#the other option is like. thinking about scott as the kind of weird loner of the o5 in 616. though the others do of course like him

[wellnoe]

thinking about butch lesbian cyclops x men again excuse me. but. if cyclops is out about this during the silver age that kind of dominos into at least both bobby and jean during that time yeah.

[gruby88]

The story clerks is kind of amazing. A lower-middle class kid from suburban New Jersey starts working at a video store, where he mets a guy heavily into movie. He broadens his horizons enough with some Independent Film Fair hangouts, a place where future classics like Linklater’s „Clacker” would appear. The kid, known as Kevin SMith, get so into it he ges to cheap canadian film school to make his own movies.

He drops out mid-semester, because school is boring and boring things are just not interesting. But he assembles a rudimentary crew of rpoducer Scott Mosier and cinematographer Klark, makes some credit card fraud for 30k dollars and starts making his debut movie - Clerks.

Shot over a month at a store Smith worked at - the movie is basically two dudes just having a weird day at work. They talk in a very verbose style, giving this sophistication to the most inane of topics while serving wacky customers and slowly bulding up to a broader lesson the love subplot signifies.

In spite of it’s blue collar setting of a convinience store, the movie appears to be ideologyless. IThe characters, or rather maybe SMith himself, seem to have no real  thoughts about politics. There’s no big boss acting as villain. there’s no goals.  A guy who sells chewing gum starts a riot in the store but that never gets any commentary, it’s just a gag. There’s just empty void of depression. And 90s kinda were like that. Reagan and Tatcher turned the world into a capitalist hellhole, everything seemed meaningless beyond monetary value, with no real way out of the system.

It still does btw.

And thus, the valued commodity of early 90s was realness. The was a market for what we believe to be real. Swearing, being drunk in public, greasy haired rockers were not the world finally manning up to some sick guitar riffs, it was an open craving for somethig real. Something raw. Or at least as raw as we can stomach, there’s a reason why pretty boy Eddie Vedder got famous, and shit-slinging rockers like GG Allin just remained too hot for tv.

And realness wasn’t just to be consumed, it gave us hope that we can too become recognizable for just being ourselves. And it times before reality tv, vlogs, instagram stories and facebook posts - to scratch that itch we had to look for people like us on the big screen. For validation that our averageness is significant in some way.

And Clerks was the perfect movie for the generation of directionless stoners, loners, geeks, nerds, outcasts, mclovins of their time. It was just two dudes being smartasses for 90 minutes.

So how does CLerks hold up in 2020?

Welp.

The movie itself is kinda good. Very funny still. It encapsulates early 90s attitude of not giving a fuck pretty flawlessy with worst attitued played up to maximum. There’s no stakes, characters hardly have an arc to follow, it just kind of is. It meanders with no purpose and that kind of is the point. It’s lack of effort seems to be intentional to signify the lack of effort in the characters. It’s as dull as your life, but also has all the things that make it bearable. The funny friend. The fact that low-paying jobs have the best stories because you mostly deal with other low-income people wh are usually insane from all the stress.

C A P I T A L I S M

One thing that caught my eye was contempt for store customers. You’d think Smith would find compassion for fellow low-classians, but no. I wroked commerce so I know, the best stories are the ones about people you don’t hold too dear to your heart and called names to their face because they just put you past the tipping point. But politics of clerks is basically - look at this dumb motherfuckers interrupting me doing fuck all at my job. There’s no hint of irony or self-awareness. Like, at some point the cool guy, Randall fucking GRAVES, just spits water at a guy point blank for being kinda stupid about tabloids. And is presented as the guy we want to be, the cold calculated friend with instant funny comment about anything.

I guess this is a display of Kev-dawgs immaturity. He is not aware, that what he perceives as cool carries a broader social commentary and a lesson that’s beyond a joke about customers being weird. Which is kinda part of the charm. That Smith doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care that he shows us the worst people ever, which is why it’s so authentic. It’s brutal when put like that, but it is the voice of the part of america that gets the worst jobs. And this is what they think of you. That you’re assholes for making them work. ANd that speaks to countless generations of kids who would never have a voice in cinema. There was never a cool representation for chubsters with affection for superheroes. They want to believe that their lack of sex skills will result in a girl mistakenly fukcing a corpse in pursuit of them and not just straight rejection.

And it works like that because the movie is pretty consequenceless for our main characters. Randall has no stakes in anything and just spits onelines. He throws some food around which I guess is pretty dramatic, but that’s about his impact on the story.

The story centers around the main character of Dante. A guy who has unexplanedly two women fight for his affection even thouth his bed skills seem to be comparable to rigor mortis. And is just an asshole to both off them. He scolds his girlfriend for having broad sexual past, and then gets mad when he learns that his ex moved on. Lots of room for improvement as a person.

Anyways, his lesson? Ditch the ex who will most likely never recorver and is now useless as you can’t fuck, and go back to your main chick. This is actually the whole arc of the movie. Dante learns that his options are limited, and he should bank on girls that actually can stand him. And it’s not even my interpretation, the movie ends with the director, playing the iconic  SIlnet Bob, explaining the movie to us via a monologue to the main character.

But all of this makes the movie work. Becuase it perfectly captures tht moment in life when you’re kinda too naive to figue out that having good taste in movies does not a good person make, but also old enough to not be dismissed or get in trouble for challanging the status quo.

Even after dogma, where peoles good will towards smith reached its peak and for a second he was about to enter the mainstream legit, not just as an indie wonder funny guy. He was not treated as seriously as after Clerks. And smith ate it up. He played into it. 90s Kevin is way more full of himself than his later laid back slacker persona of the public speaking era. Kevin loves the implication that he is this working class genious, the smartass philosopher of the gen x, taking popular culture and treating it like art. Big words. And he is not wrong, lthout his takes.. usually are.

Kevin is prominently featured as an intro interviewer for Josh petersen, indie distributor that wrote  book about how he performs the most boring aspect of the movie making - selling the thing.

But seeing this movie now, being 10 years older than kevin when he made it. I can feel the excitement of voice emerging, and „that’s beautiful, man”.