Christine Henseler's work on Generation X includes:
Generation Goes Global: Mapping A Youth Culture in Motion
(Routledge, 2013) (see the accompanying website )
Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed
(Palgrave, 2011)
Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture,
co-edited w/ Randolph Pope, Univ. of Virginia (Vanderbilt, 2009)
Huffington Post Publications:
Millennials and Boomers: Don't Forget Generation X (May 2, 2014)
Generation X: What's In The Label? (May 27, 2014)
Millennials and Boomers: Don't Forget Generation X
Published in The Huffington Post
Raise your hand if you can identify anything about Generation X. So many books and articles published in recent years tend to mention Gen X only in passing as a small, insignificant, "in-between" cohort leaving few lasting impressions. Instead, we hear about the Millennial state of mind, and how the Millennial-Baby Boomer relationship appears to be flourishing and providing all the nourishment the current generational identity checks seem to need.
As someone who has researched Generation X around the globe for years, I know that the Millennials and their younger "Generation Z" siblings owe a great deal of their generational identity to Generation X. Born between 1960 and 1980 in the United States -- now between the ages of 34 and 54-years-old -- Gen Xers laid the political, intellectual, social, creative and personal ground upon which the Millennials today walk, talk and text.
The transitional and transformational time when Generation Xers grew up, as well as their current impact and influence at the height of professional careers, should not be ignored or erased. To understand how the Millennials think and act today and might change the world tomorrow, the cloak of invisibility must be lifted.
Let's start with the numbers. The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown is a recently-published book based on data collected by the Pew Research Center. While Paul Taylor's project provides valuable insight into the world and mind of the Millennials, I was struck by how an entire generational identity could be determined by scientific data sets based on a subjective selection of birth dates.
Chapter two starts with the claim that, "Millennials and Boomers are the lead characters in the looming generational showdown by dint of their vast number and strategic location in the life cycle." My first reaction was, Where did the Xers go? Taylor considers Baby Boomer birth dates to range from 1946-1964, Generation X birth dates from 1965-1980, and the Millennials to begin in 1980, with no end date in sight. A closer look at these dates, which each researcher can determine as he or she chooses, uncovers that the supposedly "vast numbers" attributed to the Boomers and Millennials are based on dates that have reduced Xers' existence to a mere 14 years, compared to 18 and 20 years in the other two cohorts. Indeed, this way, the booming sound of the two demographics does become quite loud, leaving that mysterious Generation X to fend for itself, lost in the middle.
Most troubling is any thinking that Boomers and Millennials are "also each other's children and parents, bound together in an intricate web of love, support, anxiety, resentment, and interdependence." While some certainly are each other's parents and children, what happened to the Generation X parents who between the ages of 20 and 40 have given birth to many Millennials born between 1980 and 2000? Was the legalization of the birth control pill in 1961 so powerful?
Why has parental status and impact been thwarted when the Millennial psychology has in fact been heavily influenced by GenX life experiences and beliefs related to politics, family, class, religion, culture, technology and sexuality, among many other subjects?
The Pew study is no exception of the degree to which Generation X's impact is minimized in studies concerning the Millennials. In a book titled, Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever, authors Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber reduce Generation X birthdates to such a degree -- to a mere 13 years -- so as to argue that, "sheer numbers mean that Generation We is going to have a gigantic impact on American society, and in turn, on the world." Their approach undermines the gigantic impact of a supposedly inclusive "We" generation by both excluding worldwide perspectives from their research and squeezing Gen Xers out of the equation.
Proclamations about how U.S. Millennials will rule or change the world seem to include little to no understanding of the historical, political, social and personal factors that have shaped the lives of their peers around the globe. Particularly ironic is to talk about the impact, reach and global connectivity of a generation when applying a microcosmic and U.S.-centered vision alone, as over 35 international contributors will tell you in Generation X Goes Global.
A more comprehensive approach teaches us that cohort birth dates vary by country and experience, that generational engagements can be complex and contradictory, and that cultural influences shift and change as people move from city to city, leaving bits and bytes to be remixed across nations and people. For instance, current political activism has strong roots in Generation X's punk and DIY culture. The U.S.-born underground feminist punk movement of the 1990s known as the riot grrrls, whose goal was to bring issues of rape, abuse or racism to light, has moved through time and space to inspire a group of young Russian protesters (ranging from ages 20 to 33) calling themselves Pussy Riot and challenging Vladimir Putin's politics through guerrilla performances posted to the Internet.
To engage with the Millennials means paying tribute to a past generational worldview with a long and strong history and a spirit that has gone viral. Let's not forget about the contributions from Generation X when we talk about the Millennials. We are not going away anytime soon.
Published in The Huffington Post
Raise your hand if you can identify anything about Generation X. So many books and articles published in recent years tend to mention Gen X only in passing as a small, insignificant, "in-between" cohort leaving few lasting impressions. Instead, we hear about the Millennial state of mind, and how the Millennial-Baby Boomer relationship appears to be flourishing and providing all the nourishment the current generational identity checks seem to need.
As someone who has researched Generation X around the globe for years, I know that the Millennials and their younger "Generation Z" siblings owe a great deal of their generational identity to Generation X. Born between 1960 and 1980 in the United States -- now between the ages of 34 and 54-years-old -- Gen Xers laid the political, intellectual, social, creative and personal ground upon which the Millennials today walk, talk and text.
