reading culture - pearson · 2019-02-20 · bergenfield, new jersey. thomas hine’s “goths in...

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READING CULTURE

C H A P T E R 2 Generations

This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. This is the

new generation—of Olds.

—1990 television commercial

for Oldsmobile

43

America is a nation of immigrants, and it is common to distinguish between firstand second generations—between those who first traveled to and settled in theUnited States from Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin America and their children

who were born here. The two generations are biologically related to each other aswell as to older generations as far back as people can trace their ancestry. Yet first-generation and second-generation Americans often differ in the way they live theirlives, in the hopes they have for themselves and their children, and in the ties theyfeel to the traditions and customs of their places of ancestry.

People are also members of a historical generation that is formed by a commonh i s t o ry and common experiences shared by others their age. To be a member of ageneration in cultural terms, then, is to belong both to a family you are related tobiologically and to a group of people you are related to historically.

In this chapter, you will be asked to read, think, and write about what it meansto be a member of and a participant in your historical generation. Whether you arestraight out of high school or returning to college after some time off, it can be valu-able for you to consider how your own personal experience has been shaped bygrowing up at a particular moment in a particular historical generation.

The term generation denotes change. It suggests new life and new growth—newstyles, new values, and new ways of living. Americans hear generational voices all

the time in everyday conversation, when young people tell their parents not to be“so old-fashioned” and their parents reply, “It wasn’t like that when we were grow-ing up.” Advertisers too, as the Oldsmobile commercial at the beginning of this chap-ter indicates, like to make consumers believe that the new generation of goods—cars,stereos, computers, household appliances—is smarter, better designed, and morehigh tech than its predecessors.

Each generation produces its own way of speaking and its own forms of culturalexpression. Cultural historian Raymond Williams says that “no generation speaks quitethe same language as its predecessor.” Young people, for example, use their own slangto recognize friends, to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, to position them-selves in relation to the older generation. Whether you say “whatever,” “awesome,”or “far out”; the kind of music that you like to listen to; the way you dance; your styleof dress; where you go to hang out— reveals something about you and your relationto the constantly changing styles of youth culture in contemporary America.

How a generation looks at itself is inevitably entangled in the decisive historicalevents, geopolitical changes, and popular entertainment of its day. The Depression,World War II, the Vietnam Wa r, the Reagan years, and the “new prosperity” of the1990s have each influenced a generation profoundly. To understand what it meansto belong to your generation, you will need to locate your experience growing up asa member of your generation in its historical times—to see how your generation hasmade sense of its place in American history and its relation to past generations.

From the invention of the American teenager and juvenile delinquency inmovies such as Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild One in the 1950s to grunge rockand MTV in the 1990s, American media have been fascinated by each new genera-tion of young people. Each generation seems to have its own characteristic mood oridentity that the media try to capture in a label— the “lost” generation of the JazzAge in the 1920s, the “silent” generation of the Eisenhower years in the 1950s, the“baby boomers” of the 1960s, the “yuppies” of the 1980s, or the “slackers” of the1990s. When people use these labels, they are not only referring to particular groupsof people but are also calling up a set of values, styles, and images, a collective feel-ing in the air. When thinking about your generation, look at how the media haverepresented it and how these media representations have entered into your genera-tion’s conception of itself.

This is not to say that everyone in the same generation has the same experienceand the same feelings. A generation is not a monolithic thing. In fact, every genera-tion is divided along the same lines of race, class, gender, and ethnicity that dividethe wider society. But a generation is not simply a composite of individuals either. Tothink about the mood of your generation—the sensibility that suffuses its lived expe-rience—you will need to consider how the character of your generation distinguishesit from generations of the past, even if that character is contradictory or inconsistent.

Reading the Culture of GenerationsThis chapter begins with three reading selections. They each present a different writ-ing strategy that examines the relationship between generations. In the first,“Kiswana Browne,” a chapter from the novel The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Nay-lor uses fiction to explore the differences and continuities between an African Amer-ican mother and her daughter. In the next selection, Dave Marsh writes a memoirrecounting a moment of revelation while listening to Smoky Robinson sing “Yo uReally Got a Hold on Me.” The third reading, “Youth and American Identity,” an

44 CHAPTER 2 Generations

excerpt from Lawrence Grossberg’s longer study It’s a Sin, takes a broader, more ana-lytical perspective on the way post–World War II America invested its hopes in theyounger generation as the living symbol of national identity and the AmericanDream.

The next three selections look at conflicts, differences, and misunderstandingsbetween generations. In “Teenage Wasteland,” Donna Gaines writes as a sympatheticreporter who investigates a teenage suicide pact and the response of local officials inBergenfield, New Jersey. Thomas Hine’s “Goths in Tomorrowland” explores the frag-mentation of teenage subcultures and the alienation of young people from adultsociety. “Gen X’s Enduring Legacy: The Internet,” by Mike Pope, looks at the worldof cyberculture as a generational divide.

The following pair of readings, “Perspectives: Before and After 9/11,” asks youto consider the impact of September 11, 2001, on a generation’s sense of itself. Thefirst reading, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seek-ing an Identity” appeared before September 11. The second selection, “Generation9-11” by Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton, appeared in N e w s w e e k two monthsafter. Taken together, they give you an opportunity to think about historical eventsas defining moments in the life of a generation.

The Classic Reading in this chapter is Allen Ginsberg’s anthem of the Beat Gen-eration of the 1950s, “Howl.”

As you read, think, talk, and write about the interpretations presented in thischapter, consider how you would characterize your own generation. What styles ofcultural expression mark your generation from your predecessors? What is your gen-e r a t i o n ’s sense of itself? How is your generation portrayed in the media? Perhapswhen you have completed your work, you will find a way to define the particularmood and character of your generation.

K I S WANA BROWNE

Gloria Naylor

Gloria Naylor’s highly acclaimed novel The Women of Brewster Place (1980) tells the storiesof several African American women who live in a housing project in an unnamed city.“Kiswana Browne” presents a powerful account of the encounter between a mother anddaughter that explores both their generational differences and the aspirations that they holdin common. Naylor’s story reveals how the much-publicized generation gap of the 1960s isnever simply a matter of diff e rences in politics and lifestyle but rather is complicated by theintersecting forces of race, class, and gender. The cultural shift signified by Kiswana’s changeof name represents both a break with the past and, as Kiswana discovers, a continuation ofher family’s resistance to racial oppression.

As you read, underline and annotate the passages where the story establishes conflict betweenthe two characters and where (or whether) it resolves the conflict.

SUGGESTION FOR READING

Gloria Naylor Kiswana Browne 45

1 F rom the window of her sixth-floor studio apart-ment, Kiswana could see over the wall at the endof the street to the busy avenue that lay just northof Brewster Place. The late-afternoon shoppersl o o ked like brightly clad marionettes as they

m oved between the congested tra f f i c, clutc h i n gtheir packages against their bodies to guard themf rom sudden bursts of the cold autumn wind. Aportly mailman had abandoned his cart and wa sbumping into indignant window - s h o p p e rs as he

puffed behind the cap that the wind had snatc h e df rom his head. Kiswana leaned over to see if hewas going to be successful, but the edge of thebuilding cut him off from her view.

A pigeon swept across her window, and shem a r veled at its liquid movements in the airwave s. She placed her dreams on the back of thebird and fantasized that it would glide forever intransparent silver circles until it ascended to thecenter of the unive rse and was swa l l owed up. Butthe wind died down, and she wa tched with a sighas the bird beat its wings in aw k wa rd, fra n t i cmovements to land on the corroded top of a fireescape on the opposite building. This bro u g h ther back to earth.

Humph, it’s probably sitting over there cra p-ping on those folks’ fire escape, she thought.Now, that’s a safety hazard….And her mind wasbusy again, creating flames and smoke and frus-t rated tenants whose escape was being hindere dbecause they were slipping and sliding in pigeonshit. She wa tched their cussing, haphaza rddescent on the fire escapes until they had allreached the bottom. They we re milling aro u n d ,oblivious to their burning apartments, angrilyplanning to march on the mayo r ’s office aboutthe pigeons. She materialized placards and ban-n e rs for them, and they had just reached the cor-n e r, boldly sidestepping fire hoses and bro ke nglass, when they all vanished.

A tall copper-skinned woman had met thisphantom parade at the corner, and they had dis-s o l ved in front of her long, confident strides. Shep l owed through the remains of their faded mists,unconscious of the lingering wisps of their pres-ence on her leather bag and black fur-trimmedcoat. It took a few seconds for this transfer fromone realm to another to reach Kiswana, but thensuddenly she recognized the woman.

5 “Oh, God, it’s Mama!” She looked dow nguiltily at the fo rgotten newspaper in her lap andhurriedly circled random job advertisements.

By this time Mrs. Browne had reached thef ront of Kiswa n a ’s building and was checking thehouse number against a piece of paper in herhand. Befo re she went into the building shes tood at the bottom of the stoop and care f u l l y

inspected the condition of the street and theadjoining property. Kiswana watched this metic-ulous inve n tory with growing annoyance but sheinvoluntarily followed her mother’s slowly rotat-ing head, fo rcing herself to see her new neigh-borhood through the older wo m a n ’s eye s. Thebrightness of the unclouded sky seemed to joinfo rces with her mother as it high-lighted eve r yb ro ken stoop railing and missing brick. The after-noon sun glittered and cascaded across even thetiniest fragments of bro ken bottle, and at thatvery moment the wind chose to rise up again,sending unswept grime flying into the air, as as t ray tin can left by careless garbage collecto rswent rolling noisily down the center of the stre e t .

Kiswana noticed with relief that at least Benwasn’t sitting in his usual place on the oldgarbage can pushed against the far wall. He wasjust a harmless old wino, but Kiswana knew hermother only needed one wino or one teenagerwith a reefer within a twenty-block radius todecide that her daughter was living in a buildingseething with dope fa c tories and hang-outs fo rd e re l i c t s. If she had seen Ben, nothing wo u l dh ave made her believe that practically eve r yapartment contained a fa m i l y, a Bible, and ad ream that one day enough could be scra p e df rom those meager Friday night paychecks tomake Brewster Place a distant memory.

As she wa tched her mother’s head disap-pear into the building, Kiswana gave silentthanks that the elevator was broken. That wouldgive her at least five minutes’ grace to straightenup the apartment. She rushed to the sofa bedand hastily closed it without smoothing the rum-pled sheets and blanket or re m oving her night-g own. She felt that somehow the ta n g l e dbedcovers would give away the fact that she hadnot slept alone last night. She silently apologize dto Abshu’s memory as she heartlessly crushedhis spirit between the steel springs of the couch.Lord, that man was sweet. Her toes curled invol-u n tarily at the passing thought of his full lipsmoving slowly over her instep. Abshu was a footman, and he always started his lovemaking fro mthe bottom up. For that reason Kiswana changedthe color of the polish on her toenails eve r y


week. During the course of their relationship shehad gone from shades of red to brown and wasn ow into the purples. I’m gonna have to sta r tmixing them soon, she thought aloud as sheturned from the couch and raced into the bath-room to remove any traces of Abshu from there.She took up his shaving cream and ra zor andt h rew them into the bottom drawer of herd resser beside her diaphragm. Mama wo u l d n ’ td a re pry into my drawe rs right in front of me, shethought as she slammed the drawer shut. We l l ,at least not the bottom drawe r. She may come upwith some sham excuse for opening the to pdrawer, but never the bottom one.

When she heard the first two short raps onthe door, her eyes took a final flight over the smallapartment, desperately seeking out any slight mis-demeanor that might have to be defended. We l l ,t h e re was nothing she could do about the crack inthe wall over that ta b l e. She had been after thel a n d l o rd to fix it for two months now. And therehad been no time to sweep the rug, and eve r yo n ek n ew that off-gray always looked dirtier than itreally wa s. And it was just too damn bad about thek i tchen. How was she expected to be out job-hunt-ing every day and still have time to keep a kitc h e nthat looked like her mother’s, who didn’t eve nwork and still had someone come in twice amonth for general cleaning. And besides…

10 Her imaginary argument was abruptly inter-rupted by a second series of knocks, accompa-nied by a penetrating, “Melanie, Melanie, are yo uthere?”

Kiswana strode toward the door. She’s start-ing befo re she even gets in here. She knowsthat’s not my name anymore.

She swung the door open to face her slightlyflushed mother. “Oh, hi, Mama. You know, Ithought I heard a knock, but I figured it was forthe people next door, since no one hardly eve rcalls me Melanie.” Score one for me, she thought.

“ Well, it’s awfully strange you can fo rget aname you answe red to for twe n t y - t h ree ye a rs, ”M rs. Browne said, as she moved past Kiswa n ai n to the apartment. “My, that was a long climb.H ow long has your eleva tor been out? Honey,how do you manage with your laundry and gro-

ceries up all those steps? But I guess yo u ’ reyoung, and it wouldn’t bother you as much as itdoes me.” This long string of questions to l dK i s wana that her mother had no intentions ofbeginning her visit with another argument abouther new African name.

1 5 “ You know I would have called befo re I came,but you don’t have a phone yet. I didn’t want yo uto feel that I was snooping. As a matter of fact, Ididn’t expect to find you home at all. I thoughtyou’d be out looking for a job.” Mrs. Browne hadm e n tally cove red the entire apartment while shewas talking and taking off her coat.

“ Well, I got up late this morning. I thoughtI’d buy the afternoon paper and start earlytomorrow.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” Her motherm oved towa rd the window and picked up the dis-carded paper and glanced over the hurriedly cir-cled ads. “Since when do you have experience asa fork-lift operator?”

K i s wana caught her breath and silently curs e dh e rself for her stupidity. “Oh, my hand slipped—Imeant to circle file clerk.” She quickly took thepaper befo re her mother could see that she hadalso marked cutlery salesman and chauffeur.

“ Yo u ’ re sure you we ren’t sitting here mopingand day - d reaming again?” Amber specks of laugh-ter flashed in the corner of Mrs. Brow n e ’s eye s.

20 K i s wana threw her shoulders back andunsuccessfully tried to disguise her embarra s s-ment with indignation.

“Oh, God, Mama! I haven’t done that inyears—it’s for kids. When are you going to real-ize that I’m a woman now?” She sought desper-ately for some womanly thing to do and settledfor throwing herself on the couch and cro s s i n gher legs in what she hoped looked like a non-chalant arc.

“ P l e a s e, have a seat,” she said, attemptingthe same tones and gestures she’d seen BetteDavis use on the late movies.

M rs. Brow n e, lowering her eyes to hide heramusement, accepted the invitation and sat atthe window, also crossing her legs. Kiswana sawimmediately how it should have been done. Hercelluloid poise clashed loudly against her m o t h e r ’s


quiet dignity, and she quickly uncrossed her legs.M rs. Browne turned her head towa rd the windowand pretended not to notice.

“At least you have a halfway decent viewf rom here. I was wondering what lay beyond thatd readful wa l l — i t ’s the bouleva rd. Honey, did yo uk n ow that you can see the trees in Linden Hillsfrom here?”

