Lost Teens
Having watched and covered Inside Out and then Saturday Night Fever close to one another, I saw the connection between these two films as movies in the genre of "lost teens". So, I've pulled these two posts together with an older post on the archetype of all "lost teen" movies: Rebel Without A Cause. I hope you enjoy...
Stepping inside the head of a girl transitioning into hard times, we get to see her world turned inside out.
Inside Out is perfect in a way that kind of tingles. With beautiful animation, great direction, good editing, but a masterful story, Inside Out is one of the greatest animated films I've ever seen. Its every moment pulsates and reverberates with an understanding of the Disney-Pixar craft, and so its no surprise that it projects one of their most articulate and touching narratives of all time. Whilst this isn't subtextually as complex as, for example, Monsters Inc, Inside Out manages to balance its deeply metaphorical side with its more accessible side. Thus, as most people could tell you, Inside Out is a film about growing up and embracing the wide range of human emotions. However, there is nuance and more to this story than just this, and so this is what we'll explore today.
For practically all of modern human history, societies have found a means of representing one fundamental idea: the fractal nature of the individual. Ancient societies, such as the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, represented this through polytheism, a belief in multiple gods and goddesses. In Roman mythology, Cupid was the god of desire, Mars was the god of war and Vulcan was the god of fire. There are a plethora of other gods, including the 12 central and a myriad of other peripheral figures, that all represented different aspects of humanity and society. With these three examples, however, we can see expressed three central human attributes: violence and aggression, love and affection, and creativity and malleable change. Furthermore, we have an example of a fundamental representation of the idea that people, and in turn societies, are made up of separate, even individual, compartments that, only together, make a cohesive, functional whole.
As time progressed many societies converged upon one God, relying on monotheism for meaning and a unifying force in the individual and amongst the masses. Abstractly and non-universally, this implied a change in humanity whereby we took control of ourselves whilst maintaining an idea of a literal higher power and purpose. This higher concept, this God, for many cultures, was a guiding force that gave people the freedom and free will to live as an individual who could, to a degree, lead their own life. No longer did it then seem that Mars would embody societies and drive them towards war. However, with a belief in a literal God remained a concept of embodiment; i.e, the devil, demons or evil embodying someone. And thus there still remained an idea of fractal societies and people existing through forces of evil, good and shades in between. But, as time again progressed, God became ever more abstract and less literal. This signalled to some that society was breaking down. It is at this point that we begin to approach the 20th century where Nietzsche declares that "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him" in his 1882 collection, The Gay Science. This idea of "God is dead" deeply worried Nietzsche, which is seemingly why he proposed that we have to become supermen and in turn gods ourselves.
With Freud, who was greatly influenced by Nietzsche, seemed to come an answer to this proposition. Freud brought back, into mainstream thought, the idea of the fractal nature of the individual. He did this by suggesting, not that gods controlled us and our emotions, but that our unconscious and subconscious mind did. And in this hazy realm of non-consciousness came three abstract personalities - what some would call gods. These were the ego, superego and the id. Without wanting to delve too deeply into these concepts, Freud, having resurrected polytheism's essential understanding of humans as fractured beings, gave us new tools of self-expression. However, over the 20th century Freudian and Jungian psychology faded out of popularity.
In the latter half of the 20th century, however, Paul Ekman proposed the concept of the "6 Basic Emotions". These, as you may know, are fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. (He also proposed a seventh, and that was contempt). Ekman was not the first to propose a list of core or fundamental emotions, but, it was his list that seemingly stuck. Thus, in the modern day, we usually describe ourselves through emotions as opposed to gods and our unconscious (though, both of these ideas remain relevant, and even important). This has its positives and negatives, much like polytheism, monotheism and psychoanalysis do, and they manifest in society. However, much like societies before ourselves had to make the gods happy, walk righteously under one god, reconcile with their childhood or confront their shadow, we have to manage our emotions. And thus we find ourselves at the narrative expression of this idea through Inside Out, which, who knows, may be a significant marker of thinking in our day and age in the future (much like many of the Pixar and Disney films could be).
When we now take a look at our main characters, they may seem a little more important and profound than you'd initially assume...
However, let us take a step back. Ekman proposed that there were six or seven core emotions. Why are there only five represented here? The truth is, there are many theories and many different numbers concerning core emotions. It was decided, by Pete Docter and with Ekman's aid, that five would be the right amount of emotions for the sake of simplicity. There are nonetheless many more emotions expressed by this film than these five. For example, we get contempt and nostalgia through a combination of the references to memory with sadness and anger. And, most important of all, this film lets surprise be represented physically in Riley's inner world.
Surprise, the discovery of the new, can lead to creation...
But, taken badly, surprise leads to destruction...
All of this is of course dictated by the unknown world. Thus, surprise will come to be one of the most important 'emotions' of this film. This is because this is a coming-of-age story in which Riley moves into her transition away from childhood and into adulthood. This movement is catalysed by, in essence, life happening.
Life, seen through a responsible adult's eyes, is not all fun and games. This is because life is made up of chaos, entropy and a lot of forces trying to do you harm. To confront life, you must prepare for the unexpected by constructing a flexible, evolving tool kit with which you can cope with almost anything. And this is indeed maturity; it is letting go of life as a dream, of life as seen through a child's eyes; a life filled with almost constant joy thanks only to naivety and parents.
As an adult, you must construct your own happiness whilst dealing with the chaos of life. This is represented by Inside Out through our look into the parents' minds:
There are a plethora of things that these two images tell us, but there are two key ideas that we'll pick up on. The first is that adults have a different panel to a child's: each emotion has their own controls. Secondly, there is nonetheless someone in the director's chair in centre. Unlike with Riley, however, Joy is not in control in the parents' mind. Instead, sadness and anger are.
