The internet gives a lot of power to a lot of people.
), plays vinyl records and cassette tapes (huh?
), and chastises his parents for selling out from hippies to yuppies (what to huh?).
But the film remains too potent, prescient, and pissed off to write off as a cultural curio.
To the film’s credit, Slater is playing a self-aware vulgar white guy.
Inherently, we human beings are contradictory, complicated, ceaselessly shifting entities.
Image via New Line Cinema
Theres not an attempt at a filter, a professionally curated brand.
Hard Harrys just shouting whatevers on his mind, with every human crinkle remaining unironed.
And his followers give him power, acclaim, and idolization for that lack of finesse.
Image via New Line Cinema
Slaters transition from edgelord to activist is an inspiring one.
He speaks plainly so many truths about power, hierarchy, subjugation.
He begins to show shades of vulnerability, of self-criticizing, of palpable empathy.
At one point, a longtime listener calls in to reveal hes considering suicide.
Slater neither turns off his Hard Harry persona nor amps it up to egg this hurt man on.
He tells this young man were not alone.
If youre feeling some way, someone else is, too.
Thats really worth something.
But was this other persons well-being Slaters responsibility?
If so, why?
Because he interacted with Slaters public forum?
Its a difficult moral question, one we see only amplified in our Internet age.
But in its difficulty, examined so fiercely inPump Up the Volume, one solution remains steadfast.
Pump Up the Volumeends with the bare, transparent hypocrisies and corruptions of the ruling class.
Speak for yourselves, speak for each other, speak against the powers that be.
This act of speaking means you are living, or even just surviving.
Pump Up the Volumecomes to Blu-ray February 23.
