It Came From the ‘90s: Winona Forever

This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade.

Six of the most important words I've ever heard in a movie were written by Helen Childress and delivered by Winona Ryder (as Lelaina) in Reality Bites (1994):

The answer is...I don't know.

That moment of recognition, of shared confusion and uncertainty, seeing and hearing what I was feeling up on the screen, was enormously powerful—at least it was to me, and from what I could gather back then and still witness today, it was for a lot of people my age. Every generation goes through this, most acutely of course during their teenage and early adulthood years. But for us it was slightly different. We were the kids raised in latchkey homes whose main source of inspiration and connection during those years seemed to come from television and popular culture—in fact, this very blog is almost entirely informed by my status as a Gen-Xer. That's because we'd already been told by the adult boomers around us that everything in our future would suck—seriously, we heard this all the time during those years and if you don't think that dramatically alters your perspective on the world then you're in denial. It was doubly depressing for us because those exact same boomers, who seemed to take great pleasure in explaining how doomed we Gen-Xers would be, were the ones to blame anyway.

But we grew up, as every generation does, and we took responsibility for our own lives. As best we could, at least, given how much work we had to do to crawl out from under the eight ball. We're still hard at work at it, and will be until the very end. For many of us, Winona's various roles and performances have helped guide us through the years, especially back when we most needed someone to look up to. She filled that role. It was as if she was us and we were her. If even Winona didn't know the answer, at least we were in good company.

For her resume full of absolutely stone-cold essential Gen-X films, like Reality Bites and Heathers (1988) and Beetlejuice (1988) and Mermaids (1990) and on and on and on, Winona was, is, and will always be right at the top of any list of generational icons I can put together. I'm really happy to see her back in the spotlight with Stranger Things because she's still so young and should get better roles than she's gotten the last fifteen years or so. I'm excited to see how she manages to continue to find creative and thoughtful ways to represent, through performance, my generation's long, strange, utterly unique (sorry, but we are, it's just true) trip through time together.

Back in the day, Johnny Depp had it right with his initial tattoo: Winona Forever. I own a coffee mug with "WINONA" above and "FOREVER" below a series of images of Winona from her most iconic roles. It's exactly the sort of thing a Gen-X adult would buy, and for the exact reasons you would assume: it helps me stay connected, to my roots, to Winona's dramatization of them, and to a time when neither of us had any idea what might lay ahead, but together we tentatively stepped out on that ledge anyway.

Happy birthday to one of my generation's true icons, heroes, inspirations, or whatever other label applies. As much as anyone, she's the main reasons this blog exists. The impact of her work on my life is immeasurable.

Winona Forever, indeed.

Comments

Paul SOctober 30, 2018 at 7:57 AM
Belated Happy Birthday Winona, where did the years go.Whenever I think of the 90s, and I often do I Winona is never far from my thoughts. Her gorgeous enormous eyes seemed to be everywhere during my youth. I hadn't heard anything about her in years, but whatever she does in the future I hope she's happy in herself.
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