the United States
"The Morphing of Generation XX" "In 2003, when I co-edited the volume, GenXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture (with John M. Ulrich), which is about American culture, Generation X meant one thing. Now, 9 years later, it means something else. In the 2 decades that it takes for a generation’s cultural productions to unfold, much changes. Members of this generation are still writing, performing, and so on, but we are not young, and this is no longer “youth culture.” The oldest members of Generation X are now 50 years old. Given the 20-year plus span of a generation, the tendency to look for generational spokespersons is problematic because people transform over time. In addition, analyses of Generation X have pointed out the particular problem of designating a spokesperson for a generation that has sought to defy labels. While my focus in 2003 was on gendering Generation X, for that discourse was often gender-blind in a problematic way (and still is), what strikes me most now while looking back are the many broader changers in Generation X. The evolution of digital culture as well as all culture at a fast pace has caused “acceleration” at a pace Douglas Coupland couldn’t have imagined in 1991 when he wrote his novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, an influential text that attempted to define a generation in its early stages." ~ Andrea L. Harris, Excerpt from Generation X Goes Global Andrea L. Harris. Professor of English at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Other Sexes: Rewriting Difference from Woolf to Winterson (SUNY Press, 2000) and co-editor (with John M. Ulrich) of GenXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). She has also published several articles on Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf. She is currently working on a study of the Auschwitz poetry of Tadeusz Borowski.
NO ALTERNATIVEby William Dickerson (2019)
"No Alternative is a coming-of-age drama that drills a hole into the world of suburban American teenagers in the early '90s. Thomas Harrison is determined to start his own alternative band, an obsession that blinds him to what's either the mental collapse, or the eruption of musical genius, of his little sister, Bridget. Bridget boldly rejects her brother's music, and the music of an entire generation of slackers, by taking on the persona of a gangsta' rapper named "Bri Da B." No Alternative probes the lives of rebellious kids who transition into adulthood via the distortion pedals of their lives in an era when the "Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll" ethos was amended to include "Suicide" in its phrase."
Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind 'Generation X' (1995) by Geoffrey T. Holtz
"The generation of Americans born during the 1960s and 1970s remains, to many, an enigma. Time magazine referred to them in 1990 as "an unsung generation, hardly recognized as a social force or even much noticed at all." The size of this unheralded generation? A mere seventy-five million teenagers and young adults--nearly one American out of every three. They are now coming of age and beginning to assume a broader position in the public spotlight, but until now, the media's depiction of them has been disturbingly consistent: The Doofus Generation" (The Washington Post) "The Tuned-Out Generation" (Time) "A generation of animals" (The Wshington Post) "The Numb Generation" (The New York Times) "The Blank Generation" (The San Francisco Examiner) "This is a generation without soul" (A West Coast radio talk-show host) "The unromantic Generation" (The New York Times) "A generation of self-centered know-nothings" (The Pollster Andrew Kohut) (from Introduction) Disappear Here: Violence after Generation X (2015)
by Naomi Mandel Examining developments in media, philosophy, literature, and politics in the years Xers were coming of age, Mandel demonstrates that Generation X’s unique attitude toward violence was formed by developments in home media, personal computing, and reality TV. This attitude, Mandel contends, is key to understanding our current world of media ubiquity, online activism, simulated sensation, and jihad. With chapters addressing both fictional and filmic representations of violence, Mandel studies the work of Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Claire Messud, Jess Walter, and Jonathan Safran Foer. A critical and conceptual tour de force, Disappear Here sets forth a new, and necessary, approach to violence, the real, and real violence for the twenty-first century. Naomi Mandel is Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island. She is the author of Against the Unspeakable: Complicity, the Holocaust, and Slavery in America (University of Virginia Press, 2006), editor of Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park (Continuum, 2011) and co-editor, with Alain-Philippe Durand, of Novels of the Contemporary Extreme (2006). She is currently working on a book about violence in fiction after Generation X.
