Feeling the '60s in the Age of Reagan: Failure, Repetition, and History in "Eddie and the Cruisers"

[...]early reviewers consistently identify two technical flaws inconsistent with the formal demands of the contemporary nostalgia film-the category to which Eddie and the Cruisers has been summarily assigned-which would seem to require a satisfyingly, if not consolingly accurate, representation of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Literature film quarterly 2015-01, Vol.43 (1), p.46-63
Main Author:	Smith, Eric D.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1900-1999 American literature Analysis Authors Berenger, Tom Bloch, Ernst (1885-1977) Cinema Cinema, Broadcasting, Interactive Media Cinematography Criticism and interpretation Davidson, Martin dramatic arts Eddie and the Cruisers English Literature Failure Film & stage music film adaptation Film Adaptations Filmmakers historical film Historical films History Individual Films Kluge, P F Kluge, P. F. (b.1942) Memory Modernism Motion picture criticism Motion pictures Narrative techniques Narrative theme Nostalgia novel Plots, themes, etc Portrayals Postmodernism Rimbaud, Jean Nicholas Arthur (1854-1891) rock and roll musicians Twentieth Century utopianism Zizek, Slavoj
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Summary:	[...]early reviewers consistently identify two technical flaws inconsistent with the formal demands of the contemporary nostalgia film-the category to which Eddie and the Cruisers has been summarily assigned-which would seem to require a satisfyingly, if not consolingly accurate, representation of an already familiar cultural past. 'The film's blatant anachronism and unsatisfactory narrative resolution frustrate the precise "historical" satisfactions of the nostalgia film and can thus be read against such generic expectations only as failure. If the quadruple-platinum soundtrack is widely considered "inexplicably wrong" for the period it presumes sensually to recall on the one hand, the film's ending "makes the fatal flaw of arriving at a dramatic conclusion that does not settle the Eddie Wilson mystery" on the other (Maslin; Ebert). However, in the post-millennial present, as the 1980s themselves now rapidly take on the opaque contours of a discrete historical (in addition to a merely cultural) epoch-evinced in the work of historians like John Ehrman, Philip Jenkins, Gil Troy, and Sean Wilentz3-I suggest that it might now be worth exhuming this popular artifact from the dawning Age of Reagan and postmodernity, one that takes the concepts of artistic failure and of periodizing history themselves not only as its primary subject matter, but also its formal substance.
ISSN:	0090-4260 2573-7597