Slacker Fest: Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
The slacker genre flirts with self-awareness
Slacker Fest is back! We only have a couple more films left in this series, but they’re good ones! Slacker Fest is where we document our research and analysis of mass media’s “slacker” archetype, part of our effort to broaden the genre with a slacker film of our own. Find our master list of entries here. Previous entry: Funny Ha Ha
When I put out a call looking for slacker characters that weren’t White dudes, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was the most suggested film. While this marks my first viewing of the film, I’ve long been aware of how children of immigrants—especially Asian immigrants—resonate with it. So I wasn’t shocked to see it explore the pressure cooker of cultural expectations for bicultural Americans.
What I was surprised to also find, however, was the first seeds of critique toward slacker films broadly. With allusions to genre conventions and biases, Harold and Kumar marked a bit of a shift in slacker films themselves1.
The basics
Release year: 2004
Premise: Two Asian-American young professional roommates go on a late-night, munchies-driven quest to get White Castle, finding a series of absurd obstacles and detours along the way. (An evolution of Cheech and Chong’s plot thirty years prior)
Auteurs: John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote this film (Danny Leiner directed it) with the express intention of representing high school friends that they never saw represented in teen movies. I gotta hand it to them: their outstanding degree of insight when writing characters that don’t share their background is rare and gives me hope.
Interesting side note: they also wrote Plan B fifteen years later, a very funny film about two girls who are also kids of immigrants. Having just given the fellas their flowers, I must say they toned down the slacker when writing these analogues, instead making them overachievers who are dabbling with rebelliousness and sexual liberation. Which is awesome, and they probably didn’t mean to make Plan B a direct descendant to H&K. But I mention this just to show how difficult it has been for the genre’s (overwhelmingly male) writers to cross gender anti-slacker biases even when they’ve been able to cross cultural ones.
Notable characters:
Harold, titular slacker #1
Kumar, titular slacker #2
Dr. Patel, Kumar’s dad and voice of the immigrant work ethic expectation
Billy Carver, Harold’s coworker who functionally functions as the “villain” and the “privileged” slacker (my term…more on that later)
Cindy Kim, the seemingly prototypically careerist, studious international Asian student.
Maria, the girl next door who, in typical early 2000’s comedy fashion, exists to be hot and telegraph Harold’s figurative growth of a “pair.”
Meet the slackers: Harold and Kumar
Harold, the true protagonist, is very much not a slacker. When we meet him, in fact, he’s being overworked by colleagues eager to exploit his “Asian” diligence (“I’m telling you, those Asian guys love crunching numbers. You probably made his weekend!”) Accordingly, his “growth” arc is clear: get a little Big Quit Energy and learn to set some boundaries.
Kumar fully embodies the slacker archetype. We meet him purposefully sabotaging his med school interviews (despite his high intellect) while milking his dad’s allowance as much as possible, despite pressure from his entire family to achieve a high-status career.
Their World: The NY/NJ Metro area
I.e. the work-humpiest region on Earth. This isn’t small town Jersey a-la Clerks, but more of an office-park corporate hellscape a-la Office Space. And like in the latter world, the specter of downsizing looms over Harold’s life, coercing him to grin and take exploitative assignments. That and, for our slackers, of course a nice layer of the rude, racist, homophobic provincialism that the Northeast US low-key (not so low key?) delivers along with the best.
Within this world, the film also finds time to poke fun at the obsessive careerism of Asian-Americans—both young adults and the families who pressure them.
What does our slacker want and what’s in the way? (defining desire vs. opposing force)
At face value, just weed and White Castle–the whole purpose of their road trip. But underneath they seek a more elevated form of hedonism: the permission to slack, blow off steam, make mistakes, AND still feel accepted by the world around them. In the way is, well, the LACK of permission that their culture and society (and, ultimately, their own “inner bosses”) grant them to do all this.
How does the film define a “slacker” in broader terms?
Of all the films in our series, I feel like H&K implies the most straightforward definition: someone who blows off work and responsibility, plain and simple. Unlike other films in the series, our slackers have a fairly clear sense of their path in life (neither of them making drastic life changes at the end of the film), but are either burnt out by the way they’re approaching it (Harold) or avoiding getting started altogether (Kumar).
Could anyone other than a White an Asian dude pull off slacking in this story world?
I think so! Beyond centering two Asian-American protagonists, it actually–upon further reflection after I criticized the writers for Plan B–showcases some female characters who at least dabble in slackerism. For example: Cindy, the girl who Harold dismisses as a boring and studious international student turns out to have it in her to throw a huge banger.
Does the film “approve” of slacking? Is it a broader anti-job statement?
