Destination Unknown

On the flip side, by the time Xers became old enough to decide what movies they wanted to see, they encountered a parade of films that showed adults as unreliable and unworthy. Continuing a real-life “lineage of divorce and dysfunction, adults became the enemy,” film critic Jonahtan Bernstein wrote in Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies. “If they weren’t entirely absent (how many hundreds of films used ‘my parents are away for the weekend’ as a plot point?), they were stumbling prehistoric buffoons or corrupt intransigent fascists” mainly existing to stand “in the way of the hero or heroine achieving their desires.”

If our representative, Jenn X, were born in 1973, chances are the movies of John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, among others) throughout the 1980s were among the first films marketed to her. The Boomer filmmaker treats parents and adults with near universal scorn in these movies, Bernstein explains:

All representations of adult authority were characterized in the Hughes canon as cringing, vindictive, foul-smelling, prehistoric, bewildered and spiritually undernourished. … Parents were tyrannical in their expectations. They were criminal in their neglect. They were simpleminded. They were devious. They were archaic in their remove from modern times. They were pathetic in their attempts to acclimate themselves to the new age. In short, they were across-the-board unqualified to shepherd their offspring through the choppy waters of the teen years.

Among the film images of the 1980s, a couple of timeless and prominent ones have emerged that I have identified as “proto-slackers”: Heroic shirkers of adult-directed responsibilities before the “slacker” label or Generation X stereotypes had gelled. The eponymous lead character of Ferris Buehler’s Day Off and young romantic Lloyd Dobler of Say Anything… both represent roles that have taken on near-mythical status among Xers, even as they prefigured the popularized perceptions of the generation.

In portraying the charming and rascally yet deviant Ferris Buehler, Matthew Broderick presents a baby-faced underachiever who funnels his creative energy into subverting authority instead of following the society-approved path to success. In the Hughes-directed 1986 movie, Ferris convinces a couple of friends to join him in his quest to enjoy one final day of frivolity before they part ways and drift into the less-than-fun process of adulthood. His parents, while loving, are clueless to his scheming and easily fooled by his shenanigans. His archenemy, the vile and hapless school administrator Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), suffers a series of misadventures in his attempts to foil the teens’ fun. By the final credits, Ferris and friends have gained memories and wisdom from their day of slacking, while Rooney’s attempts to enforce order have earned him nothing but humiliation. Young rebels 1, authority figures 0.

In Say Anything…, which despite initially modest box-office numbers has gone on to become what reviewer Timothy Shary called “one of the best received youth films” of its times, protagonist Lloyd Dobler -- played by John Cusack as a well-intended, funny and modest guy -- successfully pursues Diane Court, the attractive valedictorian of his recently graduated class. While the movie seems to imply they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and that her future appears much brighter than his, Lloyd's sense of humor and earnestness nonetheless win over a Diane who ordinarily would seem out of his league. Played by the affable Cusask, Lloyd represents a kind of everyman who succeeds by going against conventional wisdom; asked by another partygoer how he managed to get such a pretty, seemingly unapproachable young woman like Diane Court to attend a graduation party with him, Lloyd simply responds: "I called her up."

But Lloyd has little in the way of future prospects: He would like to become a professional kick-boxer (“The sport of the future,” he calls it) and Diane’s father believes he is a threat to his daughter’s bright future, and the expected generational conflict ensues. In a dinner set up to embarrass Lloyd, the teen rambles about his ambitions with a passage that concludes: “I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career.” Bernstein observes: “A few years down the line and a speech like that would have made Lloyd the hit of the party, a living, breathing poster boy for generational malaise.” In the end, Diane’s father heads off to jail for embezzlement, while the young lovers prepare to fly together to London, where Diane has won an impressive fellowship. Young rebels 2, authority figures 0.

Not all teen films ended so happily. By the time Jenn X completes kindergarten, the teen slasher flick trend has begun with 1978’s Halloween. That franchise, as well the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Streets series (to say nothing of the many inferior copycat examples of the genre) would serve as morality plays that found most teens succumbing to temptation and the other crushing forces of the world. They proved enormously popular, representing 60 percent of U.S. premieres by 1981, as well as half of that year’s top-50 grossing films.

One could argue that these films followed the anti-child backlash of the 1970s posited by Holtz. The slashers tended to be avenging wrongs instituted by past teens, which one could perceive as hinting at generational conflicts or the sins of their fathers. Shary said these movies show transgressions of purity by youth being punished by a greater evil while ineffective adult entities -- parents, the law, teachers or other social institutions -- were powerless to stop the carnage. The lone survivor was usually a young woman, a virgin who had retained her innocence in a corrupt and corrupting world. Whether one views these films as normative, fantasy or merely deranged, placing them within the context of Gen Xers coming of age exemplifies some of the messages they received from growing up on pop culture.

Back in real America, the promised peace and prosperity from the approaching end of the Cold War appeared unlikely to materialize. An economic downturn that struck younger workers especially hard continued to deepen. In January 1991, U.S. troops went into battle to drive Iraqi troops out of oil-rich Kuwait. Many cynical young Americans saw it as a rich man’s war indicating that the new world order looked a lot like the old one. “Well, we won the war. Patriotic propaganda is in full effect,” a then-unknown young man named Kurt Cobain wrote in his journal at the time. “We have the privilege of purchasing Desert Storm trading cards, flags, bumper stickers and many video versions of our triumphant victory. When I walk down the street I feel like I’m at a Nurenburg rally.”

So as Jenn X and her cohort headed to college in fall 1991, they did so at a time of uncertainty. Members of her generation had spent their lives in the shadow of the Boomers, seeing less of their parents than any previous age’s children, and virtually unnoticed (save one Time article) by the people who count. By the end of her first semester, however, three unlikely pop culture phenomena would come together to give her generation a name, a spotlight and much more attention than they ever wanted.