Identification and Place: Understanding Texan Culture Through a Rhetorical Lens of Richard Linklater’s "Dazed and Confused"

“I wanted this teenage movie to play in shitty little towns and malls and drive-ins. I wanted a 16-year-old to stumble into the movies somewhere and see his own life”

-Richard Linklater

Texan culture is far from the troped archetypes of cowboy boots and horse rides. It is much more than that; there are layers with multiplicity and dynamism to it all. The cultural ethos of Texas is diverse and middle-America, it is country and tech enterprise, it is capitalism and southern hospitality – widespread and an eclectic combination of people groups and values. Oftentimes, the breadth and depth of ethnographic studies of Texas are stuck somewhere chasing the Venn Diagram middle of all these constructs. 

Thus, I would like to zoom in. As a fourth generation Austinite, I will invite the self into the words I write over Texan culture. I will use Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused as the central touchpoint of rhetorical analysis. Moreover, the ultimate goal is to recognize the function and utility of rhetorical theories concerning identification and place in film to understand and contribute to existing research in this field. 

Laurence Behrens’ piece “The Argument in Film: Applying Rhetorical Theory to Film Criticism” contends that “artistic decisions” from a director to “persuade, cajole, lull, grip [or] arouse” are made with intentionality, which by extension, is inherently rhetorical. Film as a site for rhetorical analysis is important to foreground all future analysis.

Released in 1993 and directed by Richard Linklater, Dazed and Confused has entered the zeitgeist of teenage lore in the film industry. It is all things ‘70s nostalgia and coming-of-age drama, yet does not put forth a defensible stance or point. To explain Dazed and Confused as a plotless movie is a bit contrived, however, to borrow an affectionate description of the TV show Seinfeld, it is a movie about nothing. Author Melissa Maerz of Alright, Alright, Alright the Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused furthers this by saying it is “more about a vibe than about a story.” Hence, the lack of general meaning is indeed the point after all, and most notably, it creates ample space for rhetorical interpretations. The day in the life depiction of high school kids in Central Texas in this movie encapsulates the world all too familiar to those who have lived it in real life. And this is where my rhetorical analysis will look to be situated. How can a pointless movie make profound points on culture and place? What does Linklater do to position his viewers inside the life of a group of run-of-the-mill teenagers? In other words, how are real bodies invited into identification within a fictitious film? Dazed and Confused cult-classic status covers a large scope: stoner comedy, early career performances from Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey, an elite soundtrack (ZZ Top, Kiss, Black Sabbath, amongst others). The rabbit holes could abound. Although, I will look to narrow my ethnographic exploration of Texas within the synthesis of rhetorical theories involving identification and place.

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Identification

On a 2020 episode of The Big Picture, a movie podcast from the sports and pop-culture network The Ringer, hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins interviewed director Richard Linklater and the Dazed and Confused oral history author Melissa Maerz. Fennessey highlighted an important aspect of Linklater’s directing proclivities that should baseline this analysis of identification. He notes, “[Linklater] knows how to build a complex and purposeful form around something that is otherwise very emotionally and intellectually direct.” Teenagers sneaking out of their house, riding around in cars and listening to music, and chasing their buddies to the next party are all relatively “direct” plot points. But the “complex and purposeful form” is the consubstantial identification the characters build with their viewers.  Rhetorician Kenneth Burke defines a doctrine of consubstantiality as “an act; and a way of life is an acting-together; and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them consubstantial.” The authenticity and relatability of the coming-of-age saga in Dazed and Confused builds identification for viewers that see themselves in the “common sensations” depicted. Even further, Burke puts this theory of identification another way: “two persons may be identified in terms of some principle they share in common, an ‘identification’ that does not deny their distinction.” 

In the same interview, Linklater touches on some of these concepts of acting-together and the common sensations that the general American high school experience encompasses. People from all across the US stop him to recount how they had a guy just like that in their hometown or that their gym teacher acted the exact same way. He offers that “the way people watch movies, they are looking for connections. The slightest thing makes it personal.” I guess it adds up, but the more general and nonspecific the depiction of the fictional town or the characters in Dazed and Confused, the more room for identification is possible. Here is how Maerz discusses identification in an excerpt from her book:

“This movie is a period piece, but the period isn’t the ‘70s–its the period in everyone’s life from age 14 to 17. That is why so many people consider it their favorite movie, and it explains why it holds up over multiple viewings: everyone who sees Dazed and Confused thinks its about them. The experience is illogically personal. We watch it, and we feel what anyone who’s ever been a teenager wants to feel. We feel seen.” 