For more information about Prof. Mandel, see her webpage: http://www.uri.edu/faculty/mandel/Mandel.html "American X: The Ironic History of a Generation"
"For an entire generation of Americans, Generation X, we have come of age in a culture of dualism and irony, a world shrouded in surrealism yet emblazoned in hyper-authenticity. We walk in a world where reality has converged with celebrity, presidents appear on primetime, priests are scandalous, children are warriors— a world of HD Dalí and the effects have left us dizzy albeit exhilarated. We’ve grown with the promise of pursuing our dreams through education, but still plod patiently awaiting the return for our efforts. We wear the scars of our parents’ unscrupulous business tactics, continuing to amend that which they have turned their backs on. We’ve ascended through the deconstruction of the nuclear family, watching the ecstatic and liberating destruction of its ruin. We’ve given our lives to institutions and ideals that now seem like nothing more than imaginative musings, creative concoctions of hopeful days we may never see. " ~ Dan Leidl, Excerpt from his Forward to Generation X Goes Global US DIVORCE RATES DURING GENERATION X Highlights of a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990 Monthly Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 43, No. 9, Supplement For Release April 18, 1995 Data highlights
Disappear Here: Violence After Generation X
by Naomi Mandel Disappear Here: Violence After Generation X probes the atomism and disaffection that began to be articulated in the 1980s and 1990s by young writers commonly associated with Generation X. Taking as its title the billboard that haunts Bret Easton Ellis's iconic GenX novel Less Than Zero (1985), the book explores the implications of this disaffection for representations of violence in contemporary fiction. Generation X redefined the relation of representation to its object, initiating a move away from the 20th century approach to violence as a founding trauma that fiction reflects and responds to. The epistemic validity of violence (its quality as 'real') disappears during this period, with crucial implications for judgment, critique, and action. Surveying developments in media, film, philosophy, and literature in the 1980s and 1990s, with chapters on U.S. authors Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Safran Foer and the literary response to the spectacular terror attacks of September 11, 2001 by Claire Messud, Frederic Beigbeder, Jess Walter, Jay McInerney, and Don DeLillo, Disappear Here argues that a new approach to violence needs to be articulated for the 21st century, an approach that takes as its starting-point Generation X.
"Talking ‘bout My Generationalism"
"The dominant narrative trajectory of Generation X, at least in the USA, UK and Australia, can be traced through the oeuvre of American filmmaker Richard Linklater. A significant part of the auteur’s work—specifically It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988), Slacker (1991), Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), SubUrbia (1996), Tape (2001), Waking Life (2001), School of Rock (2003), Before Sunset (2004) and A Scanner Darkly (2006)—has functioned as a cumulative, cinematic vision of slacker cynicism and progression of post-1970s youth to the present. " ~ Christina Lee, Excerpt from Generation X Goes Global Trailer for Slacker by Richard Linklater
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Christina Lee. Lecturer in Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University (Australia). Her areas of research include memory studies, fandom and youth in cinema. She is the author of Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema (Ashgate, UK) and editor of Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema (Continuum Books, USA).
Jeff Gordinier discusses "Generation X Saves the World"
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For Further Reading
Andrews, Edmund L. “German Media Company's Loss Surpasses Forecast.” The New York
Times. May 1, 2001. Web. 04 Aug. 2011.
Angell, Roger. “Youth And the World.” Holiday January 1953. Print.
Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London, Pluto Press, 1998. Print.
Ascher, Kenny, and Paul Williams. "The Magic Store." The Muppet Movie. Atlantic Records,
1979. Vinyl. Lyrics at Whysanity.net. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.whysanity.net/muppets/magic.html>.
Asthana, Anunshka, and Vanessa Thorpe. “Whatever Happened to the Original Generation X?” The Guardian /The Observer, Jan. 23, 2005. Web. July 20, 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/23/britishidentity.anushkaasthana
Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, Popular Memory and Cultural Studies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Print.
Clarke, Sally C. “Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990.” Monthly Vital
Statistics Report, 43(9). March 22, 1995. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/mvsr/supp/mv43_09s.pdf>.
Comer, Krista. "Western Literature at Century's End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel." Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 (August 2003): 405-13.
Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Print.
Craig, Stephen C., Stephen Earl Bennet, Jack Dennis, et al. After the Boom: The Politics of Generation X. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. Print.
Edmunds, June, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. Generational Consciousness, Narrative, and Politics
Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print.
---. Less Than Zero. London: Simon and Shuster, 1985. Print.
Farova, Anna, ed. Robert Capa. New York: Paragraphic Books, 1969. Print.
Foster Wallace, David. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.2 (Summer 1993): 168. Print.
Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. New York: Summit Books,
1983. Print.
Gordinier, Jeff. X Saves the World: How Generation X got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Print.
Halstead, Ted. “A Politics for Generation X.” The Atlantic. August 1999. Web. 04 Aug.
2011. <http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99aug/9908genx.htm>.