This is one of the most expressive and pertinent ideas in this entire film. Whilst we are told, by the end of this film, that joy alone cannot rule a person's mind, it is here that we are told that more daunting emotions must take control. So, whilst we'd all like to think that we're lead primarily by joy in life, most people aren't. As we have discussed, life is difficult and it forces us to forge our own happiness and create a tool kit with which to confront it. Contrary to what a child would believe, to confront the world, you can't just be positive. This doesn't mean that positive thinking and the whole branch of positive psychology is null. However, it does mean that, reprising a Jungian idea, people must embrace their shadow and dark side. The mother is shown to do this by letting sadness be her guiding emotion whilst the father utilises anger. Interestingly, sadness is then attributed to an imaginary image love...
... and anger an imaginary hockey game...
Whilst these are jokes based on the personalities of the parents, this also reveals how these core emotions, as negative as they seemingly are, function. Starting with anger, we see a form of destruction that can also create something positive. Anger is then, in a certain sense, what Riley channels when she plays hockey...
... and we hear this to be true when Anger has to take over as this game starts. In this respect, anger is shown to motivate competition and the joy it offers. So, whilst Anger will play his part in the protection of Riley and her sense of self, he is not just darkness, but a combination of the good and the bad. However, whist Riley's dad is an influence upon her, much like Anger is, anger doesn't play a huge role in this narrative. Instead, the conflict throughout is between Joy and Sadness.
As is implied initially through Riley's mother, Sadness seems to be a kind of understanding or empathy; it is only by empathising with someone that can you be compassionate, and it is also only through understanding that you can learn to let things go. We see this manifest itself with this later, crucial moment:
Sadness, through empathy and understanding, manages to raise Bing Bong's spirits. By accepting his despair, instead of suppressing it through positivity as Joy would suggest, Bing Bong soon manages to move on and again be happy. This is one of the core elements of Riley's final lesson:
What develops from this reconciliation between Sadness and Joy in Riley is both the ability to let go and be weak, but also be strong again. This is so important because, with only Joy, life becomes deluded, and this is made clear with the expansion of this core memory...
... to include sadness...
However, letting go and being weak before regaining strength as a means of maturing, is signified best through one key moment: Bing Bong's death.
To grow up and accept that sadness, in a certain respect, must run your life, you must first learn what it means to let the things that need to be let go, go. Bing Bong's death is then the realisation that Riley is no longer a child, which can be a difficult thing to endure, but it is nonetheless something we must all go through. We can assume, because her 'headquarters' is run by sadness, that Riley's mother also had to learn how to let go for the better. Conversely, her father would have had to learn how to control his frustrations and turn them towards positive creation. (Or, at least, these would be their core, defining lessons in life; we all must learn how to control all of our emotions). However, with Riley learning a similar lesson to what her mother had to have, we see her accept that there is something that can flourish from the destruction and challenging of self.
There is conflict along this road of maturation with Joy refusing to let Sadness take control, and such leads to the decimation of Riley's personality:
But, this destruction of personality only eventually leads to the growth of something new and better:
Thus, the judgement and questioning of her core being, and ultimately its deconstruction, is what teaches her that, from darkness, essentially comes a brighter light than one she has ever seen before.
Coming towards a conclusion, what we ultimately see with Riley maturing into a more complex and stronger person is the reconciliation of the many parts of her fractured self. This story is then a meta-narrative constructed over thousands upon thousands of years that ultimately sees all the gods that rule over, and the subconscious elements that reside with, the human complex come into peace, ready to confront the ominous beast that is reality, as someone moves closer towards adulthood. For this, Inside Out is not just a masterpiece, but a truly significant story of our times in my view.
Jim, a troubled teen, spirals into calamity when trying to integrate himself into a gang.
This film is, in short, about a bunch of fucking idiots. To put it more eloquently, this is a film about growing up in trying conditions with naivety and an overwhelming recognition of the arbitrary chaos present in society and, macrocosmically, the universe. The major conflicts of this film then derive from an inability to comprehend or deal with, what is best put in abstract terms: life. For this focus on such complex yet universal themes, this film has earned the status of classic. However, this is not a perfect film. The film is extremely expressive with its characterisation and plotting because it concisely conveys its meaning, but, the hyperbolisation of both character and plot hurts the narrative in terms of verisimilitude. In this, I mean to say that the themes are over embellished, the characters overwritten and overplayed (mainly the smaller parts) resulting in an overly fantastical view of teenage issues that isn't entirely believable. To further clarify, like American Pie overplays teenage sexuality...
... Rebel Without A Cause overplays the conflicts between teenagers and their childhoods.
But, despite the hyperbolisation in the characters and plot, Rebel Without A Cause rightly deserves its place in cinematic history. The real triumphs of the film then encompass everything outside of the abandoned mansion sequence (the bulk of the third act, discluding the ending). What makes the majority of the film so great, especially the opening, is the way we're brought into a teenage perception of the world with empathy and understanding. We see Jim punching the desk, writhing with exasperation in the presence of his parents, and we completely get him. What we're being told with the opening act is then a pivotal aspect of the movie and what we'll dive into first as to get a grip on the depths of the film's meaning.