The transitional and transformational time when Generation Xers grew up, as well as their current impact and influence at the height of professional careers, should not be ignored or erased. To understand how the Millennials think and act today and might change the world tomorrow, the cloak of invisibility must be lifted.
Let's start with the numbers. The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown is a recently-published book based on data collected by the Pew Research Center. While Paul Taylor's project provides valuable insight into the world and mind of the Millennials, I was struck by how an entire generational identity could be determined by scientific data sets based on a subjective selection of birth dates.
Chapter two starts with the claim that, "Millennials and Boomers are the lead characters in the looming generational showdown by dint of their vast number and strategic location in the life cycle." My first reaction was, Where did the Xers go? Taylor considers Baby Boomer birth dates to range from 1946-1964, Generation X birth dates from 1965-1980, and the Millennials to begin in 1980, with no end date in sight. A closer look at these dates, which each researcher can determine as he or she chooses, uncovers that the supposedly "vast numbers" attributed to the Boomers and Millennials are based on dates that have reduced Xers' existence to a mere 14 years, compared to 18 and 20 years in the other two cohorts. Indeed, this way, the booming sound of the two demographics does become quite loud, leaving that mysterious Generation X to fend for itself, lost in the middle.
Most troubling is any thinking that Boomers and Millennials are "also each other's children and parents, bound together in an intricate web of love, support, anxiety, resentment, and interdependence." While some certainly are each other's parents and children, what happened to the Generation X parents who between the ages of 20 and 40 have given birth to many Millennials born between 1980 and 2000? Was the legalization of the birth control pill in 1961 so powerful?
Why has parental status and impact been thwarted when the Millennial psychology has in fact been heavily influenced by GenX life experiences and beliefs related to politics, family, class, religion, culture, technology and sexuality, among many other subjects?
The Pew study is no exception of the degree to which Generation X's impact is minimized in studies concerning the Millennials. In a book titled, Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever, authors Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber reduce Generation X birthdates to such a degree -- to a mere 13 years -- so as to argue that, "sheer numbers mean that Generation We is going to have a gigantic impact on American society, and in turn, on the world." Their approach undermines the gigantic impact of a supposedly inclusive "We" generation by both excluding worldwide perspectives from their research and squeezing Gen Xers out of the equation.
Proclamations about how U.S. Millennials will rule or change the world seem to include little to no understanding of the historical, political, social and personal factors that have shaped the lives of their peers around the globe. Particularly ironic is to talk about the impact, reach and global connectivity of a generation when applying a microcosmic and U.S.-centered vision alone, as over 35 international contributors will tell you in Generation X Goes Global.
A more comprehensive approach teaches us that cohort birth dates vary by country and experience, that generational engagements can be complex and contradictory, and that cultural influences shift and change as people move from city to city, leaving bits and bytes to be remixed across nations and people. For instance, current political activism has strong roots in Generation X's punk and DIY culture. The U.S.-born underground feminist punk movement of the 1990s known as the riot grrrls, whose goal was to bring issues of rape, abuse or racism to light, has moved through time and space to inspire a group of young Russian protesters (ranging from ages 20 to 33) calling themselves Pussy Riot and challenging Vladimir Putin's politics through guerrilla performances posted to the Internet.
To engage with the Millennials means paying tribute to a past generational worldview with a long and strong history and a spirit that has gone viral. Let's not forget about the contributions from Generation X when we talk about the Millennials. We are not going away anytime soon.
Generation X: What's in the Label?
Published in The Huffington Post
In my previous post, "Millennials and Boomers: Don't Forget Generation X," I ask to pay tribute to a generation that is often passed by. I believe that the scarce attention paid to Generation X has resulted from a lack of understanding about the meaning and identity of this cohort. To begin, it is worth noting that the label itself has been somewhat of an enigma, a question mark, a blank, an identity squeezed between two poles--the Boomers and Millennials--twisted into a demographic that seems to contribute little, disregarded as dark matter lost in disillusioned space. Who cares, say the critics. Whatever, reply Xers.
What did ever happened to Generation X? And why should we care? Why should you bother reading about a generation that might coincide with your birth date (were you born between 1960 and 1980 in the US?) but seems to have nothing in common with you at all? Because Generation X is more than just a demographic. Generation X is a cohort with personal and political experiences that have marked the way we look at the world and we live in this world.
To grasp Generation X, we must start with its label. Most people think that it was born in 1991 when Canadian writer and visual artist, Douglas Coupland, published the popular book Generation X: Tales of An Accelerated Culture. That's not the case. In fact, it all began much earlier, in 1953 when, as Dr. John Ulrich eloquently details in GenXegesis, "The Queen's Generation: Young People in a Changing World" was published in the Picture Post in the United Kingdom. This piece was later published as a three-part series titled "Youth and the World" in the United States' magazine called Holiday.
The 23 young people around 21 years of age from 14 countries around the world who were interviewed for this piece came of age after World War II. The editors concluded that their opinions did not reveal a clear pattern for the future and their concerns did not point into any clear direction. This lack of conclusions and these unknowns about the future of tomorrow led photographer Robert Capa to call this "The Generation X".
