5 Films that Define My Generation
By: Brian Cotnoir
Every generation of people has their iconic movies. The films that when people look back on years later and make people go: “Yep, that’s how things were back then. This is who we were, and this is what we did”. I am 25-years-old at the time I writing this article for you, and I have pondered, and researched, and watched many films that have been made since the time I was born, and I’m proud to say that my generation has produced some insightful and impactful films that I believe accurately represent everything we are and everything we stand for. Today we are going to honor those great films of my generation and take a look at the significant impact they’ve left that have helped define my generation. Every film on this list has been made in the past 25 years; I believe that’s long enough to qualify these as generational films.
1.) Clerks (1994)
So after High School some of us went on to better things like college or the military, but others of us went right into the workforce, and much to our disbelief we ended up working some real bad dead end jobs. Jobs like those held by characters Dante and Randall in Kevin Smith’s debut film “Clerks”. Now true, I could’ve (and probably should have) included the 1991 film “Slacker” on this list, since Kevin Smith frequently stated that “Slacker” was the film that inspired him to write “Clerks”, but there really isn’t much of a plot to “Slacker” so that’s why I chose “Clerks” instead. In the 1990’s a great number of us became known as slackers; people who were unmotivated, had no ambition, and just waited to see how things played out. Some of us became content with our mundane and minimal jobs, while others began to sulk. Dante represents a large group of people in some ways: the person who peaked in High School, the underachiever who stayed at his minimum wage job while his friends and classmates went on to college and other things, and is only left the reminisce about his glory days, while others come in and remind of what a failure he has become and probably always will be. However, some of us were like Dante’s co-worker, Randal: the happy idiot, who couldn’t care how crappy his life is because he was having too much fun goofing off and making jokes at other peoples expense. “Clerks” has become one of those iconic films that has made scores of people in my generation take a moment to reflect on where they are in life and whether or not they’re where they want to be in life.
2.) Reality Bites (1994)
The same year that “Clerks” was released we also got the film “Reality Bites”. It’s the story of a group of young 20-something college graduates who are trying to find their place in the world. College is the best time of your life; it’s all the freedom of being an adult with all the responsibility of a High School Senior. Now graduating college is a big deal, but it can also be a little scary. For the past 4 years, you have been told by your Professors, classmates, family, and friends that you’re going to go on to do great things once you graduate, and then once you finally do graduate you find out the real world isn’t as accepting and welcoming of you as you had hoped. You’re not going to always find that high-paying job right out of college, no one wants to take you seriously because of your “lack-of-experience-in-the-work-place”, and the cherry on the sundae: you now have alarming amount of student loan debt that you cannot afford to pay back! The cast of “Reality Bites” features a number of great characters that represent different members of our disenfranchised peers. You have the under-achieving scholar, Leliana, the slacker/aspiring musician, Troy, the corporate sell-out/Yuppie, Michael, the fretful closeted gay adult, Sammy, and the Promiscuous Best Friend, Vickie. This is one of the Best casts I’ve seen in any film, and it’s amazing to see how well this film holds up even after 20+ Years. A friend of mine wrote a more detailed article about “Reality Bites”, and that link is below for anyone who is interested on learning more about this film.
3.) Singles (1992)
Well now that you’ve got that life together and heading in the right direction, you now have to begin another difficult task: finding someone to share it all with. “Singles” is a film set in Seattle a height of the Grunge Movement, and is the story of 6 adults who are all trying to find love, and the lengths they will go through to find love. There’s the cute energetic coffee barista, Janet (Played by Bridget Fonda) who desperately seeks attention from the dirty, selfish aspiring grunge rocker Cliff (played by Matt Dillon). There’s Debbie a successful young business woman who uses the latest dating trends in a never-ending search to find Mr. Right. And finally there’s Steve and Linda, a seemingly “perfect couple” who keep letting events form their pasts hold them back from committing to each other. I think everyone knows someone or who has been in a similar relationship: the person who constantly seeks affection from the emotionally distant slacker, the person who thinks they’ll find their true love by relying on things like technology (dating sites, videos, etc.), the couple that is perfect for one another that everyone wants to see together, and takes forever to get together. “Singles” is an awesome film written and directed by Academy Award Nominated® Director, Cameron Crowe, and this film was also the inspiration to the Super Popular and Beloved TV Sitcom “Friends”.
4.) Office Space (1999)
But even if you don’t find love right away, you can still make valuable use of your time, like putting all your free time into your career...your stressful, uninspiring, soul-crushing career. There was a time in your life when we were all younger that we swore that we would never be one of those Office Rats working in a cubicle for some “Big Soulless Corporation”; no, not you. You were going to have a cool and important job that you were going to make a lot of money doing the thing you love the most, and you were going to be successful...but then student loan debt started to pile up, and you had trouble finding work, and they were the only place hiring so you said to yourself, “it’s okay, this is only going to be temporary. Once I find a decent paying job in my field, I’m going to kiss this place goodbye!”. But then a few months become a year, and then that year becomes a few years, and then you start to fall into a routine, working a daily grind from 9-5 every Monday-Friday. Pretty soon, this job you said you couldn’t stand becomes your primary source of income and you become increasingly paranoid about what you’re going to do if you ever lose this job, and then finally enough time passes by that you sit there at your desk trying not to cry asking yourself “What have I done with my life?! This is nothing like what I envisioned all those years ago!”. And no film captures that pain and misery as well quite like 1999’s cult classic “Office Space”. The story of a man named Peter Gibbons who—after a botched hypnotherapy session—begins to break free of the boredom on monotony of the office work space. Peter’s bleak outlook on his job and how much of his life he’s wasted at his job is a very accurate representation of how much disdain some people hold for their jobs and their employers, however, some people take their bottled up rage and take it to a whole new extreme...
5.) Fight Club (1999)
...People like Edward Norton’s character in the movie “Fight Club”. Based off of the popular novel by Chuck Palahniuk, “Fight Club” is the story of a nameless Narrator, and the daily struggles he goes through to make it through life. He has an office job with a boss that he hates, he suffers from low self-esteem and chronic insomnia, and for fun (and mental health reasons) he spends his evenings at Cancer Support Groups pretending he is dying of cancer in order to gain sympathy and love from strangers. The life of this unknown Narrator changes after he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and the two of them start a secret underground fight club for angry disenfranchised white-collar men. So many of us are dissatisfied with our lives that we create fantasy avatars in our minds of who we wish we were. Everyone’s created a Tyler Durden in their life: he looks the way you wish you looked, he says the thing you wish you could say, and he even f*cks the way you wish you f*cked. Who among us at work hasn’t secretly fantasized about telling of their boss off or lying to an attractive person in order to get them to like us? “Fight Club” is a film that has not only left an impact on our generation but—with society’s rising dependence on corporate built technology—future generation as well.
It’s crazy to think that these 5 films—all made in a 7 years span—have helped shape and define the lives and attitudes of an entire generation of people. Some of them even manage to intertwine and support each other’s philosophies and messages, but in the end they represent everything we as a generation wanted. We all wanted to find success by doing things our way. We all wanted to have a happy relationship and a successful career, but somewhere along the way made the realization that it had to be one or the other. We all wanted to be the next big thing in music and get popular and famous playing our own music in coffee houses and night clubs. I am so glad that I live in the time I do now, and I hope that years from now these films will show how great my generation truly is.
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