Note: please don’t write me to tell me how much you don’t believe in astrology. It’s just no fun.
As you probably know, Friday began the Year of the Rabbit; as it happens, I am also a Rabbit, and apparently one of the last generations of Gen-X figuring stuff out. (I gather we take a while on this front.)
If I have to be a rabbit, it's going to be a killer bunny.
Penelope Trunk read yesterday’s Star-Wars-inspired Volkswagen ad as an ode the newfound (and short-lived) purchasing power of Gen-X. Earlier this year she announced that thanks to Gen-X, the coming decade will be about trust. Citing exactly the sort of study I don’t trust, she concluded that ‘the most pronounced traits of Gen X are ‘no patience for veneers, hierarchy, and BS-laden idealism’ and that this is why we will enter a decade where transparency and honesty are the keys to success.
As much as I’d like to believe it — I’d be a CEO in no time! — I don’t. One might even hazard to observe it’s kind of idealistic to say stuff like that.
I know what Gen-X wants: 80′s movies. We’re still hoping to get Ferris Bueller’s day off; our vision of diversity is a Benetton-inflected take on the Breakfast Club. Underneath the grownup veneer, we like blue eyeshadow and sparkles and music that’s cheerful even when it’s suicidal, and yes even the sexist power rock of the now-dead Robert Palmer. (Face it, you’re addicted to love and you can’t say anything bad because he’s dead.)
Yes, children, it was a wondrous time when pasty, bloated Englishmen cavorted with living mannequins.
Consider the new wave of movies pandering to Gen-X nostalgia: Hot Tub Time Machine was only the beginning, take my word, and soon we’ll have Take Me Home Tonight, featuring actors from the the final throes of Gen-X. Now that the 80′s are officially ‘historic’, the young people need to know their history!
Because of my teaching experience, people have started to ask me for my Gen-X ‘perspective’ on Gen-Y. I find this comical, and tell them exactly what I threatened to in my ‘worst life coach ever’ post. So far, it’s going okay, so maybe Penelope Trunk has a point about people wanting honesty. (What I don’t tell them, however, is that I’m envisioning a world influenced by Fast Times at Ridgemont High — there’s such a thing as too much honesty.)
And of course, when it comes to ‘veneers, hierarchy, and BS-laden idealism’, academia is the premiere location. So maybe Penelope Trunk is right about that, too. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t deal. But I’m not holding my breath on other Gen-X academics.
Most people in grad school are looking for prestige and port-drinking with the Dean. I was looking for Real Genius. Or at least Revenge of the Nerds. By going places where a lot of smart people hung out, I assumed amusing hijinx would ensue. And yeah, we’d totally have to, like, bring down those fear-mongering weapons dealers who were bumming us out but otherwise it would be a relaxed, nerdy utopia of synthesizer-soundtrack bliss — wait a minute, isn’t that exactly the work culture those Gen-X Google guys created? You’re welcome, Mark Zuckerberg, and dammit, Ivory Tower, get with the decade.
What grad school should be like.
Onward, Rabbits! We have only ten years before we are slaves to the Millennials. Might as well get our kicks in now…
Here’s an academic acid test: in Animal House (my personal Star Wars) who’s your avatar?
What? No shout outs to the Wedding Singer or Hatley High or Freaks and Geeks, those movies/shows that really started to make it hip to hurt for the 80’s? I don’t think we’re alone in this as our fellows across the pond have also had an upsurge in 80’s nostoi. But what soundtrack isn’t great without New Order?
I have to agree with your cynical outlook. There might be some hope that we of the age of fluorescent leather ties, vans, and Devo, might be inclined to more straight shooting – I just don’t see much of that yet. Nevertheless, I do often say, after weathering some petty shitstorm, “when I run the zoo” so maybe…
I wonder if our low threshold for BS comes from having more movies with working class boys and girls (think Flashdance, that Richard Gere fella in an Officer and a Gentelman, or…oh…Pretty in Pink! Or Joe in Facts of Life? Even the Janus-faces of Michael J. Fox in Bright Lights Big City and the Secret of my Success were characters from working class, and I think midwestern America). None of these kids today have any hardscrabble heroes and heroines. And our music is so much mo’bettah. Fun post as ever.
The Wedding Singer, OMG you have no idea how much I love Billy Idol for doing that movie, I already loved him anyway. But the movie was the outlier, I think…and Freaks and Geeks was just waaaay ahead of its time. So now we’re seeing the fruition, ha, and we do run the zoo!!!
Hardscrabble, you’re right, I think I might have even read an article about that in some book on eighties movies — see, this is what people who don’t study Classics get to do, grrr!
Don’t forget, Robin Sparkles on How I Met Your Mother (technically, she was a Canadian 90′s popstar, but Canada is so behind that the 90s were like the 80s here in the States).
As for hardscrabble heros, who could forget ending the 1980s with Night Court and Rosanne? Sorry, I’m one of those Gen-X people who was born the last year that it is acceptable to be called Gen-X. So the early 1990s are my 1980s. Sorry.
But I would be Marion Wormer. Yeah, that’s right. I used to be the under-aged 14yo looking to go to a frat party, but now, really, come on. Marion Wormer all the way.
