Pop Will Eat Itself

I have to be honest with you, I'm sick of the poorly thought out reactionary bullshit I saw in this thread. It's pathetically cloying, it's about people needing to feel like they are better than others because of an isolated factor and that's just stupid. Nobody does anything in a vacuum, nothing except judge others and that's all that most people do.

I've been thinking about this, not because I care what your kids wear (ostensibly the subject of the thread I linked to) but because I'm interested in what little 9 year old Johnny Rotten and little 8 year old Kimmie Deal are doing in a band, and playing at CMJ no less, as covered in the NY Times last weekend. When I first heard about this show a few weeks ago I was stymied, but given a chance to think about it, I think it's pretty cool.

I think my original indecision and yes, indignation, was because of the generation gap which for the last 50 years or so has been largely characterized by relationships to pop culture. Modern pop culture quickly became linked to rebellion and moodiness, initially characterized by the icon James Dean, who was rebelling against the Eisenhower era and the silent generations quiet conformity.

By the time my generation, X got around to rebelling, Molly Ringwald and the Brat Pack were the new icons, as much a product of the Reagan era conservatism and boomer disillusionment as anything else, something people my age ate up with gusto. The Brat Pack's rebellion had a lot in common with Dean's, both icons felt trapped, primarily by their parents but more accurately by society.

Your kids on the other hand are part of the first generation in the era of pop culture to really rebel with their parents, not against them, or at least in addition to rebelling against them. Actually they are just the most obvious indicator of a trend that's been reported on here and there the last few years, parents and their kids having things in common and actually being friends.

To those of us who invested in rebellion and perhaps more importantly never had good relationships with our parents, this is downright bewildering. To some, it's threatening, since the tools of our own rebellion (pop culture) are being used to foster the relationships you have with your children.

This started with the boomers of course, but it never quite took like it is now. Where it gets downright ironic for Generation X'ers, at least those without children, is you are not only using the same toolset, you are using exactly the same tools; the same songs, music, and politics that we still think of as instruments in our own rebellion, even if we don't think in those terms anymore. I really don’t think you can take Minor Threat quite so seriously once a group of 10 year olds has covered it.

Of course, what this really illustrates is the silliness of pop culture fostered rebellion. How's that for irony Gen X?