It starts with that question. “So what you up to?” For the lucky few popped from the womb brimful of self-belief, it shouldn’t raise a heartbeat. For those whose university years already resemble a cess-pool of memory decay, groin rot and fractured hopes, there really is nothing worse that you could ask, apart from maybe “Why do you exist?” With Lena Dunham’s recent tale of a film grad’s “post-graduation malaise” in Tiny Furniture, I propose a trip through cinema’s top five sad grads. And if you’re still looking for an answer, you could do worse than Michele (Lisa Kudrow)’s in Romi and Michelle’s High School Reunion: “Um, I invented Post-its”.
1. Ghost World (2001)
Enid Coleslaw *sigh*. The deadpan, Louise Brooks-bobbed sardonic little turd so brilliantly played by Thora Birch is justifiably a poster girl for a generation of comic book nerds, vintage lovers, and girls with chunky thighs. In her cack-handed inability to secure a basic job, her denial of blue collar mediocrity and her flat out refusal to do anything that might be deemed sensible or ambitious, she is also one of the few true high school rebels. As her best friend and fellow outcast Rebecca (Scarlet Johansson) moves towards accepting the ‘twin-set-and-pearls’ world of suburban America – shown subtly through her change in outfits as Enid’s get crazier -, she mimics the moves of most early adopters of subculture rebellion (look, all our parents had crappy hair and revolutionary ideals, and look where some of them ended up). So what are you up to, Enid? “I'm taking a remedial high school art class for f***-ups and retards”.
2. Tiny Furniture (2011)
Seen through the glazed eyes of hipster-ennui belonging to talented filmmaker Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture is a hilarious and scathing look at the self-promotion and solipsism of Gen-Y as it graduates and tries to find An Occupation. Aura (Lena Dunham) moves back home to the Tribeca loft she shares with her artist mother Siri, having broken up with her “male feminist” college boyfriend and has a quasi nervous breakdown. Aura has no idea what she’s doing, apart from sleeping with sleazy sous-chefs, working at a bistro and housing the YouTube sensation “Nietschian [sic] Cowboy” (Alex Karpovsky). What’s a girl to do? Work on her YouTube videos, obviously. “I saw that your dyslexic-stripper video got, like, 400 hits!” drawls po-mo “monologist” (Amy Seimetz). If Tiny Furniture were a hashtag, it would be #whitegirlproblems.
3. The Graduate (1967)
I’ve got one word to say to you. Plastics.
4. Garden State (2004)
It’s hard enough being a struggling grad, if on top of that, you once accidentally paralysed your mum, are stoned cold on painkillers, and you’re a struggling actor. Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff) is all these and more, as he waits tables at a trendy Vietnamese in LA, while sporting a bad dose of guyliner. There’s hope for you yet Largeman! Look at Mad Men’s Jon Hamm! He waited tables until he got discovered in his 30’s and magically diffused into the sexual subconscious of a generation of men, women and dogs. But then Jon Hamm is a god carved out of the sexual marble of ancient Rome. Zach Braff is the dust mote of the ash refuse of Hamm’s 20th post-coital cigarette.
5. Reality Bites (1994)
A freshly printed graduate generally occupies the awkward position of embodying high human capital with a low disposable income: Those three years I paid to learn about the deconstrucialist legacy of Tyra Banks in the post-colonial trade of debris, for this! Well Vicki (Janeane Garofalo)’s attending jean-folding seminars for The Gap, so quit moaning.
The Grad That Didn’t Make it...
Into The Wild (2007)
Doesn’t life suck when you’re upper middle class, highly intelligent, educated, wealthy and good-looking? History and anthropology graduate from Emory, Christopher McCandleless took to the Alaskan wilderness in 1992 for a “Thoreauvian period of solitary contemplation”. Since time immemorial (or at least the upper middle class glorified Art Trip known as the Grand Tour), man has left school or university, only to take to the road and “chunda everywhere”. Sean Penn’s 2007 directorial debut, based on a true story written by Jon Krakauer, attempts to romanticise what was nothing more than an ill-fated and poorly organised Gap Yarr, except in the hands of someone better-looking (Emile Hirsch) and better read. Unfortunately, what some purport to be the On The Road for Gen-Y ends in starvation and death – an almost positive outlook for an E-stuffed weekend at Full Moon Party.
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