Gilberto Perez’ chapter title “Identification” from his book The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film provides rhetorical insight to Maerz’ assertion. He highlights that identification is not just seeing yourself in another’s place, but identifying “with an action, a situation, an emotion, a motive, an interest, a point of view, [or] something the character represents.” The important differential in rhetorical scholarship Perez is offering is that identification is multilayered and not solely just the way we look up to an idyllic movie star or character they are emulating. Identification can infiltrate the audience through rhetorical choices made by the director, it can involve an unintended identification with the “villain” of the story, or it can reveal itself in the mundane and ordinary. 

The mundane and ordinary is where the extrapolation to Texan culture thrives. The characters and setting are one thing, but the tertiary details and commotion have a profound impact on our experience with the depiction of an a-typical Texas town. Which can be concluded, are conscious directorial choices made by Linklater. People from Texas feel identification with Dazed and Confused because they have walked those exact high school hallways. I have been to a party at the moontower. The rumblings of a beat up pickup truck circling a parking lot is all too familiar. Passing time at the local burger joint after a high school baseball game is a right of passage in Texas. If Linklater was overt and dramatic about typical Texas provisions and practices, the manicured rendition would not have the consubstantial impact it does with people who have lived it in real life. I will let perennially meme’d Leonardo DiCaprio display how I choose to believe people from Texas watch Dazed and Confused:

As a final note on identification and Dazed and Confused infiltrating the pop-culture zeitgeist, Equire’s Tyler Coates maintains that “it's hard not imagining these characters' personal stories as they extend beyond the narrative borders of the film. That's a testament to the central truth of Linklater's script, and how easily viewers may recognize its characters as those who crowded the halls of their high school.”

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Place

To start the discussion of place as rhetoric, I call on research from Greg Dickinson in his work titled “Space, Place, and the Textures of Rhetorical Criticism.” The places in Dazed and Confused are routine, standard, for all intents and purposes, a traditional Texas town. Rhetorical analysis of these spaces should not be overlooked, however. Dickinson argues that “thinking critically about the spaces of everyday life reformulates substantial portions of rhetorical criticism by inserting into it bodies and materiality and thereby remaking our understandings of text, context, author, and consequence.” Identification with characters and spaces in Dazed and Confused, or “inserting into it bodies and materiality” as Dickinson says, tells us that the everyday familiarity of the film makes ample room for rhetoric to be situated. 

I would also like to offer an additional preface to baseline the rhetorics of place in Dazed and Confused. As mentioned in the introduction, Laurence Behrens invites rhetorical theory into film criticism. In his exploration of the modes of persuasion (logos, ethos, pathos) in cinema, Behrens contends that a director engages logos in movies to “convince us that the ‘world’ of the film is a genuine one.” There has to be intentional, specific world building through craft and purpose from the director in order to allow the space-to-place assemblage to occur within the viewer’s experience with the film. Linklater’s use of logos is covert because of the authenticity and believability in the fictional small town he built.

Thus, Dazed and Confused is purposeful and expertly normal, which by extension, is disarming for rhetorical analysis of space and place. Okay, that feels like enough caveats. 

Inventing Place: Writing Lone Star Rhetorics, edited by Casey Boyle and Jenny Rice, looks to capture “writing that emerges from the event of being there: the assembly of body and place.” The collection of essays in their work explore the rhetorical power of place and how our bodies interact and make meaning from the experiences of being “pushed up” next to them. Their discussion of methodology and epistemic foundations to writing about place and bodies is the work I am most indebted to for my inquiry. Moreover, they challenged their authors to embrace a writing method called poiesis: “‘the constant reconstruction of selves and others through specific exclusions, conventions and discursive practices.’” Poiesis is a way of knowing and naming the world around you through embodied experiences. I borrow it here to display, in function, the rhetorics of this film and the Texas cultural archetypes I know. Additionally, Boyle and Rice suggest that “embodied knowledge arises from a bodily experience of being there, turning a space into a place.”  Many of us who grew up in Texas have been in the spaces found in Dazed and Confused, and I would argue they are in fact places, not just spaces, through my embodied experience and knowledge in similar settings. For me, the impact of place as Lone Star rhetorics in Dazed and Confused could function as an addendum or additional chapter in their work.

