Anyone?...Anyone?...Bueller?

[indie_robbo]

I just went and saw "Ferris Bueller's Day Off " at the moonlight theatre in the botanic gardens.  Wow, I'd forgotten how amazing that film is.  Why aren't there teen films like that anymore?  It's totally anti-authoritarian and leftist and blah blah blah...  But seriously, what do we have for the kids these days to make them question their

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Re: check out

[jshulman]

Ok so the difference between the 80s kids’ response to the movie versus the response of teens of today is circumstantial. In some ways it was a lot more relevant then than it is now. Regardless, teenagers don’t change, I think the same amount of people that the film spoke to then would still be reached now. You can’t say that one generation of youth is more ‘switched on’ than another.

It’s true, there hasn’t been a mainstream film equivalent of Ferris, but there’s definitely a lot of other populist trash that compensates. Michael Moore - he’s M for mainstream. Ask any of your students and I’m sure they’ve read his books and seen his movies. Ask any of them what they think about the War on Terror, about George Bush; you’ll definitely get some leftist rants out of that… plus, if all of them were political radicals then they’d all be agreeing with you in tutes and how boring would that be.

And maybe they don’t need teen-cult movies to question their existence. Maybe these conservatives actually watch the news and current affairs and wonder what happened to their fucked up world? Generation X (which FYI includes you, just.) are known as the ‘slackers’ primarily because they’ve grown up in a post-modern environment that’s consistently infiltrated with this idea of ‘what the fuck?’ The youth of today see all this stuff that’s wrong with society - but don’t see how they can make any sort of difference, thus there’s this whole ‘why bother?’ attitude. (I also don’t think it’s fair to act as if conservatism is a bad thing, when most liberals are simply more inclined to being pragmatic over principled… and they’re scared. Very afraid. That’s what governments to do people.) So most kids my age get fed their political views from their parents and the Courier Mail, regurgitate standard conservative crap that might not even necessarily represent what they believe, but don’t really see the point in acting otherwise. We’re a fucking generation defined by disillusionment for godsakes.

Either that, or I’ve been listening to too much of Sleater-Kinney’s ‘Youth Decay’.

And also…(because I am mean and cynical and underestimate people in general)… I wouldn’t assume the kids that chose to do Arts did so because they were intelligent and wanted to learn more about society and politics and culture… they either a) didn’t get into the course they wanted or b) couldn’t decide which course they wanted. The smart kids figured out that education systems have this way of posing as facilitators for open-minded individualistic thinkers, but in reality when it comes down to it there’s only ever one ‘acceptable’ opinion/strategy/method/whatever - and they went and did Science instead. It’s less ambiguous and you can’t argue with it.

Anyway fuck it. It’s the best movie. "I’m not European, I don’t plan on being European, so who gives a crap if they're socialists. They could be fascist anarchists, still doesn't change the fact that I don't own a car."

Cool, this has just given me a topic to write about.