War (What Is It Good For?)

Absolutely nothing, but you wouldn't know that from the people who were trying to fan the flames intergenerational warfare during the high times of GenXmania. That's at least part of the story I want to tell in the "junior year" part of the thesis.

Since this section details life for Generation X in 1993-94 (with related currents), I'm anchoring it with 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?, a book that represents the hasty body of anti-GenX work that assaulted the nation's bookshelves. While authors Neil Howe and Bill Strauss have some interesting research on the 13 various and sundry U.S. generations that had come of age, this tome did its darnedest to cement the timeless prediction that our generation was doomed to do worse than its parents. (So that I stop wearing out the library's copy, it's worth noting that I just ordered it used on Amazon for 10 cents. Yes, one thin dime ... plus more than $3 handling. Eh, I'll get plenty of use from it, then maybe burn it at some point.)

I've already repeatedly pointed out the folly of Howe and Strauss in 1993 predicting disaster for a generation whole oldest members were just reaching their 30s and whose youngest members were just graduating college, so I'll spare you that. At this juncture, I could also dovetail other spiteful books like Peter Sacks (pseudonym) negotiating teaching on the community-college level in Generation X Goes To College (his lesson was that treating GenX students like a bunch of children helped him win tenure ... and he's proud of it?) and Bernard Carl Rosen's strangely paranoid and Croc Hunteresque look at "Elite Xers" befouling the workplace in Masks and Mirrors: Generation X and the Chameleon Personality.

The chapter/section is about strife, mainly manufactured strife, so it may be a good time to include the 1994 movie stinker Reality Bites. This misguided attempt to appeal to Xers who moviemakes believed were choosing between slacking and working for a living "appeared in its finished incarnation as if it had been assembled by cyborgs programmed to display Gen-X traits," Jonathan Bernstein wrote, as "its assumption of generational commonalities turned off more than it attracted." Adds Peter Hanson: "...the idea of Gen Xers drawing strength from generational identity is laughable ... saying in 1994 that different segments of Generation X can learn from and love each other, as Reality Bites did, is as wide-eyed as suggesting in 1969 that the hawks and doves of the Vietnam era could live in peace."

What about generational struggle depicted in film? Bernstein says this infuses myriad John Hughes movies. But a better example, albeit a movie from 1989, may be the unassuming yet excellent Say Anything... We see John Cusack's proto-slacker Lloyd Dobler -- who is only interested in the lovely, smart Diane Court and becoming a professional kickboxer -- at loggerheads with Diane's father, played by John Mahoney. At one point, Lloyd awkwardly explains to Mr. Court and his business associates that he doesn't "want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or proceseed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career." We learn that his rival, Diane's father, not only makes a living running nursing homes but salts away bundles of cash by filching funds from the elderly residents. The movie may send him to jail for screwing an older generation, but karmically, Bernstein insists, "his implicit and far more heinous felonies were smothering his daughter with love and interfering in her romance with a cool dude."

There is a lot to say about how GenX had a different view of relationships and marriage -- having seen their parents explode the institution in record numbers -- that can be viewed through accounts as well as movies/TV. This isn't something I've developed much yet, but as my "junior year" section looks at different types of Xer turbulence, this may be a place for it.

And what of the other big news item of 1994 -- the Republican Revolution? Is the country's rightward shift a cultural movement that has anything to do with Xers? I really don't know, although its roots have as much to do with a still sluggish economy, a polarizing president and relentless branding/messaging on the part of the GOP. What part my generation played in this may/may not be a consideration. This could also be included in next section, the "senior year" which covers GenX growing up, graduating (from whatever) and joining the working world.