“The New Lost Boys (and Girls):
Showcasing Family Formations in Emerging Adulthood Through Slacker Cinema”
Laura Nicole Humeniuk (10395261) Hoogte Kadijk 173C 1018 BJ Amsterdam Phone: 0614 858 732
Supervisor: Dr. Eef Masson
Second Reader: Dr. Catherine Lord
MA Thesis
Film Studies Department University of Amsterdam Word Count: 19002 21 June 2013
Introduction---4 Chapter 1: From Sibling to Parent: Challenging Family Roles and Structures---10 Chapter 2: “We're Like a Club!”: Intimacy and In-Group Bonding---18 Chapter 2.1- “Where to Now? The Supermarket?”: Family Life and Everydayness--18 Chapter 2.2- “You, Me, and Five Bucks”: Inclusion Through Dialogue---26 Chapter 2.3- “You Don't Even Live Here!”: Examinations of the Use of
Family Space---30 Chapter 3: “You Know, In a Parallel Universe...”: The Complexities of In-Group Dating----37 Conclusion---42
This thesis deals with what I refer to as “lost boys (and girls)” films. I am essentially examining the formation of surrogate families by emerging adults (categorized by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett as those approximately within the ages of 18 to 25) in American films of the early 1990s. “Surrogate families” within this age demographic have been described by journalist Ethan Watters as “urban tribes” who elect to delay marriage and instead form families among their peers. I focus on films of the early 1990s both because research on this life phase began to gain prominence at this point in history and also because films exhibiting this theme began to emerge in a cluster during this period (many of which are typically classified as “slacker” films).
To analyze this group of films as a distinct trope I begin by exploring how structural formations of kin-based “families” as they are represented in these films deconstruct our idea of normative family roles. Following this, I discuss the construction and depiction of intimacy through three separate lenses. Firstly, I explore the film texts using Andrew Klevan's concept of “everydayness.” Secondly, I posit that dialogue can be used to create a sense of inclusion or intimacy within these “families.” This chapter ends with an exploration of how the house or apartment as structures can signify family, both through providing a safe space during development, and through acting as a space to be outgrown or “shed” once one moves into full adulthood.
Finally, I spend time deliberating over the problematic nature of the representation of
male/female platonic relationships among young people in this corpus of films. Through positioning the protagonists as siblings, parents, and children, complexities and incestuous undertones arise should the protagonists become romantically involved within the narratives.
Through this thesis I hope to highlight the manner in which these films express concerns over the relationship between youth and family. In addition, I hope to offer a fresh approach to studying “slacker” genre through positing that the protagonists, far from being ambivalent slackers, are adaptable role-players who are methodically collecting skills that will help them navigate adulthood when they are ready for it.
In 2010, a New York Times reporter asked, quite simply, “What is it about 20-somethings?” (Marantz Henig). This question headlined her article about society's fascination with the younger generation, and what this demographic appeared to represent. Since then, newspapers and magazines have published articles weekly about the current crop of twentysomethings, nicknamed “millennials” or “Generation Y,” and scholars, sociologists, and parents worry about this generation and the wayward lives they live following their high school years (Stein). There exists a marked difference between the life course that was predominantly followed half a century ago and that which is followed today. While in 1950 it was typically expected that a young adult would live at home during their high school years and get married relatively soon after graduating, the length of time between when one graduates high school and when one gets married (if at all) has seen a consistent stretching (Glick “Fifty Years”).
This fascination with “twentysomethings” in the 2000s is hardly a new phenomenon. This was evidenced by a recent rebuttal to a TIME magazine critique of Generation Y, in which journalist Elspeth Reeve dug through various magazine archives to illustrate that our society's concern over “hopeless youth” runs deeper than simply the current crop of young people fresh out of adolescence. Though Reeve's focus is more on the tendency of older generations to label twentysomethings as narcissistic, what is pertinent for my purposes is the very notion that there is something that differentiates twentysomethings from the older adult demographic.
Psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett has taken note of the shift in the development and progression through life stages of young people that has been tracked by Glick and others. Arnett, whose research began in the 1990s, has taken his fascination with those between the ages of 18 and 25 to a point of isolating and declaring these years a previously unacknowledged life phase sandwiched between adolescence and adulthood, which he has deemed “emerging adulthood.” Arnett draws similarities between this life phase and adolescence as it was described by G. Stanley Hall a century ago, which consists of sensation-seeking, susceptibility to the media, and a heavy reliance on peer relationships.
Arnett has acknowledged Kenneth Keniston's concepts which suggested a similar idea in the 1960s, though he believes that he provides a novel approach due to the fact that he “considers the ’60s a unique moment, when young people were rebellious and alienated in a way they’ve never been before or since” (Henig). Arnett has thus posited that the youth of approximately the 1980s onward differ markedly in their development than youth before this time period, due to the societal context in which they grew up. Arnett's term “emerging adulthood” can therefore be argued to apply to members of
Generation X and onwards.
The fascination with this period between moving out on one's own and establishing one's own family is one that has also been addressed by journalist Ethan Watters. Watters has coined the term “urban tribes” to describe the formations of young people at a “post-college/pre-family” stage who develop family-like relationships (18). Watters began his research on friend collectives around the year 2000 in response to a bevy of proclamations about young people delaying marriage which lamented the younger generation's straying from family values (“The Way We Live Now”). Watters determined that far from having lost a sense of family and connectivity, his generation is simply expressing these values through alternative family formations.1
Around the early 1990s, films began to address and depict this young demographic in a similar light. Representations of this “new” demographic found a home within what became known as the “slacker” genre which was born upon the release of Richard Linklater's 1991 film of this name. Slacker films, which encompass a diverse selection of films from Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992) to Kevin Smith's Clerks of 1994, typically showcase protagonists who stand at a “middle ground between passive incubation in front of television re-runs or immersion in the works of Nietzsche” (Elliott 4). Protagonists of this genre of film represent a generation of youth in transition who feel very much removed from authority and the inner-workings of the society they inhabit.
This “separatedness” featured in slacker films of the 1990s was observed both on-screen and off, as changes in nuclear family structure continued to take effect – divorce rates, for example, rose steadily from the 1960s through to the mid-1980s (Glick, “The Family Life Cycle” 125). In discussing young adults of the 1990s as a generation, Peter Hanson has suggested that Generation X exists as a demographic that was forced to grow up quickly and “at worst parent themselves” (Hanson 11). He goes on to explain that:
The ability to draw strength from unconventional family units is a key topic for Gen-X filmmakers. This is unsurprising, given the number of Gen Xers whose homes were cleaved by divorce, and given how many were raised by two working parents- meaning that as children, these Gen Xers often were left to fend for themselves or commiserate with peers while mom and dad were at the office. (44)
While not all of the filmmakers within my corpus fit in the demographic of Generation X, they all
1 Watters published his preliminary text in 2001, at that point identifying himself within the demographic of people within
the age range of 25 and 39. This would arguably mark him as a member of Generation X: the same generation that Arnett began by discussing, and the same demographic as those represented in my corpus of films. Generation X constitutes those born between 1961 and 1981, approximately (Howe & Strauss in S. Ortner 416).
appear to have captured and represented the implications of forced independence and premature adulthood which gained prevalence within this generation and extended beyond it.
Inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin and Stuart Hall, George Lipsitz (author of Time Passages:
Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990)) has commented that media objects “inherit part of the historical consciousness of their authors and audiences” and “seek legitimacy with audiences by effectively representing diverse aspects of social life including memories of past experiences,
current contradictions, and potential sources of division and opposition” (68). This corpus of films does appear to have “inherited the consciousness,” or rather scepticism, surrounding the notion of family in the late 1980s through the 1990s. The need to find family elsewhere and the desire to live within the bounds of a familial community exist as prominent themes within this corpus of films, and can be seen as a critique or a commentary on the so-called “disintegration” of the conventional nuclear family structure that had been growing in society since the 1960s.
The characters within the corpus of films I will discuss appear to be heavily entrenched in a state of insecurity and self-doubt, not unlike that which one would see in adolescence. Additionally, characters within this genre tend to develop a heavy reliance upon others in their peer group. It is this heavy reliance that lies at the crux of this paper, for it prompts a discussion on how this reliance is articulated, and what the implications of it could be. I would argue that the interactions between characters within these films and the means in which they are represented are symptomatic of family-like relationships among these on-screen urban tribes. As such, I will be exploring how and to what extent these family-like relationships take shape.
The suggestion of alternative family relationships being represented in film is not a new one. Mark J. Charney, author of the text “'It's a Cold World Out There': Redefining the Family in
Contemporary American Film,” argued in 1996 that there has been a shift towards a narrative trope that he refers to as the “extended family film” trope, which marks a transformation in the representation of families in the cinema. Charney has cited The Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) as one of the early exemplifications of this, also mentioning a diverse range of films from The Big Chill (1983) to The Breakfast Club (1985) to St. Elmo's Fire (1985).
Charney has postulated that the formulation of the theme of the “new family” began around 1980, directly coinciding with rising divorce rates which led to “a nation of people . . . [finding] the prospect of a surrogate family both comforting and entertaining” (40-41). He contrasts extended family films of this decade with earlier group films by noting that his corpus of films focus on relationships which, in addition to containing more members, aren't reactionary or circumstantial in nature, instead
being based on “love, concern, [and] affection – not personal gain or temporary sexual gratification” (41).
Based on the parallels between his research and my own, I am going to use his research as a point of departure. For while Charney's observations are useful, I believe that his corpus is much too broad. I would argue that a group of high-school aged children (as in The Breakfast Club, The Last Picture Show (1971), and American Grafitti (1973)) function and interact quite differently from a group of more mature adults (The Big Chill, Return of the Secaucus Seven, Steel Magnolias (1989)) and, notably, differently from friend collectives during one's twenties. I would like to posit that the representations of friends as family units can more pertinently be explored within films which showcase protagonists who fit within Arnett's developmental stage of “emerging adulthood.” With films like The Return of the Secaucus Seven, the protagonists largely already have families outside of the group; they are merely convening for an annual get-together. With films such as St. Elmo's Fire (1985) – which, notably, Charney does include in his corpus – and the aforementioned Singles, we gain a sense that these groups of friends are all one another has.
In this paper I would like to extrapolate on Charney's aforementioned ideas by exploring family relationships of twentysomethings in the 1990s, specifically within the slacker genre. Due to Arnett's research which suggests that the age range between 18 and 25 exists (at least since the 1980s) as an additional “coming-of-age” life phase, I became curious about the role of the family during this
important stage of life. My underlying objective, then, is to answer the question: how do friends create surrogate families in the adult coming-of-age film?
My own corpus parameters, in contrast to Charney's, include only “twentysomething”
collectives of friends and have a strong emphasis on dialogue and interaction between the ensemble set of protagonists. I wish to examine how the 1990s saw a blossoming of the trend of films featuring protagonists at this life phase. Thus, while I will look at St. Elmo's Fire (1985) as a fore-runner to this film trope, I will largely be focusing on four films of the 1990s to answer and illustrate this question: Singles, Reality Bites (1994), Kicking and Screaming (1995), and Some Girl (1998).2 While the corpus of films that depict the friends-as-family theme is much larger, I believe that predominantly using these five films will provide a richer illustration of my argumentation in allowing me to examine each film in depth.
2 St. Elmo's Fire can be argued as distinct from the other films mentioned due not only to its earlier release, but also due to
the fact that, strictly speaking, the characters within this film are not “slackers” per se; we do see several of these characters express career ambitions. Given that the primary focus of the film is on the interpersonal relationships between the characters and due to its portrayal of youthful vulnerability, however, it was felt that the film still carried the same underlying spirit and can thus be argued as a sort of prototype for other young ensemble films that would follow.
In conducting such a research project, it might be prudent to begin with a working definition of how I intend to discuss the term “family.” To attempt to define “family” is a daunting task due its plethora of implications; there exists an entire field of study devoted to the examination of the changing terms of the family. Sociologists Gubrium and Holstein, whose text What is Family? proves an
invaluable source regarding this shifting and rich term, suggest that the term might be best understood as an adjective, or descriptor, as opposed to a noun. One can therefore find commonalities among families when looking at the term “family” conceptually: in considering the concept as an adjective, structure and function become the thing that all families have in common (2). This is how I intend to approach my material; through looking primarily at the close functioning of these intertwined groups and how this functioning connotes family. This functioning ranges from the provision of care and trust to the sharing of sentimental love. According to Gubrium and Holstein, “If we consider family to be as much an idea about the connection between people as it is a concrete set of social relations, we are less inclined to inquire about 'the' family as we are to ask about how family, as an idea (without the 'the') is used to specify people's relations with others” (37). As such, the term 'family' as an idea can be used broadly beyond biological ties.
I will be addressing the question of how friend groups function as families from three perspectives. In the first chapter, I look at family structures themselves, and the manners in which characters embody maternal, paternal, or sibling roles in relation to one another. Protagonists within my corpus rarely fit within one role within their surrogate families, instead swapping roles as they see fit; it is to this end that I shall argue that these texts deconstruct conventional nuclear family roles. While films within my corpus often get placed within the “slacker” genre which typically feature protagonists described as “ambivalent” and exhibiting “chosen aimlessness” (Elliott 5), I believe the variety of familial roles absorbed and demonstrated by these characters suggest something far more pertinent within these films. The protagonists, far from being ambivalent slackers, are represented as adaptable role-players; not simply sitting about, but methodically collecting skills that will help them navigate adulthood when they are ready for it.