Generation X did not fall into oblivion then and there. The label reappeared in 1963 in a book titled "Generation X" by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson. In this context "Generation X"--surrounded by quotation marks--portrayed a cross-section of young people from all walks of life, from the controversial and sometimes violent rockers and fashion-oriented mods to prostitutes, high school and college students. These youth discussed their needs for self-expression, for the hopes of a better future, more active participation in contemporary life, less corruption in government institutions, acceptance of more alternative lifestyles, and a general search for the identity of a "new man or woman" in an increasingly technology-driven age.
When Hamblett and Deverson published a message in the Observer in which they asked the youth of Britain to come forward and participate in their project, they opened a space for individuals to speak for themselves, in their own language, about matters of interest to them. In the process, tell Anushka Asthana and Vanessa Thorpe in "Whatever Happened to the Original Generation X?", they empowered the young and shocked the more traditional public still reacting to the austerity of the post-war years.
Keep in mind that this was also a time when youth gained voice through fashion, music, and popular culture (think the Beatles) while experiencing a sense of helplessness and discontent in matters concerning society and politics (think the Reagan and Thatcher era). It was this self-expressed shock-effect that attracted many to Hamblett and Deverson's book, which became an instant hit. Mick Jagger, say Asthana and Thorpe, "was said to be a huge fan and John Lennon wanted to turn it into a musical."
When punk rocker Billy Idol found "Generation X" on one of his mother's book shelves, the title seemed more than appropriate for an emerging band searching for a new identity and a rebellious voice. The band, named none other than Generation X--now not surrounded by quotation marks--would disregard musical rules and write songs meant to defy social expectations while ironically becoming the first punk band to appear on the BBC Television music program Top of the Pops. When in 1976 Billy Idol started his new band, Generation X, he remixed Hamblett and Deverson's pop sociological book with a dose of punk and rock and gave the "X" a whole new sound.
While the moniker's sound does not end with Billy Idol (as can be read in Generation X Goes Global), this span of 20-some years infuses the label with new insight. The stories of the past add to today's understanding of Generation X as a cohort that places emphasis on the importance of moving into new, alternative, and tech-driven spaces from where they can reject or rewrite the past and the future, redefine and accept themselves and others, question and reenvision storylines, and participate in the construction of their own lives. As such, Generation X is both a worldview, consciousness, or spirit that transcends time and a time-bound cohort whose approach to life and work reaches both into the past and toward the future.
Published in The Huffington Post
In my previous post, "Millennials and Boomers: Don't Forget Generation X," I ask to pay tribute to a generation that is often passed by. I believe that the scarce attention paid to Generation X has resulted from a lack of understanding about the meaning and identity of this cohort. To begin, it is worth noting that the label itself has been somewhat of an enigma, a question mark, a blank, an identity squeezed between two poles--the Boomers and Millennials--twisted into a demographic that seems to contribute little, disregarded as dark matter lost in disillusioned space. Who cares, say the critics. Whatever, reply Xers.
What did ever happened to Generation X? And why should we care? Why should you bother reading about a generation that might coincide with your birth date (were you born between 1960 and 1980 in the US?) but seems to have nothing in common with you at all? Because Generation X is more than just a demographic. Generation X is a cohort with personal and political experiences that have marked the way we look at the world and we live in this world.
To grasp Generation X, we must start with its label. Most people think that it was born in 1991 when Canadian writer and visual artist, Douglas Coupland, published the popular book Generation X: Tales of An Accelerated Culture. That's not the case. In fact, it all began much earlier, in 1953 when, as Dr. John Ulrich eloquently details in GenXegesis, "The Queen's Generation: Young People in a Changing World" was published in the Picture Post in the United Kingdom. This piece was later published as a three-part series titled "Youth and the World" in the United States' magazine called Holiday.
The 23 young people around 21 years of age from 14 countries around the world who were interviewed for this piece came of age after World War II. The editors concluded that their opinions did not reveal a clear pattern for the future and their concerns did not point into any clear direction. This lack of conclusions and these unknowns about the future of tomorrow led photographer Robert Capa to call this "The Generation X".
Generation X did not fall into oblivion then and there. The label reappeared in 1963 in a book titled "Generation X" by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson. In this context "Generation X"--surrounded by quotation marks--portrayed a cross-section of young people from all walks of life, from the controversial and sometimes violent rockers and fashion-oriented mods to prostitutes, high school and college students. These youth discussed their needs for self-expression, for the hopes of a better future, more active participation in contemporary life, less corruption in government institutions, acceptance of more alternative lifestyles, and a general search for the identity of a "new man or woman" in an increasingly technology-driven age.
When Hamblett and Deverson published a message in the Observer in which they asked the youth of Britain to come forward and participate in their project, they opened a space for individuals to speak for themselves, in their own language, about matters of interest to them. In the process, tell Anushka Asthana and Vanessa Thorpe in "Whatever Happened to the Original Generation X?", they empowered the young and shocked the more traditional public still reacting to the austerity of the post-war years.
Keep in mind that this was also a time when youth gained voice through fashion, music, and popular culture (think the Beatles) while experiencing a sense of helplessness and discontent in matters concerning society and politics (think the Reagan and Thatcher era). It was this self-expressed shock-effect that attracted many to Hamblett and Deverson's book, which became an instant hit. Mick Jagger, say Asthana and Thorpe, "was said to be a huge fan and John Lennon wanted to turn it into a musical."
