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P a g e | 1Gluck, Thomas

ID #78147919th May 2014

Research EssayARTH319

Nostalgia and Pop Music in George Lucas’ American Graffiti.

Thomas Gluck.

id#781479.

ARTH319.

Word Count: 2,692.


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Abstract

George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973) created a historical mise-en-scene through imagery,

dialogue but most of all with its soundtrack, which this essay argues vitalized the modern

film soundtrack as utilizing nostalgia and a track’s popularity giving a scene emotive power.

American Graffiti’s soundtrack is interesting in that not only is it entirely composed of

popular music (including music that hadn’t been released as of the 1962 setting the film

promotes)1 but it is entirely diegetic, playing from the radios of the cars that much of the film

takes place in. The essay will look at Lucas’ aesthetic goals by examining the similarities and

influences between Lucas’ own childhood in Modesto, California, as described by John

Baxter in his book George Lucas: a Biography,2 and the film’s own ambiguous setting.

Through an analysis of several scenes from the film this essay will achieve a broader study of

the creation of the nostalgic mise-en-scene and the use of popular music. Looking at the

opening scene, the focus will be on imagery, how Lucas sets the place and the time of the

film. A point midway through the film will be analysed for how it shows a turning point for

two characters, John and Carol, and exemplifies the youthful carefree expression of

vandalism they commit with the seminal Johnny B. Goode (1958) by Chuck Berry. To

analyse how the film explores its own mechanisms of diegetic music, the essay will look at

the scene when Curt discovers the radio station that the mysterious deejay Wolfman Jack has

purportedly been broadcasting from. Word count: 287

1 "American Graffiti - Original Soundtrack | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic." AllMusic, accessed 15th May 2014, http://www.allmusic.com/album/american-graffiti-mw0000691836 .2 John Baxter, George Lucas: a biography, (Hammersmith, London: HarperCollinsEntertainment) 1999.


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Essay

Until he was in a serious car crash in 1962 (interestingly the same year the film is set) George

Lucas’ life trajectory was wholly different to how it turned out.3 Lucas lived in Modesto, a

town that Baxter describes as being a “Kansas town” in California, its residents largely

composed from migrants from the American mid-west and south, and its landscape sparce

and flat, filled with used car lots,4 very much alike to the unnamed setting of American

Graffiti. The film is very much based on Lucas’ own teenage experiences, and his

examination of those experiences,5 and these influences should be outlined to gain an

understanding of where Lucas was coming from in his aim to recreate 1962. According to

Baxter, Lucas discovered rock and roll at the age of fourteen, in 1958, when he would “race

home to spend hours playing Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry,the Platters, the Five

Satins” 6 and that Lucas would grow his hair long and attempt to mimic the rock and roll style

of Elvis Presley. At the age of fifteen, cars joined rock as Lucas’ “ruling passion”7 that

outlined his social life for most of the rest of his teenage years. Baxter gives a quote by Lucas

about cars and why they really defined the social structure of his peer group in high school:

“In the sixties, the social structure in high school was so strict that it didn’t really

lend itself to meeting new people. You had the football crowd and the

government crowd and the society-country-club crowd, and the hoods that hung

3 Baxter, 38.4 Ibid.,18-19.5 Ibid., 30.6 Ibid., 18.7 Ibid., 31.


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out over at the hamburger stand. You were in a crowd and that was it. You

couldn’t go up and you couldn’t go down. But on the streets it was everyone for

himself, and cars became a way of structuring the situation.”8

This is a textbook definition of the social structure in any film set in high school in the

1970s, and the idea that true social intercourse occurred in cars and ‘on the streets’ is also a

common one, but really is exemplified in American Graffiti where the characters Steve,

Laurie and Curt visit their old high school, and the social interaction there is mediated by

teachers and other functionaries that make the action in these scenes feel altogether more

tense than the more relaxed, albeit more dangerous, events occurring ‘on the streets’

throughout the film. Two aspects of the social world of car culture can be traced back to

