“Who am I, and where do I belong?”
The young adults who comprise Generation X are not the first wave of chronological peers to collectively wrestle with this question, and they won’t be the last. But certain aspects of Generation X’s past and present make their quest interesting and timely. As has been noted throughout this study, Gen Xers grew up in the shadow of one of the most discussed, celebrated, and, arguably, self-centered generations in American history, the boomers. Like a young child trying to declare his or her own identity while an older sibling gets all of mom’s and dad’s attention, Gen Xers have faced an uphill battle since birth to find a place in a world that is in many ways of, by, and for the millions upon millions of boomers.
Moreover, the peculiar aspects of the decades during which Gen Xers came of age colored their perspectives. The oldest members of this generation were mature enough to at least somewhat grasp the importance of Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War, and the countless other schisms that sliced through American society in the 1970s. And virtually all Gen Xers were privy (some would say victim) to the changes in education, government, and popular culture that forced youths of the late 1960s through the early 1980s to grow up faster than almost any of their predecessors. While it might be overstating things to say that Gen Xers raised in a period of cynicism, self-involvement, marital disharmony, and political upheaval lost their innocence as quickly as they first tasted it, it’s not an overstatement to say that Gen Xers, by and large, were faced with adult choices and quandaries well before they became adults.
This accelerated maturation led to a severe disconnect in this generation’s upbringing: Since Gen Xers were asked to come of age before they actually came of age, it’s no surprise that so many of them seem to be stuck in prolonged adolescence. They were never allowed to just be children, but were in some cases withheld the rights and responsibilities of adults, so they are a hybrid of different phases of human growth.
For many members of this peculiar generation, the confusion about the roles they are supposed to play in society is exacerbated by the darkest social factors of the periods in which they were raised. Divorce, experiments in hands-off education, the use of medication as a parenting tool, the corporatization of the American workplace, mixed messages from the post-Watergate political establishment, and the homogenization of popular culture all contributed to an environment in which young people felt at least like cogs in some great machine and at worst like disposable accessories to their parents’ lifestyles. While not every Gen Xer was touched by every one of these factors (even though those who weren’t heard about the social upheavals from friends and the media), the onslaught of changes to American society during Generation X’s formative years led to a cheapening of life in this country, and led countless youths to feel unwanted or even betrayed by the institutions that comprise the bedrock of existence in the United States.
For that reason, it makes all the sense in the world that Gen-Xers took the “tune in, turn on, drop out” ethos of the boomers to a new, almost nihilistic extreme. For instead of removing themselves from mainstream culture in order to join an alternative culture fueled by new ideas of positivity and harmony, the Gen Xers most deeply affected by social change removed themselves from mainstream culture in order to join an alternative non-culture fueled by disdain for everything they were expected to take seriously. Irony and disenfranchisement and contempt combined into an all-purpose psyche that produced its own aesthetic, language, and, to a degree, belief system. The most cynical Gen Xers perceived society as having abandoned them, so they fought back by abandoning society.
This led older Americans, and even members of Generation X who felt stronger ties to conventional society, to dismiss slackers and other disenfranchised Gen Xers as avatars of narcissism and sloth. The most stinging accusations hurled at Gen Xers pointed out that Generation X grew up in an era of comparative peace—notwithstanding skirmishes in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf, there was no war during Generation X’s youth, and there certainly was no conflict that promised to erupt into anything as divisive and destructive as Vietnam. Furthermore, skeptics of Generation X’s malaise noted, slackers and their ilk didn’t propose a new societal model to replace the old one. A generation before, hippies withdrew from polite society and tried to found a new collective called, among other names, the Woodstock Nation. Where, doubters asked, was the grand idea of Generation X? If the youths of the late twentieth century were so fed up with the culture handed to them by their parents, what changes did they propose for making the culture better?
One place in which to look for some answers to these haunting questions is the cinema of Generation X. Even in the earliest films in this wildly varied body of work—Steven Soderbergh’s introspective sex, lies, and videotape, Richard Linklater’s seminal Slacker, John Singleton’s charged Boyz N the Hood—a common theme begins to emerge. All three pictures challenge presumptions about society.
