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> Date: Fri, 06 May 1994 08:08:49 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Chris Amirault <amirault@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>

I've been fascinated and annoyed at the ease with which the category
"generations" has been unproblematically taken up by some people on
this list. For example, though I'm sure Evan Heimlich means well enough,
I'm confused by his recent message. He writes that his interest is
"punk rock" and that his post doesn't have "much to do with a genera-
tion per se, as much as it has to do with a cluster of graduating high
school classes." A cluster where? of whom? who do and listen to what?
Isn't this still within a generational logic, just something of a mini-
generation?

I want (again) to make a case for dropping this generational discourse
entirely -- I think that, in such broadly sweeping terms, it is
utterly unhelpful. To take up Evan's thread as a case in point: he
focuses on "social anger" and "punk rock," a category of music that he
argues has a lot to do with the former concept and that is a relevant
category for the kids who graduated from high school in the 1980s
(like me -- 1981). While a lot of what he says is valid and
interesting, the post has implications I want to explore.

I would argue that "social anger" had found its way into pop music
throughout the 70s and 80s in a wide variety of ways: Sly Stone's _There's
a Riot Goin' On_, Bruce Springsteen's _Darkness on the Edge of Town_,
Stevie Wonder's 1972-3 trilogy, Neil Young's early stuff, Grandmaster
Flash's "The Message", even Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_
 -- hell, when did Johnny Paycheck record "Take This Job and
Shove It"? One could go on for a long while (and could rightly locate
that anger in previous "generations"). Now, these angers may not
have been sufficiently anarchist or situationist or whatever, but that
isn't the point: social anger, whatever that means, is by definition a
compontent of virtually all oppositional youth culture; such culture
constructs itself in opposition to the previous generation using tools
like anger, which, as constituted by social groups like "youth" and
"parents" and so on, is necessarily social at some level. Such
persistence makes it even more crucial to locate generational
discourse and see how it functions, instead of merely appropriating it.

Furthermore, whatever "punk" was on these shores had as much to do with
_boredom_ as it did with social anger, which is a familiar element of much
US youth culture, traceable at least through Brando in _Wild One_, through
the NY Dolls ("We like to look 17 and bored shitless," spoke David
Johansen), the Clash (see the subject heading of this msg [moderator's
note:  the original header was "I'm so Bored With Generations"), the
Circle Jerks, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and, of course, Nirvana. And, unlike
social anger, which is a bit tricky (though certainly not impossible) to
market, boredom is an immensely easy sell. Among other things, The "angry
generation" or the "bored generation" is a demographic, and I think it is
crucial not to forget the commodification of generations as another
contribution to this discourse.

This is all to say: I think that the language of generations (or
graduating classes) eludes crucial distinctions that are worth making.
Culture -- especially, I think, youth culture, whatever that is -- is
always already too diffuse and variegated for general statements about
its generational shifts and trends. Chalk that up, in part, to a twist
on Groucho's logic as applied to generations: no one wants to belong to
a generation of which he or she is supposedly a member. (After all, Evan,
was "your generation" _really_ listening to Social Distortion in 1984,
or were they listening to Prince, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, and John
Cougar?) So much of youth culture involves toeing that tricky line
between what's hot and what's not, between maverick and outcast, and
the terms of that negotation are constantly shifting: being taken up,
dropped, appropriated, dissed, marketed, rejected, reappropriated, and
so on.

More problematically, I think, the discourse of generations presumes a
certain norm that it takes as the generation worth considering, and
that norm (like most norms) is typically white, male, middle class,
and suburban. It leads, I think, to problematic relegations of
non-white, non-MC, etc. cultures to the margins. At the end of his
post, Evan writes, "Rap, of course, expresses social anger, and in its
new schools is the Next Contribution to a characterization." That such
"generational" discourse about the youth culture of the 1980s leaves
out rap (and here I'm not pointing fingers at Evan Heimlich
specifically) makes it dangerous stuff, given the crucial role rap
has played in the industry and in youth culture over the last 15
years. (Calling the "new schools" of rap the "Next Contribution" to
the expression of social anger seems to me to be pretty presumptuous
about what influences what in the world of pop music.)

My assertions here are not merely an attempt at thinking more
inclusively about what culture is (though it is that). Let's remember
too that most of the kids buying Onyx, Public Enemy, and Dr. Dre are
white middle-class suburbanite boys. After all, if you think "rap" is
"merely" marginal, "black" culture, just watch the ads during Saturday
morning cartoons and listen to their soundtracks. "Rap" is, and has been
for years, everywhere you turn, and from the look of the spring
collections at Target and Kmart, grunge is peaking as well.

To be fair, I should point out that, at the very end of his post, Evan
asks a couple of rhetorical questions on this point. He writes, "But
when we read "GenX," we don't think of rap fans, do we? Does GenX
connote 'mainstream White' rock fans?" To take a crack at answers: no,
"we" probably don't; yes, it probably does. All the more reason, then,
to stop trying to identify, locate, figure out (that is, _construct_)
what "generations" are in such broad, sweeping terms.

Chris Amirault                    English Department -- Modern Studies
amirault@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu          University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                                                   Milwaukee WI  53201

=======================================================================
(2)

> Date: Fri, 06 May 1994 11:27:31 -0500 (CDT)
> From: ana marie cox <amc2@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>

Evan writes:

>Rap, of course, expresses social anger, and in its new schools is the
>Next Contribution to a characterization.  But when we read "GenX," we
>don't think of rap fans, do we?  Does GenX connote "mainstream White"
>rock fans?

This is exactly my biggest beef with the whole
"marketing-ploy-turned-pop-sociology" phenomenon that is Generation X:
not only is the "generation x" as portrayed in popular form all white,
but it's usually male too.

Think of all the stars that are held up as generation x icons: kurt
(of course), rick linklater, doug coupland, evan dando, bart
simpson...

i guess this just reflects the general "whiteness" and "maleness" of
the popular press. but even the few women  "x-ers" i can think of
don't seem to be portrayed as "slackers." Rather, women like liz
phair, winona ryder and kim deal are the women that slackers have
crushes on (how does the joke go? thousands of guys are starting
grunge bands so they can date winona?)

i think there is a more "serious" scholarly question buried in this
on-the-fly analysis...and, if i were in the mood to think seriously, i
might put it something like this: "why is it that women are
represented as willful outcasts? why isn't the image of a woman going
home after college to work a minimum wage job and see cool bands as
romantic as a the image of a dude with groovy sideburns doing the same
thing?"

not to be too simplistic, but perhaps the same kinds of questions
could be asked about the absence of blacks...

both sets of questions might have the same answer: those images are not
as romantic because, for blacks and women, you can never really be
sure that they *willingly* are doing the slacker thing. for white men,
the choice to give up on "professional life" is just an *option.*

rage and rebellion and sideburns are cool (in the eyes of the media, i
guess) only if you once had the option of living the smooth and easy,
clean cut, corporate good life.

ana

Ana Marie Cox            * "...the standard gloss is that the
University of Chicago    * people longed for melons."
amc2@midway.uchicago.edu *  --_Allusions in "Ulysses"_

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