"... by a vapid clutch of contemporary trendspotting articles.... Klosterman has come not to bury these stereotypes but to praise them.... 'Among the generations that have yet to go extinct,' Klosterman writes, 'Generation X remains the least annoying.' Its nihilistic blend of lassitude and disaffection, in his analysis, guarantees a minimum of whinging, quite unlike the 'self-righteous outrage,' 'policing morality,' and 'blaming strangers for the condition of one’s own existence' typical of other generations. For the rusted youth of the nineties, 'solipsism was preferable to narcissism'; later, he contrasts their 'anti-commercialism' (discerning, optimistic) with the supposed 'anti-capitalism' (totalizing, pessimistic) of millennials.... If Gen X disengagement and ironic fence-sitting were brought up short by Bush v. Gore and 9/11 and the rise of social media, he wants to preserve the nineties as a safe space for his cohort.... He has no patience for partisan rashness, for passionate convictions that would break upon his ghostly solitude."
From "Chuck Klosterman Brings Back the Nineties/In a nostalgic tour through the decade, Klosterman defends Gen X as today’s 'least annoying' generation" by Frank Guan (The New Yorker).
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The Matrix trilogy was said to be set at the height of that civilization - The 90's.
It was glorious.
They were pretty shit on so they don’t have lots if self esteem…
Gen X is the least annoying generation (assuming it actually is) because they are in their forties and early fifties. At that age, people are making a living and supporting families and taking care of things generally. They don't have time to be screeching about unimportant things, and they aren't old enough to be out of touch.
In short they are acting their age.
People don't act their generation, they act their age.
The generations have distinct "identities" only insofar as they share superficial things like memories of the same big events or devotion to the bands of their teen years.
Funny. I just ran across this tweet before popping over here to see if there's anything new to read:
Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth)
With the Boomers joining forces with the Millennials to cancel Rogan on Spotify, can we finally all agree that GenX was The Last Good Generation?
Après nous, le déluge.
Douglas Coupland's "Generation X" is one of my favorite novels. I was in my 2nd real job working in Silicon Valley when the book was released. Coupland's descriptions of "McJobs" and "veal fattening pens" to describe office cubicles resonated with me. I am a fence sitting far middle "kid" to this day!
We are certainly not a “great” generation, but unlike others I could mention, we never tried to reshape society to fit our delusions, we just asked to be left alone for a while. And then once the Boomers finally started retiring, we sighed, rolled up our sleeves and took over their jobs, usually with more hours and for crappy benefits.
And as thanks for our efforts, we get sneered at by the Boomers’ bratty, woke children
Preach it, Brother Chuck!
Bleah. Is "whinging" going to be an American word now?
Or is this some Brit talking.
What's wrong with good old "whining"?
Is that a little too on point?
They can shove "whinging" in their "arse."
The often strained Gen X experience as shown by the character Brad from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982):
"You know what Mrs. O'Rourke, you don't know me at all. I broke up with my girlfriend this year, I lost my job at All American Burger and two other places. I wake up, at 5:30 to go to work at Mi-T-Mart. Then, I go to school and, go back to Mi-T-Mart. My grades aren't that bad and, you're telling me the fun is over. Man, I'm still waiting for the fun to start!"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083929/characters/nm0001662?ref_=tt_cl_c_3
Gen X was born into the bad teenager stereotypes created by the post-WW2 spoiled brats and then forced to deal with it. The large Boomer generation insisted that creaky old Woodstock music and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones be played 24/7, so Gen X was forced underground. As fewer in number and younger than the Boomers, they never had a chance to control the culture.
But, they gained perspective and ultimately turned into Krysten Sinema.
I agree with the sentiment, but the fact that it's Chuck Klosterman's sentiment makes me want to disagree with it.
Nothing ever made me hate Generation X as much as the movie "Reality Bites." All the lassitude, the whining, the "oh, my gawd, I just can't LIVE without my cigarettes and coffee," and especially all the Ethan Hawke... blech! Surprising that it was directed by Ben Stiller, because "The Ben Stiller Show," his MTV sketch-comedy show (which is available for streaming, but you'd have to pay for it), skewered '90s culture quite effectively.
If Klosterman and some commenters here want to admit that the parents of these sterling Gen X people must have done a superb job of bringing them up in righteousness, I'm all ears.
It's always nice to be appreciated.
