1984’s Repo Man is a great cult film on many levels. An oddball mixture of science fiction, comedy and car chase thriller, it’s set amidst the cultural backdrop of the punk and hardcore music that formed part and parcel of the largely white, suburban youth experience of early 80’s America. Aesthetically it can be seen as a perfect companion to the punk-teen rebellion classic ‘Suburbia’, with a much more ‘out there’ plot and a greater sheen of professionalism.
Otto Maddox, the central character of the film, played by Emilio Estevez gets fired from his shitty shelf stacking job in a supermarket in Los Angeles. At a party, his best friend who has just got released from jail ends up fucking his girlfriend. Betrayed and broke, he strolls out of the venue, singing along to the lyrics of “T.V. Party” by Black Flag before walking home. Enter the eternal old man bit part king that is Harry Dean Stanton, his character Bud, and the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation…
Initially responding with “fuck you, queer!!!” to an offer of 25 dollars, Otto wrongly assumes that Bud takes him for a rent boy. In fact he wants him to go and drive a car out the neighborhood. On taking it back to a depot, having being fooled into thinking it was a mere errand, Otto has just repossessed a car. Initially reluctant to the sleazy, cut throat environment of the business, that starts to null when offered a large wad of cash. He’s hired, and what’s more, his pothead hippie parents have blown all of his school leaving money on shipping Bibles to El Salvador…
“The life of a Repo Man is always intense” exclaims Bud, amidst the thrill of car chases, hotwiring cars, driving through shitty neighborhoods, good money, brushes with near death, being beaten to a pulp and snorting lines of speed. Life has acquired a new sense of fire and vigour, new meaning and learning curves, riding the tiger. In the plot of Repo Man, these concepts need a means to an end. Enter the radioactive waste emitting 1964 Chevy Malibu…
Said car, otherwise of low value has a bounty of $20,000 attached to it, initially thought to have narcotics in the boot, now assumed to have the bodies of aliens inside, rendered hazardous by the radioactivity. Brought on by his tryst with a girl, Leila, who works for the United Fruitcake Outlet (UFO) the bounty culminates in a pursuit which involves Helping Hand’s repo rivals, the antagonistic Rodriguez Brothers, the UFO scientists, government agents, and even the televangelist Otto’s parents sent his grant money to.
In an iconic concluding scene, the Chevy Malibu, which is now glowing green from the radiation detracts or sets fire to anyone who tries to come close to it, with the exception of the oddball junkyard mechanic Miller, and Otto, who eagerly follows him into the front of the car. Rejecting the pleas of his love interest Leila and her ensuing insults, the car takes to the LA skyline and into the great beyond.
It’s a culmination to something that Repo Man embodies, and is crystallized in its lead character. Amidst the emptiness that comes from a lack of direction, from the mediocrity of the everyday, the tyranny of being a cog in the wheel, and the risks that come from transgressing its conditions and rules, is something that celebrates the pursuit of the unknown, of reward from danger amidst uncertainty as an alternative to a future of suffocating safety.
It should serve as a model and a metaphor; the will to do something can always end in an action, and in Repo Man’s Otto Maddox these actions become immediate adaptations to new circumstances that occur on a whim, in a classically ‘ride the tiger’ sense. Whilst a plot to a film is certainly not “the story of ones life”, its cues can always serve as valid reference points. Behind a seemingly ‘goofy’ film lies a critical and transcendent masterpiece about overcoming that should be viewed in the way many critics see late 90’s classics such as ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Beauty’.
I always think positively of Repo Man, and a past of dead-end self doubt, knowing full well of one’s sense of difference but lacking the sense of confidence to act on that, but forcing it on myself, in the way of physical fitness as merely one example. It’s a poignant tribute to a will to power, to find and hunt down subtleties within you that for all you know, or didn’t know, might be untapped and worthy of exertion.
I don’t want to come across as some sort of cringeworthy positive live goals hashtag guru, far from it, but I think little pushes and tweaks can always help test a select few who’ve been conditioned into browbeating themselves into victimhood, to test these constraints and gradually overcome that ‘state of nature’. I’d challenge anyone to watch Repo Man and then find something that tests their own comfort zone, within the real world, within the area of self-improvement, and act out on it.
Excuse The Blood 