The “Other” Film Spectator: Generational Films
Babyboomers Rebelled, the Gen Xers Brooded, and the Millennials Demanded
Since the death of Michael Nichols, it is hard not to reflect on the evolution of generational films—which many subsequent filmmakers have followed suit—especially after the release of his iconic film, The Graduate. Generational films often reflect on the dominant conscious of the current milieu—be it social, political, and cultural. Nichols’ The Graduate quintessentially defines the Babyboomer generation. Lost and confused post-graduates refuse to live the “square” or perverse life carried out by their parents who settled into a world of “plastics.” The Babyboomers—conscientious of their parents’ mundane existence—questioned and often rebelled against such initiation.
Then came the Gen Xers. Instead of the Gen Xers feeling rebellious, they enslaved themselves to the conventional dogma where hard work eventually leads to stability and security—a dictum that was ingrained by their parents. After surviving two recessions, “security” became the ultimate goal. But when that wasn’t enough, the jaded Gen Xers brooded over the notion that something better is still “out there.” Wounded by their decisions to just make it through life prompted a lingering dissatisfaction with their sense of self.
This neo-existential brooding was captured by filmmakers such as Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club and of course, the critically acclaimed indie trailblazer, Richard Linklater. He is perhaps one of the leading directors who brought a fresh voice in his unique indie-Gen X cinematic hybrid with his film Slackers (1991). In the coming decades Linklater continues to reach his indie-auteur zenith with the Before series (1991-2013) and his most recently released and critically acclaimed Boyhood (2014). His films consist of recurring existential themes that consist of self-deprecating insights in finding one’s place in a world that offers no guarantees. His unforgettable, yet world-wary characters wallowed about taking chances and reasserting their identity in a very impersonal world.
This search for the self or a sense of direction becomes a recurring theme as well for Millennials—but with a different approach. They, too, are making their mark in the 21st century art world especially in a more technology-saturated milieu. Young, budding auteurs are advantageously equipped with the easily accessible technological point-and-shoot self-indulgence, resulting in a verité narrative style that is synonymous to the motion picture “selfie.” As with all new art forms—whether it is music, cinema, or literature—they are often greeted with polarizing thoughts. Director Lena Dunham, a young and arguably groundbreaking edgy millennial auteur, made her directorial debut with her 2010 release Tiny Furniture. It received enough critical acclaim where Criterion Collection, an elite video-release distributor known for quality video transfers of “selected” arthouse films, decided to release it on Blu-ray in 2012. Dunham’s film joins the Criterion’s “indie” repertoire, which sparks curiosity in its supposedly artistic “indie” merits. A year following its release was Linklater’s Slackers in 2013. Slackers and Tiny Furniture were the director’s very first film to be released from Criterion Collection, which is an impressive notoriety for any director.
With the subsequent release of a millennial and Gen X “indie” film from Criterion, it is hard not to reflect on two different cinematic voices of both Dunham and Linklater in their musings about their generation while using the same thematic soul-searching “template.” Much attention will focus on form (i.e., style) and delivery of content (particularly in its thematic ontological understanding and awareness of the self) and of course, their contributions to the voice of their respective generation.
Slackers (1991)
Linklater’s Slackers was a film shot on a shoestring budget (less than $23,000) with a 16mm camera. The entire film takes place in 1981 in Austin, Texas, which chronicles a typical day of post grad, young adults with eccentric personalities. The cast consists of Linklater along with his friends and acquaintances. Most of the scenes were shot during the day—mostly outdoor scenes and sparse indoor scenes. The visible grains authenticate the film’s in-the-moment verité style. There is no scoring. Only ambient sounds and dialogue are audible. In essence, the principle focus in the film is the nature of the dialogue between various characters in which Linklater penned and directed.
The entire film is virtually plotless. It consists of a continuous narrative that allows spectators to follow along the conversations that start in medias res. We simply “run into” conversation after conversation in the midst of things, that is, one character from the previous conversation links us to the next conversation with a new character. The pan shots and minimal intercuts complement this minimalist and uninterrupted narrative. Conversations from the nameless characters are synonymous to interior monologues that explore the questioning, the anxiety, the uncertainty, and the aimlessness of young adult culture. Such consciousness leads to a stagnated mindset, as it manifests in an obsessive lament on what possibilities are “out there” but not effective enough to actually move forward in life and seize such opportunities—hence, the term, slacker.
This recurring theme is illustrated in the film’s opening sequence with Linklater sitting in the backseat of a cab and indulges in a philosophical ramble about how thoughts create their own reality. He states: “The thing you choose not to do fractions off and become its own reality.” There is no interaction between Linklater and the cab driver, which indicates that he is merely sounding off his own apprehension of simply not doing. This conscientious fret is carried over to other characters, which reveals a young adult culture plagued with anxiety, which results in existential immobility. Linklater does poke fun of those who preoccupy themselves over the thought of a terrible world—and doing very little to alleviate the situation. As a result, we meet characters who are wasting away in their concerns. For instance, they obsess over alien existence and the Kennedy assassination conspiracy.
