Written by Basil
on July 6, 2021

How 'Dazed and Confused' captures the gore and glory of being a teenager

Introduction

From left: Don, Wooderson, Pink and Mitchie in Dazed and Confused, 1993

Tom Hamilton’s familiar bass notes kick in, followed by Steven Tyler’s chorus of ‘Sweeeet Emooootion’. A montage of high school students, smoking, chatting casually. And then, it is declared in bold,

“The last day of school, May 28 1976, 1:05 pm”.
The protagonists, a web of school friends, are introduced, all caught up in their own worlds.

The bell rings, boys and girls rushing out of their classes, salvaging, ransacking their lockers, throwing away paper, tearing down books to the lyrics of “School’s out for summer. School’s out forever. School’s been blown to pieces”. Boys designing smoking devices and spanking bats while the teacher peacefully snores in woodworks class.

Richard Linklater’s storytelling and the ability to convey deeper, unspeakable conflicts merely through action and simple words shines through. This is a no-holds bar portrayal of the life of American teenagers in the 70s.

Themes

Bullying. Marijuana. Beer. Sex. Slangs. Fistfights. That is a sufficient summary of the movie. But under this cover, lies the true story that is told. One of carefree and reckless living, crushing of dreams for peers and drugs, humiliation, acceptance, and at the center of it all, the teeming and frothing teenage angst.

The explicit portrayal of hazing is shocking yet not despised. The boys target juniors for spanking. At one point, when the senior girls are spreading ketchup and flour and cracking eggs on juniors, Mike says, “They have permission to use the parking lot. No parents seem to mind”. When it’s over, the seniors offer them ride home, invite them to parties, becoming buddies – suggesting it to be an initiation ritual to the high school.

Into the night driving aimlessly through the neighbourhood, Dawson and his gang pick up trash cans, breaking mailboxes and crushing windscreens. Getting in trouble when caught by a mailbox owner who shot at them. Drunk girls topple on one another at the party in the woods. Fistfights breaking out. Experiments with sex and drugs. Speeding on the road. All amounting to a careless attitude among teenagers.

Mitchie and Sabrina exchange notes of their first night with their seniors. And I have a crush on Sabrina Davis 0_0

Characters

Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd, a promising footballer, is asked to sign a pledge barring him from drugs, smoking and other illegal activities. His coach makes him aware of his potential and asks him to focus on his career. Through the night, he is trying to make up his mind, conflicted whether to choose his friends over his passions. At dawn, Pink, caught in this crossroads decides to pursue his friends and sets out to buy tickets for Aerosmith. Such myopic, self-depreciative view of one’s life is commonplace among teenagers and how such crucial junctures of life can be taken for granted and squandered.

At one point, a kid says,

“If I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.”

The fresh high school junior, Mitch Kramer’s transformation overnight, from the timid geeky kid to smoking pot, destroying public property, making out with a senior girl. The uncertainty in his eyes when offered a ride by his seniors to coolly sliding in his headphones in his room at dawn after confronting his mother, his emotions are raw and true.

Cynthia, Mike and Tony, the school’s intelligentsia, throwing philosophies at each other after being frustrated at not finding a party in the neighborhood. Linklater grasps this opportunity:

“Life is preparation for death…. All we are taught to do is prepare.
…Since we’ll be dying anyway, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now?”

The nerd Tony, disciplined, eloquent and socially awkward. The blossoming romance with junior Sabrina Davis was a cute subplot to the medley. If I could identify with anyone, it would be him.

Matthew McCoughney’s Wooderson, high on pot, tied the threads together succintly in his speech standing in the middle of the field at midnight:

“…You gotta do what Randall “Pink” Floyd wants to do, man.
Let me tell ya this.
The older you do get, the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow.
You just gotta keep livin’, man.
L-I-V-I-N.”

Soundtrack and title

The soundtrack on this movie is a rock lover’s paradise. The thumping, living drum beats will seldom let one rest their feet. I strongly suggest that you experience it yourself. Futile to express music in words. Besides, I love rock myself so this soundtrack is ideal for my midnight insomnia frenzy. 😛

The title itself is a song by the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin and aptly captures the general attitude of teenager waiting and confused for something to happen.

Conclusion

There is no villian to defeat, no damsel in distress to rescue, no troubled character on a journey to finding himself. The storytelling is a smorgasbord of lives of all these teenagers intersecting each other, building itself on and on, reminiscient of the young and sprightly lives it paints.

The movie is “not arriving” at anything. And that gives it a timeless quality. This is a movie worth revisiting.