In the second chapter I examine the family as an entity separate from the rest of society, or as a “superpersonality.” At this point I will utilize Andrew Klevan's concept of “the everyday” to suggest that everydayness and seemingly mundane tasks can be used to signify intimacy and family life. From here I will look at the way dialogue can be used to allude to the fact that families have their own sort of language, before finally addressing how space is used within these films to indicate intimacy and to highlight the perimeters of who is and is not part of the family.
In my final chapter I will change gear and look particularly at the fact that the “surrogate families” within my corpus contain both men and women. Platonic friendships between the sexes in film remains relatively novel, both in films during the 1990s and in present day; as Harry (Billy Crystal) famously told Sally (Meg Ryan) in Rob Reiner's 1989 When Harry Met Sally..., “[in opposite-sex friendships] the opposite-sex part always gets in the way.” While my corpus of films appears to contest this on the surface, I will examine the problematic nature of these relationships more closely in considering the family framework that they are set within, in particular looking at how these relationships might be read when several characters within the “family” become romantically linked.
In his writing on independent cinema Carter Michael Soles, though admitting the term is rich in complexity and meaning, has made the claim that “Slackerism could be seen as the delinquency of the 1990s, inflected into a slightly older (twenty- to thirtysomething) arrested-development age bracket” (22-3). In looking at surrogate families from the perspectives outlined above, I hope to both allow for a new reading of “slacker films,” but also to shed light on the manner in which these films express concerns over the status of youth and family during the intermediary stage between adolescence and adulthood.
Rory Kelly's Some Girl opens with a rather surreal close-up image of a woman with a halo of red hair and angel wings running down the middle of a street. Her face has black smudges on it and her white dress is askew, and based on a fire engine's urgent movement in the opposite direction the
audience can ascertain that the angel is running away from the fire. The woman is Claire (Marisa Ribisi), and this first image speaks volumes about the story that is about to unfold. The juxtaposition of purity (the angel wings, the white dress) with filth (the black-smeared face) could be read in a bevy of ways. On the one hand, Claire has the infantile quality of a child who has been playing in the dirt, but from a different perspective, she appears to be a grown-up trying to cling to her childhood and run away from impending adulthood. To combine these readings is to place Claire in a sort of middle-ground or purgatory between childhood and adulthood.
Claire's friend April (Juliette Lewis) is in a similar position. April comes off as a sexually-forward, confident woman. She dresses provocatively, she wears a lot of make-up, and she gets what she wants. We know she is sexually promiscuous because on several separate occasions, the camera shows her waking up in a bed next to a different man. In each instance, the nude April stretches and groggily gets dressed before leaving. These “morning after” scenes paint an oddly infantilized image of April in two manners. First, April's nudity as she climbs out of the cocoon of the bed covers each morning almost echo a baby freeing herself from the womb. This is emphasized by her bewildered expressions and ginger use of her limbs as she toddles out of the house.
What is perhaps more significant in the morning after scenes is that the other protagonists in the film take turns picking her up from her one night stands. Each morning as April climbs into one of her friend's vehicles there is almost a sense that she is being picked up from a sleepover party by a parent. The close camera shots within the confined space of the cars allow us to see her free of make-up on the mornings after her exploits, making her look particularly young as she sits quietly and moodily in the passenger seat of the various vehicles. The friends all attempt to navigate the space between acting as simply a friend or sibling, and lecturing April on the dangers associated with her casual encounters.
It is this navigation between varying roles that I wish to focus on. Representations of
romanticized family life – with notable versions being television's Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963) or The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966) – have in the past clearly articulate and indeed, propagate familial roles. The role of the father is clearly defined as being that of a bread-winner who is there to maintain discipline among children; the role of the mother, to nurture. Siblings, according to these narratives, toe the line between being intimate versions of playmates or at worst, nuisances.
Stephanie Coontz, an academic in the field of family studies, has attempted to expose the mythologized American family of the 1950s in The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992), in part pinning the blame of romanticism and false idealization on consistent harmonious family representations such as those mentioned above. Interestingly, many contemporary narratives set in this romanticized era of the 1950s attempt to echo Coontz's point through deconstructing or
unravelling the idealized facade of these fictional families.3 The breaking down of codified family roles – the father as the source of strength and the mother, of compassion – in television and film narratives has been a gradual process, and the films within my corpus make an important contribution in helping to break down these outdated codes.
Within my corpus of films, while my foremost claim is that groups of friends form alternative families, I would further argue that a further shift in family dynamics is seen through the very manner of “putting on different hats,” so to speak; or, occupying various functions within the structure of the family. The flexibility of roles allows each member to “try on” a different role as the situation calls for it. Consequently, the fact that a character may shift from a “mother” role to a “sibling” role also challenges the way we perceive these roles and exposes the very way in which these roles are indeed fabricated and malleable. It is in this manner that these films attempt to critique or “undo” these codifications.
Watters has discussed the various roles and functions at work within urban tribes, noting that while some members naturally take on “innovator” or “party planner” roles, others function as “children” in this group while still others take on “guardian” or “mother figure” roles (46-48). The acknowledgement of grown “children” within adult group friendships deserves closer examination as it highlights the manner in which “urban tribes” run parallel to traditional nuclear family structures in their inclusion of both parent and children figures. Watters has posited that while having a child figure within an urban tribe may seem undesirable due to the constant care and maintenance they require, the benefits outweigh the cost as ultimately, the child brings the group together; providing for the child results in a “challenging, and ultimately enjoyable, group project” (47).
I believe the urban tribes within my films also appear to value the “child” figure, but for an altogether separate reason. In Some Girl, we never see the other protagonists speaking fondly about April's latest adventures. What we do see are the rest of the protagonists coming to April's aid again and again, refusing to give up on her. In a sense, the grown-up child (April, in this case) is serving as a sort of training for when the group members will have children of their own. The members of the group can
3 Pleasantville (1998) is a notable example, or more recently, television's Mad Men (2007).
try on the role of sibling with April and simply drive her home without judgement or perhaps even gossip about her exploits. They may try on the conventional “mother” role and make sure she's
emotionally okay, or they may try on the “father” role and sternly speak to her about her actions; again, through addressing these “conventional” modes of representation or codifications, they are able to call attention to how pliable and easily broken down they are. The ability to play dress-up with different family roles links back to the opening scene of the film. Elsaesser has posited that crucial elements of a film are exhibited within its opening sequence, guiding the audience towards meaningful elements and telling the viewer “how [the film text] wants to be read and needs to be understood” (116). This is clearly the case in Some Girl in the image of Claire running away (from adulthood and responsibility); this sentiment (the fear or isolation and adulthood) is echoed throughout the film, and the
representation of her urban tribe within this film very much embodies a transitional middle-ground between adolescence and adulthood.
