Hacker Cinema
Reality Bites
1994 · Film · 98 min
Directed by Ben Stiller
A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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9 comments on Hacker News
Revival was on a soundtrack of a (mediocre) movie Reality Bites. It has wonderful sense of South-style communion for me. I remember that was the only song by Me Phi Me, which I enjoyed at that time.
Thx for links, good stuff. Let us keep it up.
What we think we want to be and do and the randomness of life are strange.
We reject fashion, or certain types of work, or various things in order to find something else or define ourselves, but it's not really clear if we ever really understood those things or that by doing so we learn / go anywhere.
It reminds me of what Roger Ebert said of the film "Reality Bites" (sticking to the 1990s vibe):
"the deep-seated prejudices of the movie, which are that anyone who shoots documentary video footage of friends is a genius; anyone who is pushing 30 and has a good job has sold out; and anyone who is simultaneously unemployed and hostile is a reservoir of truth."
I think that once all the people of my generation are dead, and all the people I can relate to, who had the same formative experiences I had are gone, I won't want to live much longer.
I think even if we engineer away death, you will still have the psychological structure from the "formative years" -- adolescence to early adulthood-- that sort of fundamentally make you personality-wise.
The songs and movies that gave you emotional experiences, the events that happened, etc. For me and my cohort it would be groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Beck, and movies like Reality Bites and Pulp Fiction. These were the things that spoke to us as we were becoming adults.
It's not that those groups or movies mean much to me nowadays, but I feel that, socially, I am a peer with someone who lived through those years at the same age I did. It's not simply that we share the same cultural references, nor is it just that we happen to be the same age. I think rather that we were formed by the same events at that age and time.
If I live to be 230, I might feel somewhat disconnected from a 200-year-old, even as the age difference becomes relatively smaller and smaller, because that offset of 30 years made for a completely different formative experience. I'd still want to be friends with people who _get_ me.
My grandpa lived into his 90s. It got to the point where the children of his peers were dying. His main thing to do was read the obits and note how he knew that person. He had lots of family and friends, but no one could relate to his stories of old sports games, WWII, etc. etc. He was in good health and will mentally alert, but after my grandma died, it was just a matter of time. He died of a blood infection, no illness or anything.
So even if we can undo aging and death, we still might need to address the developmental process-- tweak it in some direction. Either have eternal formation, or re-formations-- something.
I was born in 1970 so I'm in the Gen X group. I remember seeing the "definitive" Gen-X movie Reality Bites and realized I hated everyone in the film except the guy they were making fun of. Also the snickers bar line still offends me.
I think background and geography are always going to trump age bracket.
I've always liked a quote from the otherwise forgettable movie "Reality Bites":
Lelaina: Can you define "irony"? Troy Dyer: It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.
Oh, agreed entirely that it's apples and oranges. Reality Bites was a Universal movie, the soundtrack was on RCA, and they put five tracks on MTV. It was very much top-down.
Now these guys, on the other hand...
When I read the article I had in the back of my mind that this had been done before but I could not remember who. Thanks for the reminder. Her song was introduced to people because of the movie Reality Bites. This song going number one I will take as a positive thing because it shows the still growing influence of the internet.
Sure, there was something behind the idea. But it was a combination of thinking:
a) "Waah, life sucks, I can't get everything I want", and
b) "This is somehow a problem unique to my generation"
both of which are universal thoughts held by the more introspective and less thoughtful members of each generation.
I've never actually seen Reality Bites -- too early for me. But I've seen "Fight Club". Wow, has that movie aged badly.
"We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives." Awww freaking diddums, Mr Durden. We have four wars and a depression, wanna swap?
Hyperbole = $$ (tuition/living expenses/opportunity costs) + 4-8 years of youth. Valuable stuff that inspires hand waving.
Overgeneralization = The source of this ire seems to me to come from the idea of "hey, it wasn't long ago that a degree could guarantee me a job. Now not so much. Let's posit why." Although, I seem to remember that was the tone of the movie Reality Bites some two decades ago. So clearly, this isn't the first education bubble.