Lucas’ adolescent days amongst car culture. The first are the drag races. According to Baxter,

after the number of cruisers lessened in the early hours of the morning, drivers more

interested in the speed of their cars would find the longest, straightest roads near the edge of

town, and would compete in dangerous drag races.9 This tradition of racing is celebrated in

the film with the climactic race between John Milner and Bob Falfa. The other feature of the

car culture celebrated in the film is the hot rod gangs. The Pharaohs from the film world are a

direct reference to the Faros gang from Modesto, with whom Lucas had some association,

though never full membership.10 The Faros would participate in initiation rituals similar to the

one the Pharaohs put Curt through, in scene twenty two, when they have him tie a chain to

the back of a police car to cause major damage when the police try to speed after the

8 Baxter, 30.9 Ibid., 32.10 Ibid.


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gangsters when they drive by. As he tells it, in reality Lucas was used as a stooge by the

Faros, who would send him in to enrage other gangs and then to lead them in a chase down

an alley where the Faros would be waiting armed with chains.11

Lucas sees American Graffiti as an examination of the culture outlined above by several

experiences from his adolescence. He doesn’t consider this to be car culture, but the culture

of rock radio.12 When discussing the name American Graffiti, he cites the Italian meaning for

the word graffiti; “a drawing or inscription on walls, glib, funny, immediate”13 which is what

he considers rock radio to be, an American graffiti. He describes the film as his way, and his

way of allowing others to “check out a culture” which, while done by some by looking at

their commodity products such as cars or clothing, Lucas has done by studying rock radio.14

So, accepting this idea, we can gain an understanding that by studying the music of the film,

we gain an insight into Lucas’ examination of the period of his own adolescence.

The film opens with the image of Mel’s Drive-in and Steve’s 1958 Impala car in front of it,

with the title “American Graffiti” in a cursive typeset, and with a style evoking the neon sign

of Mel’s behind it [fig.1]. Already the viewer is being drawn in and told what the film’s

visual language is. During the next two minutes the main characters arrive in their respective

cars, each of which is remarkably unique while fitting into the aesthetic of the film. First

Terry arrives in his motorised Vespa scooter, which evokes Lucas’ own small Autobianchi

car as has been noted, and is symbolic of Terry’s inability to properly partake in the social

11 Baxter, 33.12 Ibid., 107.13 Ibid.14 Ibid.


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intercourse of the adolescent community, which is based around the car culture, and Terry

can’t exactly cruise the streets with the same presence as his friends Steve and John, with

their imposing and stylish hot rods [figs. 2 and 4]. After Terry, Curt arrives in his 1967

Citroën sedan.15 Not a large car, as can be seen in figure 3 where it is the smaller blue car in

the background, it can be seen as representative of Curt’s character. While he can be seen as

the anchor character, and the focalizing sensibility for much of the film, Curt doesn’t take up

much of a screen presence, and he hasn’t a need for the class of Steve’s Impala or the speed

of John’s Coupe, just a small unassuming car to provide him necessary mobility. Indeed, he

doesn’t actually use the car for most of the film, remarkable for the star of a film about car

culture, Curt is barely seen driving at all, only using it to find Wolfman Jack’s station late

into the film, and never uses it for the cruising that all four of the other main characters at

some point partake in. Curt’s sister and Steve’s girlfriend Laurie then shows up in her blue

1958 Edsel Corsair,16 whose features show Laurie’s relationship with the two main

characters. The blue colour of the car as it rolls up behind Curt’s [fig.3] shows her familial

relationship with Curt, whose car is also blue, while the low, long and sleek design matches

Steve’s Impala, representing the companionship between the two characters and almost

alludes to an idea that they were “made for one another”. Finally John drives into the Mel’s

parking lot, with his engine running loudly; in his bright yellow customised 1932 Ford Deuce

Coup [fig.4], just as Steve is telling Curt that “you can’t be seventeen forever”. This is

indicative of John’s character as a whole. Fascinated by mechanics and cars in general, John

would obviously have customized his machine for optimum power and speed, and the age of 15 "’American Graffiti, 1973’: cars, bikes, trucks and other vehicles," IMCDb.org: Internet Movie Car Database, accessed May 17, 2014.http://www.imcdb.org/movie_69704-American-Graffiti.html .16 Ibid.