Shifting into different positions within the familial structure suggests that one of the roles of the family unit within this corpus is to provide an intermediary experimental space until one is ready to form one's own family or otherwise enter into the world of adult responsibilities. Thus, while these “surrogate” families do provide roles and responsibilities common to most biological families (such as the provision of support, both emotional and financial), they carry the additional feature of allowing each member a multiplicity of non-gender-specific roles so that each might develop the tools and skills to move beyond this unit and, if it is desired, create one's own adult family in future.4
Child Parenting Child
The experiences of these characters during their childhood appear to have had a marked effect on their development, or lack thereof. At the climax of St. Elmo's Fire, Jules (Demi Moore), who has feigned the appearance of being confident in her adulthood, experiences a crisis. She sits shivering in the middle of her large red room, which is bare save for some broken oversized toys littering the floor. Much like April of Some Girl, Jules' unexpectedly nude face allows the viewer to see her stripped of the hardened, sophisticated mask that her make-up creates. Jules' smallness and consequently, her
4
While it might be tempting at this point to speculate over the implication that in these films adulthood is only reached once one establishes one's own family and thus, maintain a very conservative ideology regarding adulthood, this is not the case throughout my corpus. While Reality Bites and Singles and to some extent Some Girl (through the fact that April finally “settles” with one man) do convey the monogamous heterosexual pairing as a means of growing up, they and other films within the corpus also suggest other implications of adulthood, such as moving into one's own apartment, deciding on a career, and simply standing on one's own two feet.
vulnerability, are emphasized by the magnitude of empty space that surrounds her in this scene. We, the viewer, feel compelled to reach out to her, to take up some of that empty space that surrounds her so that she is not alone. While the rest of the film predominantly avoids extraneous space surrounding the characters within the camera frame (which will be elaborated upon later), this sudden exaggeration of empty space through the use of a long shot seems all the more disarming, as though we, the viewers, have suddenly been distanced from Jules and the other characters and are just as alone. The use of colours – particularly the billowing baby blue drapes in a pale pink room in the initial shot of the interior of Jules' apartment – and the toys further suggest a regression to childhood, or possibly that childhood was never left behind to begin with. In a scene in which she is already infantilized, she weeps to Billy (Rob Lowe) about the love she never received as a child.
In Women's Friendship in Literature (1980), Janet Todd notes that a secure attachment in which a child is allowed a certain sense of autonomy while still retaining support of the mother will lead to the child being able to form positive future relationships in her adult life(3; 196). In her analysis of literary texts, she contrasts this with abrupt or severed relationships with mothers, which ultimately result in one's inability to form healthy future relationships. By “unhealthy” relationships Todd is referring to issues of dependency or lack of trust. This is clearly the situation at hand in regards to Jules of St. Elmo's Fire. Without proper nurturance during her childhood, Jules chooses to restrict her
encounters with men to brief flings, and is unable to trust even those closest to her enough to admit that she has lost her job and is not really, as she puts it, a “together woman of the '80s.” By the end of the film, her friends have proven that they care about her through supplying her with the support that she did not experience growing up, thus giving her a “second chance” at having a family to rely on – and through this family's support, she will ultimately develop into an autonomous adult woman.
A neglected or ambivalent parent-child relationship such as that of Jules demonstrates one plausible reason for the fact that the protagonists within my corpus are desperate for replacement parent figures while simultaneously attempting to achieve their own independence. But the notion of having to parent oneself and seeking out alternative parent figures is not restricted to simply this one film; it is exhibited in nearly all of the films within my corpus5. In Reality Bites, Lelaina (Winona Ryder), one of the core four protagonists who spends the duration of the film struggling to find her way out of the maze of emerging adulthood, reveals that she had to take on the parent role growing up. This is
5 Though relationships with biological parents aren't largely explored in Singles, Elliott argues that in this film the
protagonists' scepticism towards institutions such as marriage are in part attributed to dysfunctional upbringings (48-50). Additionally, though Claire of Some Girl does not explicitly discuss with her friends the stilted relationship she had with her parents, her one brief, distanced encounter with them indicates a sense of removal or lack of warmth.
accentuated in a brief scene in which she goes out to dinner with her parents and their new respective significant others and is forced to act as peacemaker between them, attempting to placate both parents while in desperate need of a parent figure herself. Similarly, in Grover (Josh Hamilton) and Jane's (Olivia d'Abo) discussion of their parents in Kicking and Screaming, they admit that the support they get from their parents now is really only their attempt at “paying for early neglect.”
As was mentioned in the introduction, Hanson has argued that self-parenting was not an
uncommon practice for Gen Xers growing up due to a variety of sociological factors ranging from high divorce rates to both parents working.6 These conditions during one's formative years perhaps sheds light on why this generation developed a distrust for authority figures (Elliott 4) and further, why they might be inclined to seek out advice and guidance from those within their own age demographic. To return to the scene of Jules in her bedroom, it is quite poignant that it is only Billy who is able to enter Jules' apartment. With Leslie (Ally Sheedy) banging on the door from the hallway of the apartment and all of the male protagonists rattling the metal bars blockading the window, Jules' apartment is turned into a childhood refuge7. Billy, who is affectionately referred to as “Billy the Kid” by the others, is the one who manages to overcome the boundary. Novelist Thomas Wolfe popularized the phrase “you can't go home again” in discussing how one can never really revisit something from the past with clear accuracy or the same frame of mind. Would it be a stretch to suggest that Billy is the only one to enter Jules' home because he, still of a childlike mentality, is the only who still can go home? The rest of the characters, though far from full-fledged adults, have moved far enough beyond childhood to no longer be able to understand it the way Billy does. Regardless of the reason for Billy being able to break through Jules' door, his stepping up to support and comfort Jules in this scene – whether it be understood as parent comforting child or sibling reassuring sibling – once again demonstrates the veritable game of musical chairs that the protagonists play in terms of their role within the family.
Depicting Familial Roles Through Parody
The term “adult supervision” takes on an alternative meaning through the fact that it is handled with humour in Reality Bites. The core group of four friends in this film, all having grown up in dysfunctional home environments, appear to understand “parenting” only insofar as it has been represented through pop culture depictions and consequently, any attempts at feigning adulthood or
6 While Hanson has chosen to focus on this particular generation, these conditions appear to have continued into the
present day.
7 The concept of the apartment as both barrier and refuge will be explored more in depth in the next chapter.
parenting one another within this film are made in jest. When Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) helps Sammy (Steve Zahn) practice how he will come out as gay to his mother, she performs a particularly
exaggerated masquerade of a maternal figure. Additionally, when Lelaina walks in on her friends all smoking in the living room, she scolds them in a jokingly deep voice “you guys better not be inhaling,” mimicking a generic paternal figure.
This latter scene in particular is wrought with parent, child, and sibling masquerade, and as such I wish to address it from four points; through its extra-textual meaning derived from the television show the characters watch, through the placement of of the characters, through the nature of mimicking popular culture depictions of family, and through considering the intent of parody, or the use of camp.
