Writer and director Richard Linklater, depicts great cultural mise-en-scene components in the 1993 film "Dazed and Confused." The theme of the film is centered around the day in the life of a high school class coming of age in the bicentennial year 1976; last day of class. The music of Aerosmith's song Sweet Emotion plays in the opening scene. The lyrics in the first verse sets the tone of what the theme of the film centers around. The words proclaim, Talk about things and nobody cares, and the last line of the verse, Can't say where I'm gonna be in a year. Brilliant setting for the film to set its cluster of characters around. This made me be alert to the significance of the choice of music in each scene to come. With each scene that had music playing in the background or in a transition from scene to scene there was a symbolic subject and theme. For example, when the dismissal bell rings the song Schools Out (Alice Cooper), Why Can't We Be Friends (War) when the incoming freshman girls are being hazed, No More Mr Nice Guy (Alice Cooper) when the freshman was being paddled by the upperclassman, and Hurrican (Bob Dylan) when the patriarch of the movie Woodson (Matthew McConaughey) enters the Emporium as if he owns the place. It is apparent the Linklater uses this form of mise-en-scene with music choices he made throughout the film. Even up to the last scene when the song Slowride (Foghat) plays as four of the main characters "slowride" out of town depicting "take it easy". This movie's soundtrack could tell the story completely off of the song choices and lyrics, not much dialogue necessary. .
The costumes and props Linklater used in the film Dazed and Confused were in align with the setting of 1976 bicentennial year. The clothes of tight high wasted jeans, polyester pants, silk shirts was the style from that era. Cars scenes were a central mise-en-scene significance throughout the film.
