Retro Review: Dazed and Confused

(personal disclaimer from the Cap'n: I first saw Dazed and Confused in high school, and owned a used VHS copy because a friend of mine - a dubious gentleman to say the least - forgot to return the rental copy for months thanks to, shall we say, chemical influences. I have, over the ensuing decade plus [nearly decadeS] watched the film at least once a year, for reasons that will be clearer on the other end of this retro review.)

It would be easy (and a little cheap) to dismiss Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused as "just another stoner movie." The argument for that missive is there, and on a surface level (particularly from its marketing by Universal), readily available for pointing out: the psychedelic artwork on the poster, the half-there smiley face accompanying the art, the ubiquitous nature of its "groovy" soundtrack in the early 90s, or the fact that most of the characters in Dazed are at least casual drug users.

When Dazed and Confused arrived on home video in early 1994, marijuana enthusiasts in high school and college around the U.S. embraced the character of Slater, a half-cognizant advocate of all things hemp, as their spokesperson. With Cheech and Chong before them and Half Baked, How High, and Pineapple Express to follow, it's no wonder that people who haven't seen the film simply assume Dazed and Confused is one long pot joke, and the fully baked audience that continues to embrace this "one note" reading of the film doesn't help. My question, however, is what do they make of the rest of Dazed and Confused, when getting high isn't a central plot point - you know, most of the movie?

The truth is that Linklater's film is written off because of surface level readings by people who might be shocked to discover that Dazed and Confused is also about rites of passage, conformity, and the universal feeling that anything has to be better than right here and right now. That teenage malaise accounts for the backbone of the picture, and Dazed and Confused has more in common with Lucas' American Graffiti than it does Still Smokin'.

Dazed and Confused takes place in one day - May 28th, 1976* - the last day of school at Robert E. Lee High School (home of the Fighting Rebels) and focuses on a cross section of rising seniors, introduced in an efficient montage: we meet the stoners, the jocks, the womanizers, the nerds, and the "mean girls" to borrow a phrase from a later film. Each shot introduces some kind of business that pays off later in the film (pay attention to the tarp in Pink's truck). Linklater introduces us to so many characters during the film that to introduce them all (many of whom are actors that would be famous after the film) would triple the length of this review. For the purposes of keeping it short, allow me to focus on Randall "Pink" Floyd (Jason London), Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins), Sabrina Davis (Christin Hinojosa), and Jodi Kramer (Michelle Burke).

"Pink" and Jodi represent the rising seniors as Lee High School, and Mitch and Sabrina the rising freshmen from a nearby middle school. As is tradition in the Austin of Linklater's Dazed, rising seniors "haze" the incoming freshmen: boys are giving a "lick" with home-made paddles, and girls are given an elaborate, humiliating series of tasks, including pacifiers, food condiments, car washes, and forced "proposals" to the student spectators nearby. The leaders of each hazing are perhaps a little overzealous: Benny O'Donnell (Cole Hauser) and Darla Marks (Parker Posey) relish the opportunity to belittle as they were, while the rest of the seniors play along but seem to feel ambivalent about the situation.

If "Pink" is our entry point into senior life, Mitch is the alternative: the kid who would be nobody save for a request by his sister to "go easy on him." As the surrogate for Linklater, the younger Kramer gets more of the story devoted to him than Sabrina, although they follow similar rites of passage through the film: both are "taken in" by their older counterpart, and join in for an evening of joy-riding, partying, and gentle ribbing as the "new kid." When Mitch - a pitcher for the local youth league - falls under Floyd's protection, he becomes a de facto member of the gang, although his presence allows for additional "tests" including buying beer, smashing mailboxes, and coded drug talk ("Are you cool man?").

Floyd, on the other hand, has his own test to pass: the football team is forcing players to sign a waiver promising a drug and alcohol free season next year, and "Pink" disagrees on principle. Rather than play the simple "rebellious" card, Linklater gives Floyd a series of arguments for and against signing the pledge (which just doesn't seem to go away): on the one hand, it's equated to "Neo-McCarthy-ism" and conformity, but the other players question his loyalty to the team and to them by refusing solidarity and embracing the easy-going perks of being a sports star. That Floyd doesn't come to a conclusion by the end of the film regarding his future as quarterback allows Linklater to avoid easy answers to less clear-cut problems.

Much of Dazed and Confused takes place between the collapse of one party and the forming of another at a nearby Moon Tower. Here the film most resembles a 70s take on the 1960s of American Graffiti, following different sets of intersecting groups as they drive from one place to another, restlessly looking for something "exciting" to do in their "boring" home town. This is, I suspect, where Dazed and Confused resonates with most audiences beyond a simple "drug" theme: the idea that even these kids, who seem so much cooler than we ever hoped to be at that age, feel confined in their environment. Drugs are an escape, a leisurely way of dealing with teenage angst, but most of them at one point or another in the film opine that the decade / location / social circle they are locked in as lacking somehow.

In a line often assumed to just be a cheap joke, Cynthia Dunn (Marissa Ribisi) says "Maybe the 80s will be like radical or something. I figure we'll be in our 20s and it cant' get worse," after referring to the 50s as a drag, the 60s as a major cultural movements, and the 70s "obviously" being a disappointment. It's easy to look at the line now and say "oh, ha ha, the 80s were so lame" but Cynthia's statement is a counterpoint to an earlier when she, Tony (Anthony Rapp) and Mike (Adam Goldberg) are discussing their stilted lifestyle and she says "if we are all gonna die anyway shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I'd like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else." The two statements, taken in total, underline the teenage attitude: on the one hand, everything sucks and will for the time being, but that's all the more cause to live it up, to escape. Things don't end so well for Mike when he decides to seize his moment with greaser Clint Bruno (Nicky Katt), but the attempt is more admirable than retreating into a drug induced haze.

Dazed and Confused is structured like Linklater's debut, Slacker, but with a more coherent narrative through line. He still wanders from character to character, sometimes with what appears to be no reason, but for the most part all of the major characters - and a few of the minor ones - have an arc in the film. Ironically, the two characters without any discernible "beginning, middle, and end" are its two most iconic: Rory Cochrane's Ron Slater and Matthew McConaughey's David Wooderson**. Both exist in different forms of arrested development: Slater is a perpetual "weed casualty," espousing on the relative merits of marijuana and generally regarded as harmless by his friends. Wooderson is a perpetual man-child, the type of guy who graduated years ago but who still hangs out with the high school students because he feels cool. Oh, and because of the most quoted line of a very quotable film: "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."

Appropriately, while most of the characters learn something or grow in some way, Dazed and Confused doesn't necessarily end, per se. Mitch and Sabrina go home, a little wiser to what's coming; Darla makes a drunken ass of herself; Mike picks the wrong fight; "Pink," Simone (Joey Lauren Adams), and Slater hop in Wooderson's muscle car and hit the highway to buy Aerosmith tickets. Their future is unclear, as are many at that age. Where Dazed and Confused actually resonates isn't in the frequent, mostly inconsequential joint and bong hits, but on another level, one its detractors can't or won't consider - it's easier to "just say 'No'."



* Appropriately, Linklater's setting provides for audiences - theoretically, the youngest you can be to see an "R" rated film is seventeen - characters the same age they are when viewing, a ploy that only increased during the film's successful secondary run in home video.
** It's tempting to add Ben Affleck's Fred O'Bannion to the list: his one note character - a senior who deliberately failed in order to continue hazing rising freshmen - doesn't learn or mature much throughout Dazed and Confused, but O'Bannion does play a role in the narrative through-line of Mitch's friends, and his comeuppance is the bridge from the "bar" sequence to the "Moon Tower" party.