Soderbergh’s film portrays a soulful drifter who videotapes women sharing their most private experiences, masturbates instead of actually having contact with women, and breaks up his friend’s marriage. Yet in the topsy-turvy world of Gen-X cinema, this character is a sympathetic protagonist. Linklater’s movie shows aimless youths wandering through their existences, exploring the wilds of intellectualism and philosophy, but not really living lives by any conventional standard. And Singleton’s picture puts human faces on a segment of society many would rather dismiss with epithets, thereby proving that even the most brutal gun-toting “gangsta” in South Central Los Angeles has a story to tell. The characters around whom these pioneering Gen-X directors chose to build their first movies are crucially important windows into the cinema of Generation X, which is largely a cinema of the misunderstood, the eccentric, the disenfranchised, and the lost.
As Gen-X filmmakers matured, they expanded their worldview to include more than misfits and malcontents. So while Quentin Tarantino spent the first few years of his career examining the psyches of criminals, Rod Lurie used his first two films to explore issues relating to the American presidency, surely the ultimate icon of traditional American culture. There’s room in the Gen-X mix for angry directors, contemplative directors, ironic directors, subversive directors. There’s room in the mix for stories about love, work, religion, drugs, sex, and countless other topics. There’s even room for stories about war, a subject few Gen Xers can discuss from a first-hand perspective: Michael Bay directed the glossy epic Pearl Harbor; Keith Gordon helmed a reflective combat film set in World War II, A Midnight Clear, as well as thoughtful movie set partly during the Vietnam era, Waking the Dead; and even actor-director Emilio Estevez entered the fray with a Vietnam-related film called The War at Home.
Perhaps because war is among the most polarizing aspects of human behavior, the messages in Gen-X war movies are among the clearest sent by any directors of this generation: Pearl Harbor, for instance, is a jingoistic celebration of America’s might. Gordon’s war-related films, however, are infused with ambiguity and ambivalence. His work is far more characteristic of Generation X than Bay’s: In films made by this generation that grew up in confusing times, there are no easy answers, and there often are no absolute answers at all. Traditional concepts of right and wrong became so clouded during this generation’s youth that taking a distinct stand on any topic seems hypocritical.
It will be interesting to see how Gen Xers react to the massive changes in the geopolitical landscape that took shape after the devastating terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington in 2001, and it also will be interesting to see how youths of the next generation react to the mixed messages brought on by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. While some might react to these incomprehensible events by retreating into cynicism, others might be caught up in the wave of nationalism that was felt following the attacks. In a sad way, perhaps the unprecedented manner in which evil was visited upon the civilian population of the United States might help the Americans of Generation Y feel more connected to their country than Generation X ever did during their youth.
In the few instances when a polarizing Gen-X film takes a distinct stand on a social issue, that stand generally defies the status quo. Soderbergh’s Traffic flat out says that America’s war on drugs is a folly that should be replaced by intervention and treatment. Yet even this assertion is to some degree anomalous, for directors belonging to this generation seem far more concerned with questions than with answers. They seem driven to encourage others to understand, and perhaps even emulate, their introspective ways.
Look at the way young characters interact with their parents in Reality Bites and other Gen-X movies about family: The kids speak a different language than their parents, who scratch their heads in confusion when trying to understand their children’s refusal to embrace traditional goals. Sure, generational clashes are nothing new, but the most peculiar aspect of how Generation X relates to its elders is that Gen Xers don’t want to challenge their parents’ culture in order to replace it with one of their own. In moments like Troy’s sobering soliloquy in Reality Bites, Gen Xers challenge their parents’ culture as a way of explaining why they don’t wish to participate in society at all.