The '90s music is the best. The '90s movies are the best. I am not Gen X, but I call 'em like I see 'em. And Bush v Gore was only a trauma to committed partisans, he got re-elected handily.
Word.
Generation X was also one of the better and more tuneful British punk groups in the 1970s. Billy Idol was their lead singer, and he went on to a more widely recognized and successful solo career.
I always preferred Singles to Reality Bites.
Hence the nineties are heralded as “perhaps the last period in American history when personal and political engagement was still viewed as optional,”
And who is to blame for making the personal political and denying Americans the option to check out on politics and just live their lives, the way, the myth goes, that Herman Hesse did? Well the Republicans, because they are so inherently evil that you people have to give up your rom coms, your love songs, your enjoyable movies to be hectored constantly by the left on politics, no matter from what art form you wish to imbibe.
The end of the nineties is when the transition happened like that from Ancient Greece to Ancient Rome. Homer was the poet of the Greek nation, and Virgil was the poet of the Roman state. Art went from "no subject is off limits" to "art must. support the ruling class's right to rule."
We are now living "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (Not the movie, which was only touched on the book)
Gen X less annoying? Later generations did inherit and exaggerate the annoying traits of Xers, making us forget just what earlier generations hated about GenX. What we say about Millennials and GenZ has a lot of overlap with what earlier generations said about GenX, though the complaint back then was more mopiness and emotionality than general fecklessness.
I do have a fondness for the Late Boomer/Early Xer culture of the Eighties and early Nineties. The Seventies made us all sick of the Early Boomers, but I suspect Klosterman is also just defending his own generation.
Was that the decade that crushed the moussed-hair-and-pop-the-collar decade?
I get 'em all mixed up.
If you don't see Reality Bites as a skewering then you're not GenX.
Last year, the majority of old people who were left to die in care homes by their children who feared the government were parents of "Gen-X" children. (the earlier generations might have done worse, but most of their parents were dead already).
I am almost never tempted to contempt, but when someone praises himself for being Gen-X, I am tempted.
I mean there is a whole bit in Reality Bites abput Ryder's character not being able to define irony! The one characteristic that was supposed to proudly define Gen X. It's totally a self-depracating comedy. Including Stillers turn as the anti Gen X Gen exer.
I’m a Gen Xer. I was the last generation to play in the woods from sun up to sun down in elementary with no parental supervision. I was the the generation to who could get into a fist fight at school and be allowed to learn the lesson one derives from a first fight (be tough enough to defend yourself and smart enough to avoid fighting). I chose how I’d spend about 90% of my free time. My parents expected me to figure things out and taught me to make decisions by not making all my choices.
I also grew up in a world where 9/11 wasn’t the worst event ever (though it was very bad). The worst even was a nuclear Holocaust that never happened because Reagan almost single-handedly stopped it.
The music of my parents generation and my generation turned out to be some of the best music ever and I can’t figure out how that much talent existed at one time.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s with comedy that made us think and ponder big questions (All in the Family, MASH, Family Ties, Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, etc).
My had brought home Pong is when I was 4 years old. So I’ve seen video games since my earliest memories and it amazes me where things are today. But I also miss my Atari.
I grew up to be independent, self reliant, and close with my friends.
I hate what we’ve stolen from children because we want them all to be perfectly safe.
Gen X was different in that we had a different experience than prior generations. We grew up during the shift of mothers into the workforce. We also were young when divorce rates began climbing. There was a lot of instability four Xers when we were young
In Reality Bites, Ethan Hawke gets the girl, but Ben Stiller gets the career. It worked out that way in real life too.
I was an 80's kid and a 90's teenager, and I am pretty much on the cusp between Gen X and Millennials, but I choose to associate with Gen X'ers because of how obnoxious I find Millennials to be. That said, the 90's were a train wreck as far as music goes, with very little worth celebrating after the mid nineties. The 80's had far better music, and most of what was good about 90's music was pretty much just the tail end of the 80's, plus grunge and electronica.
"The worst even was a nuclear Holocaust that never happened because Reagan almost single-handedly stopped it."
What near-nuclear holocause was this?
