This Is Jack’s Cinematic Credibility Going Straight To Hell

Those of you who take films seriously at all are now about to never take me seriously again.

That is because I am about to stand up and defend the teen flick, and since you’re all a bunch’a intellectual types with taste, you are about declare that after this admission, I most assuredly am NOT.

What is setting off tonight’s rant was tonight’s borrowed film, this one coming from Eugene and having sat on the pile for months on end, a little movie called Empire Records. In and of itself, I didn’t actually think that Empire Records was that great. I’m wondering if that’s because I’m suffering from a terminal case of Unhipness, or if it’s because the movie was genuinely bad. This one was directed by Allan Moyle who I doubt many people would recognize, but who I am eternally grateful to for directing Pump Up The Volume, which is 3/4 of the reason why I even watched this in the first place.

And it is Pump Up The Volume and 80′s films by John Hughes before he started choosing progressively younger subjects (I’m still waiting for him to announce his next project starring a fetus…) that really got me to thinking about teen films in general.

I repeat, this is your last chance, anyone who knows anything about film stop reading now as this will just make you angry.

I’m arguing from the empathetic perspective. Speaking demographically, as it were. Let’s throw a few things right out the window right now: Forget discussions about technical merit, I already know these are not gorgeously composed art films with stunning mise en scene. From a philosophical standpoint, throw out the cosmic perspective. The Grand Scheme Of Things doesn’t enter into this, since most teens don’t give a flying fuck about that.

Here’s what you CAN keep in the house after all those argumentative ground rules have been thrown out and forced to get a job and their own place.

Imagine you are sixteen.

That’s it. Just imagine, or remember, if you still can, what it is to be 16 years old in North America. You are reasonably intelligent, you are frustrated, you are emotional, egocentric, you understand the world is FUBAR and yet are powerless to do anything about it, you are experiencing something like infancy all over again where everything is new, except now it’s not learning to walk or speak, it’s learning that there’s a world outside your neighborhood and that maybe toys aren’t the final answer to happiness. Maybe you are even starting to read something outside comic books and required reading at school and have discovered names like Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac, Flaubert and Ayn Rand (God forbid…) but you are starting to realize it’s a big world out there, and YOU are NOT the center of it. There are doubts. Insecurities. Peer pressure is starting to take hold and your parents are no longer wise guardians but flawed human beings who you deem hopelessly out of touch with what’s going on in the world. You’ve bought your first music, are making those first trembling steps to actually trying define or discover who you are on your own, and it is a big confusing mess. And, most important of all, NO ONE UNDERSTANDS…

That’s the big key, that sense of alienation and that no one actually gets it.

Then, if it’s the 80′s, John Hughes comes along and starts throwing out stuff like The Breakfast Club. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles, Some Kind Of Wonderful. Or maybe you just watched Christian Slater channelling Jack Nicholson in Heathers or Pump Up The Volume. Or the antics of the Welton boys in Dead Poets Society. Or Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything.You suddenly don’t care about Orson Welles and deep focus if you’ve even heard of him and that, you don’t care about auteurist theory, shot composition or whether matte lines are visible around certain effects shots.

What you DO care about is that here are people that are eerily like yourself or people you know. And they’re going through things you have, or have seen. More importantly, they’re feeling, saying and DOING things you’ve thought or wanted to say or do. They are real to you because they GET IT. They’ve been through it, or are going through it over the course of 90 minutes and THEY UNDERSTAND.

Suddenly it’s there. Sympathy. Understanding. A compact established between you and movie because it spoke to you in a way you related to, in a way that mattered, and maybe once it’s done, you’re not quite the same person again, if only because you know you’re not alone, and because someone just went through something familiar to you, only with music and drama and less complications so that the right thing was a much clearer thing to see and do.

For most teenagers, there’s no point or no interest in worrying about the state of the world. The wars, the starvation, the rampant diseases or political power plays that they aren’t even old enough to intervene in. They are still self absorbed, still trying to figure out who they are before they can worry about what the world is, and because of that, there’s no point in trying to make them feel guilty. Telling a teenager that people are starving in Africa or that wars are tearing the middle east apart in order to guilt them into forgetting their own problems will not work. It’s only when a teenager works through and SOLVES their problem that they are in a better position to understand the world, their role in it, and what they can do to make it a better place. Movies like the ones I mentioned above try to do this in some small way. By inspiring, informing, giving courage, or simple understanding that they are not alone in their confusion and they can get through it.

Pump Up The Volume was a cathartic film for me. One that I took the trouble to go out and get as a personal VHS copy way, WAY back when. Same with many of the above mentioned films, which are now slowly making their way to my DVD collection. I could relate big time to Christian Slater’s angst in Pump Up The Volume. Here was this shy, alienated kid, completely outcast by his school, too smart for his own good with a real mouth on him, and he responded in the way available to him. He started up a pirate radio station and he ranted. He used the airwaves to carry his words and feelings. I ended up using writing. But despite what most of the doubtless enraged film buffs who might still be reading this would say about its commercial aspect, it’s lack of aesthetic, its pandering to the ignorant unwashed masses and its fantasy play aspect of giving power to the powerless, it did something important. At least in my case, it gave me on more reason to carry on and want to be heard. It did not talk down to me. It did not make me feel stupid (Except of course when more scholarly critical types would pan it, that always made me feel rather dumb about liking it), and it spoke to me at my level because it indirectly (Like so many of those teen flicks) taught me a lesson I throw in everyone’s face now when they start feeling bad because they’re worried about a problem they have that they think is stupid or unimportant in the Grand Scheme Of Things.

Pain is pain.

Just because it’s not happening to millions of people, or because it doesn’t involve bloodshed, that doesn’t diminish the fact that it IS pain, it IS happening and it IS hurting you in some way. Pain in not something who’s value (Or lack of) can be measured statistically, and so all those guiltstricken first world teenagers who weren’t losing limbs in minefields or getting killed by opposing forces from across the bank finally had someone (In the form of these movies) step up to the plate and tell them “You don’t have to feel bad about having problems that don’t involve news bulletins and film at 11. Problems are problems, and we know you hurt because of them. Here. Watch this. Maybe it’ll help.”

Every film, not matter how bad, or how commercial has, at some stage in it, some potential for art. Maybe in the planning stage, then lost as it went to shoot. Maybe in one lovely shot that appears for a second, and then its mired in its own mediocrity once again for the next two hours. But every film, at some stage, can be art. That is, to provoke thought, to provoke feeling, to inspire, to move, to show us who we could be, or want to be, and encourage us to realize that.

And teen films get to a very vulnerable segment of the public at a very dangerous and exciting time, and they are one of the few artistic outlets that they have that don’t talk down to them, treat them with dignity and encourage them to do the Good Thing or Right Thing. More often than not, these filmic attempts usually fail. But for every failure, there’s always one or two that the film spoke to. And maybe did a little good for. And maybe even helped to encourage to better themselves and, ultimately the world.

THAT’S why I think that teen flicks are a good thing and we need more of them. Maybe I’m not the target audience anymore, but I still remember what it’s like and when I see those moments when the cast and crew of the film are reaching out, trying to ease confusion and loneliness and provide–if not answers–encouragement and courage to go find them…

Well… okay, if all you film guys are still reading this, the comments link is below. Start your flames…