Repo Man dances on the edge of extremes: it pokes at consumer culture without being proselytizing, it is nonchalant without being petulant.
Plucked off a shelf, Repo Man hardly strikes one as philosophical material. Look, there’s a dated car! And a crook with a ski mask hovering in a corner! And look, it’s that jock from The Breakfast Club…and the dad from Pretty in Pink! Cue Black Flag’s TV Party “I have nothing better to do than watch TV and have a couple of brews”. But is there more to it all? Dare I say, a riveting philosophical heart at its core?
Repo Man implores you to dig deeper and take an inquisitive approach to the absurd and idiosyncratic dimension also known as your life. The poster beckons us with a simple query: It’s 4 am. Do you know where your car is? But more importantly, do you know where you are? Like metaphysically speaking, man.
Repo Man is an uncanny conduit for many strands of early eighties culture in America: the dawning of consumer culture a la Reagonomics, frenzied American auto-worship and punk rock street culture. The tone is tongue in cheek, recognizing the folly of the game but participating nonetheless. The enduring magic of Repo Man is its sheer irreverence, its playful refusal to conform to narrative and stylistic traditions. It dances on the edge of extremes: it pokes at consumer culture without being proselytizing, it is nonchalant without being petulant. The movie feels authentic, naturally-occuring and without the added ingredients of pretense, studied self-consciousness, or trite references.
Everything, from cults to conformists to the woebegone ‘normies’, is fair game for a comedic treatment. Gags abound but careful! Don’t mistake Repo Man for a surface level flick saturated in twists of phrase and rip roaring good times. There are lots of undercurrents here, both sincere and serious. Peer beneath the surface and you’ll find that Repo Man is something of an existential sleeper hit. Here’s some Repo wisdom that you might do well taking to heart. It’s a scary world out there.
“Ordinary fucking people. I hate them.”
“A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s like a lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. It’s all part of a cosmic consciousness.”
“Millionaires. They never pay their bills.”
“You know the way everyone’s into weirdness right now? Books in all the supermarkets about the Bermuda Triangle, UFO’s, how the Mayans invented television…Well the way I see it it’s exactly the same. There aint no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. And people get so hung up on specifics they miss out on seeing the whole thing.”
“I bet you’re a used car salesman. You dress like one.”
“The less you drive the more intelligent you are.”
“There had to be a time when there was no people right? Well where’d all of these people come from? I’ll tell you where. The future. Where all these people disappear to? The past. That’s right. And how’d they get there? Flying saucers! Which are really time machines.”
“The lights are growing dim. I know a life of crime led me to this sorry fate. And yet I blame society. Society made me what I am.”
“That’s bullshit. You’re a white suburban punk just like me.”
“But…it still hurts.”
“You ever feel as if your mind has started to erode?”
“If people carpool we’ll be out of work.”