Sometimes, this ennui turns into positive energy: The rebel characters in The Matrix undermine the sterile society in which they were raised, and in so doing become actualized. Neo learns that he has spent his entire life in a tiny pod, fed intravenously and doped into contentment by an oppressive establishment. Isn’t that imagery a hyperbolic representation of a typical Gen Xer languishing on a couch, loading himself with junk food, and numbing himself with images on television? Therefore, doesn’t Neo’s choice to free himself from his pod and fight the powers that be represent a Gen Xer departing the couch to become involved in society, instead of just providing commentary from the sidelines?
Gen-X directors rarely take such extreme measures to dramatize the value of participation in society, but they often encourage social change in more personal ways. Kimberly Peirce railed against intolerance with her passionate story about modern gender roles, Boys Don’t Cry. Alexander Payne and Wes Anderson skewered the notion that ambition equals spiritual happiness by showing driven characters driving their acquaintances crazy in Election and Rushmore. And M. Night Shyamalan offered reassuring messages about people, both living and undead, taking control of their lives in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.
Gen-X directors seem to want their audiences to participate in life, but they take unusual routes toward dramatizing their calls to action, as if the concept of a traditional hero has lost so much credibility that it’s no longer a storytelling option. At the same time, heroes, albeit haunted ones, show up in myriad Gen-X movies. In the cinema of Generation X, there are no absolutes: Just when it seems the directors in this group have given up on traditional ideas of good and evil, along comes a morally righteous filmmaker such as Singleton or Shyamalan. As Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, noted:
I really don’t have any solutions and I don’t like movies that do. I want to create situations that give people something to think about. I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don’t learn to love each other or themselves.1
Despite the mixed messages that permeate Gen-X movies, the filmmakers of this generation have racked up spectacular accomplishments.
Robert Rodriguez became a folk hero for countless would-be filmmakers by shooting his debut film, El Mariachi, for a meager $7,000. Kevin Smith achieved similar stature by turning an amateurish story shot in a convenience store, Clerks, into the launching pad of a celebrated career. Steven Soderbergh was anointed the poster boy for contemporary independent cinema when sex, lies, and videotape outperformed all expectations by earning $28 million at the box office. A decade later, the same director won a slot in history by earning twin Oscar nominations for helming Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Larry and Andy Wachowski broke new cinematic ground by integrating “bullet-time” photography into The Matrix, and the mind-bending effect was so influential that it was mimicked in subsequent movies ranging from Scary Movie to Charlie’s Angels to Shrek.
Still searching: Texas-based independent Richard Linklater, shown rehearsing Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for their roles in Before Sunrise, is one of the many Gen-X filmmakers who build on their success by experimenting with new storytelling techniques (Castle Rock Entertainment).
And then there’s Tarantino. The second Gen-X director to gain notoriety as the exemplar of a new wave of filmmakers, he introduced a pop-culture-drenched, fast-moving, ultraviolent storytelling style that influenced independent cinema, and even infiltrated mainstream movies, for most of the 1990s and beyond. Just as the movie brats of the previous generation had, Tarantino slapped contemporary cinema in the face and forced it to change with the times. Movies had been fast and violent before Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction came along, but thereafter, they had to be fast and violent and hip and smart and ironic, or run the risk of seeming passé.
Tarantino’s influence was not entirely positive, but the best aftershock of his gate-crashing was that it so deeply changed financiers’ and audiences’ ideas of what good movies could look and sound like that other daring Gen Xers—Spike Jonze, David Fincher, the Wachowski brothers, and many more—were able to bring offbeat projects into the marketplace.
There’s much more to come, of course. Soderbergh, Linklater, Singleton, Tarantino, though already established talents, probably have yet to make their best movies. In 2001, Linklater released Waking Life, an experimental movie for which shots of real actors were painted over, frame-by-frame, to create a dreamlike brand of reality-based animation. In the same year, Soderbergh juggled such diverse projects as an action-oriented remake of the Rat Pack film Ocean’s Eleven, a sequel to sex, lies, and videotape, and a remake of an obscure Russian science-fiction movie called Solaris. Even as they secure lasting places in the cinematic firmament, these filmmakers continue to experiment with new forms, new ideas, new subjects, and new techniques.
