Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Edging along the new cutting edge

Although I started thinking about "hipness" and "edge" because of two movies, which I'll get to in a minute, let's take the text of today's sermon from a 1996 essay on the death of hip by Tom Junod.

"Norman Mailer averred in an interview that hip had come about in reaction to the death of God," Junod wrote, "which I guess is fair enough, but which begs the question: What will come about in reaction to the death of hip?"

Now we know. From the noisy scrum of pop culture has emerged a snazzy hip replacement: edginess! Just in time, too. With hipness dead (so many people and things are considered hip, Junod argues, that nothing really is), we needed help with that most vital of social enterprises, determining what's cool. That's where "edge" comes in. In youth culture -- which, as we all know, is the one that really matters -- everything worth anything is now "edgy." It's among the highest honors pop culture can bestow.

Er, what exactly is edginess? It's difficult to define, but you know it when you see it in Mountain Dew commercials or on ESPN's X-Games, on "South Park" or in indie films.

In other words, I don't know. I just know I want some -- I've got a goatee and an earring and I'm not even in the neighborhood. But I do know this -- the concept of edge as a cultural definer is already losing its, well, edge. Like hip, it's has been put through a high-speed blander.

Esquire magazine recently listed a few things deemed edgeworthy by their promoters: Matt Drudge, Six Flags Theme Parks, CBS promo spots, Fox Family Channel, Las Vegas. Even Barbie and Ken -- a Mattel spokeswoman once described the company's line of pop-culture dolls (styled after Elvis, "Star Trek" and "X-Files") this way: "Our Pop Culture Series tries to associate Barbie with characters that are a little bit on the edge." Uh-huh. Not enough edge there to shave a caterpillar. When kids can play with your edge, it ain't very edgy.

I starting thinking about this stuff thanks to two films, one brand new, one celebrating its 20th anniversary, that I've seen innumerable times -- "National Lampoon's Animal House" -- and one I've only read about, the acclaimed new Italian comedy "Life is Beautiful."

Although "Animal House" predates the current edge era, it's definitely a precursor to it. I remember the liberating thrill of seeing all these misfits -- from that suave joker Otter to the crazed sasquatch Bluto -- trying to live by their own rules. With its prankish irreverence toward authority, its bracing endorsement of irresponsibility, its notion of freedom through toga parties, I thought the movie was (although I wouldn't have used the word back then) edgy as all get-out.

Well, what can I say, I was 17. A few years later, after I'd had all the brainless guff I could take from boozy frat boys, "Animal House" was at best a charming little picture, notable for some great lines -- "Did America give up after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" -- but about as edgy as Ken and Barbie.

Which brings me to "Life is Beautiful," a comedy by Roberto Benigni, invariably described as the Italian Robin Williams. Except I doubt Williams would have the edge to try something like this -- a Holocaust comedy. A Jewish bookseller and his 5-year-old son are imprisoned in a concentration camp, and to shield the boy from the horrors around him, the father pretends it's all a game staged for the boy's benefit.

Now, that requires more audacity than a subdivision of "Animal Houses." The Holocaust is material you handle like an unexploded land mine. There's too much evil and unimaginable human anguish there. To attempt, against every perceived standard of taste and propriety, to mold it into a sweet, heartbreaking comedy takes more than something you could describe as edgy. (The film won the grand jury prize at this year's Cannes festival.)

And so when some essayist eventually takes up the topic of what will replace "edge" as a marker of cultural significance, perhaps he'll think of "Life is Beautiful." It's not in-your-face. It's not X-anything. It certainly won't move soft drinks. It's just a movie bravely trying to coax something decent and human from a barren place, heedless of conventional pieties and received wisdom. And maybe that's real edge. Yeah, you could shave Bluto's back with edge like that.

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