At 30: Why the Gen X classic still stands up today
“I WAS really going to be something by the age of 23,” says Lelaina Pierce, played by the radiant Winona Ryder in the 1994 Gen X classic Reality Bites.
She was voicing an anxiety many would say was born in the post-boomer demographic of the film’s disenfranchised central characters – but it is still a familiar anxiety today, 30 years on from the film’s release.
Reality Bites was the first feature for director Ben Stiller, then known mostly for his TV comedy work, and the first script penned by then 20-something writer Helen Childress, drawing from her own life experience.
Lelaina is a dissatisfied university graduate confronting the realities of life after graduation while making a documentary about her equally disaffected friend group.
Despite graduating at the top of her class, Lelaina is stuck in a producer’s assistant role on a Houston morning show — until she is unceremoniously fired. Complicating matters, she is also trapped in a love triangle with corporate Michael (played by Stiller) and slacker Troy (Ethan Hawke), two men who represent a key philosophical fork in the road for many Gen Xers: to “sell out” or not.
Reality Bites continues to resonate with new generations of viewers. It is a timeless story of young adults navigating love, friendship, and career uncertainties.
At the time of release,
The New York Times’ Frank Rich declared: “This is the movie that has been both praised as the last word on X-ers and damned as Hollywood’s slickest effort yet to exploit them.”
There are however genuine joys, despite the slickness critique. Among them, the acerbic humor of Janeane Garofolo and Steve Zahn, in memorable roles; the killer ’90s soundtrack, featuring Lisa Loeb, Crowded House, and World Party; and two career-defining roles for Ryder and Hawke, who may be more familiar to younger audiences for Stranger Things and The Black Phone. Hawke’s brooding intellectual and Ryder’s luminous yet sardonic girl-next-door established personas for the duo that persisted throughout the decade.
Adam Daniel is an associate lecturer in Communications, Western Sydney University.*