Movie Review: Clerks (1994)

During the High-Brow Intellectualizing of Low-Brow Topics, Something Very Important Happens.

I didn’t expect a movie with more f-bombs than Pulp Fiction to have the exact analysis of work I needed for the next stage of my life.

My Rating: ★★★★

[INTRO]

Pre-script: It’s been four years since I last wrote a movie review – A Space Odyssey. Time never ceases to amaze me by how fast it can go or how this supposedly same person can change so much in four years.

I am afloat like a buoy in the ocean.

Having just paid off my debt, I am now entering a phase where there is not a crushingly financial reason for me to continue to grind away at my “profession.” For so long, it has been money in, money out to address my financial situation.

Now that it’s over, I’m getting to ask myself a very crucial question: what’s next?

A big focus has been returning to things that I want to do that are dictated only by my interests and hobbies rather than some other social obligation. While surfing the internet by pool-side, I came across the tidbit that Clerks III was released in the past year.

Now that’s something I haven’t thought about in at least ten years – Randal, Dante, Jay, Silent Bob, mid-20s malaise, remedial jobs, the transition from youth to adulthood, the ethics of independent contractors on the Death Star.

Deciding to rewatch the trilogy for nostalgic reasons and to see the culmination of the story arc, I hopped on Amazon and rented Clerks I.

I was not prepared for how important it was for me to see this film at this moment.

[SHORT PLOT SUMMARY]

Dante Hicks gets called in by his boss to work an unexpected shift at the local convenience store on his day off. As Dante becomes a battering ram for all of his customers misplaced anger and needs, he only has his mantra of “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” to buffer him against the onslaught of humanity known as the general public. His friend Randal who works next door at the video rental store does anything but work at the rental store spending most of his time with Dante.

While most of the day is either spent shooting the breeze about sordid and sleazy topics or the quotidian needs of early twenty-somethings (making it to a hockey game, what to do with an ex-girlfriend), it culminates in a very serious question: “Well, if we’re so fucking advanced, what are we doing working here?”

[ANALYSIS]

The heart of Clerks I is an irreverent comedy that looks at the stew of being in your early twenties. The back story makes it even more authentic: Kevin Smith, broke and in his early twenties working at a gas station, loaded up on credit card debt to make the film. The location is the actual gas station he worked at and all the people on screen are his friends or family.

What made the film so poignant for me is that the character’s relationship with work and how it defines them was more important to me now than it was when I was a similar age of the characters ten years ago.

When I watched ten years ago, I was Dante in the truest sense.

After graduating college, I was working the same job I had when I was in highschool albeit in a managerial role. I was deep in the monotonous Mon-Fri schedule working with and for people I thought I was well above.

After continuing the grind for a while, I came to the ego shattering conclusion Randal does: “Well, if I’m so fucking advanced, what am I doing working here?” I had taken easy course work at school, continued the drinking/partying lifestyle post-college, slipped back into the same ecosystem of highschool, moved back in with parents.

No matter how highly I thought of myself, or how lowley I thought of the customers, at the end of the day I was the one serving them. Worse, I was unable to break out of the cycle, caught in the comfort of familiarity.

At one point, Randal implores Dante to either “shit or get off the pot.” Meaning: either accept your job for what it is and enjoy life (like Randal) or do something to get out of it (like Dante’s gf Veronica). Blaming others and being a victim is not the way.

I eventually hit my rock bottom. Knowing it was time, I remember posting on facebook Redd’s line from Shawshank Redemption “Get busy livin’, or get busy dying”. From there, I went back to school living up to the potential I knew I had. After four years of hard work, and a lot of aforementioned student loan debt, I had made it.

Or so I thought.

While I’ve had a huge pay increase compared to my post-college menial job, the monotonous grind of work stops for no one. After the shiny residue of the new credential faded, I was shocked to find I was valued as a paper-pusher – the onslaught of documentation never stops, repetitively filling out the same boxes and screens to push people through the system.

I also learned how much of a customer-service angle there was to the job; regardless of my title, it is expected to be a “Welcome to Disney World!” environment. No matter how asinine, I have to entertain the whims and needs of the customer much like Dante did at the gas station.

In other words: I am just a more prestigious Clerk.

I now realize the wisdom of Randal’s way of living. The film presents four approaches to work:

• Be miserable by being stuck and blaming others (Dante).
• Work outside the system eschewing social norms (Jay & Silent Bob)
• Better yourself to escape menial work (embodied by Veronica)
• Or accept work for what it is and protest your full participation in it (Randal)

Randal often takes his ethos too far and plays out the role of an inner child. While we might think of a wisecrack and hold back, Randal lets it fly. I would never suggest we need more Randalss in the world; actually, that would be quite awful.

However, there is something rather freeing of reaching a point where work is something you do and leave behind. It does not define you, like Randal pointed out after spitting water in a customer’s face:

Randal Graves : Title does not dictate behavior.

Dante Hicks : What?

Randal Graves : If title dictated my behavior, as a clerk serving the public, I wouldn’t be allowed to spit water at that guy. But I did. So, my point is that people dictate their own behavior. Even though I work in a video store, I choose to go rent movies at Big Choice. Agreed?

This previously was a difficult lesson for me to internalize. So many people in my program tried to instill a sense of urgency and a false sense of importance (while picking my pocket for large sums of money and servitude). I thought anything different was a derelict of duty. Randal strips this way of thinking when talking to Dante:

You’re here of your own volition. You like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. Like this place would fall apart if Dante wasn’t here. Jesus, you overcompensate for having what’s basically a monkey’s job. You push fucking buttons. Anybody can waltz in here and do our jobs. You… You’re so obsessed with making it seem so much more epic, so much more important than it really is. Christ, you work in a convenience store, Dante! And badly, I might add!

Randal, Clerks I

I, too, initially graduated carrying that false sense of self importance with me into the workplace. It felt good carrying that around as it gave my life meaning. I quickly learned my place, however, and with the ego boost gone, I’ve been in a Dante cycle of self pity as I pounded away at my job to free myself from student loans knowing that would ultimately lead me back to some free will.

Randal, through some norms bending, shows there is a different way to approach it and that very few of us deal with anything even nearing life and death. Without student loans, I’m not tethered to the system quite the same way. Now I am free to “quietly quit,” a much more subdued and mature take on Randal’s relationship with work.

[CONCLUSION]

As I enter this next stage of my life, I’ve settled on that I’m okay with what I do. Work is a facet of my life, but doesn’t have to be my life. I might not be spitting water in customer’s faces, but I am taking back some of this space to be mine.

Other People’s Takes:

• I’m Not a Fan Boy: “It turns out that between the parts of the movie that have been quoted to death and beyond by everyone I’ve ever met, there’s actually a really good movie about growing a pair and taking charge of your life. I never knew.“
• Too Many Posts: “The third level of enjoyment for me, beyond it just being a funny flick and something I’d like to do, was that as recent graduate who worked behind a counter for a time it really spoke to me. While everybody wishes they could be as open and confident as the best friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), I think most of us at some time feel like Dante (Brian O’Halloran) uncertain of his future and feeling trapped in a rut.”
• Falcon At the Movies: “This movie discusses many broad topics, such as relationships, careers, and ethics.  The movie hides these larger things behind common problems and even more common dialogue.  The problems themselves are fairly generic, but the dialogue is really what sells this movie.”