Embarrassing Vulnerability in the Mid-2000s

There's a moment I think a lot of us have experienced at least once in our lives. Something upsetting happens and catches us off guard. We end up turning to some venue to express ourselves - could be social media, but older folks might have used Livejournal or Wordpress, and our raw feelings spill out. There's no attempt to cushion the impact with irony or withholding certain details, this is pure vulnerability. It feels cathartic in the moment, but in the cold light of the next day, it's embarrassing. Leaving it visible to the public feels like an invitation to ridicule so we get rid of it. 

American movies went through a phase like this in the middle of the 2000s. The movies are still here, but are now generally mocked by the public who once embraced them, if briefly. These films captured the essence of an uncertain, vulnerable time but as that moment passed, we didn't want anything to do with them. I'm going to spotlight three movies that I feel like summarize this unique era but before that, we have to set the scene.

This moment of intense vulnerability came about because of two major American tragedies - the first is of course the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It was devastating and horrific even for people who only saw it on TV. I was there and am now at the age where my kids can't believe it and have like a million questions about it, which is both sweet and kind of agonizing because I don't go out of my way to relive those memories if I can help it. However, I think we would have all come back stronger from that if not for the second tragedy - the start of the Iraq invasion in 2003. The Bush administration decided to start a war against a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, using thin rationales that anyone with a functioning brain could see were total bullshit but anyone who spoke out was buried in unhinged hostility from the same low-intelligence-high-confidence meatheads who cursed us with the Trump presidency ten years later. The war in Iraq inspired some of the largest protests in the history of mankind, but none of them made a difference. It's not really a stretch to say that the way the war machine pushed ahead, unconcerned with the passionate objections of so many people, convinced my entire generation that protesting was useless. Thankfully, Generation Z isn't burdened by this so it's made quite a comeback.

But before I get carried away with the history, let's talk about the movies.

Garden State (2004)

It's almost impossible to believe now, but people really did love this movie when it first came out. It still has a pretty high imdb score of 7.4, which demonstrates that while people might deny ever liking something that seems embarrassing after some time has passed, most of them don't bother going back and changing their votes.

The actor Zach Braff wrote, directed and stars in this movie as a guy who returns home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. While at home, he has a personal crisis when he realizes he doesn't feel much of anything because he's been on medication for as long as he can remember thanks to his psychiatrist father. While waiting at the DMV, he connects with a very smiley young woman played by Natalie Portman who insists that he has to borrow her walkman and listen to The Shins during their first meeting. Ultimately, the message is that it's better to experience life with all its ups and downs rather than numb yourself with anti-depressants. Almost twenty years later, it's pretty easy to see why that's a questionable message. It's quite ill-advised to try and "tough out" mental illness without help for the sake of authenticity or whatever. Something about this really spoke to people in that moment, however. Were we all so numbed and disillusioned by the preceding years that we craved permission to enjoy life again? It's hard to stay for sure, especially now that the moment has long since passed.

Portman's character is also an archetypal example of the "manic pixie dream girl," a phrase coined by film critic Nathan Rabin right around the time this movie came out. Her role is to use her ample quirkiness to help young men get out of their funk and appreciate hipster indie music again. The Kirsten Dunst character in Elizabethtown, which came out a few years later, is another big one. Movies were more or less done with this character type by the end of the decade. 500 Days of Summer (2009) appeared to be in the same vein at first, but turned out to be a deconstruction of these cutesy romance stories that was utterly ruthless.

Crash (2005)

In fairness, this one was controversial from the start and could very well destroy American society if it were released today. An infamously blunt drama about the way racism drives much of what ails our culture, it got a rapturous reception from critics upon its initial release but is now something of a punching bag. It won the Oscar for Best Picture in a shocking upset over the groundbreaking gay romance Brokeback Mountain, which is one of the most infamous Oscar moments that doesn't involve someone getting smacked across the face.

I remember seeing this in the theater back then and thinking that it really worked. It was hard not to get caught up in the emotions that were bleeding off the screen. But even on the second viewing, the cracks started to show. It was almost one of those "turn off your brain" scenarios that people often use to defend the shittiest blockbusters because once you really start to think about what's going on, it gets pretty questionable. The biggest sticking point with people who talk about it today is the story arc that attempts to redeem a racist, corrupt police officer (Matt Dillon) who sexually assaults a woman (Thandiwe Newton) during a traffic stop but later saves that same woman from the scene of a car wreck. The whole "bigot with hidden nobility" trope actually used to be very common, but the threat of social media backlash has put it on life support. I don't think it's inherently impossible to pull off, but you need to have much more careful writing than this.

For better or worse, you can't really get away with playing fast and loose with this subject matter in today's world. I might be in the minority on this, but I still feel there's something worthwhile about engaging so directly with these issues once in a while. I suspect that in the moment, Crash offered an emotional catharsis for people who really needed one, but it was never destined for timelessness. 

Juno (2007)

This one came near the end of this era and is interesting in this context because it's more or less about how people use irony and humor to manage their fear of genuine emotions. Elliott Page (back in the Ellen era) plays the title character, a teenage girl impregnated by her goofy friend Paulie (Michael Cera) who must reconcile the various relationships in her life while preparing for the child's birth. Why she decided to go through with the pregnancy isn't fully explained, probably because the movie didn't want to get caught up in the minefield of the abortion debate. 

The screenwriter Diablo Cody is mostly known for her penchant for inventing slang for her movies, a serious love it or hate it proposition, but this is a genuinely funny movie with a heart. Just like the other two, people responded passionately upon its initial release but today the quirkiness of the dialogue feels way out of touch, along with the "hipster" subculture that was in full swing around this time. Being able to capture the essence of the times is a virtue, but what happens when the time in question is one that most of us would rather forget? 

That's what happened with all three of these movies, along with several others. The historic election of President Barack Obama was a dramatic start to a new era and we were all more than happy to move on. It was one of the few genuinely good historical events to happen in my lifetime - the biggest competition I can think of is Parasite's Best Picture win and maybe the advent of recliners in movie theaters.  

The best movies both embody their eras and tell a story that's universal enough for people to connect with in the future. None of these movies really managed that, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss them out of hand. We're all older now, we don't have to be embarrassed about the messiness of our younger days...but those overwrought blog posts are definitely going to stay deleted.