Act Four: What are today’s counterculture movies?

Alyssa Rosenberg on culture and politics

The Malizia II, a racing boat fitted with solar panels and underwater turbines, near Lorient, France, on July 28. Climate activist Greta Thunberg will be among those who will travel from Britain to the United States on the boat starting in mid-August, as part of a zero-carbon trip to attend the U.N. Climate Summit. (Andreas Lindlahr/Team Malizia/Handout via Reuters)

Every week, I answer a question from Monday's Act Four Live chat in this Wednesday newsletter. You can read the transcript of the July 29 chat here and submit questions for the Aug. 5 chat here. This week, a reader wonders where all the rebellious movies have gone:

I watched "Easy Rider" for the first time last night, and while I didn't think it was a great movie per se, it was fascinating as a document capturing the mood of that particular moment in American history. Afterwards, I was trying to think of what the modern equivalent might be in terms of films that tap into the disillusionment and rebellious attitude that younger generations seem to always feel toward their predecessors. The '50s had "Rebel Without a Cause," the '80s maybe "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the '90s "Fight Club." But I couldn't come up with anything in the 21st century. I feel like maybe the way blockbusters dominate the box office these days has made it harder to find movies that are really adventurous and rebellious. What do you think?

There's another question behind your question: We can't talk about what constitutes a counterculture movie without parsing what we think the counterculture looks like. There are a number of ways to look at that idea.

If we think of the counterculture as a measure of intergenerational tension, one of the challenges of producing countercultural movies today may be that teenagers aren't necessarily that rebellious. Sure, shows like HBO's "Euphoria" may present contemporary kids as in crisis, but they're actually having less sex, drinking less and using fewer drugs than their predecessors. Young people like the Parkland shooting survivors and climate activist Greta Thunberg are railing against the complacency of their elders, but the kind of culture that they want to create is one with fewer guns and a cooler world. To the extent that their culture is counter, I don't know that cinema has figured out how to express it yet.

And if we consider counterculture a movement that operates outside the corporate cultural mainstream, well, mainstream pop culture has gotten pretty good at bringing outside voices inside and benefiting from their patina of authenticity. Ryan Coogler directed "Black Panther," and Chloé Zhao and Destin Daniel Cretton, who are known mostly for low-budget indie movies, are teed up to direct future Marvel movies. Folks like Harmony Korine may remain somewhat outside the mainstream, but movies like "Spring Breakers" are not exactly taboo in the way they might have been. In that context, the reactionary movies of someone like S. Craig Zahler, including "Bone Tomahawk," "Dragged Across Concrete" and "Brawl in Cell Block 99," might be the closest we have to a counterculture, in that they present a worldview and ideas that are not precisely welcome in mainstream, mildly liberal corporate moviemaking.

Maybe the best way to think about the counterculture today is to look at where people are creating content on their own terms, on platforms like TikTok or Reddit. Maybe memes are our true counterculture. It's definitely a strange moment, one that's simultaneously rebellious and conformist.

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