The Favorites, Pt. 1: Number 5 on the All Time Top 5 is…

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October 15, 2012 by Josh

It’s pretty easy to gauge someone’s emotional maturity based on their opinion of Rob Gordon. If you’re still aspiring to be like him by the age of 30, something has gone seriously wrong. My opinion of Rob Gordon has fluctuated in the 8-odd years I’ve been introduced to him, and, I suppose, I’m thankful for that.

I first saw High Fidelity around the age of 15, catching about half of it when it was aired incessantly on Comedy Central between 2004 and 2006. Catching it on the inevitable re-run the next week (or month? it was a long time ago), I was ill-prepared for the formative experience that would unfold over its running time.

15’s a really torturous age in retrospect, though at the time I would have copped to being well-adjusted, and may well have had some statistic on teenage self-harm and depression to back up the claim. That doesn’t really detract from 15’s default setting, though. You’re dealing with hormones, awkwardness, a palpable lack of driver’s license,  inexplicably socially/sexually advanced peers, all that and individual identity starts to become a serious question. High Fidelity handed me a cheat sheet.

By the time I’d watched the flick, I’d already kind of decided to be the “music guy” in my friend group, making my first forays into stuff that wasn’t “that shit on the radio”, and generally berating my bros for listening to said shit. The results were middling at best. High Fidelity only managed to strengthen my resolve.

Rob Gordon seemed like the guy to emulate: dude owned a record shop, had a sick-ass record collection, his own apartment, and a history of stupidly good-looking women that had been through or occupied said apartment, specifically the bedroom, and left him for dumb reasons. Rob Gordon not only provided me with the desire to be kind of a dick about songs that people like, but validated my choice.

Fiction? Completely. At 15, it’s frighteningly possible to only acknowledge the first half or so of the movie (kind of like how the hip-hop community embraces Scarface). It’s all about the records and the women. Years on, I had a bunch of cd’s, more vinyl than anyone else I knew, and really complex opinions on European death metal. The high-school dating record was spotty at best, and I was completely striking out in college.

Get a little depressed, mix something with bottom-shelf whiskey, and pop that bastard in the dvd player. Fuck me.

It’s somewhere in there, between late adolescence and the befuddling grey area that is the early 20s, that it hits you (ideally): Rob Gordon is a loser. And that’s the whole point. And that realization was not near as excruciating as I thought. I didn’t hate the film, I didn’t hate myself. I just grew up. I began to focus on the last half of it rather than the first, really zeroing in on Rob’s becoming; his own realization that he could, and needed, to change. The second half was no longer filled with mourning for a dead hero, but the affirmation of new life.

It’s interesting maintaining a relationship with a film over any significant span of time, but especially from the teen years onward, especially one so steeped in such painfully immanent concerns as romance and artistic preference. I could easily say that High Fidelity made the back 5 or so of adolescence a little harder for me, made me a little more abrasive and set some expectations that would not be met. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t be where I’m at now if I hadn’t watched THAT exact movie at THAT exact time. It’s become something that is, at times, uncomfortably entwined with my identity. Whether or not that’s healthy, there’s really no point in whining about it now.