Or How Some Good Old Fashioned Nineties-Lovin' fills The Void
by Elle Holgate
Kaboom, is quite frankly bang on. Trend, that is. The recently released film from ‘New Queer’ director Greg Araki is a psychedelic smorgasbord of 90s style teen-flick nostalgia with a great big whack of sex and a subversive dollop of conspiracy thrown in for good measure.
As the title suggests everything is done with the comic book camp of vintage Batman violence and it serves a feisty Kapow! to cinema's often dreary portrayals modern sexuality, flying like a sexy superhero in the face of giving a damn.
Kaboom begins laced with the drôle, erotic cynicism that was encapsulated by Rules of Attraction (2002) which capitalised on the glossy façade of a ‘teen flick’ subverted with dark, post modern existentialism. The 'teen' screen vision is familiar now, always complete with impossibly hot actors largely in their mid-late twenties impersonating still-pubescent college kids, with varying degrees of unconvincing innocence or lack of. Both films play on the aesthetic of ‘mega-zines’* (you know the thick, expensive arty tomes with ample artistic adverts) that started in the 90s. The gold in both films lies in the knowing hint of parody and nihilistic abandon, played with in the Scream series of the late 90s. It all seems to capture a certain brand of sarcastic irony that 90s culture did so well. In any of these films do we care much for the characters? Not so much. Are they hot? Uh, hell yeah. Could we blow them up with not a care in the (cinematic) world? Yup. This, in the age of instant gratification, video game (can we still call them such an archaic name?) violence, 'gore-porn'* and throw-away human sex toys, seems to hit a nerve.
We watch their over-sexed, under-academic exploits with the varying degrees of whimsy, cynicism and irony-the same traits the characters purport to embody. If only, we secretly muse, our college experiences were this fraught with misadventure and gorgeousness. If only sharp and spicy-tongued dialogue took up those days that were, in truth, spent stabbing spell check while drinking cold coffee. But somehow it feels as though this 90s-style orgy of everlasting teenage anarchy was my own mis-spent youth. My over stimulated synapses lap up films like Kaboom which, like cinematic hash cake, blur us into the perception that we too lived in a perpetual haze of ‘Dazed and Confused’ meets ‘Wild Things’. Such is the culturally drugged condition of my generation.
The 90s as this season's favourite 'retro' has been gaining momentum ever since everyone realised that the eighties for the most part sucked, plus who wants to remember the time when your Mom had a perm anyway? Along with Topshop channeling Kate Moss’ heroin-chic cool circa Depp and CK One, a resurgence of recession-friendly bleached hair with deliberate roots and boys in denim and plaid (always, for me, iconic of Jared Leto in 90’s cult teen angst series, My So-Called Life) the 90s are my generation’s most beloved point of reference. Close enough for genuine nostalgia; current twenty-somethings remember the days when making a mixtape for your crush’s Walkman was considered hi-tech, Glastonbury was still socially rebellious, and we used words like ‘crush’ and and ‘hi-tech’.
My generation, who were by and large still children or young teenagers in the nineties, has never-the-less adopted the 90’s as a time that is ours. It was booming (pardon the pun) economically, began the festival renaissance and made not washing your hair cool. What’s not to like? The nineties’ was our very own modern twist on the youth counter culture started in the 60’s. The 60’s has become culturally omnipotent, once a cliché that has now assimilated completely into fashion, music and art. It’s as if the 60’s never ended, it just bled into a thousand dresses, adverts and festivals. The 90's had Grunge and Techno, heroin-chic, free-rave rebellion and Ecstasy. Look I'm not saying all it gave us it is perfect but its ours. Or more importantly, its not our parent’s.
In the hazy afterglow of empathetic amphetamines is it any wonder that with the 90’s ‘second summer of love’ our cultural focus was still on freedom and sex but more about sexual politics than promiscuity as a political act. A thousand teen ‘dramedys’ were born of this new wave of loved up, horny teenagers who, like the dreary over-eloquence of ‘Dawson’s Creek’, loved nothing better than to jib out, endlessly dissecting the act of bonking in over-sized sweaters.
Yet we hold onto it. Kaboom plays to the age of the new-youther*, the kids who should be working in serious careers seriously and buying furniture but, post recession, are largely still living the teenage dream (whether they want to or not) in their financially-capped lifestyle. Seeing actors clearly in their twenties playing fresher undergrads gives the recession kids a moment of pure nostalgia woven with current truth. Have any of us really grown up yet? Forced dependence on our parent’s economically lucky generation means we may not be able to independently buy a house or contemplate a pension yet but, by golly, we can wear a nose ring and Doc Martins with conviction.
Kaboom is nigh-brilliant. Its really just a seamless mashup of zietgeist and nostalgia, and it hits the spot nicely. OK, its attempt at mind bending may not be as psychologically screwed and effective as Twin Peaks but its decided lack of contempt for its ballsy, banging array of characters is refreshing. No whore’s are punished by death -a la the rules of horror laid out in Scream- no girl simpers quietly through their lip gloss and the gay/bi/whatever girls and boys, who couldn’t give a flying...saucer, inherit the earth. That is, if earth survives the next big bang.
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| The original angst princess Claire Danes in wonderfully grungy My So Called Life with Jared Leto, yup you guessed it, looking stupidly hot and rocking some eye liner and plaid |
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| Guyliner wearer and Jared Leto look-a-like Thomas Dekker gets a lesson in consequence-less banging with Juno Temple in Kaboom |
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| Rules of Attraction had it all; quirky, clunky boot-wearing beauty Shannyn Sossamon, stupidly hot gay guy Ian Sommerhaulder and even Dawson-gone bad, James Van De Beek as the resident psychopath | | |
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