I am sorry, but all this Gen This and Gen That seems empty to me. Maybe because I long ago stopped keeping up with the pop cultural styles by which many her seem to mark off these artificial generational boundaries. I am a pre-Boomer, 1942. I grew up thinking my brother's generation, 1940, really missed the boat -- too uppity and snooty, whereas mine was just about right. All the rest of the gens that have come after are a big blur, only each one reminding me of how sure I once was that my generation was the one. "Never trust anyone over thirty." (Dylan also is not a Boomer.) I have a 30-something relative who took it upon herself recently to lecture me about the vast new insights her Millennials have all finally worked out amongst themselves for the first time in history -- cisgender that, heteronormativity this, implicit misogyny, overcoming transphobia, racism and white privilege, etc, etc. I did not have the heart to tell her it all started with Gramsci, Marcuse, Foucault, Crenshaw, and a whole pasel of academic lightweights, not a one of whom is a Millennial.
What near-nuclear holocause was this?
Comrade Marvin was asleep for the Cold War. (At least that's what he wants us to believe.)
Are you willing to admit that communism was directly responsible for the murder of 100 million people yet?
I started to read the linked article but stopped when I came upon this sentence: Congressional Republicans began engaging in a pattern of militant obstruction that climaxed, last year, in grassroots Republicans sacking the Capitol." I tried reading beyond that point, but then I asked myself why I would keep reading when the author is that deluded? Not having a good answer, I bailed on the article.
I can only remember my own generation, and those adjacent. My parents were GG, my brothers and I Boomed, and my son is X (I had to cheat and google the value of X).
IOW, these designations are about as substantive, usually, as journo-jargon like "Year of the Angry White Man." (Which was what, '92, '96 ?)
Gen X is better than the other generations, we just don't care whether you agree or not.
I always find it interesting that relatively minor differences between generations are amplified to create huge distinctions based on so-called shared culture. But no one is commenting on the tectonic shifts in the family - no longer can a family maintain a middle class life with only one income, divorce is so rampant it is almost the norm for many parts of the culture, and narcisim caused many parents to check out of their responsibilities to be parents to their children and not friends. For families that did not undergo these changes, there is not so much difference in generations. Just a few cultural norms that people feel they should obey to be viewed as a good person, but much of it is for show. Stuff like not being judgmental of others (I have yet to meet anyone who does not judge others), showing sensitivity to people doing weird stuff like trying to change their gender (mostly because it doesn't affect them, so it's more libertarian than anything else), and agreeing (at least on the surface) with the prevailing political views (in the voting booth is another story). But people still want the same things in life as always. I wonder how much of the woke stuff we would have if prior generations did not accumulate so much wealth. I see this as the primary rot in the children of boomers. They can afford to not work a career and save for retirement because mommy and daddy will leave them a bundle some day. That's where they find the extra time to worry about pronouns, etc. Sad, because they have no personal life story that they are building, just criticisms of everyone else. As my son says now, he and his wife are too busy for that stuff. Warms my cudgels every time I hear it. To the others, get a life!
Strauss and Howe might not have been right about everything but they were right about a lot of things. This description of Gen-X could have been lifted from their Generations from 1991.
Gen X was the last generation not weaned by the technogods and professional-class oligarchs. We were the last generation to actually be taught by reading and learning to appreciate books. We were the last generation raised in a world where dividing people by race and gender was the ultimate goal of academia. in fact, it was anathema to leading a good civic life.
We were the products of the last middle-class.
I pity or dislike what has come after us.
Critter said..."I always find it interesting that relatively minor differences between generations are amplified to create huge distinctions based on so-called shared culture. But no one is commenting on the tectonic shifts in the family - no longer can a family maintain a middle class life with only one income, divorce is so rampant it is almost the norm for many parts of the culture, and narcisim caused many parents to check out of their responsibilities to be parents to their children and not friends."
Yes, that is exactly what I commented on above. Gen X (usually stated as born 1964-1980 or so) was the generation that were children as those profound changes unfolded. According to CDC/NCHS the divorce rate in the U.S. more than doubled from 1960 to 1980. Women's labor force participation rate climbed from 38.7% in 1964 to 57.5% in 1990. Women's LFR continued to climb but at a much slower rate after 1990 reaching 60% in 1999, but the huge shift happened while Gen X were children.
The world has changed to accommodate women working. There are many after school programs, both at the schools themselves but also daycares and businesses to care for kids when both parents are working. A local chain of Tae Kwan Do studios has vans that they use to take kids from school to the dojo. These things mostly did not exist when Gen X was young. That's when the "latch key kid" became a discussion topic. Boomers and Silents who reject the idea that there was something different for Gen X ignore these huge social changes when Gen X were children.
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