Generations (15): Throwbacks | HiLobrow

Throw back to what exactly? So far these kids have done nothing but play at being kids. Will they grow up to be the next outward looking world builders we need them to be? Or, continue to play the cautious, conservative mini-me's they've been to date?

Generation X No More

Joshua Glenn has a great series of essays that rethinks the original Generations nomenclature of Strauss and Howe. First he subdivides each generation into smaller, more nuanced and granular cohorts and then describes each in terms of its contributions to high- and low-brow culture. Interesting reading, especially now that we have groups like the Hardboiled, the New Gods, and the Anti-anti-utopians.

So generation X is no more. We're now Generation PC (64-73) and Net Generation (74-83).

Here's the full list:

1844-53: [Progressive Generation] Prometheans
1854-63: [Progressive, Missionary Generations] Plutonians
1864-73: [Missionary Generation] Anarcho-Symbolists
1874-83: [Missionary Generation] Psychonauts
1884-93: [Lost Generation] Modernists
1894-1903: [Lost, Greatest/GI Generations] Hardboileds
1904-13: [Greatest/GI Generation] Partisans
1914-23: [Greatest/GI Generation] New Gods
1924-33: [Silent Generation] Postmodernists
1934-43: [Silent Generation] Anti-Anti-Utopians
1944-53: Boomers
1954-63: [Boomers, Late Boomers, Post-Boomers, Generation Jones] OGXers
1964-73: [Generation X, Thirteenth Generation] Constructivists
1974-83: [Generations X, Y] Revivalists
1984-93: [Millennial Generation] Throwbacks
1994-2003: [Millennial Generation] TBA

Old People Totally Don't Understand Twilight

I guess it's easy to ignore sweeping generalizations and indulge in oversimplifications and stereotypes when you're not part of the target group being written about. See, I thought Caitlin Flanagan's article was a pretty fair and insightful take on the girl culture of Twilight until I read this and drilled down through the links to read all the exasperated responses.

There's two things I know:

1. Flanagan is sort of notorious for her prelapsarian views on the feminist movement and her unpopular articles on the Mommy wars.

2. Young people hate being talked about by teh Olds (who should just crawl off somewhere and, like, die or something).

So, it's really a lose-lose situation here, and really why spill anymore ink on Twilight. Someday it will have all of the impact of a stack of Flowers in the Attic library discards. Which is to say, meh.

What I liked about the article (and the thing that seems to rile the Youngs the most) was the way it looked at the psychology of why we read what read. The way it took seriously the notion that people are motivated by emotions and ideas that they may not even be aware of. This to me is pretty interesting and shouldn't just be dismissed.

When you think about it, the conscious mind is a powerful engine and a very busy machine that does its level best to get you through all the things you need to be and to do during a given day. One thing it does not like to do, is look at itself. It does not like to examine its own processes. It does not like self-awareness. These things are dangerous and crippling and are likely to throw everything out of joint. Instead it prefers balance and stability, so it will rationalize whatever is going on in your head in order to keep things moving and all those dark, scary thoughts get smoothed over and ignored.

Let's face it, you'd never get out of bed much less go to school or work if your brain let you sit around and think about how stupid and pointless everything is all the time. The rationalizing mind keeps enough of "the happy" bubbling up to keep you moving, getting your work turned in, the bills paid, and food in your stomach.

Similarly, when you read, you might think that what your doing is for pleasure, or for escapism but that's just your ego trying to keep things light and happy. What you're really doing is looking at your mind, getting under the covers to look at all of those nameless creepy crawly things in your brain that drive you and motivate you even if you don't know it. Literature is a tool for examining minds, looking at how other minds solve problems, make judgments, reach decisions, and achieve goals. The details of any given story are the examples used to support the mind's argument. They are the evidence presented in order to persuade you of whatever was in the writer's mind at the time she was writing it.

So if Flanagan wants to argue that the readers of Twilight, or the readers of YA fiction occupy a different headspace than the readers of Ulysses or The Road, I'm inclined to accept that as a given. And I'm also sympathetic to the idea that those same readers are trying to satisfy different emotional and intellectual needs in different ways. What she forgets to acknowledge is that readers don't know that that's what they're doing when they're doing it.