The relationship between Jim and his parents talks to the title of the movie - Rebel Without A Cause. Jim is of course our archetypal teenage rebel, rebelling against authority in its many forms: parents, school, police officers, teachers, bullies, social norm. But, whilst he rebels against these things, they aren't atom bombs, corruption, legislation, abuse, such and so on. The difference between being upset with your parents and the government is the personal and incredibly nuanced issue of mother/daughter, father/son problems. You can't protest for the change of some document somewhere to fix problems in this respect. And for this the cause of the rebel becomes intangible, essentially ceases to be. This leaves Jim rebelling for no easily perceived reason. What we're made to see with the opening and through the characterisation of Jim is, however, his cause. This is what makes this film so great - because this is quite a hard thing to do well. We see this to be the case when looking at many films with similar themes...
What these films struggle to balance, as this film does too, is action and reaction. In other words, when these movies try to delve into guns, huge parties, high stakes and a whole lot of romanticism, they loose their grip on the crux of their themes. The greater teen films are of course...
What makes these films great is their concentration on character and the confines of their plots. What this says about teen films in general is that we need verisimilitude and character to comprehend conflict - the driving force of films. Rebel Without A Cause, despite its slightly contrived climax, is a great example of this, which goes to show that the introduction is most important, that what lies beneath the title of the movie is where we find the film's worth. So, to delve deeper into Jim's situation, we simply have to see the introduction in context. What pushes Jim to get drunk, to lash out, beat the table, is a build up of many small things. It's his mother's moaning, his father's unreliability, his inability to give him a straight answer or be of any use. In short, Jim is who he is, in large part, because of his childhood and upbringing. And this is a persistent theme throughout the film. Through both Plato and Judy we are told of kids who are in a terrible transitory period between a warm childhood and colder adulthood. In this, it becomes evident that the core goal of Rebel Without A Cause is to break down the human psyche into a complex yet comprehensible equation; we are the product of our pasts interacting with our present, we are the product of how we were treated as kids, we are, in large part, the expression of things we cannot control. Jim's conflict thus becomes much clearer with this concept. His mother strives to be a huge factor of this equation of self. In short, she is controlling, she wants to determine his character and who he grows into. This isn't a bad thing, she doesn't do this with ulterior motive - she just isn't very great at it. On the other end of the spectrum is Jim's father, he is afraid of being that causal agent in his development of self. He tells him that 'you'll see when you're older' and other abstract cliches that in no way help him in his present predicaments. Jim then, without a great sense of articulation, tries to communicate this disconnect between himself and his parents. But, he can't get through to his mother that she is too much, neither can he convey to his father that he needs to man up.
This is, in fact, a huge part of Jim's character. He gets into knife fights, into the chicken race so he cannot be called 'chicken', so he isn't seen to be like his father. All of his actions are meant to be in a haphazard direction away from becoming being this...
The most poignant reflection on this paradigm of Jim growing up with these parents comes when his father says, "Choose your friends, don't let them choose you". This is said as Jim leaves for his first day of school and is a commentary on the previous scenes between Jim and his parents. The obvious implication is that Jim doesn't get to choose his parents and that such is the root of his problems. However, this suggestion is broken down with three proceeding events around the gang, the American flag and the school insignia. On his way to school we're introduced not only to the gang Judy hangs around with, but a symbol of societal formulation; people getting into groups as to add structure and hierarchy to the chaos that is a vast pool of potential big fish (high school; life in general). At school this is layered with a macrochosmic idea of groups; the American flag being raised - all before Jim steps on the school's insignia. This gets him in trouble with...
... a group of shoes - in other words, nameless, faceless masses that represent something you're not yet apart of. All of these images weigh into the thematic discussion on self-determinism with Jim and his parents. Not only is he a product of how they raised him, but also subjected to concepts of collectiveness that he also has no control over. The film then appeals to a Freudian and behaviourist perspective on the human psyche; we are blank slates controlled and determined by childhood and our environment. The conflict then built into characters from this position is all based upon a question of control. This is all surmised with the planetarium sequence:
We, along with the students, are directly told that people don't matter, that there is a confounding triviality of humanity in the vast truth of space and time because Earth will eventually be gone and mean nothing to the universe around it. This is a huge plot point of the movie, one referred to with the ending; with Plato being killed outside of the planetarium...
The composition of the above shot speaks best to the significance of this. Jim is a small figure in the frame, the planetarium gates overshadow him. It is the symbolic reference to trivial human worries that overwhelm both this shot and the characters within; Plato most. He, like almost all of the characters in this film, struggle to deal with the 'harshness' of life. I put harshness in quotes as to imply that humans attribute the adjective to an unconscious procession of events that the universe shows itself to be. It's this attribution that lies at the core of the movie. The film doesn't dwell on these existential ideas in such abstract terms though. Instead of the universe not caring for these characters, it's parents, gangs, schools, police, government. In such, we see the direct correlation between those Jim and co. rebel against and those that they wish they had some amount of control over. This control they wish they had is expressed, with corny overtones, in the abandoned mansion sequence.
These kids wish for change, for family, that people and the world alike would see as they do. This essentially leaves the film questioning who are these kids supposed to turn to for help, who is at fault for this film's ending? Is it the police? The parents? The school system? The gangs? The kids themselves?
