Richard Rushfield looks back at Reality Bites, slackers, hipsters and the evolution of ambition.
Reality Bites and the Coming of Age of the Deadbeat Hipster Boyfriend
Up at the Sundance Festival, they are doing a retrospective mega-screening of a restored print of Reality Bites. As a generational patriot, I want to be nice to Reality Bites because it was one of the handful of movies to make an attempt to chronicle the Grunge Era, and of course Winona and Janeane at their apex are unimpeachable. But I fear that the folks up in Sundance are going to find this is one that you’re better off remembering as a classic through your teenage glasses of yore without actually trying to watch it again.
In honor of the film, Brooks Barnes interviewed Ethan Hawke and in the interview, Hawke indicates a very mistaken sense of hipster evolution in the 20 years since the film debuted.
Q: At the end of the movie, Winona’s character ends up with Troy after a tortured courtship. If the movie was made today, would that still happen? Or would she end up with Ben Stiller’s ambitious TV executive?
A: You just hit the nail on the head. That movie was probably one of the last moments when the girl makes the decision to go with the poor, self-serious dude. A theme of the movie is how money and corporate thinking was taking over everything. Today, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell they would end that movie with her and Troy together. The definition of integrity has changed. Now, if a person — or a movie — makes a lot of money, then it’s got integrity.
What Hawke misses is how much this choice has flipped in the past decade and a half. The dichotomy between slacker at the margins of society and soulless executive has completely evaporated. The slacker’s descendent (now termed “hipster”) is not a terrifying creature barely tolerated at the margins of society, he has become the arbiter of American culture and feels himself vastly entitled to all its wealth and rewards.
If there was anything noble about my generation, it was the invention of slacking - captured in Reality Bites “Den of Slack.” To the extent we made a statement in that era, it was a conscientious objection to enthusiasm about anything. The most uncool thing you could be was excited - about success, career, relationships, friends, dinner. We were not a generation waiting to be handed giant recording contracts and street marketing campaigns; we saying leave us alone, we’re trying to sleep. Of course, many went on to sell their souls later - myself included - but at least that wasn’t our starting place. (You may read much more about this in my stunning memoir of the Dawn of Grunge, Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost). So Winona’s choice was not just between the guy with money and the guy without, it was between the guy who wanted money and the guy who didn’t particularly care.
Today of course, every hipster with an Instagram app is a mini-mogul, and every hedge fund manager is just chillin’ and playing to drop extasy with buds at Coachella.
Look at the picture above. Ethan Hawke with his stubble goatee and 50’s polo could easily be a Goldman Sachs VP on the weekend. And Ben Stiller with is sculpted hair and skinny suit could easily be the lead singer for Foster the People.
Ethan Hawke, go back in your cave. These ruthless days do not deserve we gentle souls of grunge.
