Post-Graduation Movies

Salon.com features an article about post-graduation films in the wake of the movie's "flunking grades."

College and High School fare has always been aspirational. College Films offer dreams of debauchery to High School films. High School films offer paths to popularity. What are we to make of these films that cater to 22 year olds? Many appear to deal with friendships that were suppose to last forever. Listlessness settles in as the future constructed then is muddled by reality.

For the record, do I have the same angst? Many of these films, faultlessly, show upper middle class straight White kids who attended schools like Berkeley, Oberlin and Georgetown. Adventureland particularly deals with a kid who graduates with a liberal arts degree only to find himself working as a carnie at a fair.

As a point of reference, my family came to this country in the year I'm about to have. I didn't know what that felt like until I went to the Philippines over the summer. I respect my parent's generation so much more for leaving such a beautiful but flawed place. Even those endowed with dynastic gifts have to deal with the traffic and the hustling and the heat. I was born here as a result. My trepidation lies in the fact that I'm convinced, more than ever, that I was born to do something specific. There's no Newsweek cover that talks about Data Visualization and Mapping, so I'm not too late, but there's no Time cover that gives me the ammunition of words, labels and paths that I can use to defend against my own doubts.

I'm really not scared. I suppose I can't decide to be of the financial aid disaster that may loom or the friends that may scatter. Many of these films deal with marriage, which is beyond my radar. Each offer a time capsule of generations of young actors, the Brat Pack, the Baby Boomers, Generation X and even our own.

Given the 'specificness of being an American youth,' I thought my friends were the most special, certain bunch of kids in the world. I thought my experiences were my own, unrivaled by no one. Multiply this by the hundreds of thousands and the result is the Class of 2009.

My time was damn special though, for I decide it to be.

As a service to you, I present these trailers.

Adventureland (2009)



St. Elmo's Fire (1985)




Kicking and Screaming (1995)



Reality Bites (1993)



The Graduate (1967)



And for the record, a College Film, of our former life?