Jim, Plato and Judy certainly see that their predicament as the consequence of their parents - essentially, how they were raised and how they're currently treated. There is, however, a huge difference between Jim and his two friends. In my opinion, fuck Plato and fuck Judy. Both of these characters face similar issues to Jim: mummy and or daddy issues. But, Jim is the only character who makes an attempt to change, who has a somewhat mature approach to his problems. This is why I opened by saying that this is a film about a bunch of fucking idiots. Whilst I understand their struggle, whilst I see why they act as they do, I don't sympathise with how they behave - Plato especially. Not only is he shamefully clingy and emotional, he shoots puppies when he's angry - and all because he hasn't got any parents around him. This, whilst a difficult situation, is not a justification for the shit he does and ends up doing. I might seem like an asshole in saying this, but I'm glad he gets shot in the end. Whilst the film maybe wants us to sympathise with the teenage plight presented, I cannot to this degree. This is not just a personal perspective, it's one that is somewhat supported by the film. Whilst it implies that parents don't always listen, that teenagers are the product of things they cannot control, it also makes clear that to fix these problems you have to turn to the root of it: the disconnect between the people and their surrounding world. This reaffirms the poignancy of the planetarium as a symbol. It's essentially because the characters in this film find it so hard to face their problems, both on a large abstract level and on a smaller one, but also to communicate to their parents as well as understand their view, that they are who they are. The ending of the film is then both the fault of parent and child. But, this end isn't just Plato dying, it's the archetypal tragic climax of a troubled teen. We get to this climax through a lack of comprehension of the universal idea that we are all living trivially minute lives on a microscopic speck in this unfathomable universe. The response to this truth shouldn't be a loss of hope, shouldn't be a nihilistic justification for violent and destructive anarchy. This truth should be a great equaliser amongst all of us. I don't mean this in the basic and banal sense of YOLO and we should stick together to get through this tough, tough life - not at all. What this universal pointlessness should make clear to us all is that we are weak, we are small, we are next to nothing, but that's something we can work with. We can use this futility as reprieve, as a way of re-contextualising self-determinism. No, we can't just fly, breathe under water or spit fire due to the constraints of physical law - and in the same respect, we are the product of things we cannot control. What we are allowed however is a certain degree of control over the way we perceive things. We can choose to see universal pointlessness as just a mere fact, one that doesn't have to affect how we see the world in a negative light. Our predicament is, as I always say: control, the fantasy; control the fantasy. Controlling everything is just what we wish we could do, what we can actually control is how we see things.
However, as the film does, we won't concentrate on the greater existential interpretation of teenage problems. How this idea of being able to control the way we see things relates to Jim and co. is in the simple idea of walking in someone else's shoes. Jim can choose to see the world as his parents do and vice versa. In this, all they have to do is listen and not react to not being heard with arguments, moaning, knife fights and so on. The simplicity of this solution, whilst ambiguous, is key. The film makes it clear that what is missing from the relationships between children and parents is a simple two-way communication. Whilst the tone of the movie, being from a teens perspective, leans harder on the parents, what Jim's character arc says is that both child and parent need to change. To fight for the cause of subjective teen problems pushing young adults into calamity, ruining lives, all you need is clarity, both in how you see and how you communicate.
A nineteen-year-old paint store worker's life takes a turn when he finds a new dance partner.
I was way too young when I first saw this movie; I must have been around ten, and was expecting a movie about a disco dancing competition - one with a lot of Bee Gees songs - after seeing a trailer. For the first 5 minutes or so, this is what you get, but, beyond this... not so much. As you could expect, ten-year-old me was quite surprised at the dark depths to which this movie dares to burrow. And re-watching this today after not having seen this in years, I was struck even more by Saturday Night Fever as this is still a darker movie than I was anticipating it to be. (However, this may be due to me watching a different cut of the film when I was younger, though, I can't be sure of this).
With one of the greatest and most iconic soundtracks of any movie... ever, and with aesthetics and a style that helped further popularise disco world-wide, it's impossible to say that this film isn't a classic. Added to this, Saturday Night Fever goes under many peoples' radars as one of the most affecting and poignant "lost teen" movies. The archetype of this genre of film that most will refer to is of course Rebel Without A Cause. After this, however, it is very easy to jump to The Graduate and then all the way up to the 80s and the John Hughes movies. Skipping past the bulk of the New Hollywood era, however, we all miss Saturday Night Fever, which, in my view, is a much more darker and grimier, also less melodramatic, version of Rebel Without A Cause. In such, this film delves deeper into the angst and fear of having to confront oncoming adulthood without being given the tools or the means, by ourselves and by our upbringing, to stoically and successfully do this. For this, Saturday Night Fever certainly affects me more than any other "lost teen" movie that I can bring to mind.
With Rebel Without A Cause, I've always felt that the teens were a little too childish, and with The Graduate, the angle of painting the protagonists as bumbling, immoral and stupid certainly works, but, it just doesn't resonate so well with me. Conversely, Saturday Night Fever really embraces the darkness that can reside within 'adults' moving out of their teens. And though this story is based on a fabricated magazine article and, in turn, a fabricated idea of the 70s teenager and the 'disco scene', it seems to capture a realistic balance between self-awareness, naivety and stupidity in its characters. Because of this, when all the expected questions and themes are raised, they seem to be materialised genuinely. For example, what do I do about the dead-end path that life has set before me? What do I do about my dumb-ass friends? What do I do about my neurotic parents? What do I do about my inadequate and useless self? Many of these questions are answered for John Travolta's Tony before he asks them. However, when Tony does go ahead and begin asking these questions, he does so with a facial expression or an action before speaking.
One of the best examples of this would be when he thinks he has lost his job, and returns to the paint shop only to have it given back. Merely looking at the workers who have been employed at the small shop for years upon years, we hear him scream: is this all I'm supposed to amount to? And this is after he enthusiastically accepts a minor raise from his boss. The juxtaposition of these two events then says a lot about how Tony is growing and developing without any guidelines or knowledge of what to do - and largely because he's only ever critiqued, never really praised, which leaves him drowning in between two choices of either transitioning into a void of self-contempt in which he begrudgingly accepts the life-long job at the paint store or an empty well of vapidness as a small-town disco hero that sleeps around and jerks off with his friends. However, reflecting upon this, this narrative utilises his relationship with Stephanie, who is trying to find a path in the world with more open eyes, but, ultimately, an equal sense of haphazardness.
Time and time again this narrative pulls up parallels like this that formulate this core theme of 'lost' by juxtaposing two sides of the same coin, creating a seemingly useless two-headed coin with no tails. Without a thesis and an antithesis, there can be no synthesis. Translated into the "lost teen" genre film, this means that two lost teens do not make an adult. At least, this is how those around Tony seem to view themselves and life. And so, without transformation and without preparation for the road ahead, the characters of this narrative, as is suggested by Tony's boss, are just waiting to be fucked by the future.
As poignant and expressive as this idea is, we do find such a suggestion in a film like The Graduate with its iconic ending. However, Saturday Night Fever ends with hope and with an implication that these two sides of the same coin, Tony and Stephanie, can transform into something that is more than just a symbol for chance; something that doesn't rely on the unlikely probability that everything will be fine. And so it's this that reaches out of the screen whilst Saturday Night Fever plays. This is then a film about escaping escapism and the feverous Saturday night which we live for to die upon; the night in which we become a zombie with abstract dreams and a synthesised, soporific buzz. For the daring choices of plot and character that are used to project this story, Saturday Night Fever is certainly more than a classic in my view.
Previous playlist:
Vampires
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
Inside Out - The Reconciliation Of The Fractured Self
Inside Out is perfect in a way that kind of tingles. With beautiful animation, great direction, good editing, but a masterful story, Inside Out is one of the greatest animated films I've ever seen. Its every moment pulsates and reverberates with an understanding of the Disney-Pixar craft, and so its no surprise that it projects one of their most articulate and touching narratives of all time. Whilst this isn't subtextually as complex as, for example, Monsters Inc, Inside Out manages to balance its deeply metaphorical side with its more accessible side. Thus, as most people could tell you, Inside Out is a film about growing up and embracing the wide range of human emotions. However, there is nuance and more to this story than just this, and so this is what we'll explore today.
For practically all of modern human history, societies have found a means of representing one fundamental idea: the fractal nature of the individual. Ancient societies, such as the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, represented this through polytheism, a belief in multiple gods and goddesses. In Roman mythology, Cupid was the god of desire, Mars was the god of war and Vulcan was the god of fire. There are a plethora of other gods, including the 12 central and a myriad of other peripheral figures, that all represented different aspects of humanity and society. With these three examples, however, we can see expressed three central human attributes: violence and aggression, love and affection, and creativity and malleable change. Furthermore, we have an example of a fundamental representation of the idea that people, and in turn societies, are made up of separate, even individual, compartments that, only together, make a cohesive, functional whole.
As time progressed many societies converged upon one God, relying on monotheism for meaning and a unifying force in the individual and amongst the masses. Abstractly and non-universally, this implied a change in humanity whereby we took control of ourselves whilst maintaining an idea of a literal higher power and purpose. This higher concept, this God, for many cultures, was a guiding force that gave people the freedom and free will to live as an individual who could, to a degree, lead their own life. No longer did it then seem that Mars would embody societies and drive them towards war. However, with a belief in a literal God remained a concept of embodiment; i.e, the devil, demons or evil embodying someone. And thus there still remained an idea of fractal societies and people existing through forces of evil, good and shades in between. But, as time again progressed, God became ever more abstract and less literal. This signalled to some that society was breaking down. It is at this point that we begin to approach the 20th century where Nietzsche declares that "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him" in his 1882 collection, The Gay Science. This idea of "God is dead" deeply worried Nietzsche, which is seemingly why he proposed that we have to become supermen and in turn gods ourselves.
With Freud, who was greatly influenced by Nietzsche, seemed to come an answer to this proposition. Freud brought back, into mainstream thought, the idea of the fractal nature of the individual. He did this by suggesting, not that gods controlled us and our emotions, but that our unconscious and subconscious mind did. And in this hazy realm of non-consciousness came three abstract personalities - what some would call gods. These were the ego, superego and the id. Without wanting to delve too deeply into these concepts, Freud, having resurrected polytheism's essential understanding of humans as fractured beings, gave us new tools of self-expression. However, over the 20th century Freudian and Jungian psychology faded out of popularity.
In the latter half of the 20th century, however, Paul Ekman proposed the concept of the "6 Basic Emotions". These, as you may know, are fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. (He also proposed a seventh, and that was contempt). Ekman was not the first to propose a list of core or fundamental emotions, but, it was his list that seemingly stuck. Thus, in the modern day, we usually describe ourselves through emotions as opposed to gods and our unconscious (though, both of these ideas remain relevant, and even important). This has its positives and negatives, much like polytheism, monotheism and psychoanalysis do, and they manifest in society. However, much like societies before ourselves had to make the gods happy, walk righteously under one god, reconcile with their childhood or confront their shadow, we have to manage our emotions. And thus we find ourselves at the narrative expression of this idea through Inside Out, which, who knows, may be a significant marker of thinking in our day and age in the future (much like many of the Pixar and Disney films could be).
When we now take a look at our main characters, they may seem a little more important and profound than you'd initially assume...
However, let us take a step back. Ekman proposed that there were six or seven core emotions. Why are there only five represented here? The truth is, there are many theories and many different numbers concerning core emotions. It was decided, by Pete Docter and with Ekman's aid, that five would be the right amount of emotions for the sake of simplicity. There are nonetheless many more emotions expressed by this film than these five. For example, we get contempt and nostalgia through a combination of the references to memory with sadness and anger. And, most important of all, this film lets surprise be represented physically in Riley's inner world.
Surprise, the discovery of the new, can lead to creation...