There are also characters who are perturbed by unreliable media, job exploitation, gun sales, and missing persons. There is the satirically eccentric—a young woman who desperately wants to sell a Madonna pap smear. Then there is the troubled—a detached son who runs over his mother with a car, another son who abhors his late stepfather, and a young robber who ends up befriending the elderly anti-government anarchist who owns the home he is trying to rob. Linklater offers a balance between the satirically petty to the notably serious such as the breakdown of the modern family, the illusion of job satisfaction, and the corruption of the government. But what can be done?
I must admit that Slackers can be a difficult film to get through. It is filled with digressions from either the hostile or hyper-contemplative outcast who does not offer any type of comfort to spectators watching the film. Although it was very challenging to be completely seduced by Linklater’s in medias res narrative style in Slackers, it is provocative in its ontological exploration of his generation. This eventually provided the groundwork for Linklater’s subsequent films where dialogue itself was powerful enough to create unforgettable characters and to provide insight about the current milieu. Thus, as in most of his films, his continuous film narrative, a plotless and action-less cinematic world, indeed holds its ground in foregrounding its themes that identify with the Generation X. In spite of the absurd satire on those who embrace life’s trivialities, the conversations reveal a generation who are in a constant flux. There are conversations about college grads who still haven’t found a job, workers who are being exploited by the workforce, and those who are trying to understand the direction of the media. Thus, most of the characters struggle with their own inability to integrate themselves politically and socially in an unpromising, uncompromising, and less optimistic world filled with deception and skepticism perpetuated by the corrupt media and government.
Linklater also points a critical and satirical finger on those who create their own pessimism. For instance, there is a scene where a young girl tells her friend who has a habit of wallowing in negative excuses in order to avoid appreciating the beauty of nature. She tells him: “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re what’s oppressive?”
Slackers is an insightful and didactic revelation of politics, media corruption, and generational differences of the late 20th century. The characters are sullenly insightful—not exploitive—which will be discussed later in the Dunham’s film. As the characters in The Graduate leaves with “now what?” after Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets the girl, Elaine Robinson (Katherine Ross), the Gen Xers leave with “what else can I do?” Linklater criticizes the endless wasting away.
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In the film’s final sequence an old man recites prophetic lines in a tape recorder: “The tragedy of life is that man is never free yet strives for what can never be.” But for the Gen Xers, there is still the freedom to think and make decisions. And as the film ends with a montage of Gen Xers appearing happy, they are left to figure out how they can manifest those emotions and be productive at the same time. When Linklater states in the beginning of the film, “every thought you have creates its own reality,” he brings the interior world to the exterior world through the power of dialogue. In all its fretfulness, there is freedom to think and create one’s own reality—positive or negative. From this, there is no need to simply “slack off.” Thus, Linklater offers a gentle nudge to his own generation to get moving and stop brooding.
Tiny Furniture (2010)
Lena Dunham’s film Tiny Furniture is another low budget “indie” film shot using a digital camera. Dunham wrote the screenplay and starred as the lead character. The majority of the film’s locale was shot in her mom’s very trendy and sleek Tribeca apartment derived from a Design within Reach catalogue—with a stark color palette (i.e., the white cabinets, bright lights, walls lined with endless bookshelves.) Most of the cast members consist of her family and friends. Lena Dunham is able to share her own vision of growing up in this milieu through her alter-ego, Aura (played by Dunham herself).
With the film’s overt examination of existential quandary on reasserting herself as a post-grad student of film, it is no doubt her film ultimately becomes the voice of her generation. It is an indulgent selfie comedy intermingled with awkward bouts of self-deprecation and self-parodying. Unlike the Linklater characters who are sullen and miserably pensive but manage to offer some insight, the characters in Tiny Furniture are self-driven and hyper-crass. It is devoid of any insight as it attempts to be provocatively “real.” My initial gatherings from Tiny Furniture are two recurring overemphasized themes that seem to plague Aura’s existence: ennui becomes the ultimate malady; sex becomes the ultimate initiation to life.
Tiny Furniture begins with Aura returning home from college. She is left with a You Tube video with nasty comments and a boyfriend who has recently dumped her. With no immediate job prospects in her field of study, she decides to live with her sister Nadine (also real life sister Grace Dunham) and mom Siri (Laurie Simmons) in her Tribeca apartment located in lower Manhattan New York.
When she returns home, her life is immediately juxtaposed with her family’s success that wounds her self-esteem even more so. Mom continues her life as a successful artistic photographer of tiny furniture. Her sister is Aura’s antithesis—physically thin, content, and certain about her direction in life as she and her mom are already looking into possible colleges. She is an honored literary talent and a perfect assistant to her mom. (Nadine is the “model” child—figuratively and literally. She serves as the model in her mom’s photographs.) Because Aura feels sub par in comparison to her family, Aura hopes to find some direction in her aimlessness by reading her mother’s journal.