Readers prefer to think that they're reading for pleasure or reading to learn. They want to remain at an intellectual remove from whatever's percolating in their id. They want to engage emotionally and empathetically with what they read, but they don't want you to talk about it and trivialize it. Reading is a great pleasure, but it can also be really, really embarrassing.

So yes, the Twilight series probably does use vampirism as a romantic metaphor for how girls blossom into women, but don't talk about it. That just, like, totally gross.

Now go lock yourself in your bedroom and listen to the Vivian Girls or something.

Stupid White People

At first I didn't "get" it. But now that I do "get" it, I think it's pretty brilliant. The site of course, is Stuff White People Like, and it is a humiliating check list all things educated, liberal, post-boomer people love.

Just keep in mind that the people you think are "white people," aren't actually white people. In all likelihood they are the WKOWP (Wrong Kind of White People). It's also important to understand that the people who would least like to be identified as "white people" in fact are the whitest white people of them all. I.E., you are probably a white person. If you voted for George W. Bush, you are not a white person (you're a WKOWP). If you're a person of color, I don't know what to tell you.

Also, because white people tend to be very sensitive, you'll probably think the site is making fun of you. Don't worry. The language of the site is a complex secret code to keep the WKOWPs at arm's length, and allow non-white people to laugh at our folly, because we probably deserve it. The site, in short, is not a satire of ideas or things or attitudes, but a satire of expectations. You have to dig through the layers:

• Where are the redneck jokes?
• Is this site about me?
• None of the white people I know like this stuff?
• Is this site about ME?
• I'm the least white person you could meet!
• What's wrong with indie rock?
• Is this site racist?
• Is this site ABOUT ME!
• I hate this site.
• What's it saying about ironic t-shirts?

etc., etc.

When they say "Stuff White People Like", they aren't being sarcastic. They really mean it. Which is to say: this is stuff I like, all my friends like, and if you're the right sort of person, you should like also. Wink. Wink. It's sincerity disguised as irony. It's Gen-Y sweetness and light hiding behind Gen-X fear and loathing.

So it's both smart and annoying. The perfect combination.

Gen-Y Rant

A Gen-Xer at Radar has declared war on Millenials (that means you Gen-Y). At long last, it's time to stop hating on the Boomers and start hating on their second families (y'know, the kids your dad had after he divorced your mom). If you know someone who was born between, let's say, 1980 and 1995, they are, in all likelihood, a complete freaking idiot. And as they get older, they will destroy us all.

Like the Boomers before them, they are materialistic and self-absorbed. Their over-inflated sense of self leaves them delusionaly oblivious to their own lack of talent or aptitude, and renders them incapable of the sort of self-reflection or introspection required for personal growth. They destroy everything they touch turning MTV into "The Hills", transforming punk rock into a mall aesthetic, and transforming the internet into endless drunken facebook, drunken texting, and drunken Flicker.

Beyond that, their basic world view is the infantilization of all adult activities, creating nostalgia for nostalgia, and taking with them childish things wherever they go. Toy collecting, kickball playing, emo-listening know-nothings. Who needs to grow up when you've had parents as great as theirs? Who needs personal growth when you've been so well nurtured from the start? Not them, obviously.

And we, as Gen-Xers have been gently putting up them for far too long. If, like me, you've been worried about getting older, worried about getting squeezed out of the next high tech revolution, the next big cultural moment, worried that our entire generation has been cheated out of its due, its turn, every step of the way, then it's time to fight back. As Gen-Xers we're smarter, better, and tougher than either the Boomers or the Millenials, and we need to remind them of that every chance we get.

Don't sell out, don't buy in. Reject wealth. Reject materialism. Reject fads. Reject trends. Reject moving up the corporate ladder. Reject retirement. Reject the idea that your kid is a genius. Reject youth. Reject bobo-ism. Reject hipster consumerism. Reject the masses. Reject politicians. Reject the news. Reject commercial appeal. Reject nostalgia. Reject apocalyptic thinking. Reject careerism. Reject options. Reject collaboration. Reject fear.

So what if you're 30-something, or 40-something? You survived Ronald Reagan. You saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater. You owned Prince on vinyl AND cassette. Heathers and The Breakfast Club are cultural milestones.

Everything they told you when you were 16 was a lie. What, exactly, do you think has changed?

