Bell Bottoms and Bongs

Matthew McConaughey, wielding a half-empty beer, a pornstache and a grin, stares at a freshman girl that walks by him. He’s leaning his weight on his right leg against a technicolor wall in a casual contrapposto that would make Michelangelo do a double take.

He’s wearing salmon-shaded pants so snug they must have been vacuum-sealed. As his eyes follow the freshman off screen, he announces the wisdom that epitomizes his character’s mentality: 

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I keep getting older, they stay the same age.” 

This is the iconic image of Richard Linklater’s 1993 comedy “Dazed and Confused” set in the 1970s. From memes to Halloween costumes to his universal “Alright, Alright, Alright” catchphrase, this lovably lecherous character named David Wooderson launched McConaughey’s career and helped make this coming-of-age film a generationally transcendent classic. It’s probably the first vision that jumps into the minds of anyone post Generation X when thinking of the 70s.

Closely cut crop tops, mood rings, macrame — and unsettlingly styled facial hair — these trends are all emblems of the decade, and no film better showcases the impact this fashion era had on American youth and generations to come. It’s the most put-together pot comedy of all time. Stoner never looked so good. 

The warring teenage tribes at the helm of this high school film are defined by what they wear. With tight, high-waisted jeans, peasant blouses, leather vests and tube tops, each of the female characters could be the muse of the classic rock bands whose songs score the soundtrack. Linklater actually stole the movie title from the Led Zeppelin song of the same name. 

The “geeks” of the movie don big hair and big glasses to match their self-proclaimed bigger than life intellects. They provide the only voice of reason (and criticism) in this seemingly too good to be true teenage utopia bathed in a vapor cloud. However, their quest to be different just makes them all the more similar.

Their fashion choices belie their motives as they subtly emulate their higher ups on the food chain. The fitted jeans, the plaid and the bright colored stripes are just status quo enough to make one wonder whether their intellectual disdain isn’t really just envy. They’ll play bystander and throw around “Neo-McCarthyism” all they want, but they still just want “to dance” and drink at the party. 

The “cool” kids, including the aforementioned McConaughey, sport the most realistic looks. They’re comfortable yet casual in their layers and skinny jeans and fitted T-shirts and long, unkempt hair. It’s “stoner chic ” and effortlessly iconic — but that would be the case no matter what they wore. 

Our hero, Randall or “Pink” Floyd, a cross between a pseudo rebel and a jock, dresses in the most complex fashion of the film. He transcends cliques, and his wardrobe reflects his flexibility. Pink wears jeans and ratty T-shirts, but he also wears deep V-necks and flared pastel shirts crowned by a puka shell necklace. Unlike his stoner peers, he can’t decide which aesthetic to sport just as he can’t decide to sign his football coach’s pledge to stay sober for the summer.

He’s the textbook high school chameleon. He’s sloppy, preppy, sporty and sad all at once. And he lives in that awkward middle ground between teen idol and sex symbol. He’s not quite the boy next door. He’s more like the boy down the street who cleans up well for dinner with your parents but will smoke with you in the bed of his pickup afterwards. 

The film lacks a driving plot as our hero and his friends spend a majority of their night cruising in cars. As weed wafts between dialogue, the characters exhibit a shocking sense of self-awareness. They know they’re the middle children of history, still in the throes of the ‘60s revolutions but not yet in the “radical” ‘80s. They narrowly escaped ‘Nam and just missed their movement but still clamor for their bigger struggle in the heat of the summer. They’re desperately in search of “some good ol’ worthwhile visceral experience.” As one character puts it, the ‘70s “obviously suck.” 

Linklater who based the film on the dog days of his own high school summers took painstaking detail in grounding the dialogue and fashion in his real life. His characters are not caricatures, and they are all unified by their goal to have their last hurrah at the end of year party. He portrayed teenagers in an unusual way: how they actually are. They’re immature kids in mature bodies who in their desperation to playact as adults, look all the more infantile. But that’s real teenage life.

The ‘70s proved to be the perfect decade to capture adolescence — not just because Linklater’s own formative years took place then but also because the decade’s uncertainty underscores the uncertainty and insecurity of adolescence. Seventies kids were emerging from the scourge of a cultural revolution, and it was up to them to further it or reverse it. Social upheaval was always on America’s mind, and its future was in the hands of kids like these, though they were just too “dazed and confused” to realize it yet.

In high school, everything is the end of the world. Everything means infinitely more to you. In just 24 hours, your whole life could change, and a Ted Nugent T-shirt could be critical to that change. Linklater knew that, and the whole film takes place in just one day. 

As “Slow Ride” blasts from a 1970 Chevy, McConaughey unwraps his lips from a blunt and hands it to Pink in the passenger seat. They nod their heads to the bass track as they laugh and look out the window. They’re on their way to get Aerosmith tickets in Houston. School is over, their lives have begun, and they can’t wait to start living, “L-I-V-I-N,” still sucked into those same bell-bottom jeans and fitted band shirts. They might be dazed and confused, but at the end of the day, they know they’re going to be “alright, alright, alright.”