“The Seventies, they obviously suck.”

Dazed and Confused explores the turmoils and truths of high school through the lives of a dozen-or-so teenagers in the 70s, with the classic intermingling of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It’s a social commentary which ridicules power dynamics and dismantles social standards. Wooderson says it best: “The older you get the more rules they’re going to try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin’ man, L.I.V.I.N.”

The film is a raw appreciation of everything adolescence is, an amplification of the human condition; it caricatures the notion that High School is simply this beautiful experience. Just as Pink tells his friends; “If I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life – remind me to kill myself.” In a sense, he’s onto something. We all misunderstand high school’s part in relation to the entirety of our lives.

In the midst of it, it’s natural to suppose that these years define us. We overestimate the implications of every decision, every interaction and every experience. There’s a communal desperation to ensure our youths are extraordinary. Furthermore, we have a tendency to romanticize everything we do not have. Therein lies the issue; we spend our moments longing for those moments to be something else. Perhaps to be glorious. Perhaps to be unconventional. Perhaps to be meaningful. Nevertheless, we waste away in longing.

In my favorite scene in the film, Cynthia describes the “every other decade” theory, as she calls it. She explains, “The 50s were boring. The 60s rocked. The 70s, they obviously suck. So, maybe the 80s will be radical. I figure we’ll be in our twenties and hey, it can’t get any worse.” It’s beautifully sardonic. The film sweetly reminds us that every generation of youth is utterly dissatisfied with the times they exist in. 

Even 40 years ago, teenagers suffered some version of “I was born in the wrong decade.” It’s especially compelling considering Dazed and Confused was made in the 1990s; it was reflecting on the ways in which teenagers existed in the 70s in order to reach teenagers in the 90s.

In another one of the film’s strangely poignant moments, Cynthia remarks, “If we are all gonna die anyway, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I’d like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.”

That’s precisely why I love Dazed and Confused. It categorically savors this sentiment that “nothing” is everything. The best of adolescence can be found in all the little things (rather than their consequences). It can be found in the backseat of our friend’s car. In the football games we cheer too loudly at. In the tests we barely pass. In our unrequited crushes. In parties filled with people who would one day become strangers. In the albums we’ll forget we loved. In the universal sensations of adolescence: desperation, heartache, growth, and on and on the list could go.

It’s a sentiment we can appreciate now more than ever. For perhaps the first time, we are nostalgic for the present. Instead of clinging to archetypes defined by past generations, we find ourselves missing our own youths. We long for everything we had. We long for all those moments we unintentionally diminished.

For most of us, high school is made up of our first attempts at life. A taste of the wide world awaiting us. We savor it as best as we can, or as best as we know. And, most of us will spend our lives missing high school – whether we hated it or loved it, it won’t matter in the end. As Dawson simply states, “All I’m saying is that I want to look back and say that I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place.”

In these coming years, we will become so much more than our High School selves. We will never be reduced to one consequence, one experience, one interaction, one decision, or even one version of ourselves. We are a mismatched compilation of all things. If anything can be understood from the message of Dazed and Confused, it’s that our lives are not about consequentiality. Our lives are about seeing the moments we live through as exactly what they are and savoring them for it.