In her desperate need to connect with people, she listens to her quirky British friend, Charlotte (Jemima Kirke), who helps her get an uninspiring, low paying job as a restaurant hostess. Newly single after a disappointing breaking up with her boyfriend, she instantly latches on to a man, Jeb (Alex Karpovsky), at party who is known for a You Tube video of him riding a child’s rockinghorse while reciting Nietzsche. Aura is eager to please him by offering him to stay with her at her mom’s apartment while her mom and sister are away visiting college campuses. He basically exploits her generosity by eating most of the food and over welcoming his stay. He has no interest in her whatsoever (not even sexually) and is willing to exploit her hospitality. Aura is either naively oblivious to this painful truth or chooses to dismiss it. As a result, this causes a rift between Aura and her mom when she returns home, as his presence becomes more intrusive. When Mom tries to establish boundaries on how her apartment should be run, Aura goes on a “woe-is-I” rant on how it has been difficult for her to make any type of adjustments—from jobs, friends, and relationships with men. Her mom later chides her of undeserved entitlement, feet- dragging restlessness, and mindless meandering.
While Linklater offers a balance between the mundane to the profound via dialogue, Durnham desperately gasp for a chuckle or a laugh through ineffectual humor or thoughtless sarcasm. Perhaps this is used to contribute to the film so-called realism about a disaffected young adult culture who is mainly about self-indulgence. This is clearly illustrated through the restaurant chef who tries to use Aura to get him some pills and stands her up when he asks her out; her freeloading “friend” and houseguest, and her friend with the British accent who indulges in watching Aura make one mistake after another. I did not care for any of the characters. They all seem to be disconnected from one another.
There is a annoying emptiness in Aura’s personality that is hoping to be quirky and unique—rather than poignant or comedic. Could this be a rehashing of Durhnam’s own personal journals about her insecurities? When there is potential for insight, it leads to nothingness as the conversation is truncated suddenly or withers in its typical unintelligible and unwitty drone. Because of this, everything appears awkwardly disjointed or fragmented. For instance, in the final sequence, Aura attempts to open up to her mother by disclosing that she has read her diary. This prompts her to inquire about the men in her mother’s life (perhaps to compare her relationships.) Her mother admits to Aura that her relationships were merely experimental. Suddenly, after there is some slight indication of reconciliation and understanding of generational differences between mother and daughter, the screen turns black and the film ends—not elliptically—but perplexingly abrupt.
In addition, Dunham’s multiple occasions for nudity is a desperate shot in endeavoring to authenticate her cinematic style or voice. Lena Dunham is not the ideal female beauty and is acutely aware of this. But she annoyingly shoves this in her narrative as part of its cinematic realism as well as its signature “indie-ness.” She makes it very clear that she has no qualms about disrobing or walking in front of the camera wearing only her underwear. Such gesture is a blatant rebellion against the perfect body type. And yes, we get the message plenty of times. Perhaps this is her way of trying to reassert her daring and shocking vision of 21st century feminine nouveau—yet it is cheaply achieved. The scenes are visually jarring without any genuine narrative context and narcissistically self-parodying. Dunham’s tendency to resort to shameless “shock value” is merely an old trick and a professional insecurity as a director. This goes the same with an awkward sex scene with her coworker that just happens out of nowhere—literally and figuratively—as it takes place inside the arch of an outdoor art sculpture. It was absurdly out of context.
What I do find impressive in Dunham’s work is her camera work in which it is mostly static. Symbolically, life is at a standstill. The mise en scène complements the blinding white photography of the modern apartment—which is where most of the scenes take place. Aura is meticulously placed in the mise en scène where she is the central figure—but ironically lost in the snapshots that consist of a shelf full of books and knick-knacks as a backdrop. Dunham captures shots of herself lying on the floor amongst tiny furniture models. Figuratively, she is tiny in the world of postgraduate student—insignificant and miniscule in social and familial stature—exploited in her joblessness and relationships with her so-called friends, and ignored by her family—partly due to her poor and misguided decisions. Unfortunately, such closed-form photography is not enough to hold the film together.
Is Tiny Furniture the millennial template of The Graduate gone awry? Dunham’s lackluster demand of the indie title makes it conscientiously genre-oriented—yet desperate and off-putting. There is no subtlety whatsoever. It makes it marginal in its own attempt for genuine artistry. The existential malady expressed in crass humor is nothing but a wandering 98 minutes of wasted reel time. In a 2014 interview in Esquire, she states: “As a little girl, I had been obnoxiously self-aware, irritatingly smug.” This personal dictum permeates throughout her film. In her attempt to turn off with her “obnoxious self-aware[ness]” (also translated as her overt self-obsession), makes film spectators want to turn her off.
Criterion Collection made a shameful mistake to release this film under their label. What were they thinking? Perhaps they think this is the voice of Millennials—but in reality, it couldn’t deliver. Criterion Collection should have exercised better judgment. This is an egregious error on their part. I’m still waiting for a better voice and an artist who is not about desperate indulgences.