‘Reality Bites’ Is Thirty Years Old. Is It Dated, or More Relevant Than Ever?

The most devastating scene in the 1994 Gen X classic Reality Bites comes when its protagonist, 23-year-old Lelaina Pierce (played by Winona Ryder) interviews for a job at the Houston Chronicle. She’s been fired from her job as an assistant at a local TV morning show, can’t make rent, and she is too proud to take a job at the Gap. The editor interviewing her is skeptical of her motives, noting her lack of relevant experience, but, over Lelaina’s insistence that newspapers are the watchdogs of society, gives her a one-question test to see if she’s got what it takes. “All right,” she asks Ryder’s character, “Define ‘irony.’ ” Lelaina, flustered and in an elevator whose doors are closing, stammers. “It’s a noun,” she asserts. “It’s when…

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