YES! I was hoping someone else would agree, Marion Wormer is my avatar, too, and Verna Bloom deserves more credit than she gets for that role. (Sadly, I have actually written about the evolution of the cougar character).
Ah, Night Court, yes! It’s so hard to pick and choose!
But wait, wasn’t Hot Tub Time Machine precisely anti-nostalgic? Isn’t that exactly why Cusak signed up and took so many pot shots at himself?
Lou: It’s the fucking 80′s guys. Let’s do what we want to do. Free Love!
Jacob: That was the 60′s dipshit.
Adam: We had like Reagan and AIDS. Let’s get the fuck outta here, okay.
Ah, it claimed to be anti-nostalgic, in the same way Colbert claims to be Republican. But the intended audience was happily flashing back to an escapist world of legwarmers, big hair, and Cusack in Better Off Dead. Why else did they have the actors play their thirty-plus selves? Why didn’t we get teenage stand-ins making out with the eighteen-year-old babes?
Also, I made my Gen-Y class report on it, and they didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did. Ergo, whatever its claims, that movie pandered to Gen-X like hell!
Love this post! Okay, seriously, I just fell in like with you a little more. I even pressed the like button to prove it.
Yes, we totally want 80s movies. But don’t forget the 90s too. So maybe I get a little depressed these days when I watch Singles or Empire Records but we are too relevant! So maybe the 90s are to millennials what the 70s are to me. I’m not going to let that scare me.
And I would be a cross between Hoover and Otter.
Aw, it’s been so long since someone’s been ‘in like’, I’m flattered. Otter’s a good one, if I had to pick one of the students I’d certainly go in that direction myself…and the 90′s movies certainly have their charms, but they’re not lodged in my brain in quite the same way.
Real Genius is one of my favorite movies to this day. Every time I had to crunch in college I thought about the guy screaming because he’s brain-fried and no one stopped to notice. Brilliant.
A bit unrelated but as a mom, my 13 year old looks at me like I’m so out of it when I try to convince him that Izod is a really cool brand. Meanwhile, guys are wearing tight collared shirts, girls are in stirrup pants, and someone brought back men in short shorts. But no matter what happens I’m NOT going back to wearing madras. Not happenin’.
The Vandy kids were popping their collars, entirely un-ironically! I agree, though, Madras is out. And that brain-fried scene is, sadly, applicable to the way most students live their lives these days!
ooops….forgot the avatar question…PROFESSOR JENNINGS desperately clutching at a professional life. Wouldn’t schtup my students though.
Prof. Jennings really does capture the suckiness of being of prof when you don’t feel like being the responsible one in the room. But still, I could never shake the feeling that at some level, I just wanted to be one of the frat boys.
I too am on the cusp of Gen X-dom, but I grew up on a healthy TV diet of early MTV and HBO (before my parents realised it was a bit too risque for a young’un). Therefore, I LOVE the 80s. I lived through all of the 80s, but was too young to REALLY live through the 80s. I had sit around and wish I could be a gorgeous teenager like my cousin, and wear weird colourful clothes, and go to the cinema and watch movies like The Breakfast Club. I LOVED Hot Tub Time Machine. I know John Cusack hates reminiscing about his 80s stardom, but I say ‘I Love Lloyd Dobbler Forever’. He can run, but he obviously can’t hide.
P.S. ie Animal House–I think I’d be either Larry Kroger (aka ‘Pinto’), as normally I’m relatively quiet and mild-mannered, but want to hang with the badass cool kids; OR I’d be Otter, as I like his dry-wit and the fact that he’s in the group but has a bit more of a conscious than the others.
As I said above, I agree that Otter is a witty and charming fellow. And I still think John Cusack knew exactly what he was doing in signing up for the ‘anti-nostalgia’ nostalgia film!
Never quite made that connection between grown-up Gen X values and the “Real Genius” workplace. It’s a super hopeful thought, and I hope that that type of workplace will be something that the average person can dream of- not just the millionaire tech geeks.
Been a while since I’ve seen Animal House and I’ll confess that it came out more than half a decade before I was born… but I’m pretty sure I’d be Tom Hulce.
Tom Hulce is an exuberant character, and the world needs some of that too! And now you know the secret to charming a Gen-Xer, just cite movies and wave bright colors around!
Haha! Thanks for the tip, I have a feeling it’ll come in handy one day!
I LOVED Real Genius. I never saw a John Hughes movie until I was 18, but I must have watched Real Genius at least 25 times before I turned 10. As a kid I was convinced that my college experience was going to be a combination of “Real Genius” and “A Different World” (despite the fact that I had no talent for applied science, nor planned to attend a historically black college).
I particularly like this post because after finishing up a PhD in a (non-tech) field, I’ve found myself working for a tech company–and your post reminded me that it’s got way more of a “Real Genius” vibe than anything I actually experienced in the academic world. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there it is. Thanks!
Glad to help. Now all those years of struggling to shove Greek verbs in nodes where 80′s movies lived has finally payed off! Ha!
When I was driving past a high school the other day, the scene outside was almost exactly like Lucas, or Breakfast Club, or Sixteen Candles…the truth remains that EVERYONE wants 80′s movies. Everyone.