The Bad Class (hardback)

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Beard writes to impress and succeeds in spades. His pounding persuasive prose treats readers with respect blasting out cinematic and socio-political references by the fistful trusting you to either keep up or keep a notepad nearby. The quartet of films discussed at length herein aren't whining for unconditional love; like the neglected children that populate them they demand-sometimes violently-our attention. Viewed through the personal lens of an intelligent articulate and passionate fan we absorb their impact on an entire generational stripe who were at once shaped and reflected by them. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Aaron Christensen HORROR 101 with Dr. AC</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In 1980 the U.S. elected an actor to the White House; Hollywood icon Ronald Reagan landed the world's leading role. While most of America celebrated a white-hot rage simmered just out of sight.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In 1982 a B-movie named Class of 1984 appeared in theaters. A vicious reworking of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Blackboard Jungle</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> here was a film for the new America: a punishing wasteland of burnouts and punks of rampaging youth and swift violence where greed was rewarded and virtue disdained.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Next came Bad Boys The Outsiders</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> and </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Repo Man</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. As each attempted to diagnose this endemic of disaffected angry young men the subtext was clear: America had failed its youth. Children were paying the price for every adult sin.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Ben Beard author of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The South Never Plays Itself</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> grew up on these films. He returns to them now revealing common threads and hidden patterns. With insight empathy and humor Beard analyzes how these disparate works have come together to form a lattice a warning a clarion call and a potential salve for the still-tender wounds of youth.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Equal parts memoir cultural history and cinematic excavation as well as a pop-culture odyssey into early 1980s Americana-a land of guns gangs drugs and the occult-</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Bad Class</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> attempts to understand the present by returning to the past by probing this raw sliver of cinephilia when a different plague was raging the culture was sick and the best films were trash.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p>