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the machine is indicative of the general mythology built around the car industry and the

racing scene that John relates to Carol in the junkyard later in film. The loudness of the car’s

engine and its appearance are a mirror of John’s own loud-mouthed personality. The color

yellow, while often in film represents cowardice, and here could be seen as a representation

of John’s fear about the future and losing his friends to far away colleges and careers, upon

further analysis one see that yellow more properly represents light-heartedness of John’s

jovial personality that he hides with the imposing figure of a man and his car, and it

represents a contrast with the other racer in the film, Bob Falfa, whose car is black. If there is

any good and evil conflict occurring in the film, it is the rivalry between John and Falfa, and

the colour coding allows us to recognise John, the noble and honourable one, with Falfa, the

devious, dangerous and ultimately, as John himself puts it, the ‘stupidest’ one. All five of

these motor vehicles are, while not necessarily contemporary with the film’s setting (Curt’s

car being the most blatantly anachronistic, being a model that is five years ahead of the 1962

setting), they serve the purpose of being nostalgic to the 1973 audience, and to the 2014

viewer, where the difference between 1962 and 1977 is smaller than the difference between

the film’s release and today, the presence of many very dated cars create a believable 1960s

environment. The visuals of Mel’s Drive-in here also serve the purpose of setting the scene,

having several features that would be considered obsolete and even archaic by modern

standards. The drive-in of the 1960s differs from the drive-through of present day in many

ways. First of all there are the architectural differences. Obviously in the 1960s, the era of the

art deco resurgence, so the influences of both art deco and streamline moderne are both

present. Geometric shapes mixed with curved lines and a wooden finishing exemplify the


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outside, while the inside prominently features the cooking facilities, implying the lack of

amenities for eat-in diners as they were less common at a drive-in, where the patrons were

more likely to eat in their cars. The outfits of the waitresses are uniform, which matches

present day fast food workers, but a notable addition is the use of roller skates. For the

present day viewer this seems absurd, but to the 1977 viewer this was still fairly

contemporary, and if not entirely common with the rise of the drive-through restaurant. So

the many small touches influenced by life in the 1950s and early 1960s were used to create

the sentimental feelings of nostalgia that the film was aiming for, and while it became dated

by these touches, they allow it to become a period piece rather than being lessened by its

dating.

The music of the film is continuous throughout, starting before the visuals with some radio

distortions as an unseen listener tunes their radio into Wolfman Jack’s station. This acts a

literary device, a frame, to provide not a narrative, as a frame normally does, but the emotive

score for the film, while connecting the disparate storylines together. A great example of this

is the use of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode midway through the film, which is used to

score a pivotal moment between John and Carol, the young girl he picked up earlier that night

by mistake and had been antagonistic with for most of the film thus far. Studying the music

behind this scene will provide a valuable insight into how the use of known popular music

impacted the filmic scene. I will look at this through the lens of the study of associationism

that was made by Annabel J. Cohen in her Associationism and musical soundtrack

phenomena, which was made to test the generally accepted but long untested view that “film


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music influences the interpretation of film”.17 Through her empirical testing, Cohen found

that music had a definite meaning that would create associations to the visual meaning

different to those from another musical track with the same visuals, proving that

associationism is foundational for study in film music.18 In American Graffiti the track

actually starts playing before the visuals I was relating it to take place. This is because the

track itself is quite long and as it was (in the diegetic universe) being played on the radio,

shortening it wasn’t an option in preserving the immersion of the effect. We first hear the

track playing, muffled, from the radio of the Pharaohs’ car, and in this scene it takes the place

of background music, only serving the role of filling the space between lines of dialogue with

music, not necessarily setting any mood. This continues when the film switches to John’s car

where he and Carol are still antagonizing one another. A second car drives next to them, and

the occupants proceed to pelting Carol with a water balloon. This coincides with an

instrumental section of the song, and as Carol suggests catching their opponents at the next

traffic stop, the music intensifies and is made louder becoming the dominating influence of

the scene as any dialogue or sound effects are drowned out by the track’s vocals while the

two characters proceed to attack the second car by covering it with shaving cream and

disabling their tires, and the end of the scene coincides precisely with the end of the track.