Take, for example, Texas high school football. In and of itself, high school football is a cultural practice that shuts down entire small towns in West Texas, the inspiration to hit TV dramas like Friday Night Lights, and the small talk overheard between cups of coffee at mom and pop diners. Michael J. Mooney in “Friday Night Temples” from Being Texan published by the editors at TexasMonthly says this about it: “In Texas, many of the most popular, most dramatic public rituals take place in football stadiums. Built ostensibly to showcase athletic prowess, the physical structures themselves have become prominent modern temples, holy places in the other religion here.” What Mooney is describing here is the Texas high school football stadium as a place and space of rhetorical meaning. Yes, the games are played in stadiums, but “being there” offers the context and revelation of what it is like to create shared ways of knowing in Texas culture. Raka Shome in Dickson’s research clarifies this difference between space and place:

“‘Space is not merely a backdrop, though, against which the communication of cultural politics occurs. Rather, it needs to be recognized as a central component in that communication. It functions as a technology—a means and medium—of power that is socially constituted through material relations that enable the communication of specific politics’”

We see the Texas high school football stadium as a “means and medium” in a concluding scene from Dazed and Confused. A handful of the main characters leave the local party spot at the end of the night to sneak onto the field at their high school – an intentional directorial move from Linklater to not create meaning behind an actual football game, but the conversations and shared experiences from a standard practice of Texas kids, myself included. We see the local stoner kid talk about sticking it to the man, McConaughey’s local burnout character stays cool in front of the cops, the drunk jock flirts with every girl there. 

This scene is “socially constituted” and the embodied experience of the characters in the football stadium allows for the “communication of specific politics.” These “specific politics” are conventional and true to the teenage experience in Texas and by no means trivial or without purpose. Linklater uses a football stadium as place in Dazed and Confused not simply as a “backdrop” but rather to define Texas culture and the human experience in the world we know.  Perhaps it is Linklater engaging poiesis, not me.

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Conclusion

I sought out to discover what Dazed and Confused said about Texas culture. Identification is a key feature in Richard Linklater’s work that communicates these cultural practices. The first chapter in Melissa Maerz's work titled “Oh My God, This Movie is My life!” touches on just that. The cast and crew discuss their own experiences before filming of cruising around, keg parties in the woods, or listening to “Sweet Emotion” at the local burger spot. I Dicaprio meme’d as McConaughey’s character tells the freshman “it would be a lot cooler if you did” when passing a joint. The authenticity of coming-of-age in Texas seen in Dazed and Confused is universal yet wildly indicative of my embodied experience growing up in Austin. 

The other area of analysis I examined was the rhetorics of place. I paid close attention to the Texas high school football stadium, but the entire film is littered with spaces of rhetorical value in Texan culture. The front seat of a car, the school courtyard, or the moon tower, to name a few. The setting in Dazed and Confused is familiar and unassuming to those of us in Texas, which Dickinson highlights, allows for “understanding of space as a ‘multiplicity of narratives’…and as a ‘simultaneity of stories-so-far.’” The fictitious shared interactions in these spaces are shared stories we lived in real life. The places in Dazed and Confused do not function just as a background, but instead as their own means of creating meaning. 

Ben Affflect said that “[Linklater] showed the joy, the sense of freedom, but also the profound sense of inadequacy and pain and fear and insecurity of high school” when reflecting on his experience filming Dazed and Confused. I concede that identification and place as rhetoric in this film stretches far past the boundaries of Texas; the universality of coming-of-age in this film is a shared “common sensation” for those familiar with the American high school experience. However, I cannot point to anything else that encapsulates the priorities, values, archetypes, places, and attitudes of Texan culture.