Hamblett, Charles, and Jane Deverson. “Generation X.” Greenwich, Conn.: Gold Medal Books, 1964. Print.
Hanson, Peter. The Cinema of Generation X: A Critical Study of Films and Directors. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2002. Print.
Helgason, Hallgrímur. 101 Reykjavík: A Novel. Trans. Brian FitzGibbbon. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.
Henseler, Christine. Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Hopper, Jessica. “Riot Girl: Still Relevant 20 Years On.” The Guardian Jan. 20, 2011. Web. Jan. 10, 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/20/riot-girl-20-years-anniversary>
Kracht, Christina. Faserland. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1995. Print.
Janowitz, Tama. Slaves of New York. New York: Washington Square Press, 1986. Print.
Geoffrey T. Holtz’s Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind “Generation X.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Print.
Lebert, Benjamin. Crazy: A Novel. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2000. Print.
Lee, Christina. Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema. Burlington, VT, 2010. Print.
Liu, Eric, ed. Young American Writers on the New Generation. New York: Norton & Company, 1994. Print.
McInerney, Jay. Bright Lights, Big City. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1984. Print.
Miles. Steven. Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World. Buckingham, Open UP, 2000. Print.
Muggleton, David, and Rupert Weinzierl. The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg, 2003.
Osgerby, Bill. Youth Media. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Owen, Robb. GenX TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 199. Print.
“Reading Literacy of 15-year-olds.” IES: National Center for Educational Statistics. 2009.
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_2.asp>.
Robb, John. “Generation X—The Most Underrated of the Punk Bands.” April 11, 2011. Web. August 16, 2011. Blog. <http://louderthanwar.com/blogs/perhaps-the-most-underrated-of-the-punk-generation-bands-generation-x-deserve-another-listen>
Rose, Marla Matzer. “Character Change: Disney To Buy Muppets From Jim Henson Co.” all
Business. February 23, 2004. Web. 04 Aug. 2011.
"Sesame Street: Forty Years of Sweeping the Clouds Away." Sesame Workshop. Web. 04
Aug. 2011. <http://www.sesameworkshop.org/programs/sesame_street>.
Stephey, M.J. "Gen-X: The Ignored Generation?" TimeEntertainment. April 16 (2008).
The National Commission on Excellence in Education. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for
Educational Reform.” A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education. April 1983. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.csus.edu/indiv/l/langd/Nation_at_Risk.pdf >.
“The Youth of Today…” Trash Fiction. N.d. Web Aug. 11, 2011. http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/youth_nf.html
Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. London, Polity, 1994. Print.
Toufexis, Anastasia, Hannah Bloch and Jeanne McDowell. “When Kids Kill Abusive
Parents.” Time. November 23, 1992. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977079,00.html>.
Tulgan, Bruce. Managing Generation X: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2000.
Print.
Ulrich, John, and Andrea Harris. GeneXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture. New York: Poplar Press, 2003. Print.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003.” Section 2. Web. 04
Aug. 2011. <http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/03statab/vitstat.pdf >. Succinct version at <http://www.divorcereform.org/03statab.html>.
U. S. Department of Education. “A Nation Accountable: Twenty-five Years After a Nation at
Risk.” April 2008. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/accountable/accountable.pdf>.
Young, Elizabeth and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on America’s Blank Fiction. New York: Grove Press, 1992. Print.
Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. Print.
Wexler, Michael, John Hulme. Voices of the Xiled: A Generation Speaks for Itself. New York: Doubleday Books, 1994. Print.
William Straus and Neil How’s Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069.
Times. May 1, 2001. Web. 04 Aug. 2011.
Angell, Roger. “Youth And the World.” Holiday January 1953. Print.
Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London, Pluto Press, 1998. Print.
Ascher, Kenny, and Paul Williams. "The Magic Store." The Muppet Movie. Atlantic Records,
1979. Vinyl. Lyrics at Whysanity.net. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.whysanity.net/muppets/magic.html>.
Asthana, Anunshka, and Vanessa Thorpe. “Whatever Happened to the Original Generation X?” The Guardian /The Observer, Jan. 23, 2005. Web. July 20, 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/23/britishidentity.anushkaasthana
Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, Popular Memory and Cultural Studies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Print.
Clarke, Sally C. “Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990.” Monthly Vital
Statistics Report, 43(9). March 22, 1995. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/mvsr/supp/mv43_09s.pdf>.
