Mark sits in his makeshift radio studio and assumes the Hard Harry persona.

Pump Up the Truth: Christian Slater Plays a Cultural Prophet by NICK MEADOR

At the turn of the 1990s, the Allen Moyle film Pump Up The Volume pushed the value of free speech via access to FM radio, inadvertently predicting today’s digital culture.

Pump Up The Volume is the story of disaffected high school student Mark Hunter (played by a young Christian Slater), whom has recently been relocated to the fictional Paradise Hills, Arizona (perhaps modeled after Phoenix suburb Paradise Valley?) when his father took a position as superintendent of the public school district. To ease the transition, Mark's parents give him an FM radio set with the strange hope that he will be able to communicate with his old friends on the east coast. Since the FM set cannot reach far beyond the city limits, Mark instead uses the transmitter to broadcast music and monologues.

His shows are unedited, unregulated and commercial free. When he plays music, he does so illegally. Mark broadcasts every night at 10 pm, initially as a way to pass the time. He's bored with his new surroundings and doesn't want to put forth the effort to make friends. He never expected many people to stop on his frequency, let alone give a hoot about his content. A scan of his cassettes (Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, Concrete Blond, Bad Brains, and Ice T) and LPs (Leonard Cohen, etc), and close attention to the music that Mark plays on the air (Beastie Boys, The Descendents, and those previously mentioned), shows an strange amalgam of styles that is nevertheless appropriate for the birth of the alternative era.

Mark performs under the pseudonym Hard Harry and preaches a "talk hard" philosophy, inspired by the work of Lenny Bruce. He takes advantage of the soapbox to bash his new community, his parents, his peers, and practically everything else he's seen since moving to the cookie-cutter oasis. Mark harbors an interesting hatred for the '60s, rightfully claiming that the hippie revolution didn't really accomplish anything for the people involved, or for society as a whole. He swims in obscenity, not only playing offensive music but also regularly simulating masturbation on the air. During Hard Harry's first broadcast, he claims he's living in an "exhausted decade where there's nothing to look forward to and no one to look up to." (He's probably referring to the end of the '80s, when writing and filming would have taken place.)                                  

At the start of the film, the public has already taken notice of Hard Harry's antics. Instead of wasting away at local malls or convenience stores, students gather for informal listening parties where the transmission is strongest: at the school's baseball field. Fans write in with comments, criticisms, love letters, and pleas for advice. They send the notes to a P.O. Box that Mark has reserved, and if they include a phone number, Mark promises to call them back. Here emerges the first parallel with modern times. Mark receives fan mail like a blog or Facebook wall gets comments, and those letters are read over the air for the public to hear. This allows for a new way to exchange ideas: asynchronous communication in an open public forum.                 

However, the equation is not that simple. First of all, Mark uses a voice disguiser on the air, so Hard Harry is an indistinguishable baritone. Mark senses the importance of anonymity, at least partially recognizing the danger of his actions. This concept of entering a telecommunications domain would explode in the mid-90s, when anyone with AOL and a 13.3 kbs modem could type their heart away in a chat room. The up: a person could say whatever he or she wanted to, with less of that pesky face-to-face inhibition to worry about. The down: LuVrGrL17 might actually be a hairy, 45-year-old pedophile. Similarly, listeners have no immediate way to prove who Hard Harry is, or determine his true intentions. They just have a gut feeling that this person is doing something important and fascinating.                 

Mark starts attracting negative attention the first time he acts as a whistle-blower. He borrows a document from his father, the superintendent, containing secret information about a series of expulsions at his high school. Hard Harry calls the school's head guidance counselor to inquire into the matter, and at first, the counselor is delighted by the attention from a radio personality. Mark asks why a pregnant student was expelled, and the question infuriates the counselor, who then hangs up the phone. The unanswered question builds throughout the film to eventually unveil an evil plot driven by the principal, but we'll return to that later.

Meanwhile, Nora Diniro is a reserved, artistic type who listens to Hard Harry's show compulsively. She jots down clues revealed during the broadcasts, in a sort of primitive version of Facebook stalking, to ascertain the radio host's true identity. Mark only knows her as "The Eat-me-beat-me Lady," a mysterious woman who submits kinky poetry handwritten in black ink on blood-red paper, but who never lists a phone number. Nora, too, desires to be heard, but is afraid of the consequences of going public. Or even worse, she and Mark are probably both terrified of their own potential as students, as creators, and as human beings. Also, an idea that sprouts from an anonymous source -- one that has no roots or chains holding it down -- can potentially survive longer than one that is constantly attributed to a specific person or group. In that case, if the person fails, the idea probably will too.                 

Mark's response to Nora's actions reflects the way people now use social networking web sites (i.e. -- MySpace, Friendster, etc) to present a more desirable version of themselves. "I bet in real life she's probably not that wild. I bet she's kinda shy, like so many of us briskly walking the halls, pretending to be late for some class, pretending to be distracted. Hey, poetry lady, are you really this cool? Are you out there? Are you listening? I feel like I know you, and yet we'll never meet. So be it." This phenomenon peaked around 2005, when MySpace users still felt like they owned their self-designed profile. And when it seemed possible to make friends or date in a virtual environment. And, undoubtedly, when the News Corporation didn't own the website and mine the posted data for highly advanced advertising techniques, as they do today.

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