25 Kiswana knew that very well, because therewere many lonely days that she would sit in herg ray apartment and sta re at those trees and thinkof home, but she would rather have choked thanadmit that to her mother.

“Oh, re a l l y, I never noticed. So how is Daddyand things at home?”

“Just fine. We ’ re thinking of redoing one ofthe ex t ra bedrooms since you children havemoved out, but Wilson insists that he can man-age all that work alone. I told him that he does-n’t really have the proper time or energy for allthat. As it is, when he gets home from the office,he’s so tired he can hardly move. But you knowyou can’t tell your father anything. Whenever hestarts complaining about how stubborn you are,I tell him the child came by it honestly. Oh, andyour brother was by yesterday,” she added, as ifit had just occurred to her.

So that’s it, thought Kiswana. That’s whyshe’s here.

Kiswana’s brother, Wilson, had been to visither two days ago, and she had borrowed twentyd o l l a rs from him to get her winter coat out of lay-away. That son-of-a-bitch probably ran straight toMama—and after he swore he wouldn’t say any-thing. I should have known, he was always asnotty-nosed sneak, she thought.

30 “ Was he?” she said aloud. “He came by tosee me, too, earlier this week. And I borrowe dsome money from him because my unemploy-ment checks hadn’t cleared in the bank, but nowt h ey have and eve r y t h i n g ’s just fine.” There, I’llbeat you to that one.

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Browne lied.“He never mentioned you. He had just heard thatB everly was expecting again, and he rushed ove rto tell us.”

Damn. Kiswana could have strangled hers e l f .

“So she’s knocked up again, huh?” she saidirritably.

Her mother started. “Why do you alwayshave to be so crude?”

35 “ Pe rs o n a l l y, I don’t see how she can sleepwith Willie. He’s such a dishrag.”

K i s wana still resented the stance her bro t h e rhad ta ken in college. When eve r yone at schoolwas discovering their blackness and protesting onc a m p u s, Wilson never took part; he had eve nrefused to wear an Afro. This had outra g e dK i s wana because, unlike her, he was dark-skinnedand had the type of hair that was thick and kinkyenough for a good “Fro.” Kiswana had stillinsisted on cutting her own hair, but it was so thinand fine-tex t u red, it refused to thicken even aftershe washed it. So she had to brush it up and sprayit with lacquer to keep it from lying flat. She neve rfo rg ave Wilson for telling her that she didn’t lookAfrican, she looked like an electrocuted chicke n .

“Now that’s some way to talk. I don’t knoww hy you have an attitude against your bro t h e r.He never gave me a restless night’s sleep, andnow he’s settled with a family and a good job.”

“ H e ’s an assistant to an assistant junior part-ner in a law firm. What’s the big deal about that?”

“The job has a future, Melanie. And at leasthe finished school and went on for his lawdegree.”

40 “In other words, not like me, huh?”“Don’t put wo rds into my mouth, young lady.

I’m perfectly capable of saying what I mean.”Amen, thought Kiswana.“And I don’t know why yo u ’ ve been trying

to start up with me from the moment I wa l ke din. I didn’t come here to fight with you. This isyour first place away from home, and I justwanted to see how you were living and if you’redoing all right. And I must say, you’ve fixed thisapartment up very nicely.”

“ Re a l l y, Mama?” She found herself softeningin the light of her mother’s approval.

45 “ Well, considering what you had to wo r kwith.” This time she scanned the apartmentopenly.

“Look, I know it’s not Linden Hills, but a lotcan be done with it. As soon as they come and


paint, I’m going to hang my Ashanti print ove rthe couch. And I thought a big Boston Fern wo u l dgo well in that corner, what do you think?”

“That would be fine, baby. You always had agood eye for balance.”

Kiswana was beginning to relax. There waslittle she did that attracted her mother’s approva l .It was like a rare bird, and she had to tread care-fully around it lest it fly away.

“A re you going to leave that statue out likethat?”

50 “ W hy, what’s wrong with it? Would it lookbetter somewhere else?”

T h e re was a small wooden re p roduction of aYoruba goddess with large protruding breasts onthe coffee table.

“ Well,” Mrs. Browne was beginning to blush,“ i t ’s just that it’s a bit suggestive, don’t you think?Since you live alone now, and I know you’ll behaving male friends stop by, you wouldn’t wantto be giving them any ideas. I mean, uh, yo uknow, there’s no point in putting yourself in anyunpleasant situations because they may get thew rong impressions and uh, you know, I mean,well…” Mrs. Browne stammered on miserably.

K i s wana loved it when her mother tried totalk about sex. It was the only time she was at aloss for words.

“Don’t wo r r y, Mama.” Kiswana smiled.“That wouldn’t bother the type of men I date.N ow maybe if it had big feet…” And she got hys-terical, thinking of Abshu.

55 Her mother looked at her sharply. “Whatsort of gibberish is that about feet? I’m beingserious, Melanie.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” She sobered up. “I’ll putit away in the closet,” she said, knowing that shewouldn’t.

“Good,” Mrs. Browne said, knowing that shewouldn’t either. “I guess you think I’m too picky,but we worry about you over here. And yo urefuse to put in a phone so we can call and seeabout you.”

“I haven’t refused, Mama. They want sev-enty-five dollars for a deposit, and I can’t swingthat right now.”

“Melanie, I can give you the money.”

60 “I don’t want you to be giving me money—I ’ ve told you that befo re. Please, let me make itby myself.”

“Well, let me lend it to you, then.”“No!”“Oh, so you can borrow money from yo u r

brother, but not from me.”K i s wana turned her head from the hurt in

her mother’s eyes. “Mama, when I borrow fromW i l l i e, he makes me pay him back. You never letme pay you back,” she said into her hands.

65 “I don’t care. I still think it’s downright self-ish of you to be sitting over here with no phone,and sometimes we don’t hear from you in twowe e k s — a nything could happen—especially liv-ing among these people.”

K i s wana snapped her head up. “What doyou mean, these people. They’re my people andyo u rs, too, Mama—we ’ re all black. But may b eyou’ve forgotten that over in Linden Hills.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and youk n ow it. These streets—this building—it’s soshabby and rundown. Honey, you don’t have tolive like this.”

“Well, this is how poor people live.”“Melanie, you’re not poor.”

7 0 “No, Mama, yo u ’ re not poor. And what yo uh ave and I have are two to tally different things. Idon’t have a husband in real estate with a five - f i g-u re income and a home in Linden Hills—yo u d o .What I have is a weekly unemployment check andan ove rd rawn checking account at United Fe d e ra l .So this studio on Brewster is all I can affo rd . ”

“ Well, you could affo rd a lot better,” Mrs.Browne snapped, “if you hadn’t dropped out ofcollege and had to resort to these dead-end cler-ical jobs.”

“Uh-huh, I knew you’d get around to thatb e fo re long.” Kiswana could feel the rings ofanger begin to tighten around her lower back-bone, and they sent her forward onto the couch.“ You’ll never unders tand, will you? Those bourg i eschools we re counterrevo l u t i o n a r y. My place wa sin the streets with my people, fighting for equal-ity and a better community.”

“ C o u n t e r revolutionary!” Mrs. Browne wa sraising her vo i c e. “Where ’s your revolution now,


Melanie? Where are all those black revo l u t i o n a r-ies who we re shouting and demonstrating andkicking up a lot of dust with you on that campus?Huh? They ’ re sitting in wood-paneled offices withtheir degrees in mahogany fra m e s, and they wo n ’ teven drive their cars past this street because thecity doesn’t fix potholes in this part of tow n . ”

“Mama,” she said, shaking her head slowlyin disbelief, “how can you—a black woman—sitthere and tell me that what we fought for duringthe Movement wasn’t important just becausesome people sold out?”

7 5 “ M e l a n i e, I’m not saying it wasn’t importa n t .It was damned important to stand up and say thatyou we re proud of what you we re and to get thevote and other social opportunities for every per-son in this country who had it due. But you kidsthought you we re going to turn the world upsided own, and it just wasn’t so. When all the smokehad cleared, you found yo u rself with a fistful ofn ew federal laws and a country still full of obsta-cles for black people to fight their way ove r — j u s tbecause they ’ re black. There was no revo l u t i o n ,M e l a n i e, and there will be no revo l u t i o n . ”

“So what am I supposed to do, huh? Justt h row up my hands and not care about whathappens to my people? I’m not supposed to ke e pfighting to make things better?”

“Of cours e, you can. But yo u ’ re going toh ave to fight within the system, because it andthese so-called ‘bourgie’ schools are going to beh e re for a long time. And that means that you getsmart like a lot of your old friends and get ani m p o r tant job where you can have some influ-ence. You don’t have to sell out, as you say, andwork for some corporation, but you couldbecome an assemblywoman or a civil libertiesl aw yer or open a freedom school in this ve r yneighborhood. That way you could really helpthe community. But what help are you going tobe to these people on Brewster while you’re liv-ing hand-to-mouth on file-clerk jobs waiting for arevolution? You’re wasting your talents, child.”

“Well, I don’t think they’re being wasted. Atleast I’m here in day - to - d ay contact with thep roblems of my people. What good would I be

after four or five ye a rs of a lot of white bra i n-washing in some phony, prestige institution,huh? I’d be like you and Daddy and those othereducated blacks sitting over there in Linden Hillswith a terminal case of middle-class amnesia.”

“You don’t have to live in a slum to be con-cerned about social conditions, Melanie. Yo u rfather and I have been charter members of theNAACP for the last twenty-five years.”

80 “Oh, God!” Kiswana threw her head back inexa g g e rated disgust. “That’s being concerned?That middle-of-the-road, Uncle Tom dumpingground for black Republicans!”

“ You can sneer all you want, young lady, butthat org a n i zation has been working for blackpeople since the turn of the century, and it’s stillworking for them. Where are all those ra d i c a lgroups of yours that were going to put a Cadillacin every garage and Dick Gregory in the WhiteHouse? I’ll tell you where.”

I knew you would, Kiswana thought angrily.“They burned themselves out because they

wanted too much too fast. Their goals we re n ’ tgrounded in reality. And that’s always been yourproblem.”

“What do you mean, my problem? I knowexactly what I’m about.”

85 “No, you don’t. You constantly live in a fan-tasy wo r l d — a l ways going to ex t re m e s — t u r n i n gbutterflies into eagles, and life isn’t about that.I t ’s accepting what is and working from that.Lo rd, I remember how worried you had me,putting all that lacquered hair spray on yo u rhead. I thought you were going to get lung can-cer—trying to be what you’re not.”

K i s wana jumped up from the couch. “Oh,God, I can’t ta ke this any m o re. Trying to besomething I’m not—trying to be something I’mnot, Mama! Trying to be proud of my herita g eand the fact that I was of African descent. Ifthat’s being what I’m not, then I say fine. But I’drather be dead than be like you—a white man’snigger who’s ashamed of being black!”

K i s wana saw streaks of gold and ebony lightfollow her mother’s flying body out of the chair.She was swung around by the shoulders and


made to face the deadly stillness in the angrywo m a n ’s eye s. She was too stunned to cry outf rom the pain of the long fingernails that dug intoher shoulders, and she was brought so close toher mother’s face that she saw her reflection, dis-torted and wavering, in the tears that stood in theolder wo m a n ’s eye s. And she listened in that still-ness to a story she had heard from a child.

“My gra n d m o t h e r,” Mrs. Browne begans l owly in a whisper, “was a full-blooded Iro q u o i s,and my grandfather a free black from a long lineof journeymen who had lived in Connecticutsince the establishment of the colonies. And myfather was a Bajan who came to this country asa cabin boy on a merchant mariner.”

“I know all that,” Kiswana said, trying tokeep her lips from trembling.

90 “Then, know this.” And the nails dug deeperi n to her flesh. “I am alive because of the bloodof proud people who never scraped or begged ora p o l o g i zed for what they we re. They lived askingonly one thing of this wo r l d — to be allowed to be.And I learned through the blood of these peoplethat black isn’t beautiful and it isn’t ugly—blackis! It’s not kinky hair and it’s not straight hair—it just is.

“It broke my heart when you changed yourn a m e. I gave you my gra n d m o t h e r ’s name, awoman who bore nine children and educatedthem all, who held off six white men with a shot-gun when they tried to drag one of her sons tojail for ‘not knowing his place.’ Yet you needed toreach into an African dictionary to find a nameto make you proud.

“When I brought my babies home from theh o s p i tal, my ebony son and my golden daughter,I swo re befo re whatever gods would listen—those of my mother’s people or those of myfa t h e r ’s people—that I would use everything Ihad and could ever get to see that my childre nwe re pre p a red to meet this world on its ow nterms, so that no one could sell them short andmake them ashamed of what they were or howt h ey looke d — w h a t ever they we re or howeve rthey looked. And Melanie, that’s not being whiteor red or black—that’s being a mother.”

K i s wana fo l l owed her reflection in the twosingle tears that moved down her mother’s cheeksuntil it blended with them into the wo m a n ’s cop-per skin. There was nothing and then so muchthat she wanted to say, but her throat kept closingup every time she tried to speak. She kept herhead down and her eyes closed, and thought, Oh,God, just let me die. How can I face her now ?

M rs. Browne lifted Kiswa n a ’s chin gently.“And the one lesson I wanted you to learn is notto be afraid to face anyone, not even a crafty oldlady like me who can outtalk you.” And shesmiled and winked.

95 “Oh, Mama, I…” and she hugged thewoman tightly.

“Yeah, baby.” Mrs. Browne patted her back.“I know.”

She kissed Kiswana on the fo rehead andc l e a red her throat. “Well, now, I better be mov-ing on. It’s getting late, there ’s dinner to bemade, and I have to get off my feet—these newshoes are killing me.”

K i s wana looked down at the beige leatherp u m p s. “Those are really classy. They ’ re English,aren’t they?”

“Yes, but, Lord, do they cut me right acrossthe instep.” She re m oved the shoe and sat on thecouch to massage her foot.

100 Bright red nail polish glared at Kiswa n at h rough the sto c k i n g s. “Since when do you pol-ish your toenails?” she gasped. “You never didthat before.”

“ Well…” Mrs. Browne shrugged her shoul-ders, “your father sort of talked me into it, and,uh, you know, he likes it and all, so I thought, uh,you know, why not so…” And she gave Kiswanaan embarrassed smile.

I’ll be damned, the young woman thought,feeling her whole face tingle. Daddy into feet!And she looked at the blushing woman on hercouch and suddenly re a l i zed that her mother hadtrod through the same universe that she herselfwas now traveling. Kiswana was breaking nonew trails and would eventually end up just twofeet away on that couch. She sta red at thewoman she had been and was to become.


“But I’ll never be a Republican,” she caughtherself saying aloud.

“What are you mumbling about, Melanie?”M rs. Browne slipped on her shoe and got upfrom the couch.

105 She went to get her mother’s coat. “Nothing,Mama. It’s really nice of you to come by. Yo ushould do it more often.”

“ Well, since it’s not Sunday, I guess yo u ’ reallowed at least one lie.”