When punk rocker Billy Idol found "Generation X" on one of his mother's book shelves, the title seemed more than appropriate for an emerging band searching for a new identity and a rebellious voice. The band, named none other than Generation X--now not surrounded by quotation marks--would disregard musical rules and write songs meant to defy social expectations while ironically becoming the first punk band to appear on the BBC Television music program Top of the Pops. When in 1976 Billy Idol started his new band, Generation X, he remixed Hamblett and Deverson's pop sociological book with a dose of punk and rock and gave the "X" a whole new sound.
While the moniker's sound does not end with Billy Idol (as can be read in Generation X Goes Global), this span of 20-some years infuses the label with new insight. The stories of the past add to today's understanding of Generation X as a cohort that places emphasis on the importance of moving into new, alternative, and tech-driven spaces from where they can reject or rewrite the past and the future, redefine and accept themselves and others, question and reenvision storylines, and participate in the construction of their own lives. As such, Generation X is both a worldview, consciousness, or spirit that transcends time and a time-bound cohort whose approach to life and work reaches both into the past and toward the future.
The 'X' in Apple and Obama
On January 22, 1984, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, a disorienting commercial interrupted the usual football fever. With the sound of screeching metal, military footsteps, and an eerie voice-over announcing the celebration of “the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives,” viewers getting chips or beer from the kitchen, were sure to stop cold in their tracks. When they looked back at the screen, they saw two lines of figures marching toward a large auditorium along metal, tube-like passages. Like zombies, the masses were sitting in rows gazing at a Big Brother figure pontificating on a large screen before them. A glimmer of hope and color appears through the crowd: a female athlete in bright red shorts and shoes and a white shirt—on it, but barely discernable, a Picasso-like picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer. Closely followed by guards, she runs up to the screen, which is now displaying an uncomfortably close shot of the face ominously surveying the crowd through thick glasses. She stops, she swings the sledghammer, and with a grunt, she throws it into the screen. At the moment of impact, just before the figure pronounces the words “we will prevail,” the light and force of the strike sweeps over the sitting audience like a strong wind. A voice announces: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
On a Sunday afternoon in March of 2007, the same ad appeared again, slightly changed: it used the image of Hillary Clinton speaking to the crowd below, and the female athlete’s shirt displayed the Obama campaign logo. Phil de Vellis, a.k.a. ParkRidge 47, had used his personal computer, a Mac, and Flash Video software to integrate a speech from Clinton into the well-known Apple commercial. He uploaded his work, titled "Vote Different," to YouTube and sent links around to blogs to distribute the new ad, which became an instant success. Vellis’s goal was to show that Barack Obama represented a new kind of politics, and that the old political machine, represented by Senator Hillary Clinton, was disingenuous and no longer held all the power. (Vellis)
Ted Friedman explains that, in 1984, this commercial enveloped the Apple computer in an aura of rebellion and empowerment. The same quality emanates in the ad from 2007, but with a different outcome: technology is now not the end of all rebellion, but it is the medium that allows for independent and individual political empowerment on a global level. The work of Vellis suggests a generational change defined by the relationship between “three concepts—media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence” (Jenkins 2). As fiction (George Orwell’s novel 1984), merges with allusions to film (Blade Runner) and television (Big Brother reality tv shows), the commercial becomes a powerful tool of political agency. Individuals from around the world could easily interpret the political meaning of the manipulated Apple ad, but they did not always apprehend the level of its generational critique. In this ad, Barack Obama, while never shown, came to embody a Generation Xer combating the conformity and power of a Baby Boomer past.
Much talk has arisen as to whether or not Obama, born in 1961, is a Baby Boomer or a Generation Xer. While critics differ as to the beginning of the GenX period (ranging between 1960 and 1964), Obama clearly displays a GenX worldview. Born the same year as Douglas Coupland, the man who brought the GenX label into the public limelight in 1991, Obama echoes many of Coupland’s characters’ concerns about living in a society more interested in material goods than the good of society, of politicians more in tune with themselves than the people they serve, of an environment disrespected by large corporations and governments. The product of divorced parents, Obama grew up smack in between an anthropologist mother who “embodied the restless drift and countercultural curiosity of a baby boomer generation” (Avlon) and grandparents who struggled through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and voted for Nixon. Obama’s generational awareness has always been acute, the word “generation” appearing dozens of times in his talks. In fact, in his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that the back and forth of Clinton and Gingrich and the elections of 2000 and 2004 “felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation.” His antidote involved rhetorical post-partisanship, political pragmatism, and an ability to assess and synthesize both red and blue perspectives into new solutions, and come up with alternative, third ways of doing business. (Avlon).
The new progressive generation to which Obama belongs has become known for blending political resistance with commercial culture and technology. Whether Obama is standing before the image of Superman, playing off of the Jay-Z “Dirt Off your Shoulder” song during the primaries, or reaching youth through YouTube and Facebook, he speaks the language of contemporary culturMillennials, is born through a "in-between" GenX consciousness.