Before Lelaina walks into the room, Troy (Ethan Hawke), Vickie, and Sammy are all watching One Day At a Time on television. The decision to have this particular television show playing in the scene is interesting in that firstly, the plot of the show centres around an unconventional family
structure featuring a mother, two daughters, and their male superintendent who plays a sort of surrogate father role to the two daughters. This acknowledgement of shifting norms in family structures, and the paternal “masquerade” that Dwayne Schneider (the superintendent, played by Pat Harrington Jr.) plays, helps to both emphasize and normalize the “family” of Troy, Sammy and Vickie who sit watching the episode. Secondly, the series aired from 1975-1984, which sets it directly in the time period in which these characters would have been children. As the three lounge on sofas and the floor, one gains a sense that they have reverted back to childhood through this nostalgic choice of a television re-run. Susan Crozier has proposed that “One might . . . say that the ideal of the sitcom is always the rerun, its reception marked by affective dislocation and the inevitable recall of an earlier moment of viewing” (105). She explains that, in addition to the viewing of sitcoms being embedded in everyday life and the domestic sphere (105), “in the experience of re-watching, the linear progression of time breaks up as past, present, and fantasy collide and the favourite programme becomes a lens through which we seem to see the children we were” (104). In this scene in Reality Bites, the three characters watching television are able to share both present and fantasy in this equation and as such, partially see themselves and one another as “the children [they] were.”
The seated positions of Sammy, Vickie, and Troy is also pertinent, as it means that when Lelaina enters the room she is “bigger” than them; that is to say, they look upwards at her from the position a child would. This placement of characters in positions that distort or emphasize size difference is used on several occasions throughout the film. In a scene in which Michael (Ben Stiller) enters Lelaina's apartment to pick her up for a date, her group of friends is seated on the floor as he
walks in, positioning him as “bigger” and by implication, more adult. In a scene in Food Mart in which Lelaina, Sammy, and Vickie dance about excitedly to the radio, Troy stands separately in the
foreground, thus making him “bigger.” In In each instance, the character who is positioned as the “adult” in that particular scenario is placed in opposition to the “children” through a size difference suggested by the positioning of the characters.
The emphasis on Troy, Vickie and Sammy's “childlike” position in the smoking scene allows one to read the three as siblings in opposition to Lelaina's fatherly role . The three, particularly Vickie and Sammy, engage in childlike, affectionate play as Lelaina looks on; when Sammy, in halted,
younger-brother intonations, reveals Vickie's exciting news to Lelaina, an indignant Vickie responds by hitting him with a pillow. This regression to childhood interactions substantiates Lelaina's role as the adult in this situation while also implying a sibling-like bond between the three “children” in this scene.
The delivery of Lelaina's line (“you guys better not be inhaling”) bears particular interest, as it emphasizes that attempts at parenting amongst the young friends is done with an edge of sarcasm or parody; it appears almost as though they are mimicking parents they have seen on one of their television shows. Their game of make-believe involving these roles is poignant as most of these characters have not experienced positive role models growing up; they are simply performing codified versions of parents. Similar to the scenarios discussed in Some Girl and St. Elmo's Fire, the characters are in a sense preparing themselves for a future which might at some point include children of their own.
Beyond this, though, one might consider an additional purpose of Lelaina's parody. We the viewers recognize it as a parody due to her deepened intonation but further, we identify it as a paternal parody. In this sense, there exists a doubling of representation within the scene – that of Lelaina, the depiction of an average young adult “slacker” as played by Winona Ryder, but additionally, Ryder as Lelaina as Father. This level of masquerade could arguably be linked on some levels to camp
performance; the Oxford English Dictionary defines “camp” as “deliberately exaggerated and theatrical in style, typically for humorous effect.” In David Bergman's Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, he argues that “[c]amp, by focusing on the outward appearance of role, implies that roles . . . are superficial – a matter of style” (24). While it may seem like a bit of a stretch to equate Lelaina/Ryder's father impersonation with camp, Bergman's argumentation rings true in that through exaggeration, the arbitrary nature of roles can be exposed. We have ingrained in our subconscious an idea of what a father stereotypically is and what he behaves like, and thus we the viewers are able to distinguish between Ryder's role as Lelaina, and her further representation of the Father.
The fact that a father figure is now a personification that is clearly identifiable and thus,
“parodiable” suggests a collective or mass conception of what a conventional paternal figure was in the past, and the humour lies in the notion that this single idea of a father is outdated, or its traditional meaning has been blurred. Fathers no longer fit one specific mold, thus the “traditional” early concept of a strict, overbearing, masculine paternal head of house no longer holds up as the one idea of who can father.
Lelaina's “fatherness” continues when, with the news that Vickie has been promoted at work, she hastily grabs her video camera to record the moment. While this action is rationalized through the fact that Lelaina is a filmmaker (who is making a documentary “about people trying to find their own identity without having any real role models or heroes or anything”), it is again reminiscent of a father proudly stepping behind the lens of a camera to document a milestone in his daughter's life. Through this exaggerated representation of a paternal figure, in this scene Reality Bites is able to deconstruct and question normative familial roles, suggesting that family relationships contain more complexity now than they have in the past.
Within the next chapter, I will delve deeper into how inclusion and exclusion work within these films to define the parameters of surrogate families or urban tribes. I will begin by examining the usefulness of “everydayness” which feature prominently within each film, before briefly discussing how dialogue effectively creates intimacy within these films. Finally, I will focus on the space that protagonists within this trope of films occupy, examining how “home” is established through the means of juxtaposing who is inside and outside of the family structures.
Within groups or “urban tribes,” there appears to exist a clear distinction between who is and is not part of the group (Watters “The Way We Live Now”).8 Charney has argued that “outsiders help to define the group's insularity” (33) within the extended family film trope, and though outright
discrimination against outsiders may not take place there still exist invisible boundaries between those within the families or tribes, and those outside of them. Thus, in the following section I wish to discuss how space, dialogue, and the demonstration of everydayness can be used to exemplify and construct the boundary between those who are part of the “family” and those who are not.
Chapter 2.1- “Where to Now? The Supermarket?”: Family Life and Everydayness
Ernest Burgess has used the term “superpersonality” as a means of articulating the significance of interactions between family members and their shared way of thinking about the world (Gubrium and Holstein 38-41). “[T]he actual unit of family life,” Burgess states, “has its existence not in any legal conception, nor in any formal contract, but in the interacting of its members” (5). Family, thus, has a particular means of interacting which functions on a different level than the interactions and conversations of those outside of the family structure (Hess and Handel 14). This allows one to
conceptualize family not as a particular unit through its make-up alone, but through the unique type of exchanges and particular reciprocal behaviour that occur among members; in other words, the members share a special understanding of one another.
The notion of urban tribes as “superpersonalities” and the poignancy of the exchanges and activities the characters engage in together are a pertinent means of exploring how urban tribes function similarly to nuclear families. The urban tribes within my corpus also function as “superpersonalities.” which I believe to be effectively depicted through the use of nondramatic, everyday moments within the plot.
