Radio Waves of Mutilation: The Youthful Angst of Pump Up the Volume

By day, Mark Hunter is a classic teenage introvert: shyly trudging through the halls of his Arizona high school, quietly reading alone between periods, hardly able to form complete sentences with classmates, much less look them in the eye. By night, Mark is Happy Harry Hard-On, a brash, foul-mouthed, gonzo radio shock jock, pirating the underground airwaves from a makeshift radio station in his parent’s basement. Mark is played by Christian Slater. Peak, impossibly beautiful, early-90s Christian Slater. He’s much more convincing as Hard Harry than soft-spoken Mark, which is kind of the point. 

Welcome to 1990’s Pump Up the Volume, writer/director Allan Moyle’s second installment in his unofficial trilogy of youthful rebellion and kickass soundtracks, bookended by the singular Times Square (1980) and Gen-X favorite Empire Records (1995). These films vary in tone, setting, and pop cultural signifiers, but they all share young characters attempting to navigate self-actualization in spite of societal straightjackets however possible, often through creating or simply loving music. Pump Up the Volume frames that rebellious energy through its pirate radio premise, and it respects that premise enough to take it seriously. 

Perhaps the most ardent fan of Hard Harry’s show is classic teenage alt-girl Norah, who writes to Harry’s P.O. Box regularly. Norah is played by Samantha Mathis. Striking, impossibly charming, early-90s Samantha Mathis. She and Slater would team up again a few years later in Broken Arrow. They’re infectious together. It doesn’t take much deduction on Norah’s part to suss out Mark as Hard Harry’s secret identity. Predictably, a romance develops; unpredictably, the romance avoids cliched beats. Mathis portrays Norah as a burgeoning artist, the more confident romantic pursuer, and Slater’s growing conscience: she is one of the great unsung teen heroines of the 90s. 

Through the Hard Harry persona, Mark lobs verbal grenades against anything and everything that makes teenage life miserable, all set to a killer collection of tunes. We’re in the mixtape era of Pixies, Leonard Cohen, Sonic Youth, and The Beastie Boys. Through this music, and Mark’s brazen radio persona, the radio show hits like a bolt of lightning to the student body of Hubert Humphrey High School, striking a chord with just about any kid who listens to it, smarties and burnouts alike. Teenage alienation doesn’t care about status. 

On the airwaves, Mark reads letters and broadcasts phone calls. His audience is growing by the day. Some calls are silly and crude. Others are fraught and vulnerable. A young gay teen recounts a humiliating story of a tentative romantic encounter revealed to be a cruel, homophobic prank. Mark reassures the caller that he doesn’t need to be confused about anything; clearly, the assholes who hurt him are the ones who are confused and broken. This simple portrayal of empathetic, righteous indignation, barely a decade into the AIDS epidemic and smack dab in the middle of two ghoulish Republican administrations, feels like a quiet miracle in the context of a studio teen drama. But even the Hard Harry persona has its limits. Another teen calls in to threaten suicide. Slater's performance in this scene is wrenching; he’s not uncaring, simply out of his element, and isn’t capable of treating the moment with the gravity it requires. The caller hangs up, and the student body is shaken the next day to learn that the young man did indeed take his own life. 

These weighty emotional stakes contribute to the power Pump Up the Volume still retains nearly 35 years removed from its original release, and it's that very quality that gives the best of Moyle’s films their long shelf-lives. As a storyteller, Moyle neither idealizes nor condescends to the teenage experience; in his films, a young person’s day to day is equal parts exhilarating, despairing, and mind-numbingly tedious. The adults with influence oftentimes have ulterior, self-serving motives, and even the nice ones are largely ineffectual. 

This dynamic is illustrated in Pump Up the Volume’s high school bureaucracy, the administration wantonly expelling low-performing students to keep standardized test score averages high, and the quality teachers powerless to do much about it. This is the face of institutional villainy for our teen characters in Pump Up the Volume: perform, make good grades, fall in line, or fuck off. Depressed? Heartbroken? Adrift? You’re on your own. It’s little wonder, then, that Mark finds such a rabid audience for Hard Harry. He may lack grace, but his voice gives a name to the collective, primal howl of his peers, just trying to find a corner of peace and decency in an increasingly contemptible world of cynicism and corruption.  

Pump Up the Volume belongs in the pantheon of quintessential teen movies that feel both wholly of its time and timeless. FM radio, flannel, and Pixies bootlegs might scream early-90s, but the scream of teenage alienation is ever present.