Top 10 Urban Tribe / Marriage Delay Movies

As part of the Virtual Book Tour, author Ethan Watters will be posting today at both Blogcritics and bitter-girl.com about topics that tie into his book Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment as a guest of Blogcritic Shannon Okey. See this Blogcritics post for details

Hello all, Shannon has encouraged me to begin this stop on my virtual book tour with some lists related to the concept of my book Urban Tribes. Let's begin with movies. I've listed the movies not in order of importance but chronologically, starting with those that portray nascent tribes or the beginnings of the marriage delay from high school and moving on through college and young adulthood.

TOP TEN URBAN TRIBE / MARRIAGE DELAY MOVIES

1. THE BREAKFAST CLUB - I doubt that the characters portrayed here would ever form an Urban Tribe but there is still something that feels tribe-like to me. Perhaps it's this: These characters are coming to the realization that meaning is not handed down from adults or some other authority but forged through discussion and friendship.

2. FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF - For me, this movie predicts the coming marriage delay. Ferris is uniquely uninterested in the trappings of his suburban upbringing. He desires the city and all the freedom it offers. It was clear that it would take Ferris a long, long time to quench that desire.
3. DAZED AND CONFUSED - It's the nerdy group of friends in this movie that speaks to me of the making of an Urban Tribe. I remember the year in high school that I discovered I could feel emotionally safe with the support of a group of friends. Didn't matter what the cheerleaders or jocks thought of me, I had found my group.
4. SAY ANYTHING - "I don't want to buy, sell or process anything. I don't want to buy anything sold or processed. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed. I don't want to process anything bought or sold. I haven't gotten it all figured out . . . " Lloyd certainly spoke for me and my friends as we graduated high school and later college. His certainty for what he didn't want to do spoke to the vacuum in his life that would open up when that high school romance failed after a year. Would he find the thing he DID want to do? It would certainly take years.
5. ST. ELMO'S FIRE - This movie was about the transition from college to "real life." It was 1985 and that transition was still assumed to be relatively short amount of time. These characters did not have any idea that it would be utterly normal for someone from their generation to remain single into their late 20s and 30s. Still, they had the beginnings of a tribe, so they were in good shape.
6. SWINGERS - This movie also portrays the early years of an urban tribe. They are all girl-crazy but the sweetness of the affection expressed between the guy friends felt very true to me. When some of the girls in their lives were accepted as their friends — then they'd have the real thing.
7. HIGH FIDELITY - High Fidelity portrays prime tribe years. Sadly, like Swingers and St. Elmo's Fire and the following two selections, the importance of the tribe is obscured by the love stories. I've noticed it is much easier for people to identify with love stories than with stories of friendships. For me it is the friendships (particularly the co-workers in the record store) that feel most true.
8. GROSSE POINTE BLANK - This is more a movie about the marriage delay than the urban tribe. Cusack feels like an outsider coming back to his tenth year high school reunion after a decade living as a hired assassin. He feels out of place but not because of his career. He's the odd man out because he left town for ten years and never married. I experienced the same fish-out-of water feeling at my reunion and I've never been paid to kill anyone.
9. ABOUT A BOY - The Christmas scene at the end of this movie has a remarkably true tribe-like feeling. I like this movie because the main character is not rescued from his ennui exclusively by romance but by friendship as well.
10. THE BIG LEBOWSKI - This movie feels like the ghost of urban tribes yet-to-come. For some of us who continue to delay marriage there is nothing to stop us from becoming increasingly quixotic. We'll obsess about bowling or paint ourselves naked and spatter ourselves on canvasses. What's to stop us?

(John Cusack stars in no less than three of my choices. This makes him the Urban Tribe / Marriage Delay Best Actor.)

Article Author: Ethan Watters

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