A perfect exemplification of unspoken, shared consciousness can be seen in an episode of the television series Felicity (1998-2002). The series, which follows the lives of several undergraduate students in New York, features one episode in which a character (Julie, played by Amy Jo Johnson), who has been taken into the apartment of two of her friends (Sean and Ben, played by Greg Grunberg and Scott Speedman), is finally contemplating moving out and finding her own apartment. Throughout
8 Ethan Watters noted this point in his initial article defining “urban tribes” for The New York Times on 14 October 2001,
though his follow-up book on the same topic of 2003 slightly altered his initial articulation of the the exclusive nature of urban tribes. Despite his retracted statement, I would argue that this first perspective holds merit.
the episode the audience sees the two remaining roommates interviewing possible new tenants, and then in one of the final scenes of the episode, a “final” morning amongst the three is depicted.
Performing a sort of silent kitchen ballet, we see Julie quietly take three bowls from the shelf and walk in one direction, with Ben wordlessly grabbing a box of cereal from a different shelf as he crosses her path. As Sean divides the newspaper, the other two form a sort of assembly line with Ben shaking cereal into each bowl, and Julie adding milk and distributing them. This scene is hardly what one would call dramatic or eventful, and yet this familial morning routine symbolizes the comfort these three feel together; with knowing their respective roles, without having to worry about engaging in idle morning chatter. In this the audience is able to recognize that to bring in a new roommate would mean an entire upheaval to the reassuring unspoken comfort between these three protagonists, and even before Ben invites Julie to stay, we are aware that her part in this morning routine is not something she is ready to give up.
To consider a scene that is seemingly insignificant on the surface as highly relevant, it might be useful to respectively look to the works of narratologist Seymour Chatman and film theorist Andrew Klevan. Chatman has proposed that narratives can be divided into two types of elements: “kernels” and “satellites.” The kernels are the elements that act as large events which virtually drive the story,
whereas the satellites are simply extraneous details, or embellishments (54). If one were to use Chatman's terminology, mundane or “undramatic” moments such as the one described in Felicity might, on the surface, be mistaken for a satellite. With respect to the text discussed here, this is
problematic due to the implication that satellites have minimal use other than as decoration; one could argue that these undramatic moments derive just as much, if not more meaning than the main events of conflict or action. It is to this end that Klevan, whether conscious of it or not, has in a sense challenged Chatman's concept of satellites, or at least exposed its limitations. Klevan posits that in many cases, these “embellishments” are worthy of one's attention in what they might reveal about the functions (narratively speaking) of such moments. For it is through everyday depictions that we genuinely gain a sense of the characters and begin to understand the psychology behind their motivations and
interactions. In regards to how “everydayness” (Klevan's chosen term) can accentuate levels of comfort and familial attitudes, this is particularly significant. I would argue that it is through everyday
experiences that the viewer can gain a sense of familial intimacy between the characters when watching a film.
Within this corpus of films, there exist very few eventful “dramatic” moments or clearly evident “kernels;” it is difficult to tell when an event occurs that is helping to “drive” the narratives.
Charney has rightfully described the plot of St. Elmo's Fire, for example, as “[wandering] aimlessly from mini-trauma to mini-trauma, almost a series of . . . vignettes rather than a coherent whole” (32). This episodic structure works in a similar way to photographic snapshots in that both document the relationship between protagonists by focusing on sporadic moments over the course of time. The moments that are documented, or depicted, frequently happen to be everyday events and simple discussions between characters.
And yet this focus on the “mundane” is meaningful as it allows us as an audience to ruminate on how the relationships between the characters function on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, it allows us to consider the way in which they are able to bond together not through having shared a momentous or traumatic event, but through sharing repetitious, everyday tasks. It is to this end that I would like to explore how scenes of domesticity, engagement with popular culture, and the use of repetitions or “leitmotifs,” while considered simply “everyday” or mundane moments on the surface, actually evoke a sense of intimacy, emphasizing the ways in which the urban tribes represented in these films act as superpersonalities. In doing so, these “mundane” events lose their status as simply embellishments, and suggest that the distinction between “kernels” and “satellites” may be much less clear than suggested.
Domesticity
In a scene in St. Elmo's Fire, Kirby (Emilio Estevez) and Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) make a visit to the laundromat together and discuss Kirby's plans to impress the woman of his dreams. Later in the same film, Kevin and Leslie chat about life and love as they cook dinner together. In both Kicking and Screaming and Reality Bites, there is a scene centred around characters unpacking groceries from a grocery trip. And in Some Girl, Claire is taken to the laundromat by Chad (Jeremy Sisto) on a first date. Chad tells her she is the “first and only” girl he will ever take to the laundromat, at which point Claire jokingly retorts “Where to now? The supermarket?” Is there a justification for this odd yet consistent pattern of showcasing domestic tasks?
While Chad appears slightly embarrassed about taking a girl he barely knows to the laundromat, I believe there is more at stake here in the use of the laundromat as the location for their first date. There exists a level of intimacy in Chad letting Claire in on this mundane element of his life. While a first date often entails the sharing of a romantic dinner or another event that is out of the ordinary (that is, something you would not do on a regular basis), Chad has skipped over that initial phase of exciting courtship and allowed Claire into his everyday life, which suggests he feels a level of comfort with her not unlike one feels with someone one has known for a long time. Doing laundry is very much a
domestic task that often takes place within the family home, and when one considers that it involves exposing oneself as a “normal person” who does “normal,” non-exciting things – it allows for a sort of deromanticization and thus, a closeness that usually takes time to develop.
Film scholar Stanley Cavell has argued that “we must embark on a quest to find fascination in the parts of the world we share . . .even though it is exactly those shared things that might appear boring because of their obviousness and repetition – indeed, because they occur each and every day” (Klevan 23). Characters within my corpus, in sharing these day-to-day activities, show the strength and depth of their relationships through these menial tasks. In having chosen to depict these “boring” tasks, the films have allowed us to gain a sense of how revealing or perhaps as Cavell suggests, even
“fascinating” mundane or repetitive tasks in themselves have the potential to be if they are done in the company of loved ones.
The depiction of domestic activities is relevant not only due to their intimate nature and the fact of their being done together, but also due to the fact that these tasks in themselves are “family” tasks. It has been noted that “Gen Xers” (which comprises all of the core protagonists within my select corpus of films), though wary of permanent institutions such as marriage (Elliott), do still have a strong desire for family life (Scott 56). It is hypothesized that this correlates to the high divorce rate that was
recorded during the time that this generation was in its youth; while many Gen Xers (and, in fact, generations that have been identified beyond this, such as “Gen Yers”) grew up in dysfunctional home settings, they still dream of one day having their own family lives. This is represented in my corpus of films; despite seeming arbitrary on the surface, the choice of the filmmakers to include these particular tasks emphasizes the desires of these characters for familial activities.
