If This Were A Movie

In his book The Cinema of Generation X: A Critical Study, Peter Hanson raises some interesting thoughts about how GenX filmmakers were influenced by (and one suspects, in turn, influenced) their generational upbringing. The key question in many films he profiled was: "Who am I, and where do I belong?" He said the theme holds for everything from Before Sunrise to Chasing Amy, Reality Bites to The Matrix.

While I hope to anchor my thesis between 1991 and 1995 -- the rise and fall of Xer media hype -- films from outside the period could offer intriguing study. Couldn't we say that Ferris Buehler's Day Off and Say Anything... were proto-slacker movies? What of the post-X-boom plot of The Matrix, of which Hanson asks, "...doesn't Neo's choice to free himself from his pod and fight the powers that be represent a Gen Xer departing the couch to become involved in society, instead of just providing commentary from the sidelines?"

A recurring notion is that Generation X has come through upheavel into a kind of permanent ambiguity. GenX cinema belongs to "the misunderstood, the eccentric, the disenfranchised, and the lost," Hanson writes. "In films made by this generation, which grew up in confusing times, there are no easy answers, and there often are no absolute answers at all." Some people could look at that as the triumph of cynical cinema, but doesn't this also show a willingness to face the reality that is much less black-and-white and much more sloppy than all those fabricated happy endings of the sugary Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals?

It's a bit ambitious, trying to catalogue and categorize films make by those born between 1961 and 1971 (Hanson admits that this leaves out about half of the GenX population, but he adds that he fully expects those born from 1971 to 1981 to also put a stamp on cinema). But his idea that "nearly every protagonist in a notable Gen-X movie is on a quest to understand the meaning of his or her existence" may serve as a very useful plank indeed. Where the mainstream media saw slackers, many of us saw people trying to figure out what to do with their life in the uncertain, confusing times that were the early 1990s.

Around a decade later, I'm not so sure we have any more answers. But we may have enough perspective to ask better questions, gain better insights and write better narratives.