Hi-Fi Cadets

Hi-Fi Cadets (1990), a small classic during which a TV is emblazoned ‘1960,’ boldly appropriates John F. Kennedy, providing his image with a strange form of afterlife. A cutout JFK wanders into a neighborhood tavern and drinks Mr. Boston with the black patrons until he passes out, alone at the bar. Klahr uses both photographs and editorial cartoons of Kennedy and, at one point presents him as the janitor of what seems to be an all-girl high school where the English class is studying Henry IV. The film’s ending is sweetly mysterious-accompanied by celestial music, a young woman (student, teacher, Kennedy’s date?) blasts off in an outsized coffee cup into a cluttered, Disneyesque vision of the cosmos. —Light Industry