First, a quick disclaimer: This review may contain spoilers – if a plotless film can be spoiled. If you have not seen the movie, read at your own risk.
Since I keep an all-things-generation-x blog, how could I get away with never having seen the movie Slacker, the film that supposedly gave Gen X its nickname, The Slacker Generation?
The following is a review of the movie and my impressions of how it reflects on the generation that received its moniker.
Uniquely Styled
The film is unique in that it has no plot. Rather, it follows random characters, intruding on a brief moment in their lives, before attaching to a loosely connected new character, as though the camera has found this other person slightly more interesting.
The camera moves about Austin, TX, a college town, and thus, many of the characters are twenty-somethings, often students or recent graduates. Both younger and older characters are also portrayed. Note that the behaviors of the older and younger characters are not significantly different from the twenty-somethings.
The movie shows a random smattering of people, connected maybe only by their time and place, all seemingly afflicted with the same condition. They are disaffected and cynical. They exist in a society that doesn’t suit them. Though they interact with one another, which is the mechanism that moves the film along, they aren’t really connecting with anyone.
Unfocused Intellectualism
The main theme of the movie is a preponderance of unfocused intellectualism. Many of the characters have profound thoughts. They seem well-educated and often cite books and history that confirm their education. But education does not necessarily equate to knowledge, and it is more than capable of avoiding productivity.
All the demonstrated, and seemingly hard-earned, education and brain power has not been funneled toward productivity at all, let alone into a career, family, or meaningful cause. It’s almost as though there is so much to think about that there is simply no time for anything else.
Meanwhile, the ideas expressed all seem a bit off. There are conspiracies and fringe claims, as well as odd interpretations. There is science and pseudoscience and history all being shared, but all contorted by the individual’s unusual perspective. From dreams being a window to alternative universes to Smurfs being a tool of Krishna indoctrination, the education is there but the sense is lacking.
The characters are lost in their thoughts and theories, bogged down, and oppressed by them. Their incessant analysis makes mundane things seem hard. When a woman suggests to her male companion that they go out, he claims it’s too difficult. “The sun is too oppressive to go out,” he says, and complains about how much preparation is required to go outside.
Imagine how difficult a job would be!
Rejection of Societal Norms
It isn’t just that they find working too difficult, however. Most of the characters express or imply that participation in society as constructed is a scam.
The Hitchhiker brags, “I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it.” He later gets right to the point and exclaims “Every commodity you produce is a piece of your own death!”
The Moon Landing fellow describes how the government builds “perfect employees” by robbing people of their long-term memories but leaving their short-term memories so they can continue to follow instructions. Employment is consistently viewed by these characters as designed to enslave.
Enslavement is a theme of the film with many characters deconstructing enslavement versus freedom. Society, the workforce, and even relationships enslave. They reject these things. They reject them to avoid their own rejection.
But there’s an absurdity to their claims. They reject relationships while seeking interaction with others. They value freedom while rejecting the means to be anything other than dependent. Ironically, they are enslaved by their own ideas and choices.
Absurdity is best reflected in the scene with the typewriter. While the typewriter’s owner wants to keep it as “a perfectly good typewriter,” his domineering friend insists it is destroyed as a symbol of their failed relationships with women. As if it’s logical to say, while we are rejecting our past, present, and future relationships, why not also destroy this functional tool?
After tossing it in the creek, he reads a passage from Ulysses to finalize the ritual, again using intellectualism as a replacement, rather than a means, for productivity. More on this passage later.
Disconnection
The camera follows the characters as they talk ceaselessly, bursting with ideas. They must let out their ideas and radical insights, but virtually no one is listening. Their interests, while all-consuming to themselves, are generally uninteresting to others.
The character’s disconnectedness is paired with a surprising politeness. Whether a character is being followed by a fanatic of moon landing conspiracies or being lectured on the JFK assassination, they address those intrusions with complete patience. While the audience recognizes the disinterest, the enthused character never does, accentuating the disconnect. And yet, the reaction of kindness seems to say, I may not agree with what you’re saying, but by God, I respect you and your theories!
Caricature of the Generation
The movie is a caricature of the “slacker generation”, now known as Generation X. While neighboring generations, the Boomers and Millennials, are both said to be community- and society-oriented, Generation X is uniquely individualistic. The characters in this film demonstrate this in an exaggerated way, individualistic to the point of utter disconnectedness.
This group of people isn’t so impressed with the work and lives of previous generations. Society looks like some kind of trap, a trap that they are simply too smart to fall into. It’s not that they don’t want to do any kind of work, but they are interested in the non-traditional paths. The movie depicts a handful of side hustles, selling t-shirts, stolen sodas, or Madonna’s pap smear, for example, but depicts no one as having a traditional job. Even in a setting where you know someone must be working, like a bookstore, coffee shop, or diner, you don’t see any workers.
The film presents a generation unable to contribute meaningfully to society as it’s a society they don’t understand or value. They reject that society to the point of absurdity. Generation X in reality, however, is very capable of work and contribution. But it is also true that they entered adulthood and the workforce with a different set of values than their parents and grandparents, and they had a massive impact on how work is conducted.
Movie Reflects Its Characters
I love it when the direction and construction of a film embody its own themes. The film itself reflects the slacker moniker. The plotlessness, the moseying of the camera – the movie is made the way a slacker would do it – just grab a camera, walk around for a day, and call it a movie.
The film is as unfocused as its characters, wandering from place to place without a goal. There is no culmination in sight. As the character Having a Breakthrough Day puts it, “They tell you, look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is no tunnel.”
I said I would mention the Ulysses passage again. The typewriter destroyer reads the passage from when Leopold discovers his wife’s affair.
“If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone, whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.”
I’m not familiar with Ulysses, but it’s hard to read that passage and not consider whether it served as inspiration to Richard Linklater when he conceived of the film. Each character, as self-involved and self-important as they seem to be, flits in and out, adding a bit of time and a little substance to the string of the film, each one of them assured of their value, and yet each totally expendable.
In the final scene, the camera catches up to a group of young adults with their own cameras, filming as they travel the city themselves. It makes you wonder if each of those cameras holds a film not unlike this one. Our camera joins them as they run up a mountain, it’s joining the herd, and maybe losing interest in its own movie at that point.
And isn’t that just as good an ending as any?
Recommendation
This movie is valuable for its unusual style and its snapshot representation of the young adults of the time. Though it does so imperfectly, the film defines an entire generation, leading to a nickname that they have since never been able to completely shake. For this reason, the movie Slacker is a must-watch for all of Generation X and those interested in 1990s pop culture.
For more about Generation X, try these:
The Difference Between Generation X, Generation Jones, and Xennials
Generation X Can Make Its Dreams Come True
We Need a Generation X President, Here’s Why
Or, visit the home page to explore more content.