Redux - Lost Boys and Golden Girls
Re-reduxing this one, because it is again the time of year for football games and field shows, and post-game parties, and (back in the day, anyway) rewatches of Highlander and The Lost Boys. And because The Lost Boys showed up, all unbidden, in a separate project I was working on today, and immediately started pulling my mind down memory lane. And a little bit because Highlander showed up last month in the first episode of Reactivities, A Kind of Magic. And also because it's been five years, already, since the initial events that had me thinking about immortality in the first place. ================= Considering whether Gen X views of life, death, and immortality were shaped by two mid-80s films: Highlander (1986) and The Lost Boys (1987) Yes yes yes, I said Stewart Copeland at about 9:12 and realized soon after that I completely meant Douglas Coupland, who wrote Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture in 1991 https://www.coupland.com/books/generation-x-tales-for-an-accelerated-culture And my point there is that in 1987 the Lost Boys was certainly depicting Gen X characters with Gen X actors, but nobody called them Gen X at the time. Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire Its sequel, The Vampire Lestat, was 1985 The Mystery of Dracula’s Castle - a scooby doo mystery in all but name, with inspiration from Christopher Lee’s Dracula over and over. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068985/ The Hunger https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085701/ The Lost Boys - straight to the tagline https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/taglines Highlander https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091203/ Cocoon https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088933/ Siskel and Ebert - Lost Boys starts at 9:44 - https://siskelebert.org/?p=2948 Highlander is the first one here, about 1:30 - they both disliked it rather a lot https://siskelebert.org/?p=1496 First chapter of The Golden Bough - Frazer calls the King a “murderer” rather than a “killer” so I’ll randomly note that A) in the 1536 battler in Highlander, the Macleods are fighting the Frasers and B) “Matador” is literally “killer” in Spanish The Spirit of Christmas, which spawned South Park, references Highlander’s repeated line “There Can Be Only One” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122264/ When talking about Reactives and the Awakening, probably worth looking at this previous entry on my blog https://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/01/reactiveness.html Unrelated but it’s a photo series called Lost Boys - millennials back at home after college or high school or whatever they decided they could do. https://www.businessinsider.com/liz-calvi-lost-boys-photo-project-2014-9#calvi-started-with-her-good-group-of-guy-friends-but-eventually-branched-out-to-look-for-more-subjects-in-town-nolan-pictured-here-is-currently-studying-graphics-in-college-and-he-lives-with-his-parents-for-the-summer-2 Here’s the archive she set up https://seulementdanslereve.tumblr.com/archive And her home page https://www.lizcalvi.com/commissions “Vampire of the Mists” (1991) was a few years later, so probably influenced by Anne Rice and The Lost Boys and everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_of_the_Mists Wikipedia sayeth that Peter Pan first appeared in a novel in 1902, while the play first appeared in 1904. He’s very much of the Nomad archetype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan Completely unrelated, except insofar as Aiken Drum (the character) is much like Peter Pan and has other Nomad / Reactive archetype indicators https://manycolored.fandom.com/wiki/Many-Colored_Wiki Pogonip club house http://deepbluemoon.com/misc/pogonip/ Other locations - the interiors were on a set at Warner Brothers https://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/lost-boys-santa-cruz-tour Gregory Widen, screenwriter for Highlander. Born in 1958, he’s a
