Pump Up The Volume reconsidered

Back in the long-distant Eighties and early Nineties, I studiously ignored most of the pop culture around me. Let's face it, most of it was eminently forgettable. (Thompson Twins, anybody?) But in the course of ignoring the crap, I also missed out on some good stuff.

This was brought home to me a few months ago when I caught the 1990 movie Pump Up The Volume on a cable channel late at night. Now, I had seen bits and pieces of the film before, but never paid much attention. Just another teen movie, thought I.

This second time around, I was amazed by the topicality of the film. Sure, the clueless parents and the villainous high-school administrators are straight from Teen Movie Central Casting, but how many other films had the prescience to make the Federal Communications Commission one of the villains? Or to show how the vapid, disassociated, condescending consumerism of the dominant mass media leaves intelligent minds gasping for oxygen?

The last scene (which I am NOT going to give away) was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, because the FCC's recent decisions have, in fact, made such things nearly impossible in broadcast media. Inspiring, because the internet -- and weblogs in particular -- are making that final scene a reality in a different media.

The movie got it right, more than a decade in advance, except for pinning its hopes on the wrong media.

....This is Hard Harry, signing off....