They both laughed.

After Kiswana had closed the door and turneda round, she spotted an envelop sticking betwe e nthe cushions of her couch. She went over andopened it up; there was seve n t y - f i ve dollars in it.

“Oh, Mama, darn it!” She rushed to the win-dow and started to call to the woman, who hadjust emerged from the building, but she suddenlychanged her mind and sat down in the chair witha long sigh that caught in the upwa rd draft of theautumn wind and disappeared over the top ofthe building.


SUGGESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. Gloria Naylor tells this story from Kiswana Browne’s point of view. How would the story

be different if Naylor had chosen to tell it from Kiswana’s mother’s point of view? Whatwould be gained? What lost?

2. Consider how Naylor has organized this story—how she establishes a central conflict,leads up to the story’s climax, and finally resolves the conflict. Does this type of plot seemfamiliar? Does the story achieve a of closure or does it seem open ended? What kinds ofsatisfaction do readers derive from plots such as this one? What, if anything, do suchplots leave out or ignore?

3. Is Naylor making a judgment, whether implicit or explicit, of her characters? Explain youranswer.

S UGGES TIONS FOR WRIT ING1. Take the perspective of either Kiswana Browne or her mother and write an essay that

explains how the character you have chosen sees the other. If you wish, write the essayin the voice of the character. Or you may choose to comment on the character’s percep-tions of the other and their generational differences in your own voice. In either case, bespecific in your use of detail to define generational differences between the two women.

2 . On one level, the chapter “Kiswana Browne” seems to be concerned with a genera-tion gap between Kiswana and her mother. At the same time, other factors—race,class, and gender—affect the way generational diff e rences are played out betweenthe two characters. Write an essay that explains to what extent the chapter presents aversion of the generation gap and to what extent other factors determine what hap-pens between Kiswana and her mother. Do Kiswana and her mother have things incommon, as well as generational diff e rences? How do these factors influence the out-come of the story ?

3. “Kiswana Browne” tells of the encounter between a young woman and her family ande x p l o res generational diff e rences that have to do with issues such as lifestyle, names, andpolitics. Can you think of an encounter that you have had with your parents, or that some-one you know has had with his or her parents, that involves such telling generational con-flicts? (The conflict should be something that highlights diff e rences in generationalattitudes, values, or styles—not just “normal” disagreements about using the car or whattime curfew should be.) Write an essay that explores such a conflict and explains whatgenerational differences are at stake.

Dave Marsh Fortunate Son 53

F O RT U N ATE SON

Dave Marsh

Dave Marsh is one of today’s leading rock-and-roll critics. He is the author of books on BruceSpringsteen, Elvis Pre s l e y, and The Who. The following selection introduces F o rtunate Son(1985), a collection of Marsh’s shorter critical essays and reviews. In his introduction, Marshoffers a memoir—a remembering—of his adolescence in Pontiac, Michigan, and how listen-ing to rock and roll as a teenager in a working-class community led him to question “not justracism but all the other presumptions that ruled our lives.”

Notice that Marsh has divided his memoir into two parts. Part I tells the story of why Marsh’sfamily moved from Pontiac to the suburbs, but Part II is about living in Pontiac before the move.As you read, consider why Marsh has organized his memoir this way. How does Part II com-ment on what takes place in Part I? Where does Marsh explain the moment of revelation—orepiphany—that stands at the center of his memories?


INTRODUCTION IThis old town is where I learned about lovin’This old town is where I learned to hateThis town, buddy, has done its share of shovelingThis town taught me that it’s never too late

Michael Stanley, “My Town”

1 When I was a boy, my family lived on East Bev-erly Street in Po n t i a c, Michigan, in a two - b e d-room house with blue-white asphalt shingles thatc ra c ked at the edges when a ball was throw nagainst them and left a powder like talc on fin-g e rs rubbed across their shallow gro ove s. EastBeverly ascended a slowly rising hill. At the verytop, a block and a half from our place, Po n t i a cMotors Assembly Line 16 sprawled for a mile orso behind a fenced-in parking lot.

Ru s t - red dust collected on our windows i l l s.It piled up no matter how often the place wa sdusted or cleaned. Fifteen minutes after mymother was through with a room, that dustseemed thick enough for a finger to trace point-less, ashy patterns in it.

The dust came from the foundry on the otherside of the assembly line, the foundry that spatangry cinders into the sky all night long. When peo-ple ta l ked about hell, I imagined driving past thefoundry at night. From the street below, you couldsee the fire s, red-hot flames shaping glowing meta l .

Pontiac was a company town, nothing less.G e n e ral Moto rs owned most of the land, and inone way or another held mortgages on the re s t .Its holdings included not only the assembly lineand the foundry but also a Fisher Body plant andon the outskirts, General Moto rs Truck and Coach.For a while, some pieces of Frigidaires may eve nh ave been put together in our town, but that mightjust be a trick of my memory, which often con-fuses the tentacles of institutions that monstro u s.

5 In any case, of the hundred thousand or sowho lived in Po n t i a c, fully half must have beene m p l oyed either by GM or one of the to o l - a n d - d i eshops and steel wa rehouses and the like that sup-plied it. And anybody who earned his living locallyin some less directly auto - related fashion was onlyfooling himself if he thought of independence.

My father wo r ked without illusions, as a ra i l-road bra keman on freight trains that shunted box-c a rs through the innards of the plants, hauledg rain from up north, transported the finished Po n-tiacs on the first leg of the route to almost any-w h e re Bonnev i l l e s, Cata l i n a s, and GTOs we re sold.

Our baseball and football ground lay in thes h a d ow of another General Moto rs building. Thatbuilding was of uncertain purpose, at least to me.What I can recall of it now is a seemingly re c k-less height—five or six stories is a lot in the flat-lands around the Great La kes—and endless wa l l s

of dark greenish glass that must have run fro mfloor to ceiling in the rooms inside. Perhaps thisbuilding was an engineering fa c i l i t y. We didn’tknow anyone who worked there, at any rate.

L i ke most other GM fa c i l i t i e s, the green glassbuilding was surrounded by a chain link fencewith barbed wire. If a ball happened to land onthe other side of it, this fence was insurmount-a b l e. But only very strong boys could hit a ballthat high, that far, anyhow.

Or maybe it just wasn’t worth climbing thatparticular fence. Each August, a few weeks befo rethe new models were officially presented in thep re s s, the finished Pontiacs we re set out in theassembly-line parking lot at the top of our stre e t .T h ey we re cove red by tarpaulins to keep theirdesign changes secret—these we re the ye a rswhen the appearance of American cars changedradically each ye a r. Climbing t h a t fence was aneighborhood sport because that was how yo ud i s c ove red what the new cars looked like,whether fins we re shrinking or growing, if thenew hoods were pointed or flat, how much thin-ner the strips of whitewall on the tires hadgrown. A weird game, since everyone knew peo-ple who could have told us, given us exa c td e s c r i p t i o n s, having built those cars with theirown hands. But climbing that fence added a hintof danger, made us feel we shared a secre t ,turned gossip into information.

10 The main drag in our part of town wa sJoslyn Road. It was where the stoplight and cro s s-ing guard were stationed, where the gas stationwith the condom machine stood alongside as h o r t - o rder re s ta u rant, drugsto re, dairy sto re,small groceries and a bake r y. A few blocks dow n ,past the green glass building, was a low brickbuilding set back behind a wide, lush lawn. Thisbuilding, identified by a discreet roadside sign,occupied a long block or two. It was the Admin-i s t ration Building for all of Pontiac Moto rs — abuilding for exe c u t i ve s, clerks, white-collar types.This building couldn’t have been more thant h re e - q u a r t e rs of a mile from my house, yet eve nthough I lived on East Beverly Street from thetime I was two until I was past fourteen, I knewonly one person who worked there.

In the spring of 1964, when I was fourteenand finishing eighth grade, rumors started goingaround at Madison Junior High. All the buildingson our side of Joslyn Road (possibly east or westof Joslyn, but I didn’t know directions then—t h e re was only “our” side and eve r y w h e re else)we re about to be bought up and torn down byGM. This was wo r r i s o m e, but it seemed to methat our parents would never allow that perfectlyfunctioning neighborhood to be bro ken up for nogood purpose.

One sunny weekday afternoon a man cameto our door. He wore a coat and tie and a whiteshirt, which meant something serious in our partof town. My father greeted him at the door, but Idon’t know whether the businessman had anappointment. Dad was working the extra boardin those ye a rs, which meant he was called towork erra t i c a l l y — four or five times a week, whenbusiness was good—each time his nameplatecame to the top of the big duty-roster boardd own at the ya rd office. (My father didn’t get aregular train of his own to work until 1966; hespent almost twenty ye a rs on that ex t ra board ,which meant guessing whether it was safe toa n s wer the phone every time he actually wa n t e da day off—refuse a call and your name we n tback to the bottom of the list.)

At any ra t e, the stranger was shown to thecouch in our front room. He perched on that oldg ray davenport with its wiry fabric that bristledand stung against my cheek, and spoke quiteearnestly to my pare n t s. I recall nothing of hisfeatures or of the precise words he used or evenof the tone of his speech. But the dust motes thathung in the air that day are still in my memory,and I can remember his folded hands betwe e nhis spread knees as he leaned forward in a ges-t u re of complicity. He didn’t seem to be sellinganything; he was simply stating facts.

He told my father that Pontiac Moto rs wa sbuying up all the houses in our community fromTe n nyson Street, across from the green glassbuilding, to Baldwin Ave n u e — exactly the bound-aries of what I’d have described as our neigh-borhood. GM’s price was more than fair; itdoubled what little money my father had paid in


the early fifties. The number was a little over tenthousand dollars. All the other houses we regoing, too; some had already been sold. Thee n t i re process of tearing our neighborhood dow nwould ta ke about six months, once all the deta i l swere settled.

1 5 The stranger put down his coffee cup, shookhands with my parents and left. As far as I know,he never darkened our doorstep again. In the backof my mind, I can still see him through the fro n tw i n d ow cutting across the grass to go next door.

“Well, we’re not gonna move, right, Dad?” Isaid. Cheeky as I was, it didn’t occur to me thiswasn’t really a matter for adult decision-mak-ing—or ra t h e r, that the real adults, over at theAd m i n i s t ration Building, had already made theonly decision that counted. Nor did it occur tome that GM’s offer might seem to my father anopportunity to sell at a nice profit, enabling us tomove some place “better.”

My father did not say much. No surprise. Ina good mood, he was the least taciturn manalive, but on the farm where he was raised, notm a ny wo rds we re needed to get a serious jobd o n e. What he did say that evening indicatedthat we might stall awhile—perhaps there wouldbe a slightly better offer if we did. But he exhib-ited no doubt that we would sell. And move.

I was shocked. There was no room in myplans for this…rupture. Was the demolition ofour home and neighborhood—that is, my life—truly inev i table? Was there really no way wecould avert it, cancel it, delay it? What if we justplain refused to sell?

Twenty years later, my mother told me thatshe could still remember my face on that day. Itmust have reflected ex t ra o rdinary distress andconfusion, for my folks we re patient. If anyo n erefused to sell, they told me, GM would simplybuild its parking lot—for that was what wo u l dreplace my world—around him. If we didn’t sell,we’d have access privileges, enough space to geti n to our driveway and that was it. No room top l ay, and no one there to play with if there hadbeen. And if you got caught in such a situationand didn’t like it, then you’d really be in a fix, fo rthe company wouldn’t keep its double-yo u r -

m o n ey offer open fo reve r. If we held out to olong, who knew if the house would be worth any-thing at all. (I don’t imagine that my pare n t sattempted to explain to me the political processof condemnation, but if they had, I would havebeen outraged, for in a way, I still am.)

My dreams always pictured us as holdouts,living in a little house surrounded by asphalt anda u to m o b i l e s. I always imagined nighttime withthe high, white-light towe rs that illuminated allthe other GM parking lots shining down upon ourhouse—and the little guardhouse that the com-p a ny would have to build and man next door top revent me from escaping our lot to run play f u l l yamong the parked cars of the multitudinouse m p l oye e s. Anyone reading this must find ita b s u rd, or the details heavily deriva t i ve of badc o n c e n t ration-camp litera t u re or maybe too influ-enced by the Berlin Wall, which had been up onlya short time. But it would be a mista ke to dismissits romanticism, which was for many monthsm o re real to me than the ridiculous re a l i t y — m ov-ing to accommodate a PARKING LOT—which con-f ronted my family and all my friends’ fa m i l i e s.

20 If this story we re set in the Bronx or in thelate sixties, or if it were fiction, the next sceneswould be of pickets and pro t e s t s, meaningful vic-tories and defeats. But this isn’t fiction—eve r y-thing set out here is as unexaggerated as I knowh ow to make it—and the time and the place we rewrong for any serious uproar. In this docile mid-western company town, where Walter Reuther’strip to Russia was as inexplicable as the partingof the Red Sea (or as forgotten as the Ark of theC ovenant), the idea that a neighborhood mighth ave rights that superseded those of Genera lM o to rs’ Pontiac division would have beenre g a rded as ex t ra o rd i n a r y, biza r re and subve r-s i ve. Presuming anyone had had such an idea,which they didn’t—none of my friends seemedparticularly disturbed about moving, it was justwhat they would do.

So we moved, and what was wo rs e, to thesuburbs. This was catastrophic to me. I loved thec i t y, its pavement and the mobility it offere deven to kids too young to drive. (Some attitudefor a Motor City kid, I know.) In Pontiac, feet or a


b i cycle could get you any w h e re. Eve r yone hadc a rs, but you we ren’t immobilized without them,as eve r yone under sixteen was in the suburbs. Inthe suburb to which we adjourned, cars were thef u n d a m e n tal of life—many of the streets in ournew subdivision (not really a neighborhood) did-n’t even have sidewalks.

E ven though I’d never been certain of fittingin, in the city I’d felt close to figuring out how to.Not that I was that weird. But I was no jock andcertainly neither suave nor graceful. Still, towardthe end of eighth grade, I’d managed to talk to af ew girls, no small feat. The last thing I neededwas new goals to fathom, new rules to learn, newfriends to make.

So that summer was spent in dread. Whenschool opened in the autumn, I was already in asort of cocoon, confused by the Beatles with theirpaltry imitations of soul music and the biza r reemotions they stirred in girls.

Meeting my classmates was easy enough,but then it always is. Making new friends wa sanother matter. For one thing, the kids in myn ew locale we ren’t the same as the kids in myc l a s s e s. I was an exceptionally good student(quite by accident—I just read a lot) and myneighbors were classic underachievers. The kidsin my classes we re hardly cre e p s, but theywe ren’t as interesting or as accessible as the peo-ple I’d known in my old neighborhood or theones I met at the school bus stop. So I kept tomyself.

25 In our new house, I shared a room with mybrother at first. We had bunk beds, and late thatAugust I was lying sweatily in the upper one, lis-tening to the radio (WPON-AM, 1460) while mymother and my aunt droned away in the kitc h e n .