As seen in the work of Jerome Armstrong (b. 1964), the mastermind behind Howard Dean’s campaign, GenXers were involved in the creation and development of the web during the dot-com heyday and are indisputably its creators (Chaudhry). GenXers rethought pre-established ideas within the twenty-first century “as a fluid field of choice rather than a hard-and-fast test of ideological committment" (Chaudhry)—of which the Apple ad is a perfect example. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that years of listening, observing, and learning, or what in GenX lingo has been called “escapism, hedonism and cynicism,” has led to awareness and change. Just think Jon Stewart, MTV, Google, MySpace, and Amazon. GenXers may be the in-between generation, born between the looming 80 million Baby Boomers and 78 million Millennials (vs. 46 million GenXers in the US), but we are, as Obama’s campaign has “jingled,” the generation of change.
Christine Henseler, June 30, 2011
Works Cited:
Avlon, John P. "A Generation Rises with Obama." NewGeography. Aug. 29, 2009. http://www.newgeography.com/content/00205-a-generation-rises-with-obamaChaudhry K, Lakshmi. "Will the Real Generation Obama Please Stand up." Drum Major Institute For Public Policy. Dec. 3, 2007. http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/library/article.php?ID=6646
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Much talk has arisen as to whether or not Obama, born in 1961, is a Baby Boomer or a Generation Xer. While critics differ as to the beginning of the GenX period (ranging between 1960 and 1964), Obama clearly displays a GenX worldview. Born the same year as Douglas Coupland, the man who brought the GenX label into the public limelight in 1991, Obama echoes many of Coupland’s characters’ concerns about living in a society more interested in material goods than the good of society, of politicians more in tune with themselves than the people they serve, of an environment disrespected by large corporations and governments. The product of divorced parents, Obama grew up smack in between an anthropologist mother who “embodied the restless drift and countercultural curiosity of a baby boomer generation” (Avlon) and grandparents who struggled through the Great Depression, the Second World War, and voted for Nixon. Obama’s generational awareness has always been acute, the word “generation” appearing dozens of times in his talks. In fact, in his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that the back and forth of Clinton and Gingrich and the elections of 2000 and 2004 “felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation.” His antidote involved rhetorical post-partisanship, political pragmatism, and an ability to assess and synthesize both red and blue perspectives into new solutions, and come up with alternative, third ways of doing business. (Avlon).
The new progressive generation to which Obama belongs has become known for blending political resistance with commercial culture and technology. Whether Obama is standing before the image of Superman, playing off of the Jay-Z “Dirt Off your Shoulder” song during the primaries, or reaching youth through YouTube and Facebook, he speaks the language of contemporary culturMillennials, is born through a "in-between" GenX consciousness.
As seen in the work of Jerome Armstrong (b. 1964), the mastermind behind Howard Dean’s campaign, GenXers were involved in the creation and development of the web during the dot-com heyday and are indisputably its creators (Chaudhry). GenXers rethought pre-established ideas within the twenty-first century “as a fluid field of choice rather than a hard-and-fast test of ideological committment" (Chaudhry)—of which the Apple ad is a perfect example. Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that years of listening, observing, and learning, or what in GenX lingo has been called “escapism, hedonism and cynicism,” has led to awareness and change. Just think Jon Stewart, MTV, Google, MySpace, and Amazon. GenXers may be the in-between generation, born between the looming 80 million Baby Boomers and 78 million Millennials (vs. 46 million GenXers in the US), but we are, as Obama’s campaign has “jingled,” the generation of change.
Christine Henseler, June 30, 2011
Works Cited:
Avlon, John P. "A Generation Rises with Obama." NewGeography. Aug. 29, 2009. http://www.newgeography.com/content/00205-a-generation-rises-with-obamaChaudhry K, Lakshmi. "Will the Real Generation Obama Please Stand up." Drum Major Institute For Public Policy. Dec. 3, 2007. http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/library/article.php?ID=6646
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
What Is “Video Clip Literature”?:
Aesthetic Rebellion in Spanish Generation X Fiction
Based on a presentation given at the Modern Language Association Convention in 2009, accompanied by examples on DVDA longer version of this piece can be found in my book Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed
Several years ago I picked up a copy of the 1993 novel Héroes by Spanish novelist Ray Loriga. When I started to read the novel, I found myself nodding off, thinking about other things, and desperately wanting to check my e-mail. So I put the book down. Several months later, I picked it up again. I tried to read it. I put it down. And I thought to myself: okay, if I was able to get through Sánchez Ferlosio's El Jarama in graduate school, I should be able to get through this. I did eventually get through it, but I have to admit that, initially, I did not like the novel; it lost my thoughts in the blanks between each word, each paragraph, and each chapter. So when one day Bob Spires asked me “So, what do you think is the aesthetic value of Generation X texts?, I was speechless. My face was as blank as the spaces within which I had been lost in text.
