The other night, I was talking with some folks about the current generation.
We were saying how there really is no current youth rebellion. Everything that gets churned out by television and MTV gets swallowed whole. Tell the average eightteen year old that tobacco companies are evil and they'll believe it. Package rebellion in a box and sell it to them and they'll think they're being subversive. Subculture is a fashion statement, kids want to be able to have a nice, neat white collar existence while convincing themselves they're "different" by what club they're going to this week.
 Then it dawned on me...
 The younger kids really didn't have much. I mean, when I was growing up I had Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, Cyndi Lauper and Weird Al Yankovich. By the time I was in my late teens, I'd had exposure to so much sub culture, I could seperate shlock from quality, and  had a level of creativity high enough to know the difference between bullshit and intelligence.
 The current brand of high school and college kids haven't had much, They get rehashed fashions, rehashed movies, two dimensional television. We're more interested in tokensim than quality. As long as there's Will and Grace, we're happy no matter how two dimensional. People protest if their particular ethnicity isn't represented enough on television without stopping to question the damaging effects of having only the worst cardboard cut out stereotypes represented.
 It's all of this that contributes to the current sterility. There's no innovation, no imagination. The up and coming generation sees the world in a spoon fed vacuum.
 But you know, we aren't without hope.
Look at the ones behind them. I'm talking the average fifth grader, the ones that will be up and coming when they're jaded, disillusioned and bitter. These are the kids that have been on the internet since the first grade. These are the ones that have had anime: Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Sanrio. These are the ones that have had RPGs and video games. These are the kids who have South Park.
 So you see, there's hope.
The kids that are in elementary school now have access to a wealth of information. Hell, children's television is already more intelligent than television geared toward 18-22 year olds. Hollywood knows that they can't insult these kids' intellect. They're pumping out as many vapid blockbusters for the current college crowd as they can muster, get as much profit as they can, because when the kids who are trading Pokemon cards now are old enough to get into a rated R movie, there's going to be enough among them who were creatively stimulated they won't be able to churn out  all the crap. It also means there's going to be some new youth subculture.  I don't know what it will be, but one thing's for certain: they aren't all going to be anti-smoking, anti-drinking Blink 182 fanatics....

 january    pontifications