The Stars of Stage and Screen: Song #46/250: New Slang by The Shins from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of the Film Garden State

Being in your twenties is weird. Your childhood fades into the distance. You stand at the threshold of adulthood, all fresh faced, filled with hopes, dreams and ambitions. The world is your oyster. Everything is possible. Yet, for many, nothing has been accomplished and the fear and doubts that come with an empty resume often fill you with a paralyzing sense of dread. Feelings are magnified. Fear of failure appears in equal measure with youthful idealism and promise. Everything becomes weighty. Even the good moments have soooo much depth and earnest emotion attached to them that, at times, even happiness can be unbearable. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be the person I have become if I hadn’t gone through the trials and tribulations that come with being a cringe-inducing twenty-something. Thankfully, I somehow managed to survive my own inner angst and emerged as a more mature version of myself in my thirties. With experience in life comes the wisdom of contentment with who we are. For those of us lucky enough, with that maturity just might come love and happiness, too. But, until that time comes, being young can be a haunting experience. No one emerges unscathed. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is merely to survive.

Being deeply, passionately invested in one’s own emotional journey as a twenty-something is the premise of the film Garden State. This movie was released in 2004. It was written and directed by actor Zach Braff. *(You may know Braff better from his decade-long role as J.D. on the NBC TV show Scrubs).  Garden State is the fictionalized version of Braff’s life story up until that point. It was filmed as an independent movie on a shoestring budget on location in New Jersey, where Braff grew up. Garden State stars Braff as a moody actor in search of meaning in his life. The movie begins with the death of his mom. This event forces Braff to have to reunite with his estranged father played by Ian Holm. As part of this reunion we learn that Holm had forced Braff’s character to become medicated as a teenager in order to control his anger issues. Consequently, Braff’s character blames his father for altering/limiting his future because of his lack of emotional trust and because of the side effects of his medication (which gave him debilitating headaches). Returning for his mother’s funeral allows Braff to reconnect with high school friends who work as gravediggers, an additional friend who has become a multi-millionaire by way of a fluke invention, and finally, he meets a super cute but emotionally messed up girl (played by Natalie Portman) through whom Braff becomes willing to trust once again with his heart. By learning to trust someone with his inner thoughts and feelings, Braff achieves a sense of calm that acts as happiness for him. Garden State was selected to air at The Sundance Film Festival and ended up winning the prize for Best Independent Film of the Year.

However, sometimes a movie becomes more than simply the movie it set out to be. Sometimes a movie becomes a time capsule or cultural touchstone for one reason or another. Garden State has become that very thing for three distinct and unique reasons. To be honest, most people who know of this movie and consider it one of the most noteworthy films of the past quarter-century actually couldn’t care less about the plotline of the movie itself. The navel gazing, self-interested, self-absorbed journey of a twenty-something flawed white male is something that you either find interesting because of how it parallels with your own life journey, or else you find excruciating because the introspection comes off as being ridiculous and over the top. Braff has made a career (on Scrubs and in film) of straddling that line between drama and comedy, between authentically exploring the emotional scenes from our lives and openly mocking them, to the point where it is difficult to know if he is playing Garden State for laughs or for real. So that is the first thing that sets Garden State apart. Many critics and fans alike contend that the fact that you can watch a movie about a young man’s healing journey and not be able to distinguish between it being a comedy or a drama is a sign of the intelligence of the writing and the plot construction. Make no mistake, Garden State is not intentionally funny at all. It is a movie that is amped up on its own earnestness to the point that audiences have come to believe that the depth of the introspection must be an intentional device for Braff’s mockery of emo-themed films. He can’t really be so self absorbed, can he?