The music here allows the viewer to be swept up in the youthful revelry of the characters and

in regards to its function within the plot, it realises Carol and John’s newfound friendship and

cements in the mind of the audience with a memorable scene.

17 Annabel J. Cohen, "Associationism And Musical Soundtrack Phenomena," Contemporary Music Review 9, no. 1-2 (1993): 163.18 Ibid., 176.


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The mechanism with which the film uses to justify the soundtrack is interesting, as it comes

close to breaking the fourth wall by acknowledging the presence of the music the audience

hears as music the characters can hear. This is done by having the sound from Wolfman

Jack’s radio broadcast at least somewhat audible throughout the movie, mostly justified

through car radio speakers. This allows the music we hear in any scene, whether it switches

from one character to the next, to stay continuous, because everyone in the film is in their car,

as the social structure demanded it, as outlined by Lucas in Baxter’s biography of him.19 In

Jay Beck’s Citing the Sound he explains that by having a diegetic soundtrack that can

advance the narrative is a technique used elsewhere, by Francis Ford Coppola (who produced

American Graffiti) in his film The Conversation(1974).20 In American Graffiti the soundtrack

is more used to connect the narrative scene-to-scene rather than as a device to specifically

advance the plot. The exception to this occurs near the end, when Curt decides to find

Wolfman Jack’s radio station to get him to air a dedication to the ‘Blonde in the White T-

Bird’ he has spent the film trying to find. Beck describes a problem with the use of audio in

The Conversation is that as we can see the source of the audio, the “audio sensations are

rendered in a primarily visual medium”21 which in Conversation occurs because we can see

the equipment the main character uses to record a conversation, which we can also see. In

Graffiti this problem is avoided by not showing us the mechanisms of the soundtrack until a

point where the music isn’t relevant to the creation of the mise-en-scene, but is a plot device

to allow Curt to find his woman.

19 Baxter, 30.20 Jay Beck, "Citing the Sound: 'The Conversation,' 'Blow Out,' and the mythological ontology of the soundtrack in '70s film." Journal of Popular Film and Television 29, no. 4 (2002): 158.

21 Ibid., 158.


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American Graffiti uses a study of rock and roll and 1960s car culture to tell a coming-of-age

tale about a group of friends. Its insights into the culture of the time allowed the viewer from

the 1970s to experience nostalgia, and the viewer from the 2010s to study both the experience

of nostalgia, the aesthetics of the 1960s, and the film making techniques from the 1970s. The

techniques that allowed Lucas to use a popular music soundtrack give the film the materials

to study rock and roll with, and the mise-en-scene from the used cars and aesthetics give the

film a credibility that allowed it to remain a period piece rather than a dated piece of the

nostalgia boom.

Word count: 2692.


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Bibliography

American Graffiti. DVD. Directed by George Lucas. S.l.: Universal Pictures [u.a.], 1973.

‘American Graffiti, 1973’: cars, bikes, trucks and other vehicles. IMCDb.org: Internet Movie

Car Database, accessed May 17, 2014.http://www.imcdb.org/movie_69704-

American-Graffiti.html .

American Graffiti - Original Soundtrack | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic.

AllMusic, accessed 15th May 2014, http://www.allmusic.com/album/american-

graffiti-mw0000691836 .

Baxter, John. George Lucas: a biography. Hammersmith, London:

HarperCollinsEntertainment, 1999.

Beck, Jay. "Citing the Sound: 'The Conversation,' 'Blow Out,' and the mythological ontology

of the soundtrack in '70s film." Journal of Popular Film and Television 29, no. 4

(2002): 156-158.

Cohen, Annabel J.. "Associationism And Musical Soundtrack Phenomena." Contemporary

Music Review 9, no. 1-2 (1993): 163-178.

Bordwell, David. "Diagetic theories of narration." In Narration in the fiction film. Madison,

Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. 16-26.


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Figure 1

00:21 of American Graffiti, snapshot captured with VLC Media PlayerAmerican Graffiti, DVD, directed by George Lucas. (S.l.: Universal Pictures [u.a.], 1973).


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Figure 2



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Figure 3



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Figure 4


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