For Halloween, TIFF appropriately programmed The Craft, the 1996 film that rocketed goth culture to mainstream popularity (much to the dismay of the true goths perhaps). There's so much about goth culture that I agree and disagree with to this day, but what interested me most about The Craft wasn't the fashion and eye make-up (tho I am to this day a fan of box purses, heavy mascara, and Urban Decay makeup), it was their take on paganism as both positive and negative, targeting it to a teenage audience. It wasn't a completely accurate representation of the Wiccan faith, but it blended many elements of real rituals that impressionable young minds may have found it hard to distinguish.
Having been interested in horror, magic, and supernatural things since an early age meant I'd read up on witchcraft long before I saw this movie. Both the medieval persecutions and the Salem witch trials were familiar territory, I even knew a little bit about modern witchcraft including Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley's names (if you're not a Crowley fan, don't get uppity that I mention him in conjunction with Wicca, I'm just referencing what's widely out there, true or not). Still The Craft was really the first time I'd seen paganism and witchcraft detailed on screen in such a manner, I had grown up more accustomed to stuff like The Witches of Eastwick.
Not long after The Craft there was Practical Magic (1998), a more adult take on magic maybe, but also kind of a crappy movie. I don't recall too many prominent magic (or magick) films since, horror and fantasy genre flicks aside of course. One needs to look no further than Queen St. West to know that goth culture has gone back underground, along with it the mainstream's fascination with paganism.
On a related note: The Craft star Fairuza Balk has most recently been involved with a documentary film called Beyond Clueless, which has been doing the festival circuit. It takes a look at teen movies and their impact on contemporary cinema. My (fellow 90's teen movie enthusiast) BFF and I checked it out at Hot Docs earlier this year, it didn't bowl us over but was a nice trip down memory lane.
Pump Up The Volume hit theatres in 1990, right at the start of the decade, featuring high school students who felt heavily pressured to conform. This made the film very Gen-X in my eyes. Having been born at the tail end of Gen X, and sometimes finding myself lumped into the (unrelateable) Millennials category in surveys, I'm part of that age group that in some ways feels the most lost because on top of potentially being a part of a more aimless generation, we're not even sure if we quite belong to it! That's a whole other discussion though.
It wasn't until many years after Pump Up The Volume was made that I realized what a 90's time capsule the movie really is. Waves of deja vu hit me watching these kids with boom boxes and cassette tape dubs. Fine, these are also found in Facebook memes as well, but others went beyond. Seeing friends on the phone with each other while simultaneously listening to a radio show reminded me of lunch hours with my friend Christopher, when we would race to our respective homes at lunch, call each other, and proceed to chat while listening to 680's Top 12 at 12 (groaning that our favourite rap song only made it to #2 while some bogus R&B track topped that day's countdown). Then there is one scene in Pump Up the Volume where a girl holds the phone up to the radio so that her friend on the other end can hear. I had a phase in middle school where my friend Dejana and I were addicted to a teen soap called Swan's Crossing (my first glimpse of Sarah Michelle Gellar being evil btw - more of that to come when TIFF screens Cruel Intentions!) I would program my VCR to record the show which aired at noon, but who could wait until after school? We would dash to Dejana's whenever possible, but then there was the problem that we had to head back at 12:50 to make it before the bell, causing us to miss the last 7 mins or so of the episode. Our solution: after school I would play back the last 7 mins I had recorded over the phone so that she would hear how the episode ended.
A more personal connection I have with Pump Up the Volume is that a friend of mine loved Christian Slater and this movie. Always having been a little insecure herself, coupled with a love of unusual things, Pump Up the Volume probably spoke volumes to Monique. The fact that she adored the film's star Christian Slater didn't hurt either. Monique is no longer with us, so when I see this movie I think of her and the good times we had in high school.
I'm not sure there has been many other movies like Pump Up the Volume since, please point out any glaring omissions. It's my hopes that (as the end of the movie alludes to) technology has helped to give rise to a diversity of voices and so fewer people are finding it difficult to express themselves.
Talk hard. Blog hard.
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