Comer, Krista. "Western Literature at Century's End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel." Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 (August 2003): 405-13.
Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Print.
Craig, Stephen C., Stephen Earl Bennet, Jack Dennis, et al. After the Boom: The Politics of Generation X. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. Print.
Edmunds, June, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. Generational Consciousness, Narrative, and Politics
Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print.
---. Less Than Zero. London: Simon and Shuster, 1985. Print.
Farova, Anna, ed. Robert Capa. New York: Paragraphic Books, 1969. Print.
Foster Wallace, David. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.2 (Summer 1993): 168. Print.
Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. New York: Summit Books,
1983. Print.
Gordinier, Jeff. X Saves the World: How Generation X got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Print.
Halstead, Ted. “A Politics for Generation X.” The Atlantic. August 1999. Web. 04 Aug.
2011. <http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99aug/9908genx.htm>.
Hamblett, Charles, and Jane Deverson. “Generation X.” Greenwich, Conn.: Gold Medal Books, 1964. Print.
Hanson, Peter. The Cinema of Generation X: A Critical Study of Films and Directors. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2002. Print.
Helgason, Hallgrímur. 101 Reykjavík: A Novel. Trans. Brian FitzGibbbon. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.
Henseler, Christine. Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Hopper, Jessica. “Riot Girl: Still Relevant 20 Years On.” The Guardian Jan. 20, 2011. Web. Jan. 10, 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/20/riot-girl-20-years-anniversary>
Kracht, Christina. Faserland. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1995. Print.
Janowitz, Tama. Slaves of New York. New York: Washington Square Press, 1986. Print.
Geoffrey T. Holtz’s Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind “Generation X.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Print.
Lebert, Benjamin. Crazy: A Novel. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2000. Print.
Lee, Christina. Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema. Burlington, VT, 2010. Print.
Liu, Eric, ed. Young American Writers on the New Generation. New York: Norton & Company, 1994. Print.
McInerney, Jay. Bright Lights, Big City. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1984. Print.
Miles. Steven. Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World. Buckingham, Open UP, 2000. Print.
Muggleton, David, and Rupert Weinzierl. The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg, 2003.
Osgerby, Bill. Youth Media. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Owen, Robb. GenX TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 199. Print.
“Reading Literacy of 15-year-olds.” IES: National Center for Educational Statistics. 2009.
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_2.asp>.
Robb, John. “Generation X—The Most Underrated of the Punk Bands.” April 11, 2011. Web. August 16, 2011. Blog. <http://louderthanwar.com/blogs/perhaps-the-most-underrated-of-the-punk-generation-bands-generation-x-deserve-another-listen>
Rose, Marla Matzer. “Character Change: Disney To Buy Muppets From Jim Henson Co.” all
Business. February 23, 2004. Web. 04 Aug. 2011.
"Sesame Street: Forty Years of Sweeping the Clouds Away." Sesame Workshop. Web. 04
Aug. 2011. <http://www.sesameworkshop.org/programs/sesame_street>.
Stephey, M.J. "Gen-X: The Ignored Generation?" TimeEntertainment. April 16 (2008).
The National Commission on Excellence in Education. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for
Educational Reform.” A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education. April 1983. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.csus.edu/indiv/l/langd/Nation_at_Risk.pdf >.
“The Youth of Today…” Trash Fiction. N.d. Web Aug. 11, 2011. http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/youth_nf.html
Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. London, Polity, 1994. Print.
Toufexis, Anastasia, Hannah Bloch and Jeanne McDowell. “When Kids Kill Abusive
Parents.” Time. November 23, 1992. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977079,00.html>.
Tulgan, Bruce. Managing Generation X: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2000.
Print.
Ulrich, John, and Andrea Harris. GeneXegesis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture. New York: Poplar Press, 2003. Print.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003.” Section 2. Web. 04
Aug. 2011. <http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/03statab/vitstat.pdf >. Succinct version at <http://www.divorcereform.org/03statab.html>.
U. S. Department of Education. “A Nation Accountable: Twenty-five Years After a Nation at
Risk.” April 2008. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. <http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/accountable/accountable.pdf>.
Young, Elizabeth and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on America’s Blank Fiction. New York: Grove Press, 1992. Print.
Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. Print.
Wexler, Michael, John Hulme. Voices of the Xiled: A Generation Speaks for Itself. New York: Doubleday Books, 1994. Print.
William Straus and Neil How’s Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069.