I think there have always been films with the same very general theme of “life’s a party”, but the Gen-X influence makes them seem like a new thing.
I don’t think anyone would deny that comedies about people working diligently at their jobs, then coming home to have dinner with their families and pay bills, wouldn’t be very funny. Comedies generally focus on what people do in their leisure time. But what’s changed is what people do in their leisure time.
Comedies in the '50s and early '60s often concerned people whose leisure time was spent dining out, dancing, sipping cocktails and flirting wittily. The characters usually had jobs, but they were so glamorized and low-impact that they were extensions of, or the jumping-off point for, the drinking and flirting. And in those days, you either did that stuff, or you wished you could. Nowadays, “partying” is a whole other ball game, but the focus of comedies really hasn’t changed: you still see guys in their twenties and thirties doing stuff that guys that age do, or wish they could.
I’ve never been lucky enough to work someplace like the record store in High Fidelity, but I’ve been a hanger-on at several, and known people who were employed at such places. That’s the dream job for my generation, just as “high-powered magazine editor” was the dream job for an earlier generation. Some people are able to pull it off; others watch movies about it. Movies have always presented an ideal; it’s just the ideal that changes.
I’m 25 (so around the ages of Harold & Kumar, I’d imagine). I think someone is ‘mature’ when they learn to think and do things for themselves. I believe the ultimate act of child-like-ness (if I can invent a word) is unthinkingly going with the flow. Maturity isn’t ‘settling down’. It’s thinking for yourself, and perhaps the guy who decides not to settle down yet is far more mature than the one who decides to do it before he turns 22.
A mature person honors commitments he makes. A mature person is able to postpone instant gratification for long-term benefit. A mature person is economically self-sufficient. A mature person reacts not impulsively but wisely. A mature person realizes that the world does not revolve around himself.
Interestingly enough, Andy in The 40 Year Old Virgin fits all your statements on what it means to be mature :D. Can we finally remove that movie from man-boy film status now?
I agree; though I haven’t seen T40YOV yet it’s on my list of movies to rent, especially since I love The Office and think Steve Carrell is quite gifted.
My take on this movie, and after reading the book, was that Forrest Gump was definitely retarded in modern terminology, which I believe puts his IQ below 70. From what reading I’ve done on the subject, people in the 50 - 70 IQ range often manage to hide their disability and function reasonably well; I once read of a truck driver who managed to handle his truck fine and got jobs by getting others to fill out his job applications. And mentally handicapped adults are not the same has MH children; like normal adults, they too acquire a sort of maturity, and even wisdom.
With that said, I’d agree that Forrest Gump was definitely not a “man-boy” movie.
And furthermore, the operative word is “dream”. Not “ideal”. As in, I knew even when I was in my 20s that jobs like that do not have security (although I did know some people who managed to scrape by in such jobs by sharing housing) and don’t lead to anything bigger (although many such people had sidelines, like a band, or a screenplay they were working on, that was their something bigger). But the low-impact, protracted-adolescence, the-boss-is-a-pal-of-yours-so-he-won’t-fire-you job has a lot of appeal when you’re young enough that you don’t aspire to finer dining than mac and cheese, don’t want your furniture to match, and basically only need your apartment as a place to crash and play video games. I chose higher-paying jobs that weren’t “cool” because I lived in the real world, but I was quietly wistful about the idea of getting paid a living (relative to one’s standard of living) wage basically for having a quick wit and knowledge of music trivia.
Similarly, the romcoms of the '50s and early '60s (basically the genre that was being parodied in Down With Love) presented as totally plausible the idea that a 25-year-old guy could be editor-in-chief of a glossy magazine, where everyone looks their best at all times, deadlines notwithstanding, or that a 20-year-old woman with stars in her eyes could become assistant to a theatrical agent on the first day she goes jobhunting, and meet all kinds of eligible men and never get mugged or evicted or anything mundane like that. I don’t know if people believed that back then, but I daresay that anyone who went to NYC pursuing such a dream got a dose of reality pretty darn quick.
And finally, I’m sure you’re aware that the guys in High Fidelity, particularly Jack Black’s character, were not merely a screenwriter’s convention. I’ve known guys just like that. Don’t know what they’re doing now, of course, but I sure knew them in the 90s.
I remember an interview where he as much as said he could have been that character. All threee of those guys were archetypes of guys found in indie record stores across the country. World, actually (the novel takes place in London).
A child can think for himself. The problem is that a child doesn’t think about anything other than immediate gratification. Maturity is knowing when to think for yourself and when to go with the flow. It’s understanding and living with the consequences of your actions.
The Old School guys are immature because they are basically ignoring their responsibilities - family, job, etc - so they can party like a bunch of college freshmen. Khumar is immature because he is choosing not to enter the working world but continues to sponge off his dad. And Harold is immature because he mindless goes with the flow of what he believes is expected of him as an Asian-American, even though he hates it.
And I’d argue a child can’t really think for himself. Or rather, they don’t think for themselves. Children almost always go with the flow. In high school (and even before that), the primary motivation was to ‘fit in’ and that meant doing what everyone else was doing.
The people at the ages of 16, 17, 18, etc. who rejected the ‘everyone must do X’ and thought for themselves and did things because they thought them through were far more mature.
I think just mindlessly ‘going with the flow’ because that’s just what everyone else is doing is a sign of immaturity. So yes, I think “Keeping up with the Joneses” is an immature act. But every person has mature and immature aspects to them, it just depends on which one is in the majority.
