We wanted to do a re-boot or a refresh or a re-emergence of our website/blog and reviewing a handful of films by and about Gen Xers was one of the ideas we came up with… time will tell if this works the way we wanted. Starting with Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker seemed like an appropriate kick-off to a summer of Gen X movies. It is a curious thing to look back at the pop culture that supported us and reflected us when we were adolescents and in our 20s way back in the 1990s. But as we celebrate and honor and memorialize thirty years since the police chase of OJ Simpson in the white Bronco, the death of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Winter Olympics, it will be interesting to see if the films and other media still hold up… especially for those of us who were there.
In a perfect world, we would have found copies of each of the movies we planned to discuss on videotape and popped them into our VHS player (which, yes, is still hooked up and is still operational). Instead, we searched the streaming channels we subscribe to and added each film to our list (if they weren’t already in our queue). We’d still like to picture it as a stack of VHS tapes sitting next to a boxy tube-television rather than a scrolling list of digital files on our flat-screen smart TV. We can’t really figure out how we decided to watch Slacker first… was it based on release date or running time or reverse alphabetical order? No matter which scientific method we used to come to this decision, we came to it and on the night of June 7th, 2024, and we “pushed play” on Slacker (1991). What follows is a conversation (of sorts) that is part review, part critique, and part commentary.
Doc Gonzo: The first scene features the director, Richard Linklater, sitting in the back of a taxi talking non-stop about dreams and fantasies to the cabdriver as he takes him from the Austin Texas bus station. In essence, it is a monologue, since the driver does not speak at all. As I watched the scene unfold, I was getting more and more annoyed. Was I annoyed because the rider was oblivious to the fact that the driver was not responding? Was I annoyed because the situation was awkward? (I typically do not speak with rideshare or taxi drivers.) Was I annoyed because he is young and I am old and someone in their mid-20s spouting off philosophically comes across as arrogant and overconfident and infuriating?
Is this what young folks do?
Is this what I did when I was young?
The car stops and the rider gets out to get help for someone who is lying in the road and then the camera follows another character. (We never see Richard Linklater’s character again.) The film continues like this from scene to scene, one character leading us to another… the film is doing exactly what the young man in the back of the taxi said at the start – one reality followed by another followed by another…
Punk Grrrl: My first thought, when we started the movie, was how bored I remember being the first time I watched it. Slacker is set in 1990 Austin, TX. At the time, living in Niagara Falls NY, I had no connection to the Southern part of the United States, save for a Grandmother who grew up in Alabama and tried her best to assimilate into Northern culture in such a way that I rarely thought about the South. When I saw Slacker the first time, I don’t think it even dawned on me that it took place in Texas. The characters are so much like ‘us’, that it just felt like another version of Gen X people, trying to figure out their shit. As far as the incessant talking of the rider, my impression of that scene was that taxi drivers had a LOT more patience than Uber or Lyft drivers (or even cab drivers) do today. I don’t think a rider in 2024 could get away with the level of monologue this character was spewing at the driver, today.
Twelve minutes into the movie we see the first woman and we actually follow her. Prior to that character, we only see a woman hit by a car (lying in the road) and a woman jogger who gets hit on by a driver before jogging away.
Doc Gonzo: Something I noticed very early on was that no one was actually engaged in conversation with anyone else. A man follows another guy to a friend’s house and he talks at him or to him the entire time. A woman looks for a book and another customer talks about all his recommendations but doesn’t really hear what she’s saying. There is not dialogue. Either the other characters in the scene are not listening or ignoring the speaker or the speaker doesn’t care to have a conversation; they just need to get out what’s in their head.
I felt frustrated while I watched it, but I also wondered, “is this what the 1990s was like? Is this pre-internet ADHD at play? Is this how young people are, no matter what generation and no matter when in time they exist?” But then, at about the 40-minute mark the first true conversation takes place – an argument between a man and a woman. A little while later two guys looking at an engine of a car have an actual conversation… both are listening to each other and reacting to what the other is saying – and it felt so out of place!
Punk Grrrl: The barista in this scene is smoking while making a latte. That is the most 90’s thing so far.
Doc Gonzo: You’re so right.. do people still smoke cigarettes anymore..?
I remember watching this film when I was in undergrad. It was like a badge of honor – “old folks don’t get it” and we were proud of that. It was like everyone was speaking in code that only Gen Xers or adolescents and those in their 20s (like me) would understand. About halfway through the movie there’s an older man who is speaking to a 20-something and he says: “There was such a thing as ‘belief put into action’ in those days…” And although he was talking about being part of an anarchist group in his youth, was it also a meta-commentary about this movie? I think this is one of the only characters in the entire film that’s not an adolescent or 20-something. He’s an old man complaining about the fact that things used to mean something. In the middle of a movie that doesn’t have a plot.