It is one thing to be tragic. It is another thing entirely to be so tragic as to become hip and cool. Zach Braff won a Grammy Award, of all things, for the soundtrack to Garden State. Because he wrote and directed his movie on a shoestring budget, he saved money by putting together the soundtrack as well. He did so by creating a “mix-tape” style of soundtrack based upon indie artists and bands who spoke to his emotional mindset while he was making the film. One of the key behaviours that his onscreen character engages in is listening to music while wearing big, clunky headphones. I know that I went through a phase during my younger days when I loved getting lost in my own thoughts while having some band act as the house band for my imagingings. There is something self-indulgent about shutting the outside world off in order to slow dance with your own thoughts. I did it. Zach Braff’s character does it throughout the film. In fact, not only did people flock to the movie because of the music and the idea that it is soooooo cool and tragic at the same time, which makes it on a level like fashion, they helped launch one of the great movie/music memes of all time. In one scene, Braff and Portman’s characters are sitting side by side in a waiting area at some office. Portman is listening to something on her headphones. Eventually she turns to Braff and says, “This song will change your life, I swear!” before placing the headphones on his head so he can listen. Braff listens for a few seconds and agrees with Portman that the song is good. It is the beginning of the two of them developing a sense of shared passions in life and growing together as a couple. However, because of how the scene is constructed, Braff can’t hear Portman’s song until the headphones are fully over his head. Because he can’t hear the song, neither can the audience. This opened the door for enterprising techie types to create memes that use the scene exactly as it appears in the film except that the song that Braff eventually hears has been substituted for songs in foreign languages, for novelty songs and so on. That Braff’s character reacts with the same deep approval of the song choice, regardless of what it turns out to be in the meme is the perfect send-up of those who are sooooooo emotionally invested in their music. The song that Natalie Portman originally shares with Braff is “New Slang” by Scottish band The Shins. *(I mentioned The Shins in a previous post that you can read here). As for the memes, you can check some out here, here and here. The Internet can be a cesspool at times, but at other times it can be comedic gold. This is one of those funny, funny times. If Zach Braff deliberately constructed the scene with its meme potential in mind, then he is very clever indeed.

The third and final reason that people point to Garden State as being a film of cultural importance has to do with Natalie Portman’s character. In the movie she plays a girl named Sam, who happens to be a pathological liar. After she shares her “song that will change your life, I swear!” with Braff, the two of them spend the day together. During that time, Braff begins to feel that he is able to open up around her, and so he reveals many long held secrets about his childhood and the dynamics of how his family functions. This newfound ability to finally trust someone leads to feelings of love by Braff for Portman. Throughout the film, Portman’s character is always there for Braff while he explores his feelings, is always accepting of his conclusions and reciprocates his feelings, especially during the climactic scene where Braff begins to leave for his home across the country (now that the funeral is over) only to run back to Portman, where they kiss and agree to be as one forever. Thank goodness that Portman was so constantly and readily available for Braff’s character, because now he is healed and whole…he writes sarcastically. Well, once Garden State came to be seen by a wider audience, reaction to how Portman’s character was written became polarized. In fact, a term was developed to describe her. That term is Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The definition of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is any female character written by a male whose sole purpose in the film seems to be to completely and without question serve the needs of the male lead character without any thought being made to the development of her own character. In Garden State, Natalie Portman’s Sam is attractive, quirky in a way that Braff finds interesting, but most importantly, is emotionally available to guide Braff through his healing journey. In the film we learn nothing of Sam’s background and only see her growth as a human in terms of her romantic association with Braff’s character. If not for the male lead, Portman’s character would be essentially irrelevant. Written as it was at a time in Hollywood that existed prior to the #MeToo movement, it is difficult to know if how Braff wrote Portman’s character in Garden State was purposeful and meant to create discussion, or if he is just another male who doesn’t know how to write for women. There is a long history in Hollywood of criticism from female actors about the roles available to them and how their parts are written. The term Manic Pixie Dream Girl has been coined to describe all such shallow female characters in any movie and is meant to act as a criticism of the male who wrote for the role so poorly. In film schools today, aspiring screenwriters and film producers are shown Garden State as an example of how not to create interesting, fully developed female characters for their projects. Zach Braff is on record as saying that he never meant any harm with how he created Portman’s character. 

Garden State is an interesting bit of cinematic history, for sure. The plotline has become irrelevant, but the continuing debate surrounding how female characters are written (especially by men), the constant flow of mocking memes regarding the “song that will change your life” scene and the clever plot construction that blurs the line between comedy and drama so that one can never be sure how to view this movie, all taken together ensure that Garden State continues to stand out from the pack as a movie worthy of examination and discussion. Being in your twenties is weird. So is this movie in many ways. Is weird good? I guess that depends on how you view your twenties. 

The link to the trailer for the movie Garden State can be found here.

The link to the original scene from the movie Garden State about “The song that will change your life, I swear” can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “New Slang” by The Shins can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.

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