This is not an anti-work film: no dismantling systems or questioning basic mores here. However, I think it approves of “pockets” of slacking as part of a balanced, healthy life, which puts it somewhat ahead of its time. If the 2000s-2010s were peak millennial work-humperism and the 2020s are the disillusionment era where corporate lip service to self-care is in vogue, H&K feels more contemporary to today.
Yet even if everyone conforms to careerism in the end, it’s hard to call the film conformist when it contains perhaps the most radical monologue in the genre: Kumar’s climatic speech that reframes the immigrant American dream from the duty to work tirelessly to the duty to enjoy America’s plentiful and delicious fast food.
Finally, similar to The Big Lebowski, the film condemns slackers who do their slacking on the back of other people, and does so more explicitly.
It’s very telling that Harold and Kumar doesn’t start with the protagonists (as most films conventionally do), but with two of Harold’s White colleagues. The opening scene portrays them sympathetically, as one is trying to encourage the other to get over his ex, ditch his work, and have some fun this weekend. If you didn’t know the film’s title and marketing, you may think the film was about them–until they make a heel turn and devise to have their fun by exploiting Harold’s work ethic.
What I like about this introductory “red herring” is that it points to the genre and suggests that behind all those white dude slackers we cheer, there are people who labor invisibly (usually minorities and/or women) to pick up their slack. This nascent critique of slacker’s “collateral damage” in H&K was explored more in-depth in the genre’s last notable entry, The Beach Bum (analysis forthcoming!).
What does the film see as “the enemy” in broader terms?
Cultural expectations of work ethic, careerism, and perfect behavior as they’re projected onto ethnic minorities. Both characters struggle with the pressure to be perfect, both from their family but (more insidiously) from a society that will only accept them conditionally as long as they “work harder” (something that’s given as “helpful” advice to marginalized people of all types).
Walt Wiltman’s favorite line
Grant Cardone’s work-humper take
“You’re either an eater or a hunter. Folks, Harold and Kumar are just eaters, driving for miles instead of channeling their craving to seize the 10X opportunity of filling the market gap and franchising some new, more conveniently located White Castles. Play small, stay small!"
Are there any slacker-like innovations in the technique of the film itself?
Plot / Setting
Plotwise, I’ve already highlighted the “red herring” start to the story and the fact that Harold has a concrete “growth arc” (which, while common for protagonists in most mainstream films, is definitely NOT common in slacker films). He “grows” to learn to set boundaries and not let himself be exploited (at least by his coworkers–bosses are absent altogether in this story). He doesn’t become a slacker, but at least he’s no longer a workhorse for other slackers.
The plot overall is very vignette-driven instead of linear. While it shares this with most slacker films, I suspect this is primarily driven by seemingly EVERY mainstream early aughts comedy’s complete disregard for plot cohesion.
Cinematography / Camera use / Color / Mise-en-scéne
Editing / Pacing
Sound / Music
What would I want to keep for our slacker film? What do I want to leave behind or improve?
KEEP
The exploration of how different ethnic groups face unique pressure to justify themselves through work and careerism. This remains the central theme of Sirena and the freedom from these pressures is shaping up to be her driver, just like it was for Harold and Kumar.
LEAVE OR PUSH
The gratuitous homophobia in Harold and Kumar (which to be fair to the writers, Plan B later tries to atone for).
As much as I like this film, it lacked a bit in the way of “slacker” innovations in its non-plot techniques and felt like a very conventional early-aughts comedy. Not that this isn’t enjoyable, but if possible I’d like our film to feel different than whatever the conventions of today are.
It’s a shame that the slacker genre more–or-less petered out after Harold and Kumar came out, because this film started to lay the groundwork for the genre to become more self-reflexive and self-critical. I’m not saying there's been a revival of the genre in recent years, but if there is one, H&K may have laid the blueprint for the themes that guide it.
Next entry: The Beach Bum
One that, to be fair, hasn’t been explored THAT in depth, as the genre fell off (with a couple exceptions) after 2004. Hence our own film project.
Amazingly I've never seen this film. As you described it, in basic contours, it does seem like other early aughts comedies. Old School and Dodge Ball follow similar rough plots. No exploration of minority views (or very minor) but similar plots, with maybe a bit more or less of an arc than Harold or Kumar experience.
It's interesting that in plots of old, a character would undergo an enormous evolution. That's the arc of Shakespeare's Henry V in the two parts of Henry IV. Or Luke Skywalker. Or even Hot Rod into Rodimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie.
Maybe slacker movies, including H&K, are also critiquing that arc of transformations? Arguing such a transformation isn't possible or realistic.
As always I loved your analysis, L Vago.