But, taken badly, surprise leads to destruction...
All of this is of course dictated by the unknown world. Thus, surprise will come to be one of the most important 'emotions' of this film. This is because this is a coming-of-age story in which Riley moves into her transition away from childhood and into adulthood. This movement is catalysed by, in essence, life happening.
Life, seen through a responsible adult's eyes, is not all fun and games. This is because life is made up of chaos, entropy and a lot of forces trying to do you harm. To confront life, you must prepare for the unexpected by constructing a flexible, evolving tool kit with which you can cope with almost anything. And this is indeed maturity; it is letting go of life as a dream, of life as seen through a child's eyes; a life filled with almost constant joy thanks only to naivety and parents.
As an adult, you must construct your own happiness whilst dealing with the chaos of life. This is represented by Inside Out through our look into the parents' minds:
There are a plethora of things that these two images tell us, but there are two key ideas that we'll pick up on. The first is that adults have a different panel to a child's: each emotion has their own controls. Secondly, there is nonetheless someone in the director's chair in centre. Unlike with Riley, however, Joy is not in control in the parents' mind. Instead, sadness and anger are.
This is one of the most expressive and pertinent ideas in this entire film. Whilst we are told, by the end of this film, that joy alone cannot rule a person's mind, it is here that we are told that more daunting emotions must take control. So, whilst we'd all like to think that we're lead primarily by joy in life, most people aren't. As we have discussed, life is difficult and it forces us to forge our own happiness and create a tool kit with which to confront it. Contrary to what a child would believe, to confront the world, you can't just be positive. This doesn't mean that positive thinking and the whole branch of positive psychology is null. However, it does mean that, reprising a Jungian idea, people must embrace their shadow and dark side. The mother is shown to do this by letting sadness be her guiding emotion whilst the father utilises anger. Interestingly, sadness is then attributed to an imaginary image love...
... and anger an imaginary hockey game...
Whilst these are jokes based on the personalities of the parents, this also reveals how these core emotions, as negative as they seemingly are, function. Starting with anger, we see a form of destruction that can also create something positive. Anger is then, in a certain sense, what Riley channels when she plays hockey...
... and we hear this to be true when Anger has to take over as this game starts. In this respect, anger is shown to motivate competition and the joy it offers. So, whilst Anger will play his part in the protection of Riley and her sense of self, he is not just darkness, but a combination of the good and the bad. However, whist Riley's dad is an influence upon her, much like Anger is, anger doesn't play a huge role in this narrative. Instead, the conflict throughout is between Joy and Sadness.
As is implied initially through Riley's mother, Sadness seems to be a kind of understanding or empathy; it is only by empathising with someone that can you be compassionate, and it is also only through understanding that you can learn to let things go. We see this manifest itself with this later, crucial moment:
Sadness, through empathy and understanding, manages to raise Bing Bong's spirits. By accepting his despair, instead of suppressing it through positivity as Joy would suggest, Bing Bong soon manages to move on and again be happy. This is one of the core elements of Riley's final lesson:
What develops from this reconciliation between Sadness and Joy in Riley is both the ability to let go and be weak, but also be strong again. This is so important because, with only Joy, life becomes deluded, and this is made clear with the expansion of this core memory...
... to include sadness...
However, letting go and being weak before regaining strength as a means of maturing, is signified best through one key moment: Bing Bong's death.
To grow up and accept that sadness, in a certain respect, must run your life, you must first learn what it means to let the things that need to be let go, go. Bing Bong's death is then the realisation that Riley is no longer a child, which can be a difficult thing to endure, but it is nonetheless something we must all go through. We can assume, because her 'headquarters' is run by sadness, that Riley's mother also had to learn how to let go for the better. Conversely, her father would have had to learn how to control his frustrations and turn them towards positive creation. (Or, at least, these would be their core, defining lessons in life; we all must learn how to control all of our emotions). However, with Riley learning a similar lesson to what her mother had to have, we see her accept that there is something that can flourish from the destruction and challenging of self.
There is conflict along this road of maturation with Joy refusing to let Sadness take control, and such leads to the decimation of Riley's personality:
Thus, the judgement and questioning of her core being, and ultimately its deconstruction, is what teaches her that, from darkness, essentially comes a brighter light than one she has ever seen before.
Coming towards a conclusion, what we ultimately see with Riley maturing into a more complex and stronger person is the reconciliation of the many parts of her fractured self. This story is then a meta-narrative constructed over thousands upon thousands of years that ultimately sees all the gods that rule over, and the subconscious elements that reside with, the human complex come into peace, ready to confront the ominous beast that is reality, as someone moves closer towards adulthood. For this, Inside Out is not just a masterpiece, but a truly significant story of our times in my view.
Rebel Without A Cause - Triviality
Jim, a troubled teen, spirals into calamity when trying to integrate himself into a gang.
This film is, in short, about a bunch of fucking idiots. To put it more eloquently, this is a film about growing up in trying conditions with naivety and an overwhelming recognition of the arbitrary chaos present in society and, macrocosmically, the universe. The major conflicts of this film then derive from an inability to comprehend or deal with, what is best put in abstract terms: life. For this focus on such complex yet universal themes, this film has earned the status of classic. However, this is not a perfect film. The film is extremely expressive with its characterisation and plotting because it concisely conveys its meaning, but, the hyperbolisation of both character and plot hurts the narrative in terms of verisimilitude. In this, I mean to say that the themes are over embellished, the characters overwritten and overplayed (mainly the smaller parts) resulting in an overly fantastical view of teenage issues that isn't entirely believable. To further clarify, like American Pie overplays teenage sexuality...