Mom Rock and Ethan Hawke

Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum reviews the soundtrack for the new Ethan Hawke film, The Hottest State:

..it's terrible. The Hottest State soundtrack features a roster of acts old and newish that would draw the envy of Cmdr. Braff: Bright Eyes, Feist, Cat Power, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, etc. But rather than culling the castaway B-sides from this posse, Hawke organizes a tribute session to none other than Jesse Harris-- that's right, the Jesse Harris. You may best know Harris as Norah Jones' guitar player, but he has a solo career in his own right, playing exceptionally harmless jazzy folk/folky jazz in the vein of James Taylor. So basically, Ethan Hawke (and all these other artists, apparently) have all the cutting-edge and adventurous preferences of, say, my Mom's bunko group.

Such a burn!

Of course, Rob is the same guy who wrote that Wilco's Sky Blue Sky "nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise." So clearly, Rob is still dealing with a lot of angsty teenage type oedipal issues. "What's that racket, son?" "It's called music, dad! Jeez! Of course you'd never understand!" Slam. Slam. Stomp. Stomp.

I guess I'd rather rock with Rob's dad, and hang out with his Mom's bunko group. They seem to at least have it together.

Fox News Attacks Mr. Rogers

This is so low, I'm left speechless. The Ectoplasmosis blog has the story and the video:

It’s a disgusting, vile little piece and it’s very likely that you won’t be able to get through all of it. To summarize. Fox News’ argument for Mr. Rogers being “evil” goes like this: he told two entire generations of children that they were “special just the way they are.” Then, in what can only be described as a despicable lie, the Fox News anchors claim that that’s precisely where Mr. Rogers left off. He never taught children anything except to merely exist in a static state of selfish self-entitlement. And that’s why my entire generation is comprised entirely of rapists, murderers, welfare recipients and drug addicts.

According to the video, this whole attack Mr. Rogers stems from the notion that today's college students are somehow entitled and don't feel like they have to earn their grades. Not that there is any actual evidence for this beyond the anecdotal grumblings of college professors and the generational resentments of the boomers in twilight once again asserting that the kids aren't all right (in spite of evidence to the contrary).

The real problem here is that a) Conservatives continually attack and undermine the education system b) Conservatives will attack anyone with progressive views no matter how benign and c) Its Boomer parents who turned College education into a consumer item (to be bought, not earned) with their over-emphasis on careerism and return-on-investment thinking (my kid and my money to insert name of college here).

If someone's paying $20, $30, or $40, 000 dollars a year on college tuition (or whatever it is these days), they make it all about the money. And what are they paying for? Straight A's, a degree, and a top job. Anything less than that leads to quality control problems ("what am I paying for?") and customer service issues out the whazoo! ("what's that liberal nutjob teaching you, anyway?)" And how's anyone gonna pay for all those loans with a Philosophy degree? (so you might as well get rid of everything but engineering, law, and medicine.)

It's not the kids, it's the parents. And for pete's sake, leave Fred Rogers out of it.

Steampunk Socialites

The New York Observer coins a new term, "New Vicotorians", in a lifestyle article on the return of Gen-Y Millenials to more traditional views on marriage. The New Vic world centers around child-bearing, cooking, gardening, knitting, nesting and other modes of bourgeois domesticity that the boomers thought they'd successfully done away with.

...recent years have seen a breed of ambitious, twentysomething nesters settling in the city, embracing the comforts of hearth and home with all the fervor of characters in Middlemarch. This prudish pack—call them the New Victorians—appears to have little interest in the prolonged puberty of earlier generations. While their forbears flitted away their 20’s in a haze of booze, Bolivian marching powder, and bed-hopping, New Vics throw dinner parties, tend to pedigreed pets, practice earnest monogamy, and affect an air of complacent careerism. Indeed, at the tender age of 28, 26, even 24, the New Vics have developed such fierce commitments, be they romantic or professional, that angst-ridden cultural productions like the 1994 movie Reality Bites, or Benjamin Kunkel’s 2005 novel Indecision, simply wouldn’t make sense to them.

Unfortunately, the article eventual devolves into yet another touchstone for female marriage panic. Girls musn't be spinsters in the New Vic world. And after all, isn't this just a new take on 80s era yuppie-ism?

Still, until everyone gets bored of playing house, I look forward to steampunk being the next major fashion trend for these Neo-Victorians and their trendy homes. With mid century modern on its way out, what would be better than Jules Verne inspired espresso makers, mp3 players, hd televisions, and cell phones?