Suddenly my attention was riveted by are c o rd. I listened for two or three minutes moreintently than I have ever listened and learnedsomething that remains all but indescribable. Itwasn’t a new awa reness of music. I liked ro c kand roll alre a d y, had since I first saw Elvis whenI was six, and I’d been reasonably passionateabout the Ro n e t t e s, Gary Bonds, Del Shannon,the Crys ta l s, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, theBeach Boys and those first rough but swe e t

notes from Motown: the Mira c l e s, the Te m p ta-t i o n s, Eddie Holland’s “Jamie.” I can re m e m b e ra ra i ny night when I tuned in a fa raway sta t i o nand first heard the end of the Philadelphia Wa r-r i o rs’ game in which Wilt Chamberlain scored ah u n d red points and then found “Le t ’s Tw i s tAgain” on another part of the dial. And I canremember not knowing which experience wa sm o re splendid.

But the song I heard that night wasn’t a newone. “You Really Got a Hold on Me” had been ahit in 1963, and I already loved Smokey Ro b i n-s o n ’s vo i c e, the way it twined around impossiblysugary lines and made rhymes within ther hythms of ordinary conve rsation, within the lim-its of everyday vocabulary.

But if I’d heard those tricks befo re, I’d neve ru n d e rs tood them. And if I’d enjoyed rock and ro l lmusic prev i o u s l y, certainly it had never gra b b e dme in quite this way: as a lifeline that suggested—no, insisted—that these singers spoke fo r me aswell as to me, and that what they felt and we reable to cope with, the deep sorrow, re m o rs e,a n g e r, lust and compassion that bubbled beneaththe music, I would also be able to feel and con-tain. This intimate revelation was what I gleanedf rom those three minutes of music, and whent h ey we re finished and I climbed out of that bunkand wa l ked out the door, the world looked differ-ent. No longer did I feel quite so powe r l e s s, andif I still felt cheated, I felt capable of getting myown back, some day, some way.

TRAPPED IIIt seems I’ve been playing your game way too longAnd it seems the game I’ve played has made you

strong

Jimmy Cliff, “Trapped”

That last year in Pontiac, we listened to the radioa lot. My parents always had. One of my mostshattering early memories is of the radio blast-ing when they got up—my mother around four-thirty, my father at five. All of my life I’ve hatedearly rising, and for ye a rs I couldn’t listen tocountry music without being reminded almostpainfully of those days.


30 But in 1963 and 1964, we also listened toWPON in the evening for its live coverage of citycouncil meetings. Pontiac was beginning adecade of racial crisis, of integration pre s s u reand white resistance, the typical scenario. Fromwhat was left of our old neighborhood came theo u t s p o kenly racist militant anti–school busingmovement.

The town had a hard time keeping thes h a b by secret of its bigotry even in 1964. Po n t i a chad mushroomed as a result of massive migra-tion during and after World War II. Some of then ew re s i d e n t s, including my fa t h e r, came fro mn e a r by rural areas where blacks we re all butu n k n own and even the local Polish Catholicswe re looked upon as aliens potentially subve rs i veto the community’s Methodist piety.

Many more of the new residents of Pontiaccame from the South, out of the dead ends ofAppalachia and the border states. As many musthave been black as white, though it was hard forme to tell that as a kid. There were lines one did-n’t cross in Michigan, and if I was shocked, whenvisiting Florida, to see separate facilities labeled“White” and “Colored,” as children we neve rpaid much mind to the segregated schools, thelily-white suburbs, the way that jobs in the plantswere divided up along race lines. The ignoranceand superstition about blacks in my neighbor-hood were as desperate and crazed in their ownway as the feelings in any kudzu-covered parishof Louisiana.

As blacks began to assert their rights, theanimosity was not less, either. The polariza t i o nwas fueled and fanned by the fact that so manydisplaced Southerners, all with the poor white’si n vestment in racism, we re living in our com-m u n i t y. But it would be foolish to pretend thatthe situation would have been any more civilize dif only the natives had been around. In fact theSoutherners were often regarded with nearly asmuch condescension and antipathy as blacks—race may have been one of the few areas inwhich my parents found themselves completelyin sympathy with the “hillbillies.”

Racism was the great trap of such men’sl i ve s, for almost everything could be ex p l a i n e d

by it, from unemployment to the deterioration ofcommunity itself. Casting racial blame did muchmore than poison these people’s entire conceptof humanity, which would have been plenty badenough. It immobilized the racist, preve n t i n gfolks like my father from ever realizing the re a lfo rces that kept their lives tawdry and painfuland fo rced them to fight every day to find anymeaning at all in their ex i s t e n c e. It did this toMichigan factory workers as effectively as it everdid it to dirt farmers in Dixie.

35 The great psychological syndrome of Amer-ican males is said to be passive aggression, andracism perfectly fit this mold. To the ra c i s t ,h a t red of blacks gave a great feeling of powe rand superiority. At the same time, it allowed himthe luxury of wa l l owing in self-pity at the gre a tconspiracy of rich bastards and vile niggers thate n fo rced wo r ka d ay misery and let the rest of theworld go to hell. In short, racism explained eve r y-thing. There was no need to look any furtherthan the cant of redneck populism, exploited aseffectively in the orange clay of the Great Lakesas in the red dirt of Georgia, to find an answer tow hy it was always the n ex t g e n e ration that wa sgoing to get up and out.

Some time around 1963, a local atto r n eynamed Milton Henry, a black man, was electedto Po n t i a c ’s city council. Henry was smart andbold—he would later become an ally of MartinLuther King, Jr., of Malcolm X, a principal in thedoomed Republic of New Africa. The goals fo rwhich Henry was campaigning seem extremelytame now, until you re a l i ze the extent to whicht h ey haven’t been re a l i zed in twenty ye a rs :d e s e g regated schools, integrated housing, achance at decent jobs.

Remember that Martin Luther King wo u l dnot ta ke his movement for equality into theNorth for nearly five more years, and that whenhe did, Dr. King there faced the most strident andviolent opposition he’d ever met, and you willu n d e rs tand how inflammatory the mere pre s-ence of Milton Henry on the city council wa s.Those council sessions, broadcast live on WPON,i n vested the radio with a vibra n cy and vita l i t ythat television could never have had. Those hours


of impre c a t i o n s, shouts and clamor are unfo r-gettable. I can’t recall specific words or phrases,though, just Henry’s eloquence and the pande-monium that greeted each of his speeches.

So our whole neighborhood gathered roundits radios in the evenings, family by family, as ifduring wartime. Which in a way I guess it was—surely that’s how the situation was presented tothe children, and not only in the city. My Pontiacjunior high school was lightly integrated, and thekids in my new suburban town had the samereaction as my Floridian cousins: shocked thatI’d “gone to school with niggers,” they vowe dthey would die—or kill—before letting the samething happen to them.

This cycle of hatred didn’t immediatelyelude me. Thirteen-year-olds are built to buck thesystem only up to a point. So even though I did-n’t dislike any of the blacks I met (it could hard l ybe said that I was given the opportunity to knowa ny), it was ta ken for granted that the epithetswe re essentially correct. After all, anyone couldsee the grave poverty in which most blacksexisted, and the only reason ever given for it wa sthat they liked living that way.

40 But listening to the radio gave free play toone’s imagination. Listening to music, that mostabstract of human creations, unleashed it all themore. And not in a vacuum. Semiotics, the NewCriticism, and other formalist approaches haven ever had much appeal to me, not because Idon’t re c o g n i ze their validity in describing cer-tain cre a t i ve structures but because they empha-s i ze those structural questions without muchconsideration of content: And that simply does-n’t jibe with my experience of culture, especiallypopular culture.

The best example is the radio of the early1 9 6 0 s. As I’ve noted, there was no absence ofrock and roll in those ye a rs betwixt the outbre a k sof Presley and Beatles. Rock and roll was a con-s tant for me, the best music around, and I hadl oved it ever since I first heard it, which wa sabout as soon as I could remember hearing any-thing.

In part, I just loved the sound—the gre a tmystery one could hear welling up from “Duke

of Earl,” “Up on the Roof,” “Party Lights”; that pitof loneliness and despair that lay barely con-cealed beneath the superficial bright spirits of are c o rd like Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby”; the non-specific terror hidden away in Del Shannon’s“ Ru n away.” But if that was all there was to it,then rock and roll re c o rds would have been asmuch an end in themselves—that is, as much adead end—as TV shows like Le a ve It to Beave r(also mys t e r i o u s, also—thanks to Eddie Haske l l —a bit terrifying).

To me, howeve r, TV was clearly an aliend ev i c e, controlled by the men with shirts andt i e s. Nobody on television dressed or ta l ked asthe people in my neighborhood did. In rock androll, howeve r, the language spoken was re c o g-nizably my own. And since one of the givens oflife in the outlands was that we were barbarians,who produced no culture and basically con-sumed only garbage and trash, the thrill of dis-c overing depths within rock and roll, the ve r ypart that was most often and explicitly degradedby teachers and pundits, was not only mar-velously re f reshing and ex h i l a rating but also inessence liberating—once you’d made the neces-sary connections.

It was just at this time that pop music wa sbeing revo l u t i o n i zed—not by the Beatles, arriv-ing from England, a locale of certifiable culturals u p e r i o r i t y, but by Motown, arriving fro mD e t roit, a place without even a hint of cultura lre s p e c ta b i l i t y. Produced by Berry Gord y, not onlya young man but a black man. And in that spiritof solidarity with which hometown boys (how-ever unalike) have always identified with onea n o t h e r, Motown was mine in a way that noother music up to that point had been. Surely noone spoke my language as effectively as SmokeyRobinson, able to string together the most hum-drum phrases and effortlessly make them sing.

45 That’s the context in which “You Really Gota Hold on Me” created my epiphany. You canlook at this coldly—structurally—and see noth-ing more than a naked marketing mechanism, aclear-cut case of a teenager swaddled in andswindled by pop culture. Smokey Ro b i n s o nw rote and sang the song as much to make a buck


as to ex p ress himself; there was nothing of thepurity of the mythical artist about his endeavor.In any case, the emotion he ex p ressed wa su n fashionably sentimental. In releasing there c o rd, Berry Gordy was mercenary in bothinstinct and motivation. The radio station cer-tainly hoped for nothing more from playing itthan that its listeners would hang in through thesucceeding block of commercials. None of thesepeople and institutions had any intention of ele-vating their audience, in the way that Le o n a rdBernstein hoped to do in his Young People’s Con -certs on television. Cultural indoctrination wa sfar from their minds. Indeed, it’s unlikely thata nyone invo l ved in the process thought muchabout the kids on the other end of the line exc e p tas an amorphous mass of ears and wallets. Thepride Gordy and Robinson had in the quality oftheir work was private pleasure, not public.

S m o key Robinson was not singing of theperils of being a black man in this world (thoughthere were other rock and soul songs that spokein guarded meta p h o rs about such matters ) .Robinson was not ex p ressing an experience asalien to my own as a country blues singer’swould have been. Instead, he was putting his fin-ger firmly upon a crucial feeling of vulnerabilityand longing. It’s hard to think of two emotionsthat a fourteen-year-old might feel more deeply( well, there ’s lust…), and yet in my hometow nex p ressing them was all but absolutely fo r b i d d e nto men. This doubled the shock of SmokeyRobinson’s voice, which for years I’ve thought ofas falsetto, even though it really isn’t exception-ally high-pitched compared to the specta c u l a rmale sopranos of rock and gospel lore.

“You Really Got a Hold on Me” is not by anymeans the greatest song Smokey Robinson everwrote or sang, not even the best he had done upto that point. The singing on “Who’s Loving Yo u , ”the lyrics of “I’ll Try Something New,” the yearn-ing of “What’s So Good About Goodbye” are allat least as wo r t hy. Nor is there anything espe-cially new fangled about the song. Its tre m b l i n gblues guita r, sturdy drum pattern, walking bassand call-and-response voice arrangement are notvery different from many of the other Mira c l e s

records of that period. If there is a single instantin the record which is unforgettable by itself, it’sprobably the opening lines: “I don’t like you/ButI love you…”

The contingency and ambiguity ex p re s s e din those two lines and Ro b i n s o n ’s singing ofthem was also forbidden in the neighborhood ofmy youth, and forbidden as part and parcel ofthe same philosophy that propounded ra c i s m .Merely calling the bigot’s certainty into questionwas revolutionary—not merely re b e l l i o u s. Thedepth of feeling in that Miracles re c o rd, whichcould have been purchased for 69¢ at any K-Mart, ove r t h rew the premise of racism, whichwas that blacks we re not as human as we, thatt h ey could not feel—much less ex p ress their feel-ings—as deeply as we did.

When the veil of racism was torn from myeye s, everything else that I knew or had beentold was true for fourteen years was necessarilycalled into question. For if racism ex p l a i n e deverything, then without racism, not a singlecommonplace explanation made any sense.N o t h i n g else could be ta ken at face va l u e. Andthat meant asking every question once again,including the banal and obvious ones.

50 For those who’ve never been raised underthe weight of such addled philosophy, the poweri n h e rent in having the burden lifted is bare l yi m a g i n a b l e. Unders tanding that blacks we re n ’ tworthless meant that maybe the rest of the cul-t u re in which I was raised was also va l u a b l e. Ifyo u ’ ve never been told that you and your com-munity are worthless—that a parking lot ta ke sp recedence over your needs—perhaps thatmoment of insight seems trivial or rather easilywon. For anyone who was never led to expect alife any more difficult than one spent behind atypewriter, maybe the whole incident verges onbeing something too banal for repetition (thoughin that case, I’d like to know where the otherexpressions of this story can be read). But look-ing over my shoulder, seeing the consequencesto my life had I not begun questioning not justracism but all of the other presumptions thatruled our lives, I know for certain how and howmuch I got over.


That doesn’t make me better than those onthe other side of the line. On the other hand, Iwon’t trivialize the tale by insisting upon how fo r-tunate I was. What was left for me was a ragingpassion to explain things in the hope that otherswould not be trapped and to keep the way clearso that others from the tra s hy outskirts of bar-barous America still had a place to stand—if notin the culture at large, at least in rock and roll.

Of course it’s not so difficult to dismiss thise n t i re account. Great revelations and insights

a ren’t supposed to emerge from listening to ro c kand roll re c o rd s. They ’ re meant to emerge onlyf rom encounters with art. (My encounters withWestern art music we re unavailing, of cours e,because every one of them was pre faced by al e c t u re on the insipid and worthless nature of themusic that I preferred to hear.) Left with the factthat what happened to me did ta ke place, andthat it was something that was supposed to comeonly out of art, I reached the obvious conclusion.You are welcome to your own.


SUGGESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. Marsh uses the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ song “You Really Got a Hold on Me”

to anchor his memoir. In fact, it is Marsh’s recollection of listening to this song that pro-vides the grounds for the “intimate revelation” or “epiphany” that Marsh sets up at theend of Part I and then explains more fully in Part II. What exactly is this revelation, andhow does it emerge from Marsh’s experience of listening to rock and roll?

