BRAINIAC'S GUIDE TO AMERICA'S RECENT GENERATIONS
1884-93:
1894-1903:
1904-13:
1914-23:
1924-33:
1934-43:
1944-53: Baby Boomers
1954-63:
1964-73:
1974-83:
1984-93: Millennials
1994-2003:
The OGX is a generation that has brought us punk, post-punk, and cyberpunk, hardcore and hip hop (I borrowed their moniker from Ice-T's "Original Gangsta," did you catch that?), DIY and zines (before they were called zines), "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons," "Ghost World" and "Love and Rockets," "Master of Puppets" and "Pulp Fiction," "Slacker" and "Do The Right Thing," sardonic "charticles" and impossibly convoluted and footnoted prose. Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Arsenio Hall, Rosie O'Donnell, and Conan O'Brien are OGXers; so are the Hollywood Brat Pack and the New York one. Also: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer; Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, and David Foster Wallace; Al Roker, Katie Couric, and Matt Lauer; and Madonna, Prince, Bon Jovi, and Michael Jackson. Plus: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.
This generation of latch-key kids and children of divorce were the first American adolescents to be informed -- incessantly, and persuasively, by TV shows and Hollywood movies -- what it's like to be an adolescent. "Lost in Space," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Happy Days," "The Brady Bunch," "The Partridge Family," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Taps," "Risky Business," "Little Darlings," "Bad News Bears," "The Outsiders," "Rumble Fish," "21 Jump Street," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "St. Elmo's Fire," "Pretty in Pink," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Joanie Loves Chachi," "Family Ties," "Eight is Enough," and "One Day at a Time" all cast OGXers as... themselves, sorta. When Situationist Guy Debord (a member of France's postmodern Generation) wrote that "the individual's gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him," this is the sort of alienation he meant. Debord wrote that in 1967, when the oldest OGXers were 13, and the youngest 4 -- and all glued to the TV.
Zinester Candi Strecker once dubbed her fellow post-Boomers the "Repo Man Generation." Directed by an elder OGXer, Alex Cox, the 1984 cult movie stars OGXer Emilio Estevez in his finest role -- as a punk 20something disillusioned not only with American society and culture, but with the empty rebelliousness of his fellow middle-class suburban punks. Note that Otto isn't un-idealistic, just baffled and skeptical. (So why not gravitate, as he does, toward an apocalyptic alien cult?) As I've written elsewhere, while OGXers were in their teens and 20s, socialism as a doctrine and a movement no longer seemed capable of addressing the insurgent political, economic, and cultural doctrine that during the market-worshiping Eighties would come to be called neoliberalism. Neoliberal triumphalism, globalism, the dominant discourse: what were OGXers supposed to do about them?
Postmoderns offered up theories of how social control was now exercised not through class domination but increasingly subtle mechanisms. The modern liberal state, OGXers were informed -- at the same age that Boomers had been when they righteously demanded that the modern liberal state live up to its own ideals -- was nothing but a neototalitarian apparatus designed solely to optimize the economic utility of recalcitrant individuals. Giving up on the workingman and college students alike, Postmodern and Anti-Anti-Utopian intellectuals cast about for a new revolutionary subject: the psychotic, perhaps; or the criminal, the part-time worker, maybe the unemployed? In a 1977 interview, Michel Foucault (a French Postmodern) said he was looking for "someone who, wherever he finds himself, will pose the question as to whether revolution is worth the trouble, and if so which revolution and what trouble."
OGXers are to be praised for taking such difficult, complicated questions seriously; but to do so is, of course, to find one's political will compromised, even paralyzed. No wonder that many OGXers have found it more copacetic to become conservatives (remember the Reagan Youth?); or instead to embrace what Baudrillard (a French Postmodern) would call the "soft ideologies" of ecologism and antiracism, instead of, say, social justice. But don't call OGXers "slackers," unless you intend it as an obscure, Linklater-esque compliment; because they're not apathetic or nihilistic. Instead, if we think it's possible to reclaim this pejorative, let's call OGXers "slacktivists."
1954: Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Alex Beam, Kurt Andersen, David Greenberger, Roz Chast, Bill Mumy, Luc Sante, Christie Brinkley, Steven Pinker, Matt Groening, John Travolta, Al Roker, Bill Buford, Bob Weinstein, Patty Hearst, John Doe, Ron Howard, Larry Summers, Dennis Quaid, Bruce Sterling, Ellen Barkin, Andrea Barrett, Jerry Seinfeld, Jeffrey Sachs, Jake Burton, James Belushi, Freddie Prinze, Barry Williams, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Michael Moore, David Lee Roth, Allison Anders, Chris Noth, Condoleezza Rice, Joel Coen, Jermaine Jackson, Denzel Washington. Elsewhere: Bobby Sands, James Cameron, Ang Lee, Elvis Costello, Alex Cox, Tim O'Reilly, Adam Ant, Annie Lennox.
1955: Jay McInerney, Kool DJ Herc, Kevin Costner, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Pollan, John Grisham, Arsenio Hall, Jeff Daniels, Kelsey Grammer, Steve Jobs, Ray Ozzie, Charles Burns, Penn Jillette, Dee Snider, Gary Sinise, Bruce Willis, Susan Orlean, Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Winer, Mark David Chapman, Debra Winger, Dana Carvey, Sandra Bernhard, Laurie Metcalf, Glenn Danzig, Tullis Onstott, Billy Bob Thornton, Mike Huckabee, Bill Gates, Katharine Weber, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Nye, Ray Liotta. Elsewhere: Rowan Atkinson, Nina Hagen, Chow Yun-Fat, John McGeoch, Topper Headon, Tim Berners-Lee, Green Gartside, Mick Jones, Steve Jones, John Kricfalusi, Bela Tarr, Billy Idol.
1957: Nicholson Baker, Katie Couric, John Lasseter, Steve Harvey, Russell Simmons, Madison Smartt Bell, Robert Townsend, Cindy Wilson, Michael Kelly, LeVar Burton, Vanna White, Spike Lee, Christopher Lambert, Judge Reinhold, Scott Adams, Richard Thomas, Cameron Crowe, Robert Pollard, Gilbert Hernandez, Melanie Griffith, Richie Ramone, Caroline Kennedy, Denis Leary, Ethan Coen, Fran Drescher, Bernie Mac, Dan Castellaneta, Jon-Erik Hexum, Christopher Knight, Donny Osmond, Steve Buscemi, Ray Romano, Matt Lauer. Elsewhere: Luis Guzman, Mario Van Peebles, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Osama bin Laden, Nick Hornby, Mark E. Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sid Vicious, Siouxsie Sioux, Gloria Estefan, Billy Bragg, Hamid Karzai, Shane McGowan.
1959: Susanna Hoffs, Kyle MacLachlan, Tom Arnold, Flavor Flav, Matthew Modine, Perry Farrell, David Hyde Pierce, Brian Setzer, Sam Raimi, Kurtis Blow, Steve Stevens, Amy Pascal, Ira Glass, Vincent D'Onofrio, Richie Sambora, Suzanne Vega, Kevin Spacey, Mark Newgarden, Jaime Hernandez, Joe Elliott, Rosanna Arquette, Todd Solondz, Danny Bonaduce, Jonathan Franzen, Rebecca De Mornay, Marie Osmond, William T. Vollmann, Emeril Lagasse, Richard Roeper, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Neal Stephenson, Judd Nelson, Val Kilmer. Elsewhere: Sade, Nastassja Kinski, Aidan Quinn, Robert Smith, Ian McCulloch, Steven Morrissey, Hugh Laurie, Simon Cowell.
1962: Tyler Cowen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Axl Rose, Bob Odenkirk, Scott McLemee, Mark Costello, Garth Brooks, Cliff Burton, Sheryl Crow, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lisa Randall, Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, Jon Bon Jovi, Matthew Broderick, Marley Marl, Rosie O'Donnell, MC Hammer, Vincent Gallo, Ian MacKaye, Emilio Estevez, Karen Duffy, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Fincher, Paula Abdul, Matthew Sharpe, Anthony Lane, Tom Cruise, Steve Albini, Wesley Snipes, Craig Kilborn, Julie Brown, Scott LaRock, Kristy McNichol, Melissa Sue Anderson, Tommy Lee, Joan Cusack, Flea, Anthony Kiedis, Demi Moore, Jodie Foster, Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Rebecca DeMornay. Elsewhere: Jim Carrey, Ian Astbury, Seth, Nick Rhodes, Michelle Yeoh, Ralph Fiennes.
1963: Steven Soderbergh, Alex Star, William Baldwin, Kathy Ireland, Quentin Tarantino, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Conan O'Brien, Johnny Depp, Phoebe Cates, Lisa Kudrow, Coolio, Joe Matt, James Hetfield, Whitney Houston, Steve Carrell, John Stamos, Tori Amos, Eazy-E, Rick Rubin, Elisabeth Shue, Tatum O’Neal, Elisabeth Shue, Ann Patchett, Michael Chabon, Brad Pitt. Elsewhere: Seal, Julian Lennon, Eric McCormack, Jet Li, Andrew Sullivan, Elle Macpherson, Mark Kingwell, George Michael, Mike Myers, Malcolm Gladwell, Jarvis Cocker, Lars Ulrich.
Imagine coming to a beach at the very end of a long summer of big crowds and wild goings-on. The beach bunch is sunburned, the sand shopworn, hot, and full of debris -- no place for walking barefoot. You step on a bottle, and some cop cites your for littering. That's how 13ers feel, following the Boom.This rings true of OGXers, the oldest of whom were acutely aware of how much fun their elders were having in the Sixties (1964-73), but who didn't get to have the same kind of fun. But it's silly to imagine that Howe and Strauss's 13ers, the oldest of whom were only 13 at the end of the Sixties ('73), and only 9 at the end of the 1960s, would feel the same sort of resentment. Inclined to be suspicious of Howe and Strauss's periodization? This ought to be the last straw.
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