So Bob, for more reasons than one, you have been motivating me for years (thank you). Your words inspired me to dig a little deeper, and to try to answer
this apparently simple, yet tremendously hard question. To start, I checked out a few book reviews of Héroes and found that critics repeatedly described the novel as a “record”. It became readily apparent that Loriga’s image as a bad-boy literary rock star on the cover of his novel, was complementing the nostalgic references to rock artists like David Bowie and Bob Dylan sprinkled throughout the text itself. And these references seemed to coincide with Loriga’s own enthusiasm of rock and roll stars, of Bob Dylan particular, as seen in several of his essays and in a special issue called “Dylan en versión española” in which Loriga recreated Dylan’s 1963 debut album, Freewheelin’:
 |
 |
Images credited to "Dylan Versión española":
http://www.elmundo.es/magazine/num181/textos/dylan2.html
http://www.elmundo.es/magazine/num181/textos/dylan2.html
The perception that Loriga and his GenX colleagues have been influenced by formal and lyrical compositions of song has received valuable and serious critical attention. Eva Navarro Martínez superbly details how the novels of Loriga, Mañas, Prado and Maestre all present certain parallels with the work of Bob Dylan, Nirvana, David Bowie, Lou Reed or Jim Morrison. For example, she says that in Héroes, Loriga often plays with one idea, repeats it, and ends at the same place he began. Loriga also uses many periods and commas and simple phrases without connecting prepositions to emphasize the closed and independent nature of each sentence (Navarro Martínez 139). In addition, his prose ranges from the downright crude to the lyrical, much like in song and melody. The novel’s short and disconnected chapters allow readers to either read the novel sequentially or open the book to any chapter, skipping from one “tune” to another.
While I think that, indeed, the novel could be read as a record, or a CD, the development of a more multimedia environment in the beginning of the 1990s is such that a purely aural understanding of this novel is insufficient; it also reduces the narrative to a textual flatness supposedly steeped in the superficiality of popular culture—a criticism often used to discredit GenX texts. But it warrants looking more closely at a few passages in Héroes to realize that something else is going on here. In one passage, the protagonist contrasts the video recorder to the movie theatre, and embraces its capacity to capture, repeat, and reembody emotions stemming from rock and roll songs and stars. In another chapter, the young protagonist who has locked himself in a 6-meter large room, watches Japanese anime in silence while listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers at high volume. The emotional charge of this audio-visual convergence leads him to think of a series of disconnect material objects and elements from everyday life. When we read the book, the effect of this convergence does not really come alive, but thanks to the help of my wonderful ITS department at Union College, I am able to give you a sense of the emotional charge of the juxtaposition of Japanese anime, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the textual evidence of the protagonist’s triggering of material objects in the following rendition:
While I think that, indeed, the novel could be read as a record, or a CD, the development of a more multimedia environment in the beginning of the 1990s is such that a purely aural understanding of this novel is insufficient; it also reduces the narrative to a textual flatness supposedly steeped in the superficiality of popular culture—a criticism often used to discredit GenX texts. But it warrants looking more closely at a few passages in Héroes to realize that something else is going on here. In one passage, the protagonist contrasts the video recorder to the movie theatre, and embraces its capacity to capture, repeat, and reembody emotions stemming from rock and roll songs and stars. In another chapter, the young protagonist who has locked himself in a 6-meter large room, watches Japanese anime in silence while listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers at high volume. The emotional charge of this audio-visual convergence leads him to think of a series of disconnect material objects and elements from everyday life. When we read the book, the effect of this convergence does not really come alive, but thanks to the help of my wonderful ITS department at Union College, I am able to give you a sense of the emotional charge of the juxtaposition of Japanese anime, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the textual evidence of the protagonist’s triggering of material objects in the following rendition:
I believe this scene points to a very important phenomenon that gains contour in the 1990s, namely the increased mixing of media technologies by producers and consumers alike, what media guru Henry Jenkins’ has termed “convergence culture” and Lawrence Lessig has called “remix culture.” Going back to Héroes, then, one could consider Loriga a contemporary remix writer and the text could be said to anticipate the movement toward what we know today as an example of hybrid media. In other words, I suggest that the novel not just be analyzed as a narrative set to song, but rather as a vivid example of one of the first breakthroughs in the mixing of media and one of the most important media events in the life of Generation X’ers, namely as a powerful example of “Music Video Clip Literature.”
Although critics have used the term “video clip literature” to define the structural stylistics of GenX texts, they have only done so on a theoretical level, usually centering their comments on the negative, illogical, and emptying qualities of a particular narrative. The synesthetic complexity of music video clips is often denied value through the use of words like the downgrading of the plot and the characterization of the medium’s exposition as free-floating, decentered, fragmented, anti-narrative and lacking substance. In the field of Hispanism, for example, Carter Smith suggested that Mañas himself sensed that “his MTV-like prose style [threatened] to become as banal as MTV itself” (10). My first and main goal here today is to undermine some of the stereotypes that a mere theoretical examination of music videos has carried into the field of literary criticism. I would like to suggest that a better understanding of the effects of the medium’s strategies through first-hand examples allows us to value GenX novels from radically, even academically rebellious, angles.
In 1981 in the US and in 1987 in Spain, Generation X’ers proclaimed: “I want my MTV!” With this exclamation they rejected monolithic cable network television for music videos’ complex audiovisual layers that motioned to the increasing convergence, hybridization, and mixing of media as new, and some would say rebellious sites of storytelling. In the first chapter. of her book, Experiencing Music Videos, Carol Vernallis presents the two interpretations largely attributed to music video clips. On one hand, critics read them as narrative constructs that function similar to television or film. On the other hand, critics, especially literary critics, viewed clips as an essentially anti-narrative medium, “a kind of postmodern pastiche that actually gains energy from defying narrative conventions” (Vernallis 3). Music videos present a large range of both of these beliefs, but, as you know, most of them pertain to the non-narrative genre. This is because videos follow a song’s cyclical form and they consider a topic rather than enact a topic in linear fashion (Vernallis 4). In addition, music video, as a rapid multimedia genre, does not translate film narrative techniques directly, but presents readers with three stories simultaneously in one very short time and space.
