Indeed, the culture of the 1970s portrayed in Dazed and Confused — where Dave Wooderson’s hoodlum life involved a seemingly infinite parade of hot-to-trot high-school girls — was a very real phenomenon. Hoodlums in that era had more fear of the cops catching them with a bag of weed than with a 15-year-old girlfriend. If the prosecution of such crimes has become more severe in recent decades, this is not merely a “backlash” of the legal pendulum swinging away from permissiveness, but rather a sober and realistic recognition of the dangers that can result from failing to be vigilant in the protection of youth.
