Dazed And Confused
"The older you do get, the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin' man."
I’m currently writing this week’s newsletter from the plane to Tennessee, but by the time it goes out, I will be on my way back home. I decided to go with Dazed and Confused for this week’s newsletter because it’s such a beloved summer movie. After rewatching it, I realized it’s really not the most plot-heavy film, but it’s loved regardless, and I think its simplicity is actually what makes it so special.
Does Dazed And Confused Have A Plot?
In preparation for this newsletter, I tried to Google something about Dazed and Confused, and the first suggestion was “Does Dazed and Confused have a plot?” I found multiple Reddit discussions about this where a lot of people seemed confused about what the movie is really about. After all, there’s no main character, just different groups of high school students on their last day of school. However, for every person saying they thought the movie was boring and that nothing was going on, there was someone who argued that that’s the point. As I mentioned in my monthly newsletter, How To Make A Perfect Summer Movie, there are a lot of summer films about adventure. However, adventure can be defined in so many ways. It doesn’t always have to be so apparent, like Indiana Jones; it can be very subtle. Driving around town aimlessly on the last day of school before summer break is an adventure in its own right.
I also mentioned in my summer movie newsletter that sometimes there’s a lot of pressure during the summer to do something extraordinary, whether because you want to impress your friends when you get back to school or because you want to make the most of your short time off. Movies like Dazed and Confused don’t put pressure on their characters or viewers to achieve greatness over the three short months summer presents us with. The characters are pretty unsure of what the future holds, especially Randall “Pink” Floyd. But there’s also freedom in not knowing or caring what the future holds.
Especially for the characters going into their senior year. From my memory, that was the most laid-back year of high school, and I can feel the sense of carefree-ness in the characters who know their time in high school is coming to an end. Watching Dazed and Confused as an adult is pretty nostalgic, and I think that’s another reason people love it so much. While the title is certainly fitting, everyone in the film is in a daze, and the plot is a little confusing, I think watching it creates a longing for a simpler time, and that’s why it had such a cult following.
A Portrait Of The 70s
Part of what makes the environment of Dazed and Confused feel like a simpler time is that it's set in 1976. I mentioned in my Now and Then newsletter how significant its time period is to the movie, and Dazed and Confused is the same. The movie feels nostalgic to people who actually grew up in the 70s, but it also feels nostalgic for people who were children during a time when technology was less prominent, and now, in adulthood, it has taken over the world. As much as technology has advanced our society and made life easier, it has its downside, too. There is something special about being unreachable, and that’s nearly impossible in today’s society. If you don’t text someone back in .2 seconds, they assume something’s wrong because we’ve been so programmed to be constantly available to everyone.
This isn’t the case in Dazed and Confused. There’s a scene at the very end when Mitch comes home at sunrise and his mother starts nagging him, even though his sister had already informed her where he was. Being nagged while walking through the front door is a lost art because today, everyone can report to their parents where they are before they even get there. There’s also a funny scene where an old man working at the liquor store sells Mitch alcohol without even asking for an ID, and Mitch is visibly young. Whether this was ever that realistic isn’t the point, but the scene adds to the laid-back aura of Dazed and Confused.
Something else that really stood out to me is that no one could get in trouble for what they were doing, legal or not, because there was no proof. Today, anything anyone does ends up on social media with the potential to go viral in minutes. Imagine chasing after a group of today’s teenagers with a shotgun and expecting no one to say anything about it. I’m not suggesting it's okay to shoot at teenagers, I just think it's funny to consider how normal this was in this time period.
I also feel the freedom to not know what you want to do with your life has been taken away. There’s always been pressure to have your life figured out, but it’s worse today than it was in 1976. I think Randall is the most interesting and in-depth character in Dazed and Confused. Randall wants to do what everyone else in school is doing: get high and have fun. But there’s pressure on him to stay sober because he’s on the football team. He’s not satisfied with this life, but his coach and friends put pressure on him not to quit his senior year. Randall’s caught between what he wants to do and what other people want for him. Clearly, what he’s really seeking is freedom.
“If it ain't that piece of paper, there's some other choice they're gonna try and make for you,”-David Wooderson, Dazed and Confused.
He wants free time and to be able to choose what he does with that free time instead of having someone else lay out his schedule for him. I think it’s even worse today because so many people present their lives as perfect on social media, brainwashing others into thinking they need to make their lives perfect too. I also think college has become a much bigger part of our culture. When I was a senior, what college everyone was going to was a massive deal, and I still think there are people who look down on others who choose an alternative path. That’s another reason I think Dazed and Confused speaks so well to its audience, it gives them permission to not know what they want to do, even if it isn’t 1976 anymore.
A Dazed And Confused Soundtrack
One of my favorite things to write about in my newsletters is the soundtracks that make movies so special. Movie musicals are not the only films where music is a part of the storytelling, but my favorite movies make it a priority to set the tone for the film through its music. After all, Dazed and Confused was named after the Led Zeppelin song of the same name. Also, in researching what people love so much about Dazed and Confused, I found that music is a major part. While I love music from all different decades, I truly believe the 70s were the best. And if I ever had to prove that to someone, I’d show them the film’s soundtrack.
Dazed and Confused utilizes 70s rock to set the tone of the film, a bunch of reckless teenagers getting in trouble. From Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” playing as the high school students flood out the doors to kick off their summer to “Free Ride” playing as night falls and the characters get ready for the party to really begin, the music of Dazed and Confused goes hand and hand with all other aspects of filmmaking. The music also adds to the nostalgia and the feeling that things just aren’t what they used to be.
There’s been a lot of criticism about modern music, and while I don’t agree with all of them, I understand the yearning for music’s past. As I said, it’s one of my favorite decades, and I think a lot of people who listen to music from earlier decades wish they could’ve been a part of that era. Dazed and Confused’s soundtrack only makes the film’s setting more appealing, and while the film may not be for everyone, it resonated with its target audience and remains a cult classic over 30 years later.