What we find in music videos, then is that sound, image, and narrative each possess their “own language with regard to time, space, narrativity, activity, and affect” (Vernallis 13) and they shift in relation to one another. These three dimensions do not usually merge or move parallel but might play against or with one another to emphasize a chord, a color, or a feeling; they might move into the background or the foreground, they might harmoniously dissolve in a variety of spaces and times, or they might contradict each other and create a disheveled feeling of textured unrest and defiance.
This versatility allows music videos to become an inherently hybrid medium. Not only does this hybridity concern the interplay of the visual, verbal and textual, but the way in which they can cross traditional boundaries and create unexpected, unusual, and powerful messages. This remixing capacity ultimately undermines the image of this supposedly “empty” popular cultural phenomenon for one that allows for significant and self-conscious social and political content, that, in some instances can even lead to political action-- as when President Obama, during the campaign, appropriated the gesture of “brushing off” his shoulder from hip hop artist Jay-Z’s video called “Dirt Off your shoulders.”
I think it is worth pausing and stressing the potential of hybridity in music videos . Much of music videos power comes from the connections that are made between disparate elements and the spaces that are left blank in between each image—what many consider a source of confusion and decenteredness. Therefore, the next clip I want to show you presents four different examples of hybrid convergences to give you a sense of the different messages made possible in each:
The first of these clips, "Megalomaniac" by Incubus, comments on self-exhaltation and destructive behavior in the interplay between song and history, the second plays at the intersection between racial politics and musical genre, between contemporary hip-hip and the Beatles in "The Grey Album" by Dangermouse, and the third clip points to the destruction of the environment by playing with the effects of design technology in the construction of story in Coldplay's "Don't Panic."
Although critics have used the term “video clip literature” to define the structural stylistics of GenX texts, they have only done so on a theoretical level, usually centering their comments on the negative, illogical, and emptying qualities of a particular narrative. The synesthetic complexity of music video clips is often denied value through the use of words like the downgrading of the plot and the characterization of the medium’s exposition as free-floating, decentered, fragmented, anti-narrative and lacking substance. In the field of Hispanism, for example, Carter Smith suggested that Mañas himself sensed that “his MTV-like prose style [threatened] to become as banal as MTV itself” (10). My first and main goal here today is to undermine some of the stereotypes that a mere theoretical examination of music videos has carried into the field of literary criticism. I would like to suggest that a better understanding of the effects of the medium’s strategies through first-hand examples allows us to value GenX novels from radically, even academically rebellious, angles.
In 1981 in the US and in 1987 in Spain, Generation X’ers proclaimed: “I want my MTV!” With this exclamation they rejected monolithic cable network television for music videos’ complex audiovisual layers that motioned to the increasing convergence, hybridization, and mixing of media as new, and some would say rebellious sites of storytelling. In the first chapter. of her book, Experiencing Music Videos, Carol Vernallis presents the two interpretations largely attributed to music video clips. On one hand, critics read them as narrative constructs that function similar to television or film. On the other hand, critics, especially literary critics, viewed clips as an essentially anti-narrative medium, “a kind of postmodern pastiche that actually gains energy from defying narrative conventions” (Vernallis 3). Music videos present a large range of both of these beliefs, but, as you know, most of them pertain to the non-narrative genre. This is because videos follow a song’s cyclical form and they consider a topic rather than enact a topic in linear fashion (Vernallis 4). In addition, music video, as a rapid multimedia genre, does not translate film narrative techniques directly, but presents readers with three stories simultaneously in one very short time and space.
What we find in music videos, then is that sound, image, and narrative each possess their “own language with regard to time, space, narrativity, activity, and affect” (Vernallis 13) and they shift in relation to one another. These three dimensions do not usually merge or move parallel but might play against or with one another to emphasize a chord, a color, or a feeling; they might move into the background or the foreground, they might harmoniously dissolve in a variety of spaces and times, or they might contradict each other and create a disheveled feeling of textured unrest and defiance.
This versatility allows music videos to become an inherently hybrid medium. Not only does this hybridity concern the interplay of the visual, verbal and textual, but the way in which they can cross traditional boundaries and create unexpected, unusual, and powerful messages. This remixing capacity ultimately undermines the image of this supposedly “empty” popular cultural phenomenon for one that allows for significant and self-conscious social and political content, that, in some instances can even lead to political action-- as when President Obama, during the campaign, appropriated the gesture of “brushing off” his shoulder from hip hop artist Jay-Z’s video called “Dirt Off your shoulders.”
I think it is worth pausing and stressing the potential of hybridity in music videos . Much of music videos power comes from the connections that are made between disparate elements and the spaces that are left blank in between each image—what many consider a source of confusion and decenteredness. Therefore, the next clip I want to show you presents four different examples of hybrid convergences to give you a sense of the different messages made possible in each:
The first of these clips, "Megalomaniac" by Incubus, comments on self-exhaltation and destructive behavior in the interplay between song and history, the second plays at the intersection between racial politics and musical genre, between contemporary hip-hip and the Beatles in "The Grey Album" by Dangermouse, and the third clip points to the destruction of the environment by playing with the effects of design technology in the construction of story in Coldplay's "Don't Panic."