... Rebel Without A Cause overplays the conflicts between teenagers and their childhoods.
But, despite the hyperbolisation in the characters and plot, Rebel Without A Cause rightly deserves its place in cinematic history. The real triumphs of the film then encompass everything outside of the abandoned mansion sequence (the bulk of the third act, discluding the ending). What makes the majority of the film so great, especially the opening, is the way we're brought into a teenage perception of the world with empathy and understanding. We see Jim punching the desk, writhing with exasperation in the presence of his parents, and we completely get him. What we're being told with the opening act is then a pivotal aspect of the movie and what we'll dive into first as to get a grip on the depths of the film's meaning.
The relationship between Jim and his parents talks to the title of the movie - Rebel Without A Cause. Jim is of course our archetypal teenage rebel, rebelling against authority in its many forms: parents, school, police officers, teachers, bullies, social norm. But, whilst he rebels against these things, they aren't atom bombs, corruption, legislation, abuse, such and so on. The difference between being upset with your parents and the government is the personal and incredibly nuanced issue of mother/daughter, father/son problems. You can't protest for the change of some document somewhere to fix problems in this respect. And for this the cause of the rebel becomes intangible, essentially ceases to be. This leaves Jim rebelling for no easily perceived reason. What we're made to see with the opening and through the characterisation of Jim is, however, his cause. This is what makes this film so great - because this is quite a hard thing to do well. We see this to be the case when looking at many films with similar themes...
What these films struggle to balance, as this film does too, is action and reaction. In other words, when these movies try to delve into guns, huge parties, high stakes and a whole lot of romanticism, they loose their grip on the crux of their themes. The greater teen films are of course...
This is, in fact, a huge part of Jim's character. He gets into knife fights, into the chicken race so he cannot be called 'chicken', so he isn't seen to be like his father. All of his actions are meant to be in a haphazard direction away from becoming being this...
... a group of shoes - in other words, nameless, faceless masses that represent something you're not yet apart of. All of these images weigh into the thematic discussion on self-determinism with Jim and his parents. Not only is he a product of how they raised him, but also subjected to concepts of collectiveness that he also has no control over. The film then appeals to a Freudian and behaviourist perspective on the human psyche; we are blank slates controlled and determined by childhood and our environment. The conflict then built into characters from this position is all based upon a question of control. This is all surmised with the planetarium sequence:
We, along with the students, are directly told that people don't matter, that there is a confounding triviality of humanity in the vast truth of space and time because Earth will eventually be gone and mean nothing to the universe around it. This is a huge plot point of the movie, one referred to with the ending; with Plato being killed outside of the planetarium...
The composition of the above shot speaks best to the significance of this. Jim is a small figure in the frame, the planetarium gates overshadow him. It is the symbolic reference to trivial human worries that overwhelm both this shot and the characters within; Plato most. He, like almost all of the characters in this film, struggle to deal with the 'harshness' of life. I put harshness in quotes as to imply that humans attribute the adjective to an unconscious procession of events that the universe shows itself to be. It's this attribution that lies at the core of the movie. The film doesn't dwell on these existential ideas in such abstract terms though. Instead of the universe not caring for these characters, it's parents, gangs, schools, police, government. In such, we see the direct correlation between those Jim and co. rebel against and those that they wish they had some amount of control over. This control they wish they had is expressed, with corny overtones, in the abandoned mansion sequence.
These kids wish for change, for family, that people and the world alike would see as they do. This essentially leaves the film questioning who are these kids supposed to turn to for help, who is at fault for this film's ending? Is it the police? The parents? The school system? The gangs? The kids themselves?
Jim, Plato and Judy certainly see that their predicament as the consequence of their parents - essentially, how they were raised and how they're currently treated. There is, however, a huge difference between Jim and his two friends. In my opinion, fuck Plato and fuck Judy. Both of these characters face similar issues to Jim: mummy and or daddy issues. But, Jim is the only character who makes an attempt to change, who has a somewhat mature approach to his problems. This is why I opened by saying that this is a film about a bunch of fucking idiots. Whilst I understand their struggle, whilst I see why they act as they do, I don't sympathise with how they behave - Plato especially. Not only is he shamefully clingy and emotional, he shoots puppies when he's angry - and all because he hasn't got any parents around him. This, whilst a difficult situation, is not a justification for the shit he does and ends up doing. I might seem like an asshole in saying this, but I'm glad he gets shot in the end. Whilst the film maybe wants us to sympathise with the teenage plight presented, I cannot to this degree. This is not just a personal perspective, it's one that is somewhat supported by the film. Whilst it implies that parents don't always listen, that teenagers are the product of things they cannot control, it also makes clear that to fix these problems you have to turn to the root of it: the disconnect between the people and their surrounding world. This reaffirms the poignancy of the planetarium as a symbol. It's essentially because the characters in this film find it so hard to face their problems, both on a large abstract level and on a smaller one, but also to communicate to their parents as well as understand their view, that they are who they are. The ending of the film is then both the fault of parent and child. But, this end isn't just Plato dying, it's the archetypal tragic climax of a troubled teen. We get to this climax through a lack of comprehension of the universal idea that we are all living trivially minute lives on a microscopic speck in this unfathomable universe. The response to this truth shouldn't be a loss of hope, shouldn't be a nihilistic justification for violent and destructive anarchy. This truth should be a great equaliser amongst all of us. I don't mean this in the basic and banal sense of YOLO and we should stick together to get through this tough, tough life - not at all. What this universal pointlessness should make clear to us all is that we are weak, we are small, we are next to nothing, but that's something we can work with. We can use this futility as reprieve, as a way of re-contextualising self-determinism. No, we can't just fly, breathe under water or spit fire due to the constraints of physical law - and in the same respect, we are the product of things we cannot control. What we are allowed however is a certain degree of control over the way we perceive things. We can choose to see universal pointlessness as just a mere fact, one that doesn't have to affect how we see the world in a negative light. Our predicament is, as I always say: control, the fantasy; control the fantasy. Controlling everything is just what we wish we could do, what we can actually control is how we see things.
