Gen·er·a·tion X (jěn’ə-rā’shən)
n. The generation following the post-World War II baby boom, especially people born in the United States and Canada from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s.
From a purely demographic perspective, Generation X is a term used to describe the children of the baby boomers. From a cultural standpoint, GenXers are the children and teenagers of the 1980s’s (in the western hemisphere): the MTV Generation. Sandwiched between the compromised ideals of their parents and the ignorance as culture of Generation Y, GenXers were the slackers, the maladjusted, the lazy, the unmotivated misfits, doomed to forever wallow in their own angst and the considerable shadow cast by the boomers.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
By all accounts, the song’s title is an accident, the result of a joke misunderstood by Kurt Cobain. Teen Spirit is a brand of deodorant (and once the song became a hit, the brand was more than happy to strengthen the connection in the public eye) and had the staunchly anti-consumerist Cobain known this at the time, he would certainly have used another title. As it stands, it works on more than one level. Using the word “teen”, for starters, specifically referenced Nirvana’s target demographic. Considering the subject matter and ignoring its coorporate origins, the title is drenched in irony (irony being, of course, the first and last bastion of Generation X). Even the song’s accidental corporate tie-in unwittingly elevates it. Baby Boomers, the flower power generation which claimed to believe in and fight for a better world eventually sold out. Their values became advertising slogans, and their children grew up a part of broken homes, in a world where consumerism had run amok. It is only fitting that a song about the consequences would have “sold out” before the opening line.
load up on guns and bring your friends
GenXers were born into a world of shattered illusions, bearing the full weight of failure before they took their first steps. Belief is nothing and cynicism is defense. What better to play with than their own lives? It is the only thing they genuinely lay claim to, and the one thing that might keep the ubiquitous ennui at bay. Death is no tragedy when life is.
it’s fun to lose and to pretend
GenXers failed before they even tried. Unreasonable expectations and the unfulfilled dreams of their parents made sure of it. Why feel bad, however, when it can be idealized? Failing, and failing together as a way of life, a rallying point from which GenXers can strike back at a society that has no room for them because it made no room for them. Creating a self contained pseudo-universe, a subculture within a subculture within culture, GenXers could both pretend they mattered and pretend they didn’t.
she’s overbored and self assured
Ennui and cynicism. GenXers are jaded by definition.
oh no, i know a dirty word
Formal education and any other sign of cultural elitism were GenX anti-values. Expansive vocabularies were shunned and replaced with subcultural terms and neologisms. Thus GenXers were both united in their ability to commuicate with one another through universal a terminology (which was often antonimous to that of the more status quo) and broke with yet another of the baby boomers’ long-held values.
hello, hello, hello, how low x3
hello hello hello
with the lights out it’s less dangerous
here we are now, entertain us
To Be Continued…?
