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It’s more than just a Zeppelin song. In 1993, a film was made that not only seemed to accurately portray teenage life from the late ‘70s, but also reflected upon the re-entrance of ‘70s fads throughout the early ‘90s. The psychedelic rock buzz had found its way back.
In the early ‘90s, Generation X had an unspoken uniform: flannel, tie-dye, smiley faces, bright flowers, peace signs, and ripped jeans. In music, we had been through the pop wave of the ‘80s, metal hair bands not included. Now, there was a wave of change striking melodic chords in far corner: the emergence of the grunge scene in Seattle, a form of hard rock, full of emotion and lyrical apathy. History will show just how significant musical evolution has been. The sock hopping pop of the ‘50s lowered itself to a steady hum, poetic folk songs that protested against war, and guitar riffs that parents said were the sounds of the Devil.
Dazed and Confused, written and directed by Richard Lanklater, focuses on one day only – the quintessential last day of school. Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” bellows through the hallways as boys and girls alike with long flowing hair run outside into the fresh summer, and one character in particular, Slaterson, is prancing about in a shirt with a marijuana leaf displayed on the front. If you were to count how many times Slaterson calls someone, “Dude” you might lose count, or become quite intoxicated if you’re playing the movie’s urbanized “drinking game.” The film also features one of the greatest “slow motion entrances” in movie history. Okay, perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but when you see Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) enter the Emporium pool hall, and Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” bursts in through the doorway with him, you know why this movie is so worthy. Aside from the freshmen-senior initiations, paddles, high-waist jeans, and teachers who use the word “bitchin,” something deep is brewing.
We could narrow in on one scene in the movie when the teenagers go to a party at the “Moon Tower.” Slaterson explains his theory on the U.S. dollar bill to a group of kids lazily sitting atop a muscle car. The group is enthused, mildly entertained, and mostly just impressionable to anything they hear. Michelle (Mila Jovovich) stares into the dark sky while singing a song, “Watch them fly away…” She is the effervescent stoner chick, an iconic illustration of the time. At the end of the party, after the last keg is tapped, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone” wails through the trees. You can feel change in the air. It’s thick with hesitation, so fogged and visable that you just want to reach out and glide your hands through it; and it’s taunting you, asking you, “What will happen next?”
A character in the film, Cynthia, seems to answer this question for us best. While surveying the party dwindling down, she says, “You know, I’d like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.” And she’s right. Saddle shoes, Birkenstocks, or Doc Martins – it’s significant no matter what the decade. We will continue to theorize about miniscule, every day things, but simple ideas will always linger, and bubble to the surface when we thought they had simply faded out. (Which brings to mind that saying…”Better to burn out…”) We will always be searching for the answers in the midst of our own daze. But this movie tells us one very important rule of thumb: keep on livin’, man.
