I was able to garner up enough energy during my two longs days laying in bed to watch two films - two very different cult classics from the 1990's - one that I had seen, the other I had not.
The first (I had not seen) was a film that identified itself as "90s" - with an opening shot of a bedroom with a collage of posters and pictures representing something of everything from Hip-Hop to Classic Rock and back. Sound 90s enough? I was a freshman in high school in 1994, consuming everything MTV could throw at me - Beavis & Butthead, Liquid Television, Yo! MTV Raps!, the first three brilliant seasons of "The Real World", Singled Out, 180 Minutes, VH1 Pop-Up Video, etc - when this film was released from first time director Ben Stiller. "Reality Bites" was created to represent a new generation - to confront issues and dilemmas of post-modern relationships and developing anti-identities. It would be the first films for 90s icon Janeane Garofalo and sidekick Steve Zahn. Seeing it for the first time almost twenty years later - I absolutely felt that it nailed several lasting cultural tensions such as the true nature "being real" vs. the false illusion of "being responsible". One of the better decisions made in the film was to not include 90s music, but instead to include the current obsession with 60s/70s music of the time (if you remember, 1994 was the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, which included a two day Woodstock festival with bands old and new) which made the film seem less contrived. I enjoyed the experience - felt it could have been more subtle still - but thought it was exactly what it meant itself to be - although it contradicted itself by having a beginning and an end - by actually making a statement. I preferred the beginning speech - which is reminiscent of the Gen-X tagline from Nirvana - "Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind"...
And they wonder why those of us in our twenties...
refuse to work an 80-hour week...
just so we can afford to buy their BMWs...
why we aren't interested...
in the counterculture that they invented...
as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution...
for a pair of running shoes.
But the question remains...
what are we going to do now?
How can we repair all the damage we inherited?
Fellow graduates, the answer is simple.
The answer is...
The answer is...
I don't know.
(Not so) ironically, Lelaina (who gives the Valedictorian speech) is given a BMW from her divorced parents that very evening during dinner.
"At the beep, please leave your name, number, and a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man's existential dilemma, and we'll get back to you."
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The second film, Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" was released just a year later in 1995. It starred Gen-X favorite Johnny Depp, and though it did not achieve financial success or critical fair (Ebert said it was "a strange, slow, unrewarding movie that provides us with more time to think about it's meaning than with meaning.") - it has since not only become a cult classic, but critically is considered to be one of the very best films (internationally) of the nineties - very much representing the "I Don't Know" dilemma of the 90s, despite being a film set in the late 1800s. The film is described as a metaphysical journey underscored by ideas like "He Who Talks Loud, Says Nothing" and "I'll tell you one thing for sure...I wouldn't trust no words written down on no piece of paper...". Fuckin' A.
Jarmusch, who is one of my favorite directors, had already been making postmodern films as early as 1980, comfortably embedded within the "No Wave" film movement in New York that coincided with the Punk Rock/CBGB era. This film in 1995 was a kind of culmination of postmodern filmmaking for Jarmusch - able to make stronger "non-statements" about Gen-X than anyone else - whereas the rest of the culture was just beginning to recognize the depth and influence of everyone from John Hughes (Ferris Bueller) to Spike Lee to Kurt Cobain.
Our two main characters are Johnny Depp's (potentially dead) character known as William Blake, who is frequently referred to as "Stupid Fucking White Man" by a Native American who is William Blake's Spiritual Guide (maybe), who prefers to be known as "Nobody". That pretty much sums up our post-modern perspective on history, as does the below still. At every turn, we are led to believe that all the elements of the film are about to be pulled together to give us that which we would like to walk away with (a message or statement) - so we can consider it over a hamburger and milkshake - but Ebert is right - there isn't one, particularly - and we honestly aren't necessarily sure if Blake is going off into the Spirit World at the end, or if he might still yet be on his way home to Cleveland, or if it even matters. Deadpan. All of this, I believe in retrospect, digs deeper into the post-modern conundrum of the foggy, confusing (but significant) decade that defined itself by what it was not.
"Every night and every morn, some to misery are born. Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight; some are born to endless night." - William Blake as quoted by Nobody
The still of Robert Mitchum above has become a non-intentional prophetic statement of what self-promotion looked like before facebook.
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