"Hero" by Family of the Year, Monday, May 22, 2023 (repost)

The 2014 film Boyhood was a highly acclaimed film that has an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working-class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself as well as the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. The events and pop culture throughout the years are woven into human themes. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early '00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band Family of the Year, with their song "Hero."

I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO. "Hero" appears in the movie toward the end when Mason, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, drives his old pickup down the Texas highway. He is now 18 years old, graduated, and become himself. This comes after a scene with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She wonders, "What was it all for?" when she reflects on the hardships of parenthood. She had raised her kids and wonders what's next for her. She tells her son, "The next big event is my fucking funeral." She had kept her family a paycheck away from eviction at some points but ultimately raised a successful family, yet she wonders what it was all for. Family of the Year's "Hero" serves as a reflection on the themes of the movie. The song talks about the conflict between wanting stability and wanting something greater than what you have right now. You long to be allowed to leave, but you still hold down a job to keep the girl around.

'M A KID LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Watching Mason's family struggle in the 2000s reminded me of growing up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck in the '90s to '06 when I graduated high school. I remember church pantry handouts and hand-me-downs from cousins. Clinton-era social programs let us go to the doctor when we needed to, and our moldy old house had me sick quite a bit as a kid. My dad worked as a logger in New York until the payment was so bad that he decided to go to truck driving school. When my dad became an over-the-road truck driver we started making more money, but we didn't have health insurance. We prayed we didn't get sick or injured, and thank God nothing bad happened. My mom would eventually go to nursing school and go to work when I was in high school. I'm very proud of what my family did, but I remember talks with my dad that echoed what Olivia said in Boyhood. What is it all for? The existential question that haunts us with every passing year. What is it all for? "Hero," tells us "Everyone deserves a chance to walk with everyone else" but what does that mean? Boyhood, life, marriage, divorce, the economic depression--rituals of the American Dream. Everyone deserves it, but isn't it all just vanity and vexation of the spirit?

Read the lyrics on Genius.

Trailer for Boyhood: