NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM (20)

By: Charlie Mitchell
December 7, 2021

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of (one of) their nerdy obsessions.

REPO MAN

No flick prods the absurdist heart of a disenfranchised youth quite like Repo Man (1984), written/directed by Alex Cox, starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. Estevez plays a punk youth named Otto who’s conscripted by repo men; his repo work eventually hurls him towards an unnaturally (and literally) ‘hot’ car with the bodies of four aliens in the trunk.

Set amidst an American Shakespearean nightmare of industrial ruins, Otto is disillusioned with his world — there’s little prospect of anything beyond chickenfeed jobs. We see him drinking alone on the train tracks in the early dawn, then belting out Black Flag’s TV Blues. Otto searches the classifieds with his gawky pal, naming off ‘asbestos worker’ and ‘french fry worker’ in disbelief. The single moment of sentiment he shares is a nightmare in which he and the same pal are working in some shithole motel in Miami as 65-year-old bellhops. Televangelists have swindled pretty much all they can from Otto’s future, a murmuring hypno-glow that transfixes his parents; “I don’t want your money, because God wants your money!”

It’s all played to the drumbeat of ‘where there’s banality, there’s something incredulous’. This peaks with the counterattack to the marketing barrage that’s commonplace in the States. “C’mon let’s go get a drink,” says Bud (Stanton) then cuts to him slamming down a sixer of cans that simply say ‘drink’ in blue letters on a white label. We see Otto glumly stock ‘corn flakes’ in the opening, ‘commando cigarettes’ in a glove compartment, ‘beer’ and ‘food’ in a fridge, ‘tasteeos’ and ‘London dry gin’ on liquor store shelves. It shocked me as a kid; now it’s a relief from the onslaught which demonstrates how vapid consumerism is. Then we have the punks who want a baby because ‘everybody does it’, the knitting cop, the indistinguishable CIA suits with uniform blonde hair and reflective shades. The macho defense of John Wayne’s alleged homoeroticism: “a lotta straight guys watch their buddies fuck — God knows I do”. These characters are living shitting American paradoxes (who are you? what are you doing in the world?) while the most reflective/authentic ones seem to win at the end.

Coupled with the attack on consumerism is the equally American ethic of wantonly throwing shit away — the Virgin Mary, bundles of cash, and wisdom in the forms of advice and books on a pyre. Eating and shitting.

Over almost forty years since its release, I don’t know of another film that can articulate my generation’s blues, morbid rage, grief, truly whatever *you* feel grappling with the abject absurdity. Or whatever you call the prospect of the future. However doom-pilled this obsession of mine might seem, I think black humor’s beauty is in making light of something dreadful. I’ll speak for myself — as soon as a subject is made light, it becomes easier to contemplate. Light enough to make a car take flight.

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What do you think?

Jens Alfke says:

December 27, 2021 at 1:56 pm

“Repo Man” is one of my favorite films; I must’ve watched it five times in theatres the year it came out.

FYI the generically-named products aren’t something made up for the film, rather a parodic exaggeration of the (brief?) “generic products” trend of the mid-80s. There really were, at least in California, products on store shelves with plain labels saying just PAPER TOWELS or BEANS, in the same color scheme and font as in the movie. They were cheaper due to lower marketing/packaging costs, and familiar to punks, college students like me, and doubtless aspiring filmmakers. (Eventually these evolved into the store brands we know today, like Costco’s Kirkland. I guess consumers were more comfortable with some kind of branding.)

See also: Flipper’s album “Generic Flipper”, and PiL’s “Album”.

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NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM (20)

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