"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

Cast and Credits

 Motifs, Archetypes and Stereotypes:

Steve Bolander:

Steve is the class president, the big man on campus. He is athletic and popular. He is enjoying his last night before going off to college. He is making the separation from high school. At the freshman dance he falls into step for a time as a "student," but he quickly takes a big step when he tells his old teacher off. Where Curt is fearful of leaving the safety of the home town, Steve has no such concerns. He has the confidence to move on and meet the future. Steve's link to high school is Laurie who is just entering her senior year. This is not a link to the past, however. Laurie is Steve's present. He is not ready to leave her behind. Steve's decisions during the evening will not be motivated by the same anxieties Curt has.

Curt Henderson:

Curt is afraid to leave the security of the womb-like atmosphere that high school has provided, but he can't go back. When he visits the freshman dance he discovers that the school has changed the locker combinations. He doesn't belong there any more. Contrast Curt to the high school teacher at the dance who tells Curt to break away and go to college, yet the teacher is trapped in his own past reaping the rewards he finds with his popularity amongst the high school students and especially the adulation of the high school girls.
One scene which illustrates Curt's desire to remain in his comfortable rut has Curt saying to his old girl friend, "Where're you going?"

Response: "No where."

Curt: "Mind if I come along?"

Another important scene for Curt is when he is in the back seat with his old girlfriend. She tells him she is glad that he is staying. This makes him blanche. He does not want to go back to when they were going out. He knows it would be a step backwards.

Curt is also given glimpses of his future if he stays in town. People who stay i town join the town organizations. Curt is given two choices on this night. He could become a Pharaoh or he could become a Moose. Neither of these prospects is particularly appealing to him.

The youthful and innocent Curt lives in a world of symbol and illusion. When he cannot see behind the illusions, he feels inadequate to challenge them. But through the evening he gets glimpses of the realities behind the appearances. He expects the teacher at the dance to have the answers he is looking for but he sees a disappointing reality of a flawed human being who can't make the same giant step that he wants Curt to make. The teacher tells Curt to get out and see the world, but he only stayed away for a semester and then came back. The teacher who could never make it outside of town and away from high school has chosen a job that makes him live a life in perpetual high school complete with big man on campus status with the girls. 

Wolfman Jack, a real life famous Los Angeles radio DJ, is a mythic, larger than life character who Curt believes will have the answers to his problems, ala the Wizard of Oz. His meeting with the Wolfman helps him to see the reality behind the illusion. The mysterious and enigmatic Wolfman is a nice, pleasant fellow who is willing to give a kid a helping hand. This reality is something that Curt can handle. In the end Curt is left with the lone mystery of the girl in the Thunderbird symbolizing that he will never attain all of the answers to the mysteries of his life.

John Milner:

Two years older, John Milner is caught in the trap of trying to hang on to the glory he had in high school. He knows his leadership in drag racing will not last forever. At the end of the film, he sees that it will come to an end, but with rueful bravado he tells Toad that he will keep going until it is over. "Okay, Toad" he says, "We'll take 'em all." John would like to give it all up, but he has no dream to replace what he is holding on to. Though the high school kids look up to John, John envies Curt because Curt has something that he is moving towards, a dream, a goal, a future. Because John lacks that ability to move on to the next step into adulthood, he is cursed to the rut of "cruising the strip." He will endlessly drive up and down the streets of town going nowhere knowing he has peaked early in his life.

Archetype:

American Grafitti is an American archetype, the cruising youth searching for experience. For the characters in this film, life does not happen fast enough so they jump into their cars and wander not-so-aimlessly through the streets looking for action or activity that will provide the experience that life has to offer. What would their alternative be? Stay at home and wait for the limited number of planned activities they have (school, family vacations, chores) to show up on the calendar? As children grow up faster and faster in today's society, the need of experience that will challenge and test the youth is more and more necessary. So they cruise. They search for adventure in the nearby neighborhoods, away from home, yet in a comfortable vacinity. They stake out territory in certain areas of the surrounding community and they learn to function as adults by dealing with what happens when two or more social circles intersect.

This undisciplined search is not activity that can happen in poorer, more deliberate communities where the society's youth would have a greater role to play with greater responsibility for providing for the family or others. This is function of the American largesse where the function of the young is to gain an education so that they can provide for their own families of the future, a nebulous, amorphous role that offers very few practical advantages in the present. In a developing society, if the young man or woman is lazy about fulfilling a role, people may go hungry or unclothed or without shellter. In the suburban American society the consequences of a young person's sloth is not known until years later, if it is ever known at all. The experience of education offers few immediate and practical experiences. The search for social interaction can pay immediate dividends, thus American youth has learned to cruise.

Music:

The music is omnipresent. Everyone keeps tuned to a radio or a band. At one point in the film Toad only knows his car has been stolen because he doesn't hear the radio. (Ebert) The music is evocative. The music is atmospheric. The music tells stories that complement the action.

Bibliography

Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert's Home Movie Companion 1989 Edition. Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1988.

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