However, as the film does, we won't concentrate on the greater existential interpretation of teenage problems. How this idea of being able to control the way we see things relates to Jim and co. is in the simple idea of walking in someone else's shoes. Jim can choose to see the world as his parents do and vice versa. In this, all they have to do is listen and not react to not being heard with arguments, moaning, knife fights and so on. The simplicity of this solution, whilst ambiguous, is key. The film makes it clear that what is missing from the relationships between children and parents is a simple two-way communication. Whilst the tone of the movie, being from a teens perspective, leans harder on the parents, what Jim's character arc says is that both child and parent need to change. To fight for the cause of subjective teen problems pushing young adults into calamity, ruining lives, all you need is clarity, both in how you see and how you communicate.
Saturday Night Fever - Two-Headed Coins
A nineteen-year-old paint store worker's life takes a turn when he finds a new dance partner.
I was way too young when I first saw this movie; I must have been around ten, and was expecting a movie about a disco dancing competition - one with a lot of Bee Gees songs - after seeing a trailer. For the first 5 minutes or so, this is what you get, but, beyond this... not so much. As you could expect, ten-year-old me was quite surprised at the dark depths to which this movie dares to burrow. And re-watching this today after not having seen this in years, I was struck even more by Saturday Night Fever as this is still a darker movie than I was anticipating it to be. (However, this may be due to me watching a different cut of the film when I was younger, though, I can't be sure of this).
With one of the greatest and most iconic soundtracks of any movie... ever, and with aesthetics and a style that helped further popularise disco world-wide, it's impossible to say that this film isn't a classic. Added to this, Saturday Night Fever goes under many peoples' radars as one of the most affecting and poignant "lost teen" movies. The archetype of this genre of film that most will refer to is of course Rebel Without A Cause. After this, however, it is very easy to jump to The Graduate and then all the way up to the 80s and the John Hughes movies. Skipping past the bulk of the New Hollywood era, however, we all miss Saturday Night Fever, which, in my view, is a much more darker and grimier, also less melodramatic, version of Rebel Without A Cause. In such, this film delves deeper into the angst and fear of having to confront oncoming adulthood without being given the tools or the means, by ourselves and by our upbringing, to stoically and successfully do this. For this, Saturday Night Fever certainly affects me more than any other "lost teen" movie that I can bring to mind.
With Rebel Without A Cause, I've always felt that the teens were a little too childish, and with The Graduate, the angle of painting the protagonists as bumbling, immoral and stupid certainly works, but, it just doesn't resonate so well with me. Conversely, Saturday Night Fever really embraces the darkness that can reside within 'adults' moving out of their teens. And though this story is based on a fabricated magazine article and, in turn, a fabricated idea of the 70s teenager and the 'disco scene', it seems to capture a realistic balance between self-awareness, naivety and stupidity in its characters. Because of this, when all the expected questions and themes are raised, they seem to be materialised genuinely. For example, what do I do about the dead-end path that life has set before me? What do I do about my dumb-ass friends? What do I do about my neurotic parents? What do I do about my inadequate and useless self? Many of these questions are answered for John Travolta's Tony before he asks them. However, when Tony does go ahead and begin asking these questions, he does so with a facial expression or an action before speaking.
One of the best examples of this would be when he thinks he has lost his job, and returns to the paint shop only to have it given back. Merely looking at the workers who have been employed at the small shop for years upon years, we hear him scream: is this all I'm supposed to amount to? And this is after he enthusiastically accepts a minor raise from his boss. The juxtaposition of these two events then says a lot about how Tony is growing and developing without any guidelines or knowledge of what to do - and largely because he's only ever critiqued, never really praised, which leaves him drowning in between two choices of either transitioning into a void of self-contempt in which he begrudgingly accepts the life-long job at the paint store or an empty well of vapidness as a small-town disco hero that sleeps around and jerks off with his friends. However, reflecting upon this, this narrative utilises his relationship with Stephanie, who is trying to find a path in the world with more open eyes, but, ultimately, an equal sense of haphazardness.
Time and time again this narrative pulls up parallels like this that formulate this core theme of 'lost' by juxtaposing two sides of the same coin, creating a seemingly useless two-headed coin with no tails. Without a thesis and an antithesis, there can be no synthesis. Translated into the "lost teen" genre film, this means that two lost teens do not make an adult. At least, this is how those around Tony seem to view themselves and life. And so, without transformation and without preparation for the road ahead, the characters of this narrative, as is suggested by Tony's boss, are just waiting to be fucked by the future.
As poignant and expressive as this idea is, we do find such a suggestion in a film like The Graduate with its iconic ending. However, Saturday Night Fever ends with hope and with an implication that these two sides of the same coin, Tony and Stephanie, can transform into something that is more than just a symbol for chance; something that doesn't rely on the unlikely probability that everything will be fine. And so it's this that reaches out of the screen whilst Saturday Night Fever plays. This is then a film about escaping escapism and the feverous Saturday night which we live for to die upon; the night in which we become a zombie with abstract dreams and a synthesised, soporific buzz. For the daring choices of plot and character that are used to project this story, Saturday Night Fever is certainly more than a classic in my view.
Previous playlist:
Vampires
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