Uses of Nostalgia and Popular Culture
In an early scene in Reality Bites, the four main characters use a video camera to capture their sentiments after their graduation ceremony. The scene is filled with affectionate banter and discussion over hopes for the future, and the very fact that it takes place on a rooftop evokes the sense of freedom they feel at having completed their studies, while simultaneously indicating how distanced they are from the rest of society – a feature which Elliott claims is characteristic of their generation as a whole (4, 5, 11). This distance is accentuated through their contrast with the surreal backdrop which, largely due to the colour palette of grey and golden buildings against a cyan sky, seems almost like a painting frozen in time behind them, a dated world that stands still as they (hope to) move forward. Director Ben Stiller, in a discussion of the sets and locations used for this film, has admitted that he “wanted to shoot
on the street so you could see the skyline, to have it kind of looming there in the background – kind of like real life looming in [the characters'] lives, and their having to deal with that” (Leydon). In the final moments of this scene, Lelaina sets the camera down and goes to join her friends as they sit and sing “Conjunction Junction,” a song from the television short Schoolhouse Rock! which aired during their childhood.
Jonathon I. Oake has argued that in this film the video camera is used anytime something “significant (i.e., 'real')” occurs amongst the characters, and that this device “makes the viewer acutely aware of the presence of the camera” (93). In other words, video footage is used to signify and
highlight moments of vulnerability and heightened emotion among the characters. This is apparent given that the device is used to record, for example: their graduation, Vickie's promotion, the results of Vickie's HIV test, and moments in which the characters discuss their parents and their childhoods.
There is an intrinsic sense of nostalgia evoked when viewing the graininess and amateur quality of video camera footage (Erens 100). Patricia Erens has argued that in commercial narrative film, typically “home movies are used to indicate the past, most generally a happy, innocent past, a time of togetherness” (99). One often has in mind the proud father creating a home movie through
documenting an important moment in his child's life (as was discussed earlier in relation to a different scene in this same film). This would certainly be the case in the scene being discussed, as a graduation ceremony is indeed cause for pride and heightened emotion.
The surreal, faded colours of the background and the “pixelation” of the image contribute to a sense of “pastness” which is further accentuated through the singing of this particular song. The bond between the characters is thus heightened through their shared memories of the past, particularly their childhood memory of Schoolhouse Rock! It is as though, through this cultural artifact (the song), they form a community which others who have not grown up with the same media influences and popular culture artifacts would not understand and consequently, would not be part of.
Kicking and Screaming also contains many cultural references which signify a means through which the characters form a bond. What is interesting about this film is the self-reflexive nature in which it addresses the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of these cultural references. In the scene in which Grover first encounters Jane in a writing class, Jane critiques one of Grover's written pieces, arguing that the mundane discussions amongst his characters (“like what to have for dinner or who's the best looking model in the Victoria's Secret catalogue”) make the piece seem trite. “All that thought and energy put into Saturday morning cartoons, I think it's depressing,” she says bluntly. The irony at work here lies in the fact that the film itself has put “all that thought and energy” into seemingly insignificant
moments, discussions, and popular culture references.
The very fact that this film makes dialogue – and dialogue of a seemingly insignificant, everyday nature at that – central is a way for the film to provide a self-referential look at the subject matter these characters are discussing and engaging with. While the use of dialogue will be explored more in depth in the next section, what I wish to discuss here in particular is how everydayness can be expressed through dialogue content, and how collective engagement with popular culture artifacts (largely through dialogue) can create a sense of closeness. The thing that Jane (and likely some of the viewers of this film) is missing, or fails to understand, is that these seemingly mundane moments of everydayness and “arbitrary” discussions within the text have a larger purpose. Far from existing simply as “filler” content or addressing, as Jane puts it, “the least important things,” these scenes imply a revisiting of childhood but moreover, a desire to share the elements of collective childhoods with one another. Crozier has asserted that “The experience of re-watching a favourite programme from
childhood can be an affectively and temporally dislocating experience” (115-16) and I would argue that the re-visiting of any cultural artifact from one's childhood would have this dislocating effect. As such, in these scenes the characters appear to have regressed or been “dislocated” to their younger selves, delighting in simple popular media together. Sharing moments and favourite things of their youth allows the characters to share a level of intimacy and create a sibling-like bond over their
commonalities.
This sharing and relating to one another through popular culture runs through the full narrative of Reality Bites. In a scene in which Michael tries to make conversation with Troy, he comments on Troy's part in Lelaina's documentary, offering “that whole thing about, 'nobody can eat all the eggs,' that was... that was really...” Troy matter-of-factly replies “I was quoting Cool Hand Luke.” This indicator that they are not on the same level, so to speak, is magnified by the fact that they are sitting at complete opposite ends of the room in this scene; the distance between them is both metaphorical and literal. Hanson has argued that Generation Xers use “pop-culture references as a coded form of
language” which allows them to “escape into a made-up society of their own” (43). Again linking to the concept of families as sharing something that the outside world is not necessarily privy to (Burgess 5; Gubrium and Holstein 38-41), it is proposed in this that an entire generation can gain a sense of community simply by relating to one another through popular culture. If one were to continue the “family” metaphor I have begun, this statement would suggest that an entire generation would then function as a sort of extended family. And yet this is not necessarily the case, as is demonstrated in Reality Bites; while Michael and Troy do appear to be in approximately the same age demographic,
they do not appear to have a common ground in terms of slang, cultural references, or attitude. As such, in the case of these films, popular culture and nostalgia can be used to create a more exclusive, familial bond that creates a divide between those who “get” the cultural references (in the above instance, Troy and his friends), and those who do not (Michael and other “yuppies”).
Everydayness and Leitmotifs
Repetitive events suggest something of the mundane; they connote routine, or banality. In cinema, repetition is often used to illustrate this very sense of the mundane (often, this is expressed through morning routine sequences; see for example The Lookout (2007)), but it can also be used as a sort of leitmotif9. The fact that some repetitions are depicted, and not simply insinuated deserves consideration; for example, we can assume, even if it is not depicted, that characters will on a regular basis wake up, shower, brush their teeth and so on. We assume this repetition without necessarily having to see it depicted. While repetitions thus still serve as examples of everydayness, they expand on this as they force one to consider the implications of the depicted repetition. Within this section there are two instances of repetition that I wish to address – from St. Elmo's Fire and Kicking and Screaming, respectively – that will shed light on how repeated acts in these films can highlight the boundary between the “us” of the family and the “them” of the outside world.
The first example is seen in St. Elmo's Fire. In this film, the characters have a tendency to share a group chant during particularly happy moments. During these moments, they all lean towards each other and utter the unintelligible cluster of sounds that only they know. This seemingly undramatic action illustrates a sort of “inside joke” that only they understand – or in other words, an exclusive bond. No one outside of this group knows what it is they are saying, and thus no one outside of the group can join in. The chant is a means of isolating the group from the outside world, accentuating their closeness and the importance of this group to have something that belongs to all of them – and only them. While in the instances of group chants there are no specific outsiders, the chant suggests that everyone outside of their small (literal) circle is an outsider compared to their small, close family.
