Thinking about how ‘90s culture had to incorporate the rise of the “creative class” as the decade went on. Like, looking at Clerks (1994) today, the construction of “riffing on pop culture” as a dead-end retail thing as vs. college-educated strivers seems weird, though I suppose even then a major theme was Dante’s gf insisting he’s college material

You know, the fact that his home town of Red Hook, New Jersey has a fairly nice commercial downtown

probably informs how Kevin Smith’s first two movies were set at a strip mall and a shopping mall, respectively (and a “dirt mall”)

Capably introduces a properly calibrated subject, willingness to be scored by Lit is reassuring

eightyonekilograms:

kontextmaschine:

Clerks III a powerful “the 90s are back!” moment

This is, by a wide margin, the most wretched “I have to stop learning things this way” moment I’ve had in all my years on Tumblr.

Who’s directing? Oh my god Kevin Smith is directing! How can that be?

Clerks III a powerful “the 90s are back!” moment

Thinking about Clerks and Mallrats

Thought the reputed fall-off in quality was overrated but at this distance I actually remember the character arc of Clerks – Dante has a dead-end life but has an earnestly caring girlfriend promoting his self-improvement… into what, the normie morons who populate his store as customers and remember her from high school as an orgasm dispenser?

Whereas Mallrats, uh, his girlfriend’s pissed he plays NHL on Genesis instead of making an effort so he… goes to the mall… then goes to the dirt mall… then Silent Bob Batmans in to expose Ben Affleck fucking a high schooler? I have no memory what the lesson was, what wisdom Silent Bob, Stan Lee OR the topless fortune teller passed on

Also from Clerks, Dante the iconic loser has

• his own place
• a job
• a car
• a girlfriend
• work friends
• a crew of guys to play hockey games with

Just saying

Uhh from Mallrats a lot of the good guy/bad guy gradient comes from Ben Affleck being into painal. If in that elevator scene he’s like “yeah, I keep up a good appearance, and then I find girls who’ve been disappointed by their men, and then, I stick my penis in their vaginas”? Like yeah dude, that’s heterosexuality, “being better than the other guy” is the move by which the protagonist wins here

Did anyone else read the Clerks comics?

Where they play out the funeral scene that was left as a lacuna in the movie

(The dead girl is in her coffin in a tube top and sexy jeans, which honestly don’t underestimate 90s New Jersey, Randall drops his keys on her that slide into her pants and has to fish around in there but gets interrupted and knocks over the coffin entirely)

Also the follow-up bit where Dante visits that ex from the movie who fucked the dead guy in the bathroom, and now she’s catatonic in an asylum and he tries to break it by banging her with a candy cane? (That one was a holiday special)

Every so often I remember that Clerks is set in a world where angels and demons are real and Alanis Morissette is God