Between X and Y Part II

Something strange happened after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.  All the euphoria faded overnight.  The world suddenly seemed more confusing, complicated, and frightening.  There are no happy endings in history.  Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK drove a stake through the triumphalism of the early 1990s with its assault against an official narrative of American history (the Warren Commission) by mixing fact with fiction.  The three hour film followed New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner, in his obsessive investigation of the Kennedy assassination which by the end left me wondering . ..  But this led me to watch films that questioned authority such as All the President's Men, Dr. Strangelove, The French Connection, and several others that reveled in the corruption and ugliness of the modern world. The idiot wind Dylan wrote of was alive and well.

The 1990s was replete with Irony.  Meanwhile technology moved like an unstoppable force too attractive to ignore.  It made everyone a little meaner and insensitive.  

Musically, the decade mirrored the fragmentation across the American landscape.  Grunge made rock relevant again for a few years. Nirvana came on and blew everyone away and then left as just as they arrived.  Kurt Cobain may well have the last rock and roll star to move his generation, but also the most reluctant one.  When Nirvana released their LP Nevermind, they usurped Michael Jackson from the pop charts and their video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received constant airplay on MTV.  Rock critics, who were desperate for someone to recapture the freethinking charisma of the Sixties icons like Lennon and Dylan, declared Cobain the savior of rock.  But the band eschewed their fame. During High School they were the outcasts and not even considered remotely cool. The chips on their shoulders were well earned.  When jocks and frat boys started rocking out to Nirvana songs the band reacted with disdain.  At their concerts Nirvana began to appear in drag to challenge their fans (a growing number of fratboys) for their homophobia and mindless conformity.  Listening to their unplugged performance, made a few months before Cobain's death, is like witnessing the apotheosis of Gen X.  In Nirvana's performance, I hear a new American sound emerging - moodier, darker, lost in the past.  Their rendition of David Bowie's, "The Man Who Sold the World," is melodic and filled with imagery, a sort of history of the late 20th Century.  Nothing is more emotionally wrenching than than Cobain's last two songs "All Apologies," and Leadbelly's "Where did you sleep last night"?

Pulp Fiction is without a doubt the most influential film of the 1990s.  Quentin Tarantino's epic homage to gangster cinema struck a chord  Tarantino, a movie buff who spent most of his 20s as a video store clerk, had imbibed decades of pop culture and conjured Pulp Fiction.  For the Spielberg/Lucas generation, Pulp Fiction brought a new cinematic language: interweaving story lines, long dialogue sequences, a cinematic universe just as unique as Star Wars.  From literary references ranging from Mark Twain to Elmore Leonard to Flannery O'Conner, Pulp Fiction is like the Ulysses of modern film.

Clerks also deserves mention.  The Waiting for Godot of the 1990s.  Perhaps no film captures Gen X more that Kevin Smith's low budget comedy set in the bleak New Jersey convenience store.  It follows two underachieving clerks as they carry on philosophical discussions on Star Wars or the movie tastes of their customers.  I knew guys like this in a job I worked after High School.  They were smart enough to know they were in a dead end situation, but showed little resolve to get out.  Being stuck in a dead end job does awful things to the mind and soul, and no film illustrates this better than Clerks as we follow Dante and Randal in their descent into retail hell.  Smith proved an equal to Tarantino in writing sharp dialogue fueled by pop culture references (and literary).

The Coen Brothers provided relief.  In Fargo, Sheriff Gunderson played brilliantly by Frances McDormand used common old decency to combat the evil threatening her community. In a world of small time charlatans, her honesty and bravery shined like a bright star.

Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, as a stoner/hippie, who uses his indolent nature as the only sane reaction to a crazy world of scheming capitalists, mobsters, nihilists, and white collar criminals .  The dude inspiring all who felt adrift as as the millennium beckoned.

The "dude" abides