ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an anthropological analysis of a cinematic text, the film "Late Summer Blues". The heroes of the film are young boys and girls facing army enlistment; the main arena is a high school in the city of Tel Aviv; the plot pivots on the preparation of the graduation party; and in the background is the War of Attrition. The "city" and the "country," Tel Aviv and Israel, are two forms of place and of time, in both of which none of the heroes of "Blues" can find a resting-place for himself. The self-reflection methods adopted by the people of "Blues," just like their brief flights of individualism, are limited in advance by the collective frame of reference. The graduation play of the heroes of "Blues" is a rite of passage which becomes a parody due to the lack of connection between the myth and the reality in the lives of the youths.