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Apart from hybridity, these are also good presentations of what critics talk about when they say that something is “cut like music video” or they refer to “MTV style editing” because they usually refer to quick cutting and editing that disrupts, confuses, and leaves the viewers and listeners with more questions than answers. Edits come much faster in clips than in films, they are often disjunctive, and they serve as a rhythmic basis for the song; as such music videos in general are discontinuous, time unfolds unpredictably and without clear reference points; space is revealed slowly and incompletely, a character’s personality, goals and desires are only hinted at but never fully disclosed, and actions are incomplete.
The effects of MTV editing warrants a peek back in history when music videos were conceived as advertisements set in motion, and for marketing purposes alone, they gained “from holding back information [and] confronting the viewer with ambiguous or unclear depictions—if there was a story, it existed only in the dynamic relation between the song and the image as they unfolded in time” (4). |
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It is this unfolding that was meant to take on rebellious proportions, allowing teens to identify with new signifying practices steeped in speed and meant to confuse their elders while creating a “secret” signifying system steeped in the rapid succession of visual, aural and textual cultural referents.
If we compare the dynamic strategies of music videos to the novel Héroes, we can recognize that our own frustrations in reading the novel--my frustration in reading this novel—was undoubtedly related to my traditional need for linear, clear and connected prose. But by understanding the inner working of music videos, I have come to recognize that the protagonist escapes into a realm that is determined by a new set of laws and freedoms.
Music video clips give us a technological basis from which to make sense of a novel that deals with personal time and space in ways that appear illogical and emptying. By understanding the structural dynamics at play in music videos, especially as they have evolved in the digital age, we literary critics can make better sense of the narrative remixings at play in other GenX novels as well. For example, each mini chapter in Héroes works like a vignette, connected yet separate from the life of the narrator who seems to be falling in and out of dreams and memories in a series of temporal and spatial overlappings. The novel’s disjointed narrative style functions to erase conventional narrative expectations from the very first moment: it disrupts and interrelates the lyrical with the mundane, questions with statements, the aural with the visual, the first with the second and third persons, space and time, reality and dream, the past and the present…
A closer look shows that the novel shifts from spaces marked by society and related to the past, spaces marked by the individual and the present, and those determined by rock, myth, dream, and hope and representing the future. In other words, space and time are interrelated in the reformulation of the self in story in a way that makes sense if we look at the dynamics of music videos. Music videos “can heighten our awareness to the fact that lived time can be personal and subjective, and different from the rhythms of the environment and that of other people” (Vernallis 129). In other words, different temporal structures can take place simultaneously and subjectively. One excellent example of this temporal multidimensionality may be found in Eminem’s video clip “Guilty Conscience” in which an individual is about to entertain a criminal act, the camera stops his motion and Eminem and Dr. Dre sing to opposing morals and values.
The clip literally stops the storyline and inserts opposing narratives while the video and its song continue. This multi-temporality evokes Vernallis’s observation that each medium can suggest different types of time, and each can undercut, put into question, or enhance the temporality of another medium (14). Similarly, in Héroes, the past, present and future are marked by different perceptions of time and space that rarely converge harmoniously, but rather shift and challenge each other’s storylines in palpable ways.
Space can also be presented in seemingly contradictory ways in music videos. PP Although the protagonist of Héroes locks himself into a small interior room, he is able to “wake up inside” and explore a variety of constantly changing exterior spaces through references to dreams, rock and roll songs and artists. Moreover, by shifting from one virtual place to another, he seems to acquire a better sense of personal direction. Similarly, one of music videos greatest pleasures is its ability to extend our sense of inside/outside beyond that of concrete physical boundaries and its capacity to guide us through an unfolding of multiple times and spaces. (Vernallis 111) This dychotomy is most beautifully expressed in this video by Oren Lavie called “Her morning elegance”:
Héroes constructs a narrative out of the layering of spaces and times, voices and bodies. Some scenes remain still and silent, others speed up and scream in disgust. Some scenes are riddled with questions, others with painful memories. And although the protagonist, as we readers, may appear lost in storyspace, his confinement allows him to travel in multiple spaces at once. The narrator remixes songs and memories, leaving blanks along the way, but ultimately providing his audience with a powerful convergence of voices and images, times and spaces. So, as to your question, Bob—what is the aesthetic value of GenX literature?--I would like to suggest that the structural dynamics of music video clips may provide us with an answer remixed for the digital age.
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WORKS CITED
Smith, Carter E. “Social Criticism or Banal Imitation: A Critique of the Neorealist Novel Apropos the Works of José Angel Mañas.” Dec. 9th 2008.
http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v12/smith.htm
Loriga, Ray. Héroes. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1993.
Navarro Martínez, Eva. La novela de la Generación X. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2008.
Vernallis, Carol. Experiencing Music Videos. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
What Is Video-Clip Literature? Aesthetic Rebellion in Héroes by Ray Loriga by Christine Henseler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.