American Graffiti and Fast Times at Ridgemont High

GRAFFITI and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

Coming of Age in California in American Cinema

Fast Times at Ridgemont High chronicles the lives of adolescents during the early 1980's in the suburban mall culture of California during that era. American Graffiti is also a cinematic chronicle of the latter stages of suburban, Californian adolescence, but of the early 1960's. The mixed group of girls and boys in Amy Heckerling's classic film hang out at the food courts of shopping malls, empty and soulless places of white tile and franchised signs. The lower tiers of the social rungs work at these establishments, unlike the individuals who patronize such places. The boys of American Graffiti hang out at diners that are locally run and not filled with artificial light. But they too, like the adolescent protagonist's of director Amy Heckerling's film and Cameron Crowe's script, are merely wasting time, waiting for their real lives to begin in an empty void of place and time, where not even adults can provide vision and moral guidance.

In both films, both the diners where the boys hang out and Perry's Pizza are venues for discussions about sexuality. But in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, both male and female protagonists are sexually curious. Only the boys of American Graffiti actual articulate their sexual desires. In contrast, One Perry's Pizza waitress, despite being dressed in a regulation uniform with sexually concealing, neck-high style that is hilarious inappropriate for the California mall, shouts out, "Linda, Linda, there he is. There's that guy from the stereo store. Don't you think he looks like Richard Gere?" And comments on the guy's cute butt. In contrast, one of the boys of the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High instructs his friend on how to treat a girl to a nice time, by instructing him to order for her, for instance ordering her Coke without ice if she so requests. Both sexes desire the other, and are confused to go about it, unlike George Lucas' film, where the focus is unerringly on the male experience of desire.

It is for scenes like the infamous 'banana scene' that Roger Ebert called the Fast Times at his review time an "adolescent sex romp," when bad-girl Phoebe Cates gives Jennifer Jason Leigh's popular character a lesson in 'giving pleasure' on a piece of fruit. Rather than bathing adolescent in nostalgia, and past rock n' roll soundtracks like George Lucas' American Graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High lacks an overt sentimentality about high school romance. Rather than disinterestedly picking at their food like the rich girls of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and using the food for embarrassing instructional purposes, Lucas' boys are actually, actively hungry, jockeying for fries at the table with calls of 'ya gonna eat that?' Food is power, social currency in the scene, but lacks the sexual connotations of Heckerling's film. Rather than one boy emerging as dominant through sexual knowledge, the deployment of wit secures temporary social status. The fact the scene occurs in a group, rather than in a pair of friends may intensify the social, rather than the sexual power implications of the use of food -- of who deploys the banana in one scene, and who gets the uneaten fries in the other scene.