For the Christmas season:
Every generation feels that a gulf exists between its parents and eventually its children. We usually boil it down to ideology, political worldview, and superficial symbols of intergenerational conflict – the stern, flat-topped WWII veteran looking on in bewilderment as his hippie kids roll around in the mud to Janis Joplin. For those of us in "Generation X" the conflict with our Baby Boomer parents becomes increasingly obvious as we start having children of our own and the Grandparents transition into the role of Grandkid Spoilers. Simply put, our generation gap is defined by significant differences in how important we consider the American sacrament of buying shit.
As you are all aware, I am obsessed with the cultural phenomenon of the Cold War. I watch propaganda films of that era moreso than is healthy but with great interest. They never fail to amaze me, and the overwhelming sense is one of wonder that the Baby Boomers aren't more fucked up than they are. The grade-school propaganda of that era was a grotesque mixture of fatalism (pray hard, kids, the bombs will fall any minute!), paranoia, and consumption-worship which inevitably concluded with the same moral lesson: We are better than Them. If you need proof, why, just look at your right to vote for the indistinguishable political parties of the era (Stevenson or Eisenhower – a rainbow of choices!). And look at how many kinds of toothpaste are available.
This is why I think the crunchy granola, environmentally sensitive anti-consumerist leanings of many of my generation so baffle our predecesors. They see recreational shopping as a patriotic duty because it reinforces our superiority; it's the difference between America and lesser nations. Being chastised for throwing out 10 plastic water bottles every day or for driving a 13mpg SUV makes them feel weak and defeated because waste and overconsumption are our birthright; re-using one's trash or driving little cars with tin-can engines is what the people of backward, un-free nations do. Our ability to waste gas is proof of the superiority of our ideology, that the bounty of capitalism is so great that we needn't even think about efficiency. We have to spend $5000 on Christmas gifts not only because that's how we prove we love one another; we have to do it because that's how we know we won the War. That's what makes us different than the Communists, who are so evil that we must forever be emphasizing our differences.
One of the most accessible collections of Cold War ephemera, a Netflixable DVD called The Atomic Cafe, features a video which argues in favor of building the hydrogen bomb to preserve our way of life from Communist aggression – and our way of life is demonstrated at the supermarket. A montage of images show the splendor of the supermarket (to think, Communists have to wait in line for bread!), a Banquet frozen TV dinner, and…a can of Reddi-Wip dispensing its contents onto a slice of pie. When we are defending America, we are defending its status as the capitalist land-of-plenty.
I will never tire of the image or its implications: America is great because we have such ready access (see what I did there?) to cheap aerosol cans of faux-dairy products. What, you think the commies can just have whipped topping whenever they want, mister? Of course not. But our forefathers died so that you can. Recycling and public transit and eating fresh organic foods (processed frozen fare being a fruit of jet age American technology) are a big "fuck you" to everything they died for.
Those of us born in the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond did not grow up with Duck and Cover, the imminent threat of nuclear annhilation, and the idea that Communism was a threat to our way of life. We saw Communist nations for what they were: backward, pitiable places far less of a threat to us than America was to them. Oh, and the Bad Guys in all of our shitty action films. No one in the 1980s, the children of a few paranoid dead-enders aside, grew up thinking that the Russians were going to come and take Our Way of Life from us. The contradictions in the rhetoric made no sense to us – the Russians supposedly couldn't feed themselves or make a car that worked, and yet somehow they were a threat?
This is my best effort at explaining why our parents think strip malls are fuckin' awesome and we are more likely to see them as eyesores. This is why they think we're weird and stuck-up because we tell them how inefficient the suburban lifestyle is or that we don't eat McDonald's or processed sugar. The Russians would kill for a Big Mac! Where do we get off refusing to eat one? The real gap between our generations is more complex than a one-sentence explanation allows, but as we start raising our own families it will be increasingly difficult to make Granny and Gramps understand that their grandkids will not be raised to understand the American Way of Life as profligate consumption and excess.
Ike says:
Recently I was discussing with my very intelligent grandmother my forthcoming loss of employment and subsequent career search. I tried to explain today's economy to her but realized she was lost when she asked, "so if none of those [career options] are good, what is the new thing to get in to? …Space?"
Indira says:
Great post! I generally agree with your sentiments but I'm not entirely sure that our generation is any less materialistic than our grandparents' generation. May be I'm still recovering from Black Friday! It's true that we may not frame our excesses in terms of our cultural and economic superiority but we're still pretty messed up.
Jeff says:
Have you found a job yet?
Samantha says:
Well stated.
BrianK says:
What's even more amazing to me is that this time period is considered The Most Ideal Time in American History (TM) – or, at least, the white suburban experience in this time.
And really, the contradiction that the Russians were inept and incapable of feeding themselves yet posed a threat to our very way of life isn't substantially different than other contradictions. I mean, we could whip the Russians and any other military force, but we couldn't even defeat the handful of dirty hippies that wanted us to lose Vietnam.
Mike says:
Reich brought up something akin to this:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/15/will_a_stimulus_be_enough/
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Keynesianism is based on two highly-questionable assumptions in today's world. The first is that American consumers will eventually regain the purchasing power needed to keep the economy going full tilt. That seems doubtful….The second assumption seems even more doubtful: that, even if middle-class Americans had the money to continue the old pattern of spending, they could do so forever. Yet the social and environmental costs would soon overwhelm us. Even if climate change were not an imminent threat to the planet, the rest of the world will not allow American consumers to continue to use up a quarter of the planet's natural resources and generate an even larger share of its toxic wastes and pollutants…
That's why we have to do all we can to get the economy back on track. But many other Americans are discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with. What we most lack, or are in danger of losing, are the things we use in common — clean air, clean water, public parks, good schools, and public transportation, as well as social safety nets to catch those of us who fall.
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that certainly seems right – the stuff I, and people like me in my generation, most want to "buy" are public goods we can't afford to create on our own – workable health care insurance, transit, education, public spaces, etc.
J. Dryden says:
As a youth, I experienced a great moment of generational gap in a movie theater, when the trailer for RED DAWN came on, and my friends and I responded with giggles and then unrestrained hilarity at the premise; being total geeks who played wargames (no, none of us had ever kissed a girl), we realized that the "nightmare scenario" it was pitching was such utter bullshit that it didn't even make for plausible escapism. What we realized is that this was a movie that was being made to make us feel good about a massive, confrontational military build-up against an enemy that was largely a figment of a previous generation's imagination. And thus was the cynicism of Generation X was born. (Well, that and the degree to which RETURN OF THE JEDI sucked–another film that prompted one of my crew to say "Apparently, the Evil Empire is run by a gang of clinical retards." But I digest…)