Unlikely School Hero Boys

Well it seems I am not the only one who has noticed a pattern in what I had called "indie movie girls."

For anyone not wanting to click on the second link, I will rehash what I said more or less.

Indie Movie Girls are the fun loving girls who seem cute and eccentric but have some fundamental personality flaw. This flaw is often hidden by the antics but is seen when the antics stop working on the plucky boys they fall in love with. They are never able to ever fully get over their problems, but always are able to face them with more confidence or something... They are named as such because they seem to appear mostly in (if not originating in) what are usually seen as indie films and movies hipsters cry during. They do not exist in real life because they would be too annoying to have around, no matter how attractive they might seem.

Tonight I watched the movie Charlie Bartlett whose boy lead made me see that there is a male equivalent.

I would like to call him the Unlikely School Hero Boy. The moniker comes from where most of these personalities show up. This does not mean that they all have to be in a school setting, but they usually require a large set of peers who love them and see them as a source of guidance for some reason. Farris Bueller is a great example because we never see him actually interact with anyone past two Freshmen yet somehow his popularity is seen as almost a revolutionary social movement.

It is easy to believe this too because these USHBs are all very friendly and somehow are able to say just the right things to everyone. They never fit into any one click, but are certainly the products of white semi-affluent suburbanites. This means they always have wardrobes that make them look like political science kids and access to most anything they want.

Unlike the boys of IMGs, USHBs might go to shrinks, but don't ever need them. They are usually just sent there by their parents who are often overprotective and underinvolved. While there might be some central issue that has caused this distance to become cold, it is also the detachment they need to become the charming people they are. If this conflict between USHB and parent becomes important to the story some how the relationship will rarely change, but the USHB will feel he has grown somehow as a person.

The USHB almost always gets some kind of girlfriend. These girls are usually pretty, smart, likable, and only really seem to have the one purpose in life to be the USHB's arm candy. Even when they do stupid public stunts that would normally embarrass normal girls these girls only giggle at him for being so lovable.

Beyond the two I mention the other place to look for examples of these characters are in Wes Anderson films, any of them. He alone has made them his bread and butter. Even Bill Murry in Life Aquatic is one of these, just a bit later in life.

The thing that made me unable to really see USHBs for so long was my desire to be one. While superheros will always be seen as the adolescent male fantasy classic, I think the USHBs are actually what most adolescent males fantasize about being. Power fantasies are important, but most guys would probably much rather just be able to be seen as super cool by his peers for doing something out of the ordinary. This is a bit more subtle, but the USHB really has everything a high school boy wants to be.

The New Sincerity

Jesse Thorn the host of The Sound of Young America has proposed something called the "New Sincerity." This is the best description of where we are post-irony.

What a blatant acknowledgement of the nature of what coolness was. Hedonism at its finest, but can our love of the "awesome" really save us?

He mentions Evel Knievel, but I can't help but to think of every love interest in every shitty indie movie.* These girls are always quirky with an acidic tongues, ever-changing hair color, anxiety disorders, and families who just don't get them. They listen to music that "will change your life" and get you to run around nude at the abandoned amusement park in their home town. In short, she will make you live la vida loca, only with moody guitar music replacing the Latin beats.

Needless to say, I love them all.

How could I not? In every movie that these girls are in they take a square loser, who lives a fairly bland life popping Xanax and staring blankly into the future, and turn his life into a happy-go-lucky time in which he probably still has his old job (or one just as bland), but now he gets to go home and unapologetically enjoyed Mac&Cheese with weenies cut up into it while watching a DVD of his favorite bad movie from his childhood (Top Gun) before he has what must be mind-blowing sex.

The only person who can't enjoy this girl is Rob of High Fidelity, who sees cool as fatalism. But he has a point. You may be able to have simultaneous orgasms with someone, but you will always describe her as a "pain-in-the-arse." Four "bonks" are really more than enough with this type of girl. This is not hidden from any of the boys who fall for them. There are always lies, too much drinking, the realities of mental illness, and the practicalities of living. So why is it that they always go back to them?

The New Sincerity is why. We used to do things (like them or not) because we had to, but that is the root of irony. Irony is a reaction to the necessary. NS is an action of excess and love. Irony saw a 2-d world and caused us to become even flatter. Now, thanks to that irony we now live in a rich world filled options to go beyond the 2-d world of yesteryear. NS rejects this for the iconic though. NS sees an icon and takes it as fun at face-value. NS wants to praise the icon and make it real.

This totally defeats everything that irony was made for. NS causes us to celebrate only a piece of our life. A piece that is pretty fun, but ignores anything else. Rob has a point again. You can't ignore everything else, at least not all the time. You can make your top 5 songs about fruit with your friends to kill time, but that doesn't give you a fulfilling life.

At least the sex is good though...


*I thank HannahMo for pointing this pattern out to me. It has caused me much enlightenment.