I can't like Dazed and Confused Anymore.

I can't like Dazed and Confused anymore. It was a big thing in my teenage years because everybody was getting stoned and the '70s retread (before the economy went to shiat) was a big deal. We wanted to live those halcyon days where you could just hang out, get high, and it was no big thing.

But it's an illusion. Just like the movie itself, it's just a reflection of the sad state of suburbia. Nothing has really changed despite the world moving on and rural America remains in this turgid bubble. Nothing changes, nothing ever grows. "If these are the best years of my life, I'm going to kill myself" is the only true line in the movie because it reveals the paradox of being an adult and being trapped in responsibilities of wanting to go back to being a child and wanting the idea of freedom but in more of a locked down fashion. And it's still true today, politically: a lot of the nation is in love with the idea of freedom and the word itself, but we all hunger for more locks and controls.  In a way, this showcases our national attitude:  not only do we crave for the false freedom that childhood provides, we see ourselves as only being free when we are young enough to have possibilities of anything but not old enough to act upon them.  We crave to be under the thumb of an authority figure, which throws every myth and idea about the '70s into severe doubt and skepticism.

Maybe the movie has some purpose still. But honestly, it's just hard to watch. At the very least we're watching a fashion trend that has come and gone. At the very most we're revisiting a nasty bit of Americana that seems unavoidable.