2. In Marsh’s view, racism is connected to the powerlessness felt by members of the whiteworking-class community in Pontiac. Explain that connection. What does Marsh meanwhen he talks about racism as the “great trap”? How does Marsh’s understanding ofracism divide him from the older generation in Pontiac?

3. Marsh explains that rock-and-roll singers “spoke for as well as to me.” Can you think ofother examples of singers speaking for you or for some other individual or group? Explainwhat the singer gave voice to in your own or others’ experience.

SUGG ESTI ONS FOR WRITING1. Dave Marsh’s memoir about growing up in Pontiac, Michigan, serves as the introduction

to a collection of his essays and reviews of rock and roll. In this sense, the introduction ismeant to present his reasons for writing about rock and roll. At the end of the memoir,Marsh says: “I reached the obvious conclusion. You are welcome to your own.” Write anessay that explains what conclusions Marsh reaches and why. Do his conclusions seempersuasive to you? Assess how well Marsh enables you to understand his perspective ongrowing up in Pontiac. What conclusions do you draw?

2 . One of the striking features of Dave Marsh’s memoir about growing up in Pontiac is hisattention to class. As Marsh shows, the sense of powerlessness rock and roll spoke to in hisexperience grows out of the relation between his working-class community in Pontiac andthe dominant economic interests in society, re p resented by General Motors. Depending onclass position, people’s feelings can range from the sense of powerlessness that Marshdescribes to the persistent anxieties of the middle classes about maintaining their socioe-conomic status to the self-confidence of the economically secure and their sense of entitle-ment to society’s re w a rds. Write an essay that analyzes how the class character of yourfamily and the community in which you grew up has shaped your own sense of power orpowerlessness and your expectations about what you are entitled to in life. Note whethert h e re are significant diff e rences in expectations between generations. If there are, howwould you explain them? If not, how would you explain the continuity between generations?

3 . As you have seen, Marsh uses the Smoky Robinson song “You Really Got a Hold onMe” to trigger the central revelation of the memoir, the moment when “the veil of racismwas torn from my eyes” and everything “was necessarily called into question.” Use an

encounter that you have had with a song, an album, a live perf o rmance, a movie, orsome other form of popular culture to write a memoir explaining such a moment ofinsight in your experience. The revelation doesn’t have to change everything, as it doesfor Marsh, but it does need to indicate something notable—a new outlook, a shift inattitude, a discovery of one sort or another—that you can link to your encounter. Fol-lowing Marsh’s example, your task is to tell a story in sufficient detail that explains howand why the encounter had such a powerful impact on you. What was it that gave thesong, album, movie, or other thing such force? What was it about the circumstances atthe time that made you especially open to such influence?

YOUTH AND AMERICAN IDENTITY

Lawrence Grossberg

L a w rence Gro s s b e rg is the Morris Davis Professor of Communication at the University of Nort hCarolina–Chapel Hill. A cultural critic who writes about popular culture and rock music, hisessays have been collected in two volumes, Bringing It All Back Home (1997) and Dancing inSpite of Myself (1997). This selection appears in the latter volume. It is taken from “It’s a Sin:Essays on Postmodernism, Politics, and Culture,” a study of the connections between politicsand popular culture in the Reagan era. In the following excerpt, Gro s s b e rg explains how afterWorld War II, young people came to be seen as a living symbol of a unified national identity.

As you read, notice that Lawrence Gro s s b e rg has organized this section from his longer essayin a problem-and-solution format. To follow Grossberg’s line of thought, underline and anno-tate the passages where he defines what he sees as the problem of American national iden-tity and where he explains how American young people were represented as the solution inthe post–World War II period.


Lawrence Grossberg Youth and American Identity 61

1 The meaning of “America” has always been ap roblem. Except for ra re moments, Americansh ave ra rely had a shared sense of identity andunity. Rather, the United States has always beena country of differences without a center. The“ fo reign” has always been centrally implicated inour identity because we we re and are a nation ofi m m i g ra n t s. (Perhaps that partly explains whyAmericans took up anti-communism with suchintensity—here at least was an “other,” a defini-tion of the foreign, which could be construed asnon-American, as a threatening presence whichdefied integration.) It is a nation without a tradi-tion, for its history depends upon a moment offounding violence which almost entirely era d i-cated the native population, thereby renouncinga ny claim to an identity invested in the land. Anddespite various efforts to define some “pro p e r ”ethnic and national origin, it is precisely the

image of the melting pot, this perpetual sense ofthe continuing presence of the other within thenational identity, that has defined the uniquenessof the nation. It is a nation predicated upon dif-f e re n c e s, but always desperately constructing animaginary unity. The most common and domi-nant solution to this in its history invo l ved con-stituting the identity of the United States in thef u t u re tense; it was the land of possibility, the“beacon on the hill,” the new world, the yo u n gnation living out its “manifest destiny.” Perhapsthe only way in which the dive rsity of popula-tions and regions could be held together was toimagine itself constantly facing fro n t i e rs. It is thisperpetual ability to locate and conquer new fro n-t i e rs, a sense embodied within “the Americand ream” as a re c u r rent theme, that has most pow-erfully defined a national sense of cultura luniqueness.

After what the nation took to be “its victo r y ”in the second world war it anxiously faced ad e p ressing contradiction. On the one hand, theyoung nation had grown up, taking its “rightful”place as the leader of the “free world.” On theother hand, what had defined its victory—its ve r yidentity—depended upon its continued sense ofd i f f e rence from the “grown-up” (i.e., corrupt,i n f l ex i b l e, etc.) European nations. It was America’sopenness to possibility, its commitment to itself asthe future, its ability to re fo rge its differences intoa new and self-consciously temporary unity, thathad conquered the fascist threat to freedom. Thep o s t war period can be described by the embodi-ments of this contradiction: it was a time of enor-mous conserva t i ve pre s s u re (we had won the wa rp rotecting the American way; it was time to enjoyit and not rock the boat) and a time of incre a s i n g l yrapid change, not only in the structures of thesocial formation but across the entire surface ofeve r yd ay life. It was a time as schizo p h renic as theb a by boom generation onto which it projected itsc o n t ra d i c t i o n s. Resolving this lived dilemmademanded that America still be located in anddefined by a future, by an American dream butthat the dream be made visible and concre t e. If thed ream had not yet been re a l i zed, it would bes h o r t l y. Thus, if this dream we re to effective l ydefine the nation in its immediate future, if therewas to be any reality to this vision, it would haveto be invested, not just in some abstract future, butin a concrete embodiment of America’s future, i.e. ,in a specific generation. Hence, the American iden-tity was projected upon the children of those whohad to confront the para d ox of America in the post-war ye a rs. But if the dream was to be real for them,and if it we re to be immediately re a l i za b l e, peoplewould have to have children and have children theydid! And they would have to define those childre nas the center of their lives and of the nation; thec h i l d ren would become the justification for eve r y-thing they had done, the source of the very mean-ing of their lives as individuals and as a nation.

The baby-boom created an enormous popu-lation of children by the mid-fifties, a populationwhich became the concretely defined image ofthe nation’s future, a future embodied in a specific

g e n e ration of youth who would finally re a l i ze theAmerican dream and hence become its livingsymbol. This was to be “the best fed, best dre s s e d ,best educated generation” in histo r y, the livingp roof of the American dream, the re a l i zation ofthe future in the present. The American identityslid from a contentless image of the future to ap owerful, emotionally invested image of a gener-ation. America found itself by identifying itsmeaning with a generation whose identity wa sarticulated by the meanings and promises ofyouth. Youth, as it came to define a genera t i o n ,also came to define America itself. And this gen-e ration took up the identification as its own fa n-ta s y. Not only was its own youthfulness identifiedwith the perpetual youthfulness of the nation, butits own generational identity was defined by itsnecessary and continued yo u t h f u l n e s s. But yo u t hin this equation was not measured simply interms of age; it was an ideological and cultural sig-n i f i e r, connected to utopian images of the futureand of this genera t i o n ’s ability to control the fo rc e sof change and to make the world over in its ow ni m a g e s. But it was also articulated by economicimages of the teenager as consumer, and byimages of the specific sensibilities, styles andforms of popular culture which this genera t i o ntook as its own (hence, the necessary myth thatrock and roll was made by American youth). Thus,what was placed as the new defining center of thenation was a generation, an ideological commit-ment to youth, and a specific popular cultural fo r-mation. Obviously, this “consensus” constructedits own powerfully selective frontier: it larg e l yexcluded those fractions of the population (e. g . ,black) which we re never significantly trave rsed bythe largely white middle class youth culture. Nev-e r t h e l e s s, for the moment, the United States hadan identity, however problematic the very com-mitment to youth was and would become, and ithad an apparently perpetually re n ewable nationalpopular; it had a culture which it thought of asi n h e rently American and which it identified withits own embodied image of itself and its future.

But this was, to say the least, a problematicsolution to America’s search for an identity, notm e rely because any generation of youth has to


g row up and, one assumes, renounce theiryo u t h f u l n e s s, but also because “youth” wa slargely, even in the fifties, an empty signifier. As[ C a rolyn] Steedman says, “c h i l d ren are alwaysepisodes in someone else’s narratives, not theirown people, but rather brought into being fo rsomeone else’s purpose.” Youth has no meaningexcept perhaps its lack of meaning, its energ y, itscommitment to openness and change, its cele-b ra tory relation to the present, and its pro m i s eof the future. Youth offers no structure of its ownwith which it can org a n i ze and give permanenceto a national identity. That is, youth itself, likeAmerica, can only be defined apparently in a fo r-

ever receding future. How could this generationpossibly fulfill its own identity and become theAmerican dream—become a future which isalways as yet unrealized and unrealizable? Howcould a generation hold on to its own self-iden-tity as youthful, and at the same time, fulfill theresponsibility of its identification with thenation? What does it mean to have constructeda concrete yet entirely mobile center for a cen-terless nation? Perhaps this rather para d ox i c a lposition explains the sense of fa i l u re that char-a c t e r i zes the postwar genera t i o n s, despite thefact that they did succeed in reshaping the cul-tural and political terrain of the United States.

Lawrence Grossberg Youth and American Identity 63

SUG GESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. Define the problem of American national identity as Gro s s b e rg poses it early in this selec-

tion. How and in what sense did American young people become a “solution” to this“problem” in the post–World War II period?

2 . G ro s s b e rg notes that the national commitment to youth set up its own “powerfully selectivef ro n t i e r,” excluding, among others, young African Americans. Examine the claim that Gro s s-b e rg makes here that the image of youth in the popular imagination after World War II wasl a rgely a white middle-class one—marked in the media as white “teenagers” but “blackyouth.” Explain why you do or do not find the claim persuasive. What further evidencecould you off e r, one way or the other? If you agree with the claim, does it still hold tru e ?

3. At the end of this selection, Grossberg suggests that youth is a “problematic solution toAmerica’s search for identity.” What makes the solution problematic? What is the “senseof failure that characterizes the postwar generations, despite the fact that they did suc-ceed in reshaping the cultural and political terrain of the United States”?

S UGGES TIONS FOR WRIT ING1. L a w rence Gro s s b e rg quotes Carolyn Steedman’s remark that “children are always

episodes in someone else’s narratives, not their own people, but rather brought into beingfor someone else’s purposes.” Apply this quote to your own experience growing up. Wr i t ean essay that explains how your life might be seen as an “episode” in “someone else’sn a rrative.” Take into account the hopes your parents and other significant adults investedin you and your future.

2. G ro s s b e rg opens this selection by saying that “the United States has always been a coun-t ry of diff e rences without a center.” He describes American national identity as one “pre d-icated upon differences, but always desperately constructing an imaginary unity.” Writean essay that explains how you would describe America’s national identity. To do this,consider whether you see a “shared sense of identity and unity” or whether, as Gro s s-berg suggests, American identity should be characterized according to its diversity andthe “continuing presence of the other within the national identity.”

3. Gloria Naylor in “Kiswana Browne,” Dave Marsh in “Fortunate Son,” and Lawre n c eG ro s s b e rg in “Youth and American Identity” have written of the issue of generationalidentity, though in quite different ways. Naylor has written a fictional account, which isa chapter from her novel The Women of Brewster Place; Marsh has written a memoir


based on his own experience; and the selection from Gro s s b e rg ’s “It’s a Sin” takes ananalytical perspective on the emotional and cultural investments made in American youthin the post–World War II period. Because each of these writers uses such a different writ-ing strategy, he or she is likely to have different effects on his or her readers. Write anessay that compares the writing strategies. What do you see as the advantages and dis-advantages of each writer’s attempt to address the issue of generational identity? Whateffects are the writers’ various strategies likely to have on readers?

TEENAGE WA S T E L A N D

Donna Gaines

Donna Gaines writes regularly for the Village Vo i c e. She also writes regularly for Rolling Stoneand SPIN. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology, has worked as a social worker with teenagers, andteaches at Barn a rd College. The following selection is taken from Gaines’s book Te e n a g eWasteland (1990), an investigative re p o rt on the suicide pact carried out by four “heavymetal” kids in the working-class suburbs of nort h e rn New Jersey in 1987. Gaines does notbelieve in the traditional neutrality of the reporter toward her subjects but instead aligns her-self with the “burnouts” and takes on the task of telling their side of the story.

This selection is set on the first anniversary of the suicide pact—a time of reckoning with theevent and what it meant for the Bergenfield community. Notice how Gaines treats the expla-nations of “why they did it” offered by various adults, journalists, and officials.


III1 On the first annive rsary of the suicide pact, a

number of special fo l l ow-up news reports aire don local and national television. We saw many ofthe same fa c e s — o f f i c i a l s, loyal students ofBergenfield High School, mental health adminis-trators. Over the year the town had gained a cer-tain moral authority—it had survived the suicidepact as well as the media invasion. The commu-nity had learned something and had grown. Byn ow, Berg e n f i e l d ’s re p re s e n ta t i ves also knewhow to work media.

On WA B C ’s N i g h t l i n e, we would learn ofB e rg e n f i e l d ’s “new awa re n e s s,” its compre h e n-s i ve battery of preve n t i ve services. We would seesigns advertising “help” posted in sto re windowsall over town, wherever kids might hang around.T h e re was a hot line, and Bergenfield police we regetting special training for suicide calls. Bergen-field High School would implement a “peer lead-e rship” pro g ram. Pa rents would get invo l ved atthe school. There was an aggre s s i ve youth out-

reach pro g ram. The town would ta ke pride initself as a model for other towns to fo l l ow. Offi-cials would seek out federal and state funding sothat these pro g rams could continue to helpB e rg e n f i e l d ’s youth. The town had been suc-cessful with its rational responses to a serioussocial problem. This is how Bergenfield wo u l dpresent itself to the television world.

