The face of my "lost" generation?
I am too young to feel myself on the precipice of purposelessness. Is this the hallmark of my kind? An army of kids trained to be these well-rounded, ambidextrously-brained restavecs; a little bit good at everything but not particularly brilliant at anything. This is not a “pity me” thing or a “save us” thing, it’s just a thing.
Sometimes it feels like little Lloyd Dobler had it all figured out: “I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed...” In terms of a life goal or values, that’s not so bad right, to not want to profit off of anyone’s misery or to throw yourself into the cogs of capitalism? The more we romanticize this sanitary, humanitarian approach to living the more we realize we might be horribly misguided. And besides, Lloyd had Donovan’s stunning daughter to fool around with at the end of the day. Very few of us can boast similar claims.
That last question becomes more and more threatening as growing up becomes the here and now. For children it's a question full of hope, fantasy, and encouragement. Now it’s just a shortcut to evaluate a person’s ambition and character. And it would be, were it not for the fact that people sharing the same professional aspirations can be quite dissimilar. Example: anyone from Donald Trump’s The Apprentice (…ok, depending on how you see it that might not actually help my point).
What am I getting at? Well, it's the new motto of our time, “It’s a recession.” What careers do people go for in times of trouble? The old stalwarts, the bare necessities, the economy-proof kind. The kind that I am frankly not inspired by, no offense*. In the 1960’s a time of (perhaps retrospectively dubious) uninterrupted economic growth saw to an almost unbridled flood of cultural innovations, challenges and social change. Even given the flowery nostalgia, culturally and creatively America was actually getting its shit together. The subcultures, the activists, the more useful hippies, the music, the racial and gender gains, it was all perfectly groovy. But what happens to kids in a recession, are they morally, spiritually, artistically bankrupt in addition to being bankrupt the classic way?
I’ll be damned if we go the way of the 1980s all coked-up and soulless and wearing sort-of-awesome-and-sort-of-terrible clothes. No, this can’t be … where’s our literature, where’s our music, where’s all our sparkling legacy? It’s not here yet! And its true, the kids who inherited high speed internet, good cell phones, wikipedia, and 24/7 access to fantastic illegal downloads… they’re barely past their 20s. Hell I’m still 19 for at least a handful of months. So hold the fuck on, and before you condemn my generation give us time to impress you. I don’t necessarily have all my shit together but when I do I guarantee results (read that in a Billy Mays voice, please). We’re not all hipsters and idiots floating around waiting for something to happen. And to some extent what they said about every generation’s kids, am I right?
Ok and here’s where I actually get to my point, or my title rather. SCREW YOU, Kyle Smith of the NY Post. You don’t know diddly about Harry Potter or me. This bullshit criticism that my “entitled” generation as reflected by Harry has no morals or guidance, is same-old, same-old. Even if you couldn’t write for shit, after 4,224 pages and endless drafts I’d say there’s a fair chance that you’ll have include at least some worthy cultural insight. These dinosaurs who want us all to feel like a soulless bland generation of losers with no direction and one-dimensional characterization, they’re all just jealous. Kyle Smith was born in ’66, he doesn’t get Potter, and on top of it all he thinks “Paul McCartney [is] Pop’s most Indispensible Figure.” To which I say, “I still like The Beach Boys better, you crumb.”
Clearly a man who gives Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the same rating as I Love You, Beth Cooper is in no position to be a critic. Admittedly, neither am I since I prefer to be constructive with my time. Besides, these self-loving, supposed prelapsarians are all just jealous. We have access to so much more knowledge and we’re ten times more adaptable to new means of obtaining it. Maybe all the wandering and the directionlessness is just dynamic potential. Maybe its all just too goddamn cool for you to comprehend.
*but obviously since I acknowledge the offensiveness I’m not really being sincere by saying it anyway am I?