And in the future, it won’t just be the established Gen-X directors who are doing interesting work. Sofia Coppola, the youngest director discussed in this book, has made only one feature film as of this writing, so the question of whether she will create a body of work as lasting as that created by her father, Francis Ford Coppola, remains unanswered. More importantly, who knows what to expect from the numerous Gen-X filmmakers who have yet to storm the gates of Hollywood? At the end of the twentieth century, a revolution in filmmaking was facilitated by the emergence of affordable digital-video cameras capable of capturing professional-quality images with minimal investments of time, money, and personnel. Film festivals around the world have opened their doors to digital movies, and the Internet provides unprecedented distribution options that could democratize the film industry. So not only have we yet to discover every Gen Xer with an important cinematic statement to share, we have yet to discover every means by which the wunderkinds of this and subsequent generations will share such statements.
So far, the cinema of Generation X has been driven by a thirst for knowledge: Characters in Gen-X movies question who they are, how the past shaped them, what options await them in the future, and why they should spend their time doing work of which corporations will be the beneficiaries. The cinema of Generation X may well be a narcissistic cinema—Gen-X characters often spend so much time analyzing their own lives and troubles that they sometimes are blinded to the world around them—but there’s a good reason for that focus on the self.
The members of Generation X seem bound by disappointment in the culture that birthed them, and wary of their ability to create a culture that’s any better. Gen Xers are on a quest for knowledge, but they’re ambivalent about whether they really want answers to their questions. Hence the prevalence not only of slacker characters, but of characters who numb their pain with drugs. As Darren Aronofsky, the challenging director of Pi and Requiem for a Dream, said: “Maybe the price of knowledge is pain.”2
James Mangold’s Girl Interrupted, a drama about a privileged young woman who spends nearly two years in a psychiatric hospital after formless malaise drives her to attempt suicide, attacks the quandary of young people frightened by the roles they may be asked to play once they become adults. Although protagonist Susannah (Winona Ryder) is shown in the early 1970s, her nebulous angst about the modern world strongly echoes the ennui expressed by Ryder’s character and her peers in Reality Bites. Tellingly, not everyone has sympathy for Susannah’s plight: Long-suffering nurse Valerie Owens (Whoopi Goldberg) has seen too many truly sick people pass through the hospital’s doors to have patience for young people hiding from life. “You’re a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy,” the nurse barks.
Similar barbs have been shot at countless Gen Xers, whom skeptics believe retreat from life because they are daunted by hard work. But as this study has shown, Generation X’s stance is informed by much more than sloth. The characters created by Gen-X filmmakers withdraw from society because they want nothing to do with a society capable of untold cruelty. That, finally, is one answer to the burning question of “Who am I, and where do I belong?”—I am an afterthought of society, and if nothing else, I know where I do not belong.
While poignant, this answer does not address one last question: If Gen Xers know where they don’t belong, do they know where they do? Are the destined to assimilate into the society about which they have such paralyzing doubts, or will they, like the rebel heroes of The Matrix, extract themselves from the cocoon of contemporary culture to look for a better place? The resolution to that conundrum will be revealed in the future, so for now, it’s best to live inside the question—to inhabit the ambiguity that suffuses the cinema of Generation X, thereby understanding how this eclectic body of work relates to what has come before, and what has yet to come. That said, there could be no more appropriate parting thought than the opening scene of Reality Bites, which dramatizes the desire for meaning that burns deep in the heart of this confused, confusing generation.
In the scene, Lelaina (Ryder) takes the podium at a college graduation ceremony to deliver her valedictory address. As her speech nears its crescendo, she realizes she’s missing the card on which her closing thoughts were written. How she chooses to disguise her error speaks volumes.
LELAINA: And they wonder why those of us in our 20s refuse to work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs. Why we aren’t interested in the counterculture that they invented, as if we did not seize and disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes. But the question remains: What are we going to do now? How are we going to repair all of the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple…. The answer is “I don’t know.”