The second example of “group insularity” is seen in Kicking and Screaming, particularly during the trivia game that the characters frequently partake in, in which one has to “buzz in” to answer. One can surmise that this game has been played by this group for a very long time, as all of the members enthusiastically jump in to play, all very aware of what the rules are. When an outsider tries to join in
9 For my purposes, I will be using the definition of leitmotif that is proposed by Gerald Prince in A Dictionary of Narratology (1988): “A frequently recurring motif, related to and expressive of a character, situation, or event” with
“motif” indicating “a minimal thematic unit” (48, 55).
the game, they are rebuked for not playing by the rules. For example, when younger character Miami (Parker Posey) joins the table of men playing the game and the category switches to “worst case
scenarios after graduation” she is told “you did not ding in, and this is definitely not for juniors.” In this she is told quite bluntly that she neither understands the game rules nor how it feels to be graduating, as the other three men at the table do. Kate (Cara Buono) faces similar exclusion when she tries to become the “Triv Master” at the bar. “You shouldn't even be Triv Master!” Skippy (Jason Wiles) indignantly exclaims, “You're not even one of us!” While these trivia games may seem inconsequential or simply yet another an excuse for witty exchanges between members, the routine of playing the game together (a game which others don't really understand) illustrates a sense of comfort between the members or, as Burgess might say, depicts their status as a superpersonality. Examples such as this once again
emphasize that however mundane the games and dialogues of these characters are, they serve to keep the group together and form a bond between them.
In considering the actions and activities of families outside of film, seldom are day-to-day lives exciting or dramatic. Family life typically consists of mundane, often repetitive “small” events. And yet to be privy to these events, to be allowed “in” on them, gives one the intimate feeling of seeing one disrobed and exposed; one feels privileged to observe the inner-workings of a group. In this, then, family and everydayness become inextricably bound.
In Cameron Crowe's discussion of the justification and meaning behind his film Singles, he notes that his underlying vision of the film began to change shape when he gathered with loved ones following the death of their friend Andy Wood. Crowe notes, “I wanted to write something that
captured the feeling in that room. Not Andy’s story but the story of how people instinctively need to be together.” This togetherness shines through not only in Singles, but in all of the films within my corpus. Crowe hoped to respond to his own question “Is anybody truly single?” in his film, and it is not a question rooted specifically in death or moments of crisis, but on a more general level. The moments discussed within this chapter, those apparently “mundane” elements of everyday life, help highlight that it doesn't entirely matter what the characters are doing so much as that they are able to do it as a unit.
The use of dialogue within film is an area that has been by and large ignored thus far within film studies, yet it exists as a poignant signifier of relationships between protagonists (Kozloff 6). Sarah Kozloff has discussed the functioning of dialogue by dividing it into two categories, with one function being to drive the narrative, and another for aesthetic effect (33-34). Within my corpus, while the content of the dialogue may seem arbitrary (as has been discussed in a previous chapter), it in a sense replaces action as a means of driving the narrative. Kozloff has remarked that “Philosophical discussion for its own sake is atypical in American film . . . – Americans do not spend much time in conversation discussing non-plot-related issues” (62), and yet discussion “for its own sake” serves as the basis for a large number of scenes within all of the films in this corpus. Films such as Kicking and Screaming consist predominantly of dialogue and exchanges between characters; in fact, there is very little action within the plot.
This so-called “actionless plot” is shared with the rest of the films within my corpus. The characters do not engage in many activities that take place outside of their home or local bar; as Troy tells Lelaina in Reality Bites, “This is all we need. Couple of smokes, cup of coffee... and a little bit of conversation. You and me and five bucks.” Throughout this corpus, the central conflict to be overcome – the realization that the characters are no longer in university and are, however much they would like to deny it, full-fledged adults – is dealt with through speaking. Klevan has noted that often it is not what is said but the nature of how it is said, or simply the depiction itself of a dialogue between
characters that proves significant (194-195). Thus, in this section, I would like take another look at this corpus' means of depicting inclusion and exclusion within surrogate families, this time by exploring how dialogue works to illustrate the establishment of trust and the defining of the boundaries of one's community or family.
Trust Through Dialogue
The desire to know one anothers' opinions, and the inability to make decisions on one's own demonstrates the reliance amongst these groups of emerging adults on conversation and assistance from one another. Almost as though they are still children unsure of what the “right” thing to do is, characters within all of these films are wont to ask one another “what do I do?”10 As was discussed
10 Several examples of this: in Singles, Linda (Kyra Sedgwick) frequently asks Ruth (Devon Raymond) what to do about
her relationship with Steve (Campbell Scott); Steve, in turn, asks his group of friends what he should do about Linda. Debbie (Sheila Kelley), also of Singles, only chooses a suitor based on her friends' opinions of who should be her “best match.” And Claire of Some Girl woefully asks the question of Jenn (Pamela Adlon) after Chad does not call her within
within the first chapter, the characters take turns putting on the parent or sibling role as they comfort, support, and encourage whoever is in doubt at that particular instance. This questioning of future actions could be argued as an inability to act autonomously, but alternatively, it could be understood as a means for the characters to reach out to one another to formulate and maintain their intimate bond. “[D]isclosing intimacy,” it is argued, “must include close association, privileged knowledge, deep knowing and understanding and some form of love” (Jamieson 13).
To accentuate this, we can look again at a scene from Kicking and Screaming. In this scene, Grover has by chance bumped into Jane at a local bar. Jane seems to be having a Saussurean dilemma of sorts, marvelling over how odd and arbitrary specific names and words are. Grover, intrigued, stays, and they spend the day together in the bar. When Jane realizes she is late for an appointment with her therapist, Grover says “you go to talk to your shrink, I'll go back to my friends” as they part ways. In this it might be suggested that the role of “shrink” is absorbed by his friends. Jane will go sort through her life and entrust her secrets to a professional, whereas Grover is able to disclose his personal thoughts with his close-knit group of men. The disclosure of intimacy that Jamieson described is one which Grover experiences with his friends, which is on parallel with that which Jane has with her therapist. There exists here a high level of trust but further, “deep knowing and understanding,” which generally take years to develop. The deep level of knowledge that comes with the disclosure of
intimacy is reflective of a family bond, wherein the members come to know each other deeply due to having spent so much time together and developed a high level of trust.
“You Guys All Talk Alike”: Setting Perimeters Through Dialogue
At this point I would like to refocus attention on the binary between inclusion and exclusion, or the factors that determine who is part of a family and who is not, through dialogue. Frederick Erickson has noted that conversation is class-based (18); this can be exemplified through both the dialects and manner in which one speaks, but also in the topics chosen for discussion (Erickson 50). Class as exhibited through conversation can act as a barrier to determine those who are within and outside of a group. Within my corpus of films, the protagonists are by and large all of the same class; it is either alluded to or outright shown that they have more or less all attended university, and based on their living arrangements and lifestyle choices it can be surmised that the majority of the characters could be considered middle class.11
an acceptable period of time.
11 Max of Kicking and Screaming is an exception due to his continued financial support from his parents, and the
