If brains were dynamite you couldn't blow your nose.

American Graffiti is one of George Lucas' early films and is often hailed as an American classic. After watching it I read various reviews (many written be people of the generation portrayed in the movie) that talked about how it's a fantastic piece of historical fiction that really takes them back to that time, a time of American innocence before Kennedy's assassination and Vietnam.

For me it's harder to evaluate it on those terms. More to the point, the only experience I have of that period is through movies or stories. For me to try to talk about this movie as being a good representation of that time period essentially means I'm comparing it against other similar representations and making a guess at which is better.

Tangent: This really brings up an important point about the stories we have as a society and they way they can shape our view of the past. Clearly American Graffiti doesn't tell the whole story of the late 50's early 60's for American youth. But as we get farther from that time, the other parts of the story that aren't shown fade from our consciousness. Without representations of those things in a sense stop being true. And this idealized version becomes the truth we hold (Lucas is infamous for idealizing a wholesome past - it's also a big theme in the Star Wars movies.) Idealizing and distorting the past in this was is dangerous ground, because it causes us to long for that better time, but we often forget all the ways that time was not better. I believe that, in general, our society makes forward progress. Looking at certain things in the past that used to be better is healthy and constructive reflection, but looking at the past as a whole as a better thing can cause a dangerous suppression of our societal progress. (End tangent.)

So now I have this movie in front of, about teenage kids in the 60's. As I said, I can't tell if it's an accurate representation of the time, but I can tell that it's an accurate representation of teenage kids. That was the thing I noticed most watching this movie: status symbols may change from cars to iPods, but the trials of being a teenager seem to be somewhat constant. Negotiating that social scene, and exploring yourself as a person, those things in American Graffiti seemed pretty similar to my experience with it a decade ago and with friend's experiences more recently.

And that is why this movie is an American classic. Yeah, it's a classic partially for it's portrayal of that time period. But to really be a classic a movie has to tap into basic human truths. And at least in the US, being a teenager (or to be fair, a middle to upper middle class white teenager) is a basic human truth which this movie captures expertly.

Go watch it to take a tour through history, if not America's, then maybe just yours.

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