Punk Grrrl: He’s not the only one – The guy that follows a character out of the coffeehouse and talks at him as they walk down the sidewalk is clearly a Boomer. He goes on about the moon landing not being real and the greenhouse effect. Although he doesn’t seem to be a full conspiracy theorist, he definitely has the demeanor of one. The line “funded by the CIA through the drug cartels” sounds like a conspiracy theory to the 1990 ear, but it is actually connected to the ‘co-intel-pro’ stuff that was real in America in the decades after 1950. Because he uses actual conspiracy theories in his monologue, the whole being of his character is called into question. In this scene, the Gen Xer walking with him mirrors the cab driver from the first scene. Patient and annoyed, but not rude. That sums up how Gen Xers often dealt with Boomers in the 90s and beyond.
Doc Gonzo: Oof! So true!
The words spoken on screen – whether in monologue or dialogue – are about conspiracy theories, complaints, popular culture, and anti-establishment. The characters are reading newspapers, watching television, talking about books, lying in bed, fixing a vehicle, walking, and drinking coffee. And there were so many people smoking so many cigarettes. (This is not a complaint… I actually miss seeing so many people smoking – it is further proof of this period piece.) The absence of the internet and cellphones is definitely noticeable, but in a nice, pleasant way – at least that’s how it feels to me… maybe if a Millennial or a Gen Zer watched this, they would say, “why don’t they just Google it?” or “just text them to see if they’re home instead of walking all that way to their house!”
Punk Grrl: The most memorable scene, and truly the only thing I really remembered from my initial 1990s viewing, was the scene where the character tells two other characters about a car chase on the expressway and then tries to sell them what they refer to as ‘Madonna’s pap smear’. Such an odd interaction, but because this character is also on the movie poster, I’m sure this is why the interaction stuck with me.
We don’t see the first character of color until 30 minutes into the movie when we see a Black man selling ‘Free Mandela’ t-shirts and attempting to explain apartheid to two white Gen Xers. Shortly after that, at 32 minutes, we see an Indian woman walk by and discuss a curse. This lack of representation is reminiscent of this period in pop culture. Although the 90s were diverse in America, we rarely saw that diversity reflected in our media. We still have a long way to go, but this period piece shows how far we have come. I have a feeling that the other movies we watch in this series will be much worse on representation, but we’ll see.
Doc Gonzo: I have a feeling you may be right. As I watched this movie, I become more and more aware of how distanced I am from the person I was in the 1990s. Three women get in a van with a guy they literally just met to go to a show that may or may not actually be happening. Internally, I was freaking out – what are you doing? You don’t even know him! But nothing bad happens (other than the guy’s not on the guest list and can’t get anyone in as he promised) and the camera eventually follows another group of people who were sitting outside the club. But that was the nineties, yeah? We took rides from strangers and we survived… I think.
Punk Grrrl: I had a similar thought when the women at the restaurant agree to go with a guy they just met, in his van, to a concert they didn’t even know was happening. But then I remembered meeting up with people I had only met on IRC channels at clubs in Canada and getting into cars with people I just met at the bar. I was always with a friend too, but why did we think that would be enough to keep us safe? Was this young people hubris? The thought that you are invincible when you are young?
Doc Gonzo: There is not enough about “young people hubris.” YPH… can we make that a thing?
Also, was the director using his characters to make social commentary? Did he agree or believe in any of what they said out loud? Was he making a statement about how Gen Xers are seen by their parents (Boomers)? And who exactly is the slacker in this film? Did the director use that word as the title of the film to say that’s how Gen X is seen? Are all the characters slackers? Or is the director the slacker?
Punk Grrrl: One thing that really struck me throughout the film was the social commentary that I wasn’t absorbing at all when I saw it at age 18. References to Karl Marx, anarchy, ethnographic film, feminism, toxic masculinity, commodification, Guy Fawkes, social constructs, the smurfs colony theory, Krishna, and so many other ideas just flew over my head back then. But now, in my 40s, with multiple college degrees, including one is Sociology, I get every single reference and realize how forward thinking Linklater actually was with this movie. He was telegraphing the future to us, but as young Gen Xers I don’t think we got it. Watching it now makes me feel good, like yeah – thanks Richard – you were right about the future and we should have listened to you more closely.
Doc Gonzo: This film leaves me with a lot of questions… but I must admit, despite being annoyed and confused by many of the situations and scenes, I do believe it holds up as a powerful film. I felt that same feeling of this was made for me as I watched it all unfold. Maybe Slacker is only for us, for Generation X. Maybe Linklater is winking at us and giving us a sly thumbs up that no one else can see to remind us that we’re okay, to remind us that Gen Xers are not alone despite being completely ignored by society and our parents, and to remind us that we should visit Austin Texas someday.