On a local news program, there was a briefclip of a fo l l ow-up visit to Bergenfield High, onthe anniversary of the suicide pact. Wholesomeand alert students selected to re p resent theschool sat around a table with their principal,Lance Ro s za, and re i t e rated what had becomethe story about the Bergenfield suicide pact. Thefour kids “had nothing to do with the school.”They had “chosen” to drop out. They committedsuicide because they had “personal problems.”

Police lieutenant Donald Stumpf, who hadalso served as school board president, admittedthat Bergenfield was “weak on dro p o u t s.” A juve-nile officer, Stumpf noted that once the kids dro p

out, “they go to neve r - n everland.” Maybe that’sw h e re they came from, since the school to o kevery opportunity to point out that it had noth-ing to do with its students’ dropping out. Sud-denly the “burnouts” appeared in this state ofsocial dislocation, as if by magic. They had noi n vo l vement with the school or the town. Bychoice they turned their backs on all the ava i l a b l esupport, concern, and care. They we re self-madeo u tc a s t s, disengaged atoms floating in spacesomewhere over Bergenfield. There was no dis-cussion of the process, only the product.

5 In the end, Bergenfield High School would bevindicated by its more devoted students, honore dfor its “invo l vement” with potential dropouts andtheir fa m i l i e s. Supposedly, the tow n ’s “newawa reness” and the preve n t i ve services had paidoff: a few dropouts had been saved, or at leastt e m p o rarily re p ro g rammed. In fact, Berg e n f i e l dofficials had implemented pro g rams so success-fully they we re now deemed wo r t hy of re p l i c a t i o nin communities across America. And finally,everybody agreed Lisa, Cheryl, To m my Rizzo ,and To m my Olton had committed suicidebecause they had p e rsonal pro b l e m s.

Once the event was unders tood, ex p l a i n e dunder the banner of p e rsonal pro b l e m s, e n t i resets of questions could be logically excluded. Ye s,the four kids did have personal pro b l e m s. Butmaybe there was more to it than that.

Some explanations for “why they did it”were formulated with compassion and sincerity,o t h e rs we re handed down contemptuously, cal-l o u s l y. There was no org a n i zed conspira cy tokeep “the burnouts’” own story silent. But it waskept silent—it was now outside the discours ewhich framed the event. In a sense, theburnouts’ story, their view of things, was evacu-ated from the social text.

Once we all agreed that the four kids hadbanded together in a suicide pact because theyhad p e rsonal pro b l e m s, we no longer needed to askwhat “the burnouts” we re alienating themselve sfrom. Or what role their identification as“burnouts” played in the way they felt about them-s e l ve s, their fa m i l i e s, their school, or their tow n .

With the suicide pact explained away as theresult of p e rsonal pro b l e m s, it would be re a s o n a b l eto believe that aided by Satan, drugs, and rock &roll, four “troubled losers” pulled each other dow n ,deeper and deeper, into an abyss of misery untilt h ey finally idled themselves out of it.

10 If we unders tood the Bergenfield suicidepact as the result of personal problems, we wouldthen have to re m ove the event from its socialcontext. And once we did that, the story accord-ing to “the burnouts” would never be known; itwould be buried with the four kids.

T h e re we re other reasons why “the b u r n o u t s ”themselves weren’t being heard. First, they hadlittle access to the media. They weren’t likely tobe on hand when Bergenfield High Schoolauthorities needed bright, articulate youth to re p-resent the school or the town to re p o r t e rs. “A l i e n-ated youth” don’t hang around teachers orshrinks any longer than they have to.

Second, to the chagrin of their care ta ke rs,“burnouts” aren’t particularly “verbal.” The basicl i f e - world shared by teenage suburban meta l-heads is action-oriented: best unders tood in con-t ext, through signs and symbols in motion. Itwould be hard to convey one’s thoughts and feel-ings to reporters in the succinct lines that makeup the news.

In the beginning “the burnouts” did talk tore p o r t e rs, but things got twisted aro u n d — “ t h ep a p e rs got the story all fucked up”—and besides,they really hated hearing their friends and theirtown maligned by stra n g e rs. So they clammedright up.

The kids everybody called burnouts under-stood this: Once you open the door, they’ve gotyou. You’re playing their language game. What-ever you say can be held against you. At the ve r yleast, it changes meaning once it’s out of the con-t ext created by you and your friends. Better tokeep it to yo u rself. So pro g rams existed inB e rgenfield but “the burnouts” didn’t dare usethem. They may have been outc a s t s, but theyweren’t stupid. They knew to avoid trouble.

15 Kids who realize that they are marginal fearreprisals. Over and over again I was asked not to

Donna Gaines Teenage Wasteland 65

mention names. And no picture s. As a rule,t e e n a g e rs love performing for the media. It’s agame that lets adults think they unders tand “kidsto d ay,” and it’s fun. But “the burnouts” we re nowmedia wise. They knew better. They wa n t e dcomplete control or they weren’t saying shit.

So by design and by default, nobody re a l l ygot to hear what “the burnouts” had to say. Likeany other alienated youth since the conceptual-i zation of “youth” as a social category, they don’tl i ke to talk to adults. About anything. After thesuicide pact a few “burnouts” told re p o r t e rs theywe re re l u c tant to confide in school guidancec o u n s e l o rs because the counselors might telltheir parents and “they’d be punished or eve nsent to a psychiatric hospital.”

The idea of troubled youth doing themselve sin was especially disturbing to a town that boastedover thirty active pro g rams for its youth prior tothe suicide pact of March 11. Yet LieutenantStumpf noted that the Bergenfield kids who mostneeded the services would not make use of them.

Authorities had acknowledged that the more“alienated” or “high-risk” youth of Berg e n f i e l dwould not vo l u n tarily invo l ve themselves withthe town’s services. But the kids weren’t talkingabout what it was that held them back, why theyweren’t looking to confide in the adults.

In the local papers, experts called in to com-ment on the tragedy referred to this as “the con-s p i ra cy of silence”—the bond of secre cy betwe e nteenage friends. While there was some acknowl-edgment that this reflected kids’ terror of “get-ting in tro u b l e,” nobody questioned whether ornot this fear might be rational.

2 0 Yet it was becoming clear that for Berg e n-f i e l d ’s marginally invo l ved youth, the idea ofgoing to see a school guidance counselor or re a l l y“opening up” to pare n t s, shrinks, and even clerg ywas inconceiva b l e. It was apparent that even ift h ey had done nothing wrong, they felt guilty.

On those ra re occasions when “burnouts”spoke to reporters, it was obvious that any brushwith authority carried the promise of tro u b l e,fear of punishment, of getting snagged fo rsomething. Enemy lines were drawn. “Burnouts”articulated little confidence that they could be

u n d e rs tood by their appointed care ta ke rs, andt h ey assumed that fair treatment was unlike l y.Even being able to relate on any level of naturalcomfort was out of the question.

By now it was also apparent that the“ b u r n o u t s,” as a clique, as carriers of a highly vis-ible “peer-regulated” subculture, posed a thre a tto the hegemony of parents, teachers, and othermandated “agents of socialization” in Berg e n-field. The initial blaming of the suicide victims’friends for whatever had gone wrong did ta kesome of the pre s s u re off the parents and theschool. This was pre d i c table—after all, “Where ’ dyou learn that from, your friends?” is a well-trav-eled technique adults use to challenge and sup-press a kid’s dissenting view.

While some “burnouts” did complain tore p o r t e rs about feeling neglected by the tow n ,the school, and their parents, some were just ash a p py to be left alone. This was a loosely con-nected network of friends and acquainta n c e swho appeared to live in a world of their ow n ,almost discontinuous from the rest of the town.

Readings of youth, from the Rebel Without aC a u s e 1950s to The Rive r ’s Edge 1 9 8 0 s, haveex p l o red the young pers o n ’s long-standing cri-tique of the adult world: Nobody talks aboutwhat is really going on. Especially not pare n t s,and never at school. The “burnouts” seemed tounderstand that very well. Yet the “insularity” ofthis group of outcasts frustrated adults eve r y-w h e re. It annoyed them as much as “ex p l o s i veinside views” might have titillated them.

2 5 These kids we re actively guarding their psy-chic space because the adults controlled eve r y-thing else. Yet the experts on the scene continuedto urge the “burnouts” to purg e. Fo rget about it.I t ’s no secret, you give them an inch and they ’ l lta ke a self. Berg e n f i e l d ’s alienated youth popula-tion already had a different way of seeing things.H ow c o u l d t h ey reach out and speak up? Whenevery day up until the suicide pact, and shortlyt h e re a f t e r, they we re encouraged to suppre s swhat t h ey p e rc e i ved to be reality? When livingmeans having to deny what you feel, disassociat-ing yo u rself to survive, you better stay close toyour friends or you could start to believe the bull-


shit. Ye s, the “burnouts” carried the news, theyk n ew the truth. They all unders tood what that

“something evil in the air” wa s. Alone, it madethem cra z y. To g e t h e r, it made them b a d.

Donna Gaines Teenage Wasteland 67

S UGGES TIONS FOR D ISCU SS ION1. Donna Gaines notes that school officials, mental health workers, and others from Berg e n-

field explained the suicide pact as the result of “personal problems.” Why do you thinkthis explanation became the dominant response to the suicides? Why would this expla-nation appeal to those in positions of authority? What, in Gaines’s view, does this expla-nation of the suicides evade?

2. Gaines puts considerable emphasis on the suspicion of the “burnouts” toward the media,schools, and the world of adults in general. How does she explain this suspicion? To whatextent does it seem reasonable or unreasonable?

3. The media have sensationalized teenage suicide by linking it to heavy-metal music andSatanism. Groups such as Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, andMetallica have been blamed for instigating suicides among heavy-metal fans. At the sametime, teens such as the Bergenfield “burnouts” in part define their group identity as “met-alheads”—which sets up a classic case of young people versus adults. What do you knowabout heavy-metal music? Do you listen to it or know people who do? Why has heavy-metal music become so controversial? Work with two or three other students to answerthese questions. Pool the information that you have about heavy-metal music. If you arenot familiar with the music, you may want to interview a heavy-metal fan.

SUGGESTI ONS FOR WR IT ING1. One of Gaines’s key points is that adults’ tendency to explain the suicides as the result of

“personal problems” evades some deeper questions about what it is the “burnouts” arealienated from and how their identities as “burnouts” shape their relations to each other,their families, their schools, and their communities. She wants us to think about them, inother words, not as isolated individuals but as a social phenomenon—a coherent sub-culture of “metalheads.” Take Gaines’s point seriously by using it to analyze a group orsubculture of alienated teenagers you know something about. Follow Gaines’s model forthis assignment by writing an account that is sympathetic to troubled or marg i n a l i z e dyoung people. Imagine that your task is to explain to readers why the group of youngpeople is alienated from the official system and what holds together their subculture.

2. The media have been fascinated by teenage suicide and its sensationalistic connection toheavy-metal music and Satanism. Write a report that explains how adult culture repre-sents heavy-metal music and what, in your view, is at stake for the relationship betweengenerations.

You might, for example, visit the Web site of the Parents Music Resource Group, whichwas established by Tipper Gore to monitor teenage listening pre f e rences. Or you mightinvestigate the 1990 trial in which a $6.2 million product liability suit charged Judas Priestwith inspiring the suicides of two Nevada teenagers. (R e a d e r ’s Guide to Periodical Liter -a t u re should provide you with the sources that you need.)

3. Gaines says that “burnouts” in Bergenfield systematically avoided social services andyouth programs directed at “high-risk” young people. Their suspicion of adult culture wassimply too high. Write an essay that explains what kinds of programs might succeed.How could they overcome young people’s fears and suspicions? You don’t have to limityourself to the Bergenfield “burnouts” for this assignment. Draw on your knowledge,observations, and experience with troubled young people in other settings.


GOTHS IN TOMORROWLAND

Thomas Hine

Thomas Hine is well known for his writing about architecture and design. He is the author ofPopuluxe (1987), a book on American design in the 1950s and 1960s, and The Total Pack -age (1995), a study of brand names and packaging. The following selection comes from hismost recent book, The Rise and Fall of the American Te e n a g e r (1999). Hine explores the diver-sity of teen culture and its relation to adult society.

Hine begins with an anecdote about the goth “invasion” of Disneyland in 1997 and the “zerotolerance” policy adopted by Disney’s security forces. Notice that Hine wants to do more thanjust tell his story. He sees in it a larger issue about how the “mere presence of teenagers thre a t-ens us.” As you read, keep in mind this general theme of the alienation of teenagers from adultsociety, how adults enforce it, and how teenagers maintain it.


I feel stupid and contagious.

Kurt Cobain, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)

1 In the summer of 1997, the security fo rces atD i s n eyland and the police in surrounding Ana-heim, California, announced a “ze ro to l e ra n c e ”policy to fend off a new threat.

H o rdes of pale, mascaraed goths—one ofthe many tribes of teendom—we re invading. Itwas an odd onslaught. Unlike their barbariann a m e s a ke s, they we ren’t storming the gates ofthe walled Magic Kingdom. They had ye a r l yp a s s e s, purchased for $99 apiece. Many of themhad not even been goths when their pare n t sd ropped them off at the edge of the parking lot.Ra t h e r, they changed into their black some-times gender-bending garments, applied theirwhite makeup accented with black eyeliner andg ray blush-on. The punkier among them acces-s o r i zed with safety pins and other aggre s s i ve l yu g l y, uncomfo r table-looking pierc e a b l e s. Andmost important of all, they reminded them-s e l ves to look really glum. Once inside, theyheaded for To m o r rowland, Disney l a n d ’s mostunsettled neighborhood, and hogged all theb e n c h e s.

It was a sacrilege. Disneyland, said thosewho wrote letters to the editor, is supposed to be“the happiest place on earth,” and these yo u n g

people with their long faces clearly didn’t belong.The presence of sullen clusters of costumedteens showed, some argued, that Disney hadgiven up its commitment to family values. It wasno longer possible to feel safe in Disney l a n d ,came the complaints, and that was about the lastsafe place left.

Ac t u a l l y, the safety of Disneyland was partof the attraction for the goth teens. They to l dreporters that their parents bought them seasonpasses because the theme park’s tight securitywould assure nothing bad would happen tothem. In the vast sprawl of Orange County, Cali-fornia, there are very few safe places whereteens are we l c o m e, and Disneyland has alwaysbeen one of them.

Those who complained spoke of the gothsas if they we re some sort of an alien fo rc e, notjust white suburban California teenagers. Onlya few ye a rs earlier, they had been kids whowe re delighted to go with their parents to meetM i c key. And only a few ye a rs from now, theywill be young adults—teaching our childre n ,cleaning our teeth, installing our cable telev i-sion. But now they insist on gloom. And theadult world could not find a place for them—even in To m o r row l a n d .

5 Unlike Minnesota’s Mall of America—whichbecame a battleground for gang wa r fa re tra n s-

planted from Minneapolis and which eventuallyb a r red unescorted teenagers from visiting atnight—the perc e i ved threat to Disneyland wa shandled in a low - key way. Te e n a g e rs we rea r rested for even the tiniest infractions outsidethe park and forced by security guards to followD i s n ey l a n d ’s quite re s t r i c t i ve rules of decorumwithin the park. After all, the theme park’sa d m i n i s t ra to rs had an option not available tog overnment; they could revo ke the yearly passes.While Disneyland doesn’t enfo rce a dress codefor its visito rs, it can keep a tight rein on theirbehavior.

Yet, despite its lack of drama, I think the sit-uation is significant because it vividly ra i s e smany of the issues that haunt teenagers’ lives atthe end of the twentieth century. It is about thealienation of teenagers from adult society, andequally about the alienation of that society fromits teenagers. The mere presence of teenagersthreatens us.

It is also a story about space. How, in ane n v i ronment devoid of civic spaces, do weexpect people to learn how to behave as mem-bers of a community? And it is about the future.Is a meaningful to m o r row so far away that yo u n gpeople can find nothing better to do than engagein faux-morbid posturing? (Even Disney’s themeparks are losing track of the future; they are con-verting their To m o r rowlands into nostalgic ex p l o-rations of how people used to think about thefuture a century and more ago.)

And even its resolution—a stance of uneasytolerance backed by coercion and force—seemss y m p tomatic of the way Americans deal withyoung people now.

I n ev i ta b l y, a lack of pers p e c t i ve bedev i l se f forts to recount the recent past, but the pro b-lem is more than that. The last quarter of thet wentieth century has, in a sense, been aboutf ra g m e n tation. Identity politics has led to asharpening of distinctions among the groups inthe society, and a suspicion of apparent majori-t i e s. Postmodern literary theory warns us to mis-trust narratives. Even advertising and television,

which once united the country in a commonbelief in consumption, now sell to a welter ofmicromarkets. Thus we are left without either acommon myth, or even the virtual commonground of The Ed Sullivan Show.

10 It seems crude now to speak of teenagersand think of the white middle-class, hetero s ex u a lyoung people that the wo rd “teenager” was orig-inally coined to describe. The “echo” generationof teenagers, whose first members are nowentering high school, is about 67 percent non-Hispanic white, 15 percent black, 14 percent His-panic, and 5 percent Asian or American Indian.The proportion of Hispanic teens will grow eachyear, and the Census Bureau also reports signifi-cantly greater numbers of mixed-race teens andadoptees who are racially different from theirparents.

Even the word “Hispanic” is a catch-all thatconceals an enormous range of cultural differ-ence between Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans,D o m i n i c a n s, and other groups whose immigra-tion to the United States has increased tre m e n-dously during the last quarter century. Urbanschool systems routinely enroll student popula-tions that speak dozens of different languages athome.

D i f f e rences among youth do not simplyinvolve differences of culture, race, income, andclass—potent as these are. We now acknow l e d g ed i f f e rences in sexual orientation among yo u n gp e o p l e. To d ay ’s students are also tagged withb u re a u c ratic or medical assessments of theirabilities and disabilities that also become part oftheir identities.

T h e re are so many differences among thestudents at a high school in Brooklyn, Los Ange-l e s, or suburban Montgomery County, Maryland,that one wo n d e rs whether the wo rd “teenager”is sufficient to encompass them all. Indeed, theterms “adolescent” and “teenager” have alwayshad a middle-class bias. In the past, though,working-class youths in their teens were alreadyworking and part of a separate culture. Now thatthe work of the working class has disappeare d ,

Thomas Hine Goths in Tomorrowland 69

their children have little choice but to beteenagers. But they are inevitably different fromthose of the postwar and baby boomer era sbecause they are growing up in a more hetero-geneous and contentious society.

What fo l l ows, then, is not a single unifiedn a r ra t i ve but, ra t h e r, a sort of jigsaw puzzle.M a ny pieces fit together nicely. Others seem tobe missing. It’s easier to solve such a puzzle ifyou know what picture is going to emerge, but ifI we re confident of that, I wouldn’t be puttingyou, or myself, to such trouble.

These discussions do have an underlyingtheme: the difficulty of forging the sort of mean-ingful identity that Erik Erikson described at mid-c e n t u r y. But if we look for a picture of thel a t e - t wentieth-century teenager in these fra g-m e n t s, we won’t find it. That’s because we ’ reexpecting to find something that isn’t there.

15 The goths who invaded To m o r rowland areexamples of another kind of dive rsity—or per-haps pseudo-dive rsity—that has emerged gaudilyduring the last two decades. These are the tribesof youth. The typical suburban high school isoccupied by groups of teens who express them-s e l ves through music, dre s s, ta t toos and pierc i n g ,o b s e s s i ve hobbies, consumption patterns,ex t racurricular activities, drug habits, and sexp ra c t i c e s. These tribes hang out in different partsof the school, go to different parts of town. Onceit was possible to speak of a youth culture, butn ow there is a range of youth subculture s, andclans, coteries, and cliques within those.

In 1996 a high school student asked fellowre a d e rs of an Internet bulletin board what gro u p swe re found in their high schools. Nearly eve r yschool reported the presence of “ska t e rs, ”“ g e e k s,” “jocks,” “sluts,” “fre a k s,” “druggies, ”“ n e rd s,” and those with “other-colored hair,” pre-sumably third - g e n e ration punks. There we realso, some students reported, “paper people, ”“ s n o b s,” “band geeks,” “drama club types” (or“ d rama queens”), “soccer playe rs” (who are n ’ tcounted as jocks, the informant noted),

“ S a ta n i s t s,” “Jesus fre a k s,” “industrial pre p s, ”“ t e c h n o - g o t h s,” and “computer dwe e b s.” Seve ra ltook note of racial and class segregation, listing“ b l a c k s,” “La t i n o s,” “white trash,” and “wa n n a b eb l a c k s.” There we re “pre p p i e s,” who, as onew r i t e r, possibly a preppie herself noted, “dre s sl i ke the snobs but aren’t as snobbish.” “Don’t fo r-get about the druggie pre p s,” another writer fire dback.

This clearly wasn’t an exhaustive list. Termsvary from school to school and fashions va r yf rom moment to moment. New technologiese m e rg e, in-line skates or electronic pagers fo ri n s ta n c e, and they immediately generate theirown dress, style, language, and culture.

The connotations of the technologies canchange very quickly. Only a few ye a rs ago,p a g e rs we re associated mostly with drug dealers,but now they ’ ve entered the mainstream. Pa g e rsbecame respectable once busy mothers realizedthat they could use them to get messages to theirperipatetic offspring. Young pager users havedeveloped elaborate codes for flirtation, endear-ment, assignation, and insults. They know that if90210 comes up on their pager, someone’s call-ing them a snob, and if it’s 1776, they’re revolt-ing, while if it’s 07734, they should turn thepager upside down and read “hELLO.”

Most of the youth tribes have roots that goback twenty ye a rs or more, though most arem o re visible and elaborate than they once we re.M a ny of these tribes are defined by the musict h ey like, and young people devote a lot ofe n e rgy to distinguishing the true exe m p l a rs ofh e avy metal, techno, alternative, or hip-hopf rom the mere poseurs. Hybrid and evo l u t i o n-ary ve rsions of these culture s, such as speedm e tal, thrash, or gangsta rap make things fa rm o re confusing.

20 One thing that many of these subculture shave in common is what has come to be knownas modern primitivism. This includes ta t to o i n g ,the piercing of body parts, and physically ex p re s-s i ve and dangerous rituals, such as the mosh pitsthat are part of many rock concerts. Young peo-


ple use piercing and tattoos to assert their matu-rity and sovereignty over their bodies.

“Can this be child abuse?” Sally Dietrich, asuburban Wa s h i n g ton mother, asked the policewhen her thirteen-year-old son appeared with abulldog ta t tooed on his chest. “I said, ‘Whatabout destruction of property?’ He’s my kid.” Herson wa s, very like l y, trying to signal otherwise.N eve r t h e l e s s, Dietrich mounted a successfulcampaign to bar tattooing without permission inthe state of Maryland, one of many such restric-tions passed during the 1990s.

It may be a mistake to confuse visible asser-tions of sexual power with the fact of it. Fo rexa m p l e, heav y - m e tal concerts and mosh pitsare notoriously male-dominated affairs. And thej o ke of MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-head” is thatthese two purported metalheads don’t have aclue about how to relate to the opposite sex .Those whose costumes indicate that they haveless to prove are just as likely to be sex u a l l yactive.

In fact, visito rs to Disneyland probably don’tneed to be too worried about the goths, a tribewhich, like many of the youth culture gro u p s, hasits roots in English aestheticism. As some gothsfreely admit, they’re pretentious, and their mor-bid attitudes are as much a part of the dress-upgames as the black clothes themselves.

The goth pose provides a convenient cover.For some males, it gives an opportunity to try outan androgynous look. The costumes, whiche m p h a s i ze the face and make the body disap-p e a r, may also provide an escape for yo u n gwomen and men who fear that they ’ re ove r-weight or not fit. Black clothes are slimming, anddarkness even more so. “Until I got in with goths,I hadn’t met other people who are depressed likeI am and that I could really talk to,” said oneyoung woman on an Internet bulletin board .Another said being a goth allowed her re l a xa t i o nf rom life as a straight-A student and a perfectdaughter.

25 Although young people re c o g n i ze animmense number of distinctions among the

tribes and clans of youth culture and are con-temptuous of those they re g a rd as bogus, mostadults cannot tell them apart. They confuset h ra s h e rs with metalheads and goths becauset h ey all wear black. Then they assume thatthey’re all taking drugs and worshipping Satan.

The adult gaze is powerful. It classes themall as teenagers, whether they like it or not. Thebody alterations that young people use to assertthat they are no longer children successfullyfrighten grown-ups, but they also convince themthese we i rd cre a t u res are well short of beinga d u l t s. The ring through the lip or the nipplem e rely seems to demonstrate that they are notready for adult re s p o n s i b i l i t y. What they provo keis not respect but restrictions.

Tribes are about a yearning to belong to ag roup—or perhaps to escape into a disguise.T h ey combine a certain gregariousness withwhat seems to be its opposite: a feeling ofe s t rangement. The imagery of being alone in theworld is not quite so gaudy as that of modernprimitivism, yet it pervades contemporary yo u t hculture.

While youthful ex p l o ration of the 1920s,1 9 4 0 s, 1950s, or 1960s often took the form ofwild dancing, more recently it has been abouts o l i tary posing. This phenomenon is re f l e c t e d ,and perhaps encouraged, by MTV, which we n ton the air in 1981. In contrast with the rudi-m e n tary format of American Bandsta n d , i nwhich the viewer seemed simply to be lookingin on young people having fun dancing with onea n o t h e r, MTV videos tend to be more aboutb rooding than participation. They are highly sub-j e c t i ve, like dreams or psyc h o d ra m a s. They con-nect the viewer with a feeling, rather than withother people.

And while the writhing, leaping, and ecsta-tic movement of the mosh pit seems to be anex t reme form of American Bandsta n d-style par-ticipation, it embodies a rather scary kind ofc o m m u n i t y. One’s own motions have little re l a-tionship to those of others. And there ’s sub-s tantial risk of injury. The society implied by


SUG GESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. Thomas Hine uses the opening anecdote about goth teens and Disneyland to announce

the theme of this passage. As Hine presents it, what is this story meant to represent aboutthe relations between teenagers and adults? What further examples and evidence doesHine offer in the rest of the selection to reinforce his point?

2. Hine suggests that the terms t e e n a g e r and youth c u l t u re no longer have one commonmeaning. If anything, he sees a diversity of teenagers and “tribes of youth” defined by

the dance is not harmonious and made up ofc o u p l e s. Ra t h e r, it is violent and composed ofisolated individuals who are, neve r t h e l e s s, bothseeking and repulsing contact with others. Ifthis sounds like a vision of American society asa whole, that’s not surprising. Figuring out whatthings are really like is one of the tasks ofyouth. Then they frighten their elders by actingit out.

30 When a multinational company that sells tothe young asked marketing psychologist Sta nGross to study teenagers around the country, heconcluded after hundreds of interviews and exe r-cises that the majority of young peopleembraced an extreme if inchoate individualism.Most believe that just about every institution theycome in contact with is stupid. When asked tochoose an ideal image for themselve s, the major-ity selected a picture that depicted what mightbe described as confident alienation. The figuresits, comfortably apart from everything, his eyesgazing out of the image at something unknownand distant.

Such studies are done, of cours e, not tore form the young but to sell to them. And the col-l e c t i ve impact of such knowledge of the yo u n ghas been the pro l i f e ration of advertising thate n c o u rages young people not to believe any-t h i n g — even advertising—and to ex p ress theirsuperiority by purchasing the product that’s will-ing to admit its own spuriousness.

The distance between spontaneous ex p re s-sion and large-scale commercial ex p l o i tation hasn ever been shorter. Cre a to rs of youth fa s h i o n ,such as Nike, go so far as to send scouts to theghetto to take pictures of what young people arewearing on the streets and writing on the walls.Nike seeks to reflect the latest sensibilities, both

in its products and its advertising. The companyfeeds the imagery right back to those who cre-ated it, offering them something they cannotafford as a way of affirming themselves.

One result of this quick feedback is thatvisual symbols become detached from their tra-ditional associations and become attached tosomething else. Ra p p e rs, having made dro o pypants stylish in the suburbs, began to wear prep-pie sportswe a r, and brand names like To m myHilfiger and Nautica became badges of bothWASP and hip-hop sensibilities. Thus, even whenthe fashions don’t change, their meaning does.Such unexpected shifts in the meaning of mate-rial goods cannot be entirely manipulated bya d u l t s. But marke t e rs have learned that theymust be vigilant in order to profit from thechanges when they come.

M o re overtly than in the past, many ofto d ay ’s young are looking for ex t reme forms ofex p ression. This quest is just as apparent insports, for example, as in rock culture. The 1996At l a n ta Olympics began with an exhibition ofex t reme cycling and ex t reme skating. These andother extreme sports, categorized collectively as“ X - G a m e s,” have become a cable television fix-ture because they draw teenage males, an other-wise elusive audience. “Extreme” was one of thec a tc h wo rds of the 1990s, and it became, by1996, the most common wo rd in newly re g i s-t e red trade names, attached either to pro d u c t saimed at youth or which sought to embodyyouthfulness.

35 Young people are caught in a paradox. Theydrive themselves to extremes to create space inwhich to be themselve s. Yet the commerc i a lmachine they think they ’ re escaping is always ontheir back, ready to sell them something new.



d i ff e rent styles of dress, music, body ornamentation, extracurricular activity, drug use,and sexual practices as well as racial and ethnic markers. Consider your high school andcollege. What “tribes” are represented? Develop a classification of the various groups.What do you see as the leading ways in which groups of young people define them-selves? What are the meanings of the identities they take on? What are the relationshipsamong the various groups?

3. Hine points to a social dynamic in which “extreme” forms of cultural expressions, suchas tatooing, body piercing, music, and sports, are meant to affirm group identities but,from an adult perspective, only reinforce the view that young people “are not ready foradult re s p o n s i b i l i t y.” What is the lure, for young people, of such extreme expre s s i o n s ?How, from the perspective of adults, do the various forms of extreme style and behaviorget lumped together?

SUG GESTI ONS FOR WRIT ING1. Write an essay that classifies the various groups (or “tribes”) of youth culture at the high

school you attended or your college. Describe the leading groups, their styles, behaviors,values, and attitudes. After providing an overview of the groups, explain their relation-ship to each other and to the adult society that surrounds them.

2 . Hine suggests that some of the groupings of youth culture re p resent a threat to adult soci-e t y. Consider what Hine thinks is the source of this fear. Why would adults be so wor-ried about young people? What exactly is at stake in the fears and anxieties of the olderg e n e r a t i o n ?

3. At the end of this selection, Hine says that young people are “caught in a paradox”: Nomatter how much they rebel against adult society to create a space for themselves, the“commercial machine” they’re trying to escape from reincorporates their cultural stylesin the form of new products and merchandise. Do you think this is a reasonable assess-ment? Why or why not? Write an essay that explains your answer—and whether youthink young people can establish their own way of doing things, independent of the mar-ket and the workings of adult society.

GEN X’S ENDURING LEGACY: THE INTERNET

Mike Pope

Mike Pope is the letters editor of the Tallahasee Democrat. The following column of opiniona p p e a red as an op-ed piece in several newspapers across the country on November 13,2001. Pope is trying to come to terms with the meaning of his generation, which has beenlabeled, he says, in “our cultural vocabulary,” as “Generation X.” In demographic term s ,Generation X refers to those born between 1963 and 1981. The real question Pope poses isthe meaning of this generation—how it views itself and how others view it. Pope makes theI n t e rnet the key defining feature that separates his generation from the generation of babyboomers that came before.

As you read, observe how Mike Pope notes the “transformations” Generation X has gonethrough in the public eye. In an interesting stroke, he also links the first George H.W. Bushadministration (1988–1992) to the second George W. Bush administration (2000– ) to pro-vide historical context.


1 It’s been 10 years since Douglas Coupland intro-duced “Generation X” into our cultural vo c a b u-lary; many people my age still wince at thep h ra s e. To many folks born between 1963 and1 9 81, the phrase seems more like a marke t i n gploy than a rallying cry.

“ H ow can we sell them our product,” theoverpaid exe c u t i ves muse. “None of our sillym a r keting tricks are working on them, so let’stap into their sense of existential cynicism andunending pessimism.”

Witness Coca-Cola’s advertising strategy forOK Soda that featured slogans such as “Don’t befooled into thinking there has to be a reason foreverything” and “What’s the point of OK? We l l ,w h a t ’s the point of anything?” (Incidenta l l y, thereis a very elaborate theory circulating on the Inter-net that the CIA and conservative editor WilliamK r i s tol wo r ked together on the marketing stra t-egy of OK to brainwash young people into being“neoconservatives.”)

During the last 10 ye a rs, the re p u tation ofG e n e ration X has undergone seve ral tra n s fo r m a-t i o n s. In the beginning, many viewed us as whin-ing slacke rs, lost in a sea of economic mediocrity.The first Bush recession had saddled us withwage stagnation, unchecked corporate greed, anenormous Cold War national debt, a glut of low-wage service jobs and the skyro c keting cost ofcollege and home ow n e rship. (In case you arewondering, I’m still paying off my student loanand I don’t own a house.)

5 But then something dramatic happened toG e n e ration X: the Internet. It changed how weviewed ourselves and how the world viewed us.Suddenly, baffled baby boomers were asking ushow to e-mail their friends or download Beatlest u n e s. Low - wage service jobs gave way to high-tech industry jobs. Irony became hip.

Giddy with revolutionary fever and ungodlyamounts of caffeine, Generation X finally hadsomething to do. And boy did we do it—for 18

hours a day. Blessed with this new communica-tion medium and an opportunity to do some-thing truly radical, we formed bold sta r t - u pcompanies and ord e red ex p e n s i ve, erg o n o m i-cally designed office furniture.

Then, of cours e, the bottom fell out of them a r ket and now you can buy erg o n o m i c a l l ydesigned office furniture secondhand. As we GenXers like to say, “Whatever.”

As the second Bush recession continues totighten its grip and the sins of the CIA have blessedus with gas masks and sky mars h a l s, Internet com-panies such as Netradio continue to fold (the Min-neapolis-based corporation closed this month,l aying off 50 employees). The age of iro ny is ove r.Nobody wants to buy banner ads any m o re.

For the past 10 ye a rs, the phrase “Genera-tion X” has been loaded with cynical subtext andsubtle derision. It has graced the market stra t e-gies of Fortune 500 companies and fueled acad-emic complaints about “self-absorption andmaterialism.” It has downloaded itself onto theh a rd drive of America and America hasresponded, “Whatever.”

1 0 O kay, so maybe we ove rsold the Internet byp romising that the old media would soon be obso-l e t e. Maybe the recently outdated New Economyworks from many of the economic paradigms ofthe Old Economy. Maybe we shouldn’t expend somuch of our energy crying into our lattes.

But during the past 10 ye a rs, Generation Xhas imbued the world with its enduring legacy :the Internet. History may not rewa rd us as the“ g reatest” generation, but it’s no small accom-plishment to revolutionize communication, edu-cation and commerc e. Sure the Internet bubblemay have burst—for now. But don’t dismiss thepossibility that Internet IPOs will once againburst upon the scene, just like the Old Economytheory of “economic cycles” predicts.

And don’t be so quick to dismiss iro ny. It willmake a comeback.


S UGGES TIONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1 . This piece relies on readers recognizing immediately the term Generation X. Mike Pope

gives a couple of ways to understand Generation X as it changes in meaning. Begin bydescribing your own sense of what Generation X means. Who are these people? In what

Mike Pope Gen X’s Enduring Legacy: The Internet 75

sense are they a generation? What are the most visible re p resentations of Generation X(think of music, movies, TV shows, and advertising). Now compare this understanding ofGeneration X with Pope’s. How do they differ? How are they similar? How can youaccount for diff e rences and similarities?

2. Pope says that one of the distinguishing features of Generation X is its sense of iro n y.What does this mean? Consider Pope’s examples of how advertisers picked up on thissense of irony.

3 . The generational divide—what separates Generation X from the baby boomers (bornbetween 1946 and 1962)—in Pope’s view is the Internet. What is the impact of theI n t e rnet? Is it just a matter of knowing how to e-mail or download music? Is thereanother step to take here to explain how the Internet shapes the lived experience ofGeneration X?

SUG GESTI ONS FOR WRIT ING1 . Pope notes that “Gen Xers like to say, ‘Whatever.’” Write an essay that explains the

attitude behind the use of the word “Whatever.” Or substitute another term that some-how embodies the attitude of a generation.

2. Write an essay about the influence of the Internet on generations in contemporary Amer-ica. Think here in terms not only of whether people of different generations can easilyoperate the Internet but also on their experience of it.

3. Imagine you’ve been asked to write an essay called “Generation Y’s Enduring Legacy:”What would you put on the other side of the colon? Think of Generation Yers as thoseb o rn after 1981 who are the late teens and early twenty-year-olds today. Your task, muchas Pope defines his, is to distinguish this generation from the one that preceded it.

P E R S P E C T I V E S Before and After 9/11

As everyone is aware, the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, loom as a definingmoment in American culture. It’s easy to see what has taken place subsequently—George W. Bush’s “war against terrorism,” a heightened awareness of the vulnera-bility of the United States to attack, the military campaign in Afghanistan, andperhaps a new sense of how the United States is interconnected to world politics.At publication time, the Bush administration is considering whether to invade Iraq.These are the geopolitical realities of our time.

These two readings focus on the domestic scene—to raise questions about youngp e o p l e ’s understanding of what 9/11 means for their generation and its sense of iden-tity. As Arlie Russell Hochschild notes in “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age,Seeking an Identity,” Americans who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s were“branded by large events—the Depression, World War II, Vietnam—and the collec-tive moods they aroused.” To see how 9/11 has affected the “collective mood” of agenerationconsider first, Hochschild’s article, which appeared in the New York Timeson March 8, 2000, well before 9/11, and second, the excerpt from “Generation 9/11”by Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton, two months after the terrorist attacks.Both readings rely on the notion of a defining moment in the life of a generation.These two views of the current generation offer a way for you to assess how 9/11 hasinfluenced a generation.


GEN (FILL IN THE BLANK): COMING OF AGE,SEEKING AN IDENTITY

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley,where she codirects the Center for Working Families; she is also the author of such sociolog-ical studies as The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (2001)and The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings (1985). This article appeare din a special section of the New York Times on “Generations” on March 8, 2000.

Arlie Russell Hochschild, unlike the other writers in this chapter, provides a definition of theidea of a generation based on sociologist Karl Mannheim’s classic 1927 essay, “The Problemof Generations.” As Hochschild notes, according to Mannheim, “a generation is a cohort ofpeople who feel the impact of a powerful historical event and develop a shared consciousnessabout it.” As you read, pay attention to how Hochschild uses this definition to analyze thegeneration of twenty- and thirty-year-olds and how she finds, in the absence of a large his-torical crisis in the life of this generation before 9/11, an underlying trend.


1 “I’m not part of the 1960’s generation,” saidSandy de Lissovoy. “I don’t feel part of Gen X orGen Y. I’m sure not part of the ‘Me Generation.’Who made up that term? I hate it. What’s reallyin front of me is my computer, but even with it,I’m between the generation that barely toleratesc o m p u t e rs and the one that treats them like amember of the family.”

M r. de Lissovoy, a 29-year-old gra p h i cdesigner in San Francisco, was ex p ressing as we l las anyone the feelings that, as a sociology pro-f e s s o r, I frequently hear during office hours. Atthis moment he was having a hard time defininghis generation. He raised his eye b rows quizzi-c a l l y, smiled and said, “Call me the @ Genera-tion One and a Half.”

Can we make up our generation, as Mr. deLissovoy playfully did, or is it imposed upon us,like it or not?

These are questions that the German sociol-ogist Karl Mannheim took up in his classic 1927essay, “The Problem of Generations.” Is a gener-ation a collection of people born in the samespan of ye a rs? No, he thought, that is a cohort,and many cohorts are born, come of age and diewithout becoming genera t i o n s. For Mannheim, ag e n e ration is a cohort of people who feel the

impact of a powerful historical event and deve l o pa shared consciousness about it. Not all mem-bers of a generation may see the event the sameway, and some may articulate its defining fea-tures better than others. But what makes a gen-eration is its connection to history.

5 Americans who came of age in the 1930’s,4 0 ’s and 60’s have been branded by larg eevents—the Great Depression, World War II,Vietnam—and the collective moods theya roused. But from the 70 ’s through the 90’s, his-to r y ’s signal events happened elsew h e re. Com-munism collapsed, but not in the United Sta t e s.Wa rs raged in Rwanda, the Balkans and else-w h e re, but they had little effect here. The fo rc e sin the United States have been social and eco-n o m i c, and they have shifted the focus to per-sonal issues—matters of lifestyle that are shapedby consumerism, the mass media and ani n c reasing sense of impermanence in family andwo r k .

“ T h e re is no ove ra rching crisis or cause fo rour generation,” Mr. de Lissovoy said. “It’s morea confusing, ambiguous flow of eve n t s. There ’s aslow, individual sorting out to do.”

But underneath this confusing, ambiguousf l ow of events is a trend towa rd a more loosely

jointed, limited-liability society, the priva t i z i n ginfluence of that trend and the cra s h - b o o m - b a n gof the market, which, in the absence of othervoices, is defining generations left and right.

People in their 20’s and early 30’s are oftencalled Gen X’ers, a term derived from a novel byDouglas Coupland. The book, “Generation X,”was fo l l owed by a film, “Slacke r,” directed byR i c h a rd Linklater, about a group of ove re d u c a t e d ,u n d e re m p l oyed oddballs who drop to the mar-gins of society. But for Jim Kreines, a 32-year-oldgraduate student of philosophy at the Universityof Chicago, the label fit loosely, if at all.

When I asked him what generation hebelonged to, Mr. Kreines replied, “I’m not sure Ic a re enough to argue about this.” He had re a dthe Coupland book and seen the film. But did theGen X’er label apply to him? He was not sure itmattered.

10 Many Gen X’ers may be trying to sort out acertain cultural sleight of hand. They feel luckierthan previous generations because they enjoym a ny more options. In the 50’s, said Charles Sell-e rs, a 28-year-old urban planner in Po r t l a n d ,O re., there was only one choice. “If you we re awoman you were a housewife,” he said. “If youwe re a man you married and supported yo u rfa m i l y. To d ay, except for the Mormons, Ameri-cans have a long cultural menu to choose from.If you’re a woman, you can be a single woman,a career woman, a lesbian, a single mom bychoice, a live-in lover, a married-for-now wife, am a r r i e d - fo rever wife. And the same for work: I’mon my third career.”

But the wider menu of identities comes witha decreasing assurance that any particular iden-tity will last. This is because a culture of deregu-lation has slipped from our economic life into ourc u l t u ral life. Gen X’ers, at least in the middlec l a s s, can be more picky in finding “just the rightmate” and “just the right care e r.” But onceyo u ’ ve found them, you begin to wonder if yo ucan you keep them.

In his book “The New Insecurity,” Jerald Wa l-l u l i s, a philosopher at the Unive rsity of South Car-olina, observed that in the last 30 years, people

h ave shifted the way they base their identity:f rom marriage and employment to marriage-ability and employability. Old anchors no longerhold, and a sense of history is lost. For the gen-erations of the 80’s and 90’s, this rootlessness istheir World War II, their Vietnam. And it pre s e n t sa more difficult challenge than the one faced bythe 60’s generation.

M r. de Lissovoy ’s parents divo rced when hewas a baby and now live on opposite coasts. Con-s i d e r, too, the shifting family ties of a 27-ye a r - o l dcomputer pro g rammer in Silicon Va l l ey, who aske dthat her name be withheld. “My mother divo rc e dfour times and is living on uncertain terms withher fifth,” she said, “so I’m not sure if she’ll staywith him either. I haven’t gotten attached to any ofmy stepdads. My dad remarried four times, to o ,only now he’s married to a woman I like. ”

When her parents divo rced, she spent eve r yother we e kend with her fa t h e r. “My dad was gladto see me, but I’d have to remind him of thename of my best friends,” she said. “He didn’tknow what mattered to me. After a while it justgot to be dinner and a video, and after that, I did-n’t feel much like going to his apartment.”

15 Talking about her love life, she said: “If Imeet someone I really like, I become shy andtied up in knots. I can’t talk about anything per-sonal.” It was as if she did not dare to begin arelationship for fear of ending it.

After the parents of another young wo m a ndivorced, her father married a woman as youngas his daughter, and is very invo l ved with hisn ew, young children who are the same age as hisg ra n d c h i l d ren. Now, when his daