pot and selling organic vegetables at the farmer's market.
But we adapted. Not that we had a choice, of course, but we did. We grabbed the joystick with both hands (OK, with just one. We needed the other for the fire and thrust buttons.) We put on the hot pink sunglasses and dayglo socks and grooved on new wave and punk, and pretended that we didn't also have The Carpenters' Greatest Hits. We hacked off our long hippie hair and spiked it up. And by doing all this, we also helped usher in the techno revolution, for which you should all be grateful. (And you are, yes? ;))
But I think many of us still have a soft spot in our hearts for the time and place of our earlier years. We may have embraced MTV and consumerism, but we still ache, from time to time, for John Denver and a belief that peace would truly come.
So for me, watching this film is like watching the moment that those things slipped away from us forever. It's deeply melancholy not just because of the tragedies of aimless teens--those have always been and will always be--but because those tragedies befell these particular ones because their culture was in such a sharp and disorienting transition.
Tags: