In that magical time of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the modern age teenager had just been born and the ways and mores of the richest, most youthful and most exciting country the world have ever heard of was being heard from were like the mating rites of the Swahilis, a different type of culture. And more, a culture that was still learning its by-laws and rituals.
20 years later and the US were ready to look back at a vastly more innocent time.
To keep the dates in perspective, 20 years ago to us is 1993. So while if you are a teenager yourself 20 years ago feels like an impenetrable amount of time, to me it was yesterday and the for better or worse, the generations in the 50s and 60s had sharp defined lines that are hard to see today.
In 1973, George Lucas gave us “American Graffiti”, a satire (albeit a sincere one) in which the night of the prom, recent teenage graduates travel in cars round and round the strip listening to rock and roll and going nowhere very far. In 1971, Peter Bogdanovitch took us to Texas to hear Hank Williams on the radio as disenfranchised dead end kids mated and married in a Great American Tragedy and in 1978, a journeyman director (though he did give us Travolta in the TV movie “The Boy In The Bottle”) turned a 1970s Broadway musical into a celebration of a magical parodist’s 1950s.
Between the three, they add up to a vision of early teenagers, just before and during the rock and roll age. In “The Last Picture Show”, takes place in 1951, shot in a dramatic black and white, there is a world without an exit there, there is no way out in Texas, it feels like the end of WW2 has left them stranded and Hank Williams is all over the car radio.
Two years later and George Lucas would see everything in bright colors of speed and neon lights and Howling Wolf on the car radio. The kids in “Picture Show” are driving up and down highways and the kids in “Graffiti” are driving round and round on Mainstreets. Meanwhile, while country can’t save the kids in Texas, it does a lot to help the kids in Cali. This place is a dream world, layered with nostalgia and hope for America which would soon say goodbye to this boon of American excelelnce.
“Grease” reflects as much on the US of the 1970s as the US of the 1950s, again, cars go round and round but they are heading somewhere: up in the skies, up to a future only reachable in the imagination. The songs are mostly originals and the the concerns are both real and pretend. Unlike the other two movies, the actors in “Grease” are too old for the roles, and the movie is deeply self aware. It wants to have it both ways, it wants to miss and to mock the world it inhabits.
Between the three, Americana goes from going nowhere, to going round and round, to going somewhere, while the music changes itself to a disco deadend.
But this is how we see America in the 1950s now, through a cinematic lens which may well prove to be a historic perspective.
The Last Picture Show – A
American Graffiti – A
Grease – A-