The Education and Urbanism of 'Dazed and Confused'
The perfect movie to end the school year, start the summer, or celebrate Memorial Day. Even the romanticized version of 1970s school life has a lot to say about America today.
Dazed and Confused is a 1993 movie that depicts the final days of the school year back in 1976, the US Bicentennial. It has become a cult classic because of its legendary cast, soundtrack, and overall vibe.
When it came out in the 1990s, it was only 17 years after the 1970s depiction. If a similar movie came out today, it would depict 2008. That is a shocking statistic because the film’s aesthetic feels so much more of a bygone era than the time difference between today and the late 2000s.
Dazed is obviously a stylized fictional version of teenage life in this specific era, but it illustrates the real changes in American educational life over the past 50 years while showing how aspects of urbanism have largely remained strikingly similar from the 70s, 90s, 2000s, and today. There is much to consider in Richard Linklater’s movie on the cusp of an endless summer.
Anytown, USA
Dazed was filmed in locations around Austin, Texas. However, the film is not an homage to the Texas capital like some movies are for the cities they are set in. Instead, it is supposed to be a fictional Anytown, USA.
“Over the years I started hearing that: ‘Oh no, yeah, it’s definitely based on Austin High.’ I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’,” said Linklater, who is a native Texan in a Texas Monthly interview.
“I intentionally didn’t put where it was. I didn’t say blank, Texas, or blank anywhere. I was purposely going for an Any Town, USA feel,” he continued. The filmmaker does admit that he drew on his own experience growing up in a small Texas town.
The fictional town of Dazed is obviously one of a post-war structure. There does not appear to be an old downtown core that even older rural towns have. Instead, what is depicted is a spread-out suburb with housing, retail, and commercial all mostly built from the 1950s onward, when auto-centric design reigned supreme.
In particular, Texas saw a wave of boomtowns during World War II due to increased manufacturing, established military bases, and, of course, energy. Dazed seemingly is set in one of these places, an exurb on the far edges of the massive sprawled Houston, with the economy long winding down 30 years after World War II. “Clearly it’s the culture of a left-behind place—they’re making their own,” said Linklater.
Twilight of the Boomers
The teenagers depicted in Dazed were 14 to 20ish in the film, meaning that they were some of the last Boomers. The Baby Boomer generation runs from 1946 to 1964, with Gen X coming after from 1965 to 1980.
Educating this cohort was a massive undertaking for the country. New schools had to be built, more teachers had to be trained, and other programs popped up around schooling the largest generation in American history (until us Millennials).
In terms of new schools, they were often built on the edge of cities where land was cheaper, usually the high schools. This allowed for a wider district boundary, too. The broader spread helped to solidify the iconic American big yellow school bus, and eventually, the trend of sprawl has continued, leading to the dreaded school car pick-up line common today.
In Dazed, the junior high was clearly an older facility tucked directly into a neighborhood where kids could potentially walk or bike to school. The high school, on the other hand, was further out with wide open spaces and giant parking lots.
In real life, the Toney Burger Activity Center, used as some exterior shots of the high school, was built in real life in 1977, while the junior high used in the film was built in 1917. The latter building was formerly Georgetown High School until a new high school opened in 1975, following the exact sprawl pattern displayed in the movie.
It was this same Boomer period when high school sports were elevated within the national culture, particularly high school football in Texas. Indeed, much of the film revolves around next year’s football season, with the star quarterback questioning his playing career.
One thing that gives away this film as depicting Boomers instead of Gen X is the noticeable lack of malls. While shopping malls had been popping up in Texas in the 1950s and 1960s, by 1976, they had not yet been established in every suburb.
Gen X youth culture centered on malls as a place to hang out. Certainly, there were malls in bigger Texas cities, but Dazed was likely taking place just at the dawn of their proliferation, with the upcoming 1980s becoming the golden age for these places as the iconic centers of American youth culture.
Dazed and Confused is very much a depiction of Boomers. Given that they were Boomers and growing up in Texas, it is funny to think that these stoners and rebels mostly became Reaganites as adults when the 1980s rolled around a few years later.
It’s a Car Movie
Sorry, fellow urbanists, Dazed and Confused is a car movie. Given the era when the town was built, it is simply not a walkable place. There are a couple of cases where kids ride their bikes from school or baseball game, but so much of the film takes place inside cars or in parking lots.
The film is bookended with such scenes, with the opening montage of parking lots and driveways with Aerosmith’s ‘Sweet Emotion’ blaring, while it ends with an iconic highway shot with the characters driving to Houston on their way to buy tickets to the band’s show.
The Low Rider song montage is an all-time car movie scene, too. It’s also right after we get the introduction to the iconic Wooderson, played by Matthew McConaughey. “It'd be a lot cooler if you did” and “alright alright alright” happen within 30 seconds of him being on screen, then we go cruising the town. Magnetic.
Dazed and Confused shows just how much Americans depend on their cars as third places. Third places are places that aren’t work or home where people can socialize. Urbanists have long criticized the US for lacking third places, losing them over the years with suburbanization.
But the characters Dazed make do with hot, dusty Texan parking lots as their third places. I was surprised by just how many scenes happen in parking lots (who’s counting? Well, me for this article)—from the coaches first talking to the boys about signing a contract, to the freshman girls getting hazed, and the groups just hanging.
“What have you guys been doing?”
“I don’t know, driving around mostly.”
“Since the party isn’t going on, me and the guys probably just end up riding around.”
Anyone who grew up in post-war America until roughly the mid-2000s probably recognized much of the teenage car culture in the film. The car is that first escape from suburban drudgery. The film shows why the “cars mean freedom” sentiment is so pervasive in the US. It really does mean freedom in this kind of built environment. And much of the built environment looks like Dazed and Confused.
It’s Not a Movie About School
The funny thing about a movie centered around the last day of school is that it is decidedly not a movie about school. Education is hilariously absent from Dazed and Confused. I guess when I think about it more as a teacher myself, it makes sense. The tests are done, grades are in, students are barely paying attention, teachers are checked out—what more can be done on the last day other than showing up?
But the thing that really stood out to me on my latest viewing was how little college factors into the film. By my count, there are only four mentions of anything remotely about college:
Adam Goldberg says he is rethinking law school… “I wanna dance!”
The stoner guy promises, “wait til I get to college man…” romanticizing future college days while his friends make fun of him.
Matthew McConaughey mentions he is working for the city but also thinking of “getting back in school.” “JC, something like that?” another asks.
Finally, a clerk asks a character if he’s going to college.
The absence of college in the conversation makes sense given the era. At the time, not even 20% of the cohort would have gone to college, while almost 80% would have graduated from high school (see chart below). American college-going numbers only kept rising to almost 40% by 2022.
In a Dazed and Confused set in the early 2000s, I think there would have been more conversations around going to college. Ivies would have been the central conversation for the nerds. And even the football players would have had dreams of playing at the next level for UT Austin (but more likely they would have ended up playing small college ball).
During the 1970s, higher education was just not the standard. Plus, college-going was not evenly distributed. Their Anytown, USA (e.g., exurban Texas) likely would have been much lower than the national average held up by the college-obsessed East Coast.
One note on some actual teaching in the film came from a female teacher discussing the US Bicentennial celebration. “Just remember this summer, when you're being further inundated with all kinds of American Bicentennial brouhaha,” she warned. “What we're really celebrating is the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white males didn't want to pay their taxes. **smiles** Have a good summer!”
The quick scene stuck out to me because there has been so much recent discourse on education becoming “woke”, anti-American, or however you want to characterize the current critiques of the sector. I just thought the particular quote illustrated that US education has always had this kind of streak. After all, Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States would be published just four years later in 1980.
Ironically, after 50 years of college-going rates climbing, there has now been a growing disillusionment with the degree. Public opinion of higher ed has nose-dived, and high school students have been thinking more like Matthew McConaughey’s character going straight to work. “Better than listening to some dip shit who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Wooderson says, echoing a sentiment I keep hearing about college today.
Hazing and Bullying
One of the central plot points in Dazed is the hazing. The incoming freshman class gets harassed by the rising seniors. The boys get paddled while the girls get more emotionally and physically embarrassed.
In what is probably the biggest departure from modern sensibilities, hazing is not depicted as cruel or unusual. Rather, the acts are supposed to be social bonding experiences, a kind of rite of passage. Even the teachers laugh and accept this culture.
“AIR RAID!” Parker Posey yells to the freshman girls, demanding they hit the ground as the upperclassmen watch and laugh from the hoods of their cars. The audience isn’t supposed to hate the characters doing the hazing, except for the bully Ben Affleck, who takes it too far and too seriously.
After the hazing, the freshman characters are then taken under the wings of an older senior, showing them the ropes of high school life—both a male and female version. The star football player tells of how bad he got it when he came into school, sympathizing with the bruised younger brother, and then bringing him out for an adventure that night.
Things have changed significantly in terms of tolerance for bullying in schools. There have been massive campaigns and awareness of the toll that bullying takes on kids. Suicides or other self-harm have become the forefront of teen mental health concerns.
The 1990s are really where the culture around school bullying rapidly changed. This was a time when things like self-harm or bulimia became national issues, entering popular consciousness via shows like Saved by the Bell or Boy Meets World. Not to mention the rise of the school shooter era with the Columbine tragedy in 1999, where bullying was a central talking point.
Even in the 2000s, when I was in high school, there were certainly aspects of the kind of bullying depicted in Dazed. I will not confirm nor deny that paddling underclassmen may have been happening then. But the brazen openness depicted in the film had long been left in past eras.
Today, bullying still exists, but it has more moved online. If Dazed were made today, Ben Affleck would have hacked freshman boys’ social media accounts while Parker Posey would have trashed the freshman girls’ straight arm TikTok dances. Bullying still exists, just in a different digital form.
Partying and Drinking Culture
One of the things that remains across the 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, and today is that kids will do stupid stuff. Dazed is filled with everyday risky behaviors: drunk driving, riding around passing a blunt, climbing up industrial equipment, and smashing mailboxes.
At one point, the freshmen are racing Affleck and in the truck to avoid paddling, speeding through a neighborhood, and driving through yards, both groups obliviously unaware of how dangerous and deadly driving like this can be. This has not changed one bit, teen drivers are still the most dangerous and deadly demographic.
However, the drinking depicted in the film does feel like a different era. It was! In 1973, the drinking age in Texas was actually lowered to 18, connecting to the 26th Amendment giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. It would not be until 1984 that the drinking age was raised nationally through strong-arming states with highway funds via the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
From the 1980s onward, drinking culture moved more underground than what was shown in Dazed. The failed house party or party at the Moon Tower are more akin to an America post-MADD, founded in 1980. Certainly, these were facets of life I recognized growing up in a similar Oklahoma town in the 2000s. We even have had our own Moon Tower, aka The Rig.
But the relationship to drinking culture in America has also been changing across eras. The rates of teen drinking have plummeted. At the peak, almost 90% of US 12th graders drank alcohol in the late 1970s and early 1980s (as shown below). With the alcohol age restrictions, these numbers slowly fell. Today, only about 40% of high school seniors drink, a smaller percentage than even 8th graders in the 1990s.
The other drug in Dazed is marijuana. The 1970s were certainly a peak for teenage weed smoking, but usage had dropped until very recently with the liberalization of marijuana laws throughout various states. Overall, marijuana usage is way up in the US, but teenage usage is not.
The youth today are simply much more temperate when it comes to both drug and alcohol usage than the cohorts in the 2000s, 1990s, and certainly 1970s. This is a key reason why the film feels very dated to today, but may not have felt that way on viewings in 1993 or even 2004.
Romanticized Freedom and Timeless Americana
In Dazed, the kids were just kind of roaming about the town on their own, even the 8th graders could bike around. Some of the behavioral changes in teens compared to previous eras are just a reflection of new parenting styles. Helicopter parenting has curtailed much of this kind of freedom.
Even the powerful car culture that dominates the film has been changing in American youth culture. “Nearly 40% of teens delayed getting their license by one to two years, and 30% delayed by more than two years,” according to a report in CNN. It is a growing trend.
There are multiple reasons why the car has lost some of its luster for American teens. One seems to be ride services like Uber or Lyft, along with the proliferation of e-bikes. Another is the mentioned helicopter parenting changing limiting expectations. In general, though, as life has moved more and more online via the smartphone, it has become less and less important to drive out on independently.
I don’t want to turn this into the Not a Cell Phone in Sight meme. Even despite the differences in the eras, there is much in Dazed and Confused that is timeless. School cliques, gendered group dynamics, awkward social experiences, trying to fit in, discovering new things, a coming of age story—it is all classic Americana.
The ever-present youth culture of striving for something more and reaching out beyond the local town. At one point, the kids stand on atop the Moon Tower, staring off across Anytown, USA: “Would you look at this fucking town man. It’s dead.” The feeling that many American teenagers feel in the places they grew up.
Perhaps, given the new parenting constraints and limitations of American childhood, these feelings have only become more entrenched. They truly are “stuck” in their own Anytown, USA, in a way the teens of Dazed were not.
This is why despite the transgressive teenage rebellions, free-range parenting before it was a thing, and no phones in sight, the film remains timeless. The aesthetics have changed but the overall theme has not.
Even though the summer of 1976 may have been almost 50 years ago, or the summer of 1993 over 30 years ago, Dazed and Confused has captured that endless summer that we have all felt. When watching the film or listening to the soundtrack, it will always be the end of May 1976, or whenever your final year of high school was.
“In what is probably the biggest departure from modern sensibilities, hazing is not depicted as cruel or unusual. Rather, the acts are supposed to be social bonding experiences, a kind of rite of passage. Even the teachers laugh and accept this culture.”
Way off. The bullying is like the short story The Lottery. A terrible thing that everyone accepts.