The device is constantly being parodied and referenced, and I’m starting to think that the parodies may far outnumber the serious portrayals. There are plenty of teen movies, 80s or otherwise, that turn on a rousing speech or other moment of triumph, but I’m not sure how many of those scenes end exactly that way: slow clap that builds to riotous applause.
Start with John Hughes’ teen movies, of course: I know there was no SC in Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller. ISTR that Weird Science and Some Kind of Wonderful had scenes where a SC might have fit, but I don’t remember it actually happening. The only movie that I know had a SC – in fact, ended with it – was Lucas, but that was in 1986, when it wasn’t regarded as a cliche. And I didn’t find it too hard to accept, the way it was led up to. There might have been one in Revenge of the Nerds, but I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m not sure the scene I’m thinking of had a literal SC moment.
So how many movies, in whatever genre, from whatever era, have a SC like the one shown in this clip? (I can’t do a direct link; it’s the one called “80s ending”.) Because I’m really starting to think that it’s less an overworked dramatic device than it is comedic shorthand. ETA: Of course, it’s possible I just haven’t seen the relevant films. If so, by all means enlighten me.
I never thought of it as something that was a reference to another movie, but the most commonly played non-parody example of what you’re talking about is from Hoosiers, from 1986. The speech from the coach in the locker room (played by Gene Hackman) to a team that feels completely outclassed in its final game is at first met with sullen silence… Then one player claps, as if perfunctorily, only to be joined by another teammate, and the crescendo of team feeling builds into a rousing frenzy.
In the biopic It’s Good to Be Alive (1974), there is an early version of the slow clap toward the end when Winfield’s Campanella makes an appearance on the ball field.
I’m almost 100% certain that Bender slow-claps in the putting-on-lipstick-without using hands scene. It’s even in IMDb’s “Memorable Quotes” section as “[claps sarcastically].”
robardin: Okay, Hoosiers and Lucas were the same year. In that case, I can see why the device would be seen as happening “all the time” or “over and over.”
Knead: Right, but that didn’t build to a whole bunch of people applauding madly, which is what I’m looking for. One person clapping sarcastically happens IRL as well as on film. I’m looking for filmic examples of the unrealistic action of one person applauding and others gradually joining in until the whole place is pandemonium.
Okay, I just checked the pop-up commentary on Not Another Teen Movie. It says the Slow Clap appears in “teen movies such as Lucas.” That’s it; they don’t give any other such-as’s.
I’m really starting to think that it’s simply comedic shorthand. The teen movie standard was and is everything working out just so: the underdog wins, the antagonist is humiliated/humbled, and all the subsidiary characters get whatever it was they wanted. So perhaps the SC appears in parodies because it’s a quick way of illustrating that, not because it happened so many times in non-parodies.
Now, refresh my memory on Weird Science. The cast of Road Warrior (literally: Vernon Wells was one of them) crashed the party, AMH threatened them with a gun, and they shuffled meekly out. That I remember, but I can’t remember if there was an SC or not. And it’s gotta be one person clapping quietly and then everyone else joins in. It’s not a slow clap if everyone starts cheering at the same time.
Not quite what it evolved into, but the slow clap clearly owes a lot to Citizen Kane.
After Susan Alexander Kane’s disastrous opera debut, the crown applause is sparse. Kane rises and begins to clap, slowly and loudly, speeding up the tempo until he’s finally stopped. No one joins in, of course.
I’ve been told that it’s been a staple of cricket crowds since my grandfather was going to matches in the 1930s. I don’t know if it transitioned to American popular culture from an American sport, though.
“Sociologists notwithstanding, on the Internet, a “meme” is usually described as a catchy derivative of some aspect of pop culture, parodied and repeated to the point that its origins and original meaning become muddled.” (link)
“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.” (link)
Whether this is an accurate distinction, or one without a difference, I don’t know.
From that, the OP is actually looking for the origin of the trope.
It would be a meme used thusly: Someone starts a thread, someone else provides a snarky but beautiful reply cutting them down, then the OP replies in such a devastating way as to leave the snarker shriveled and impotent. Then someone else posts:
I’ve always thought the slow clap - more to show “support”, as opposed to just acknowledgement - started from “Brubaker” (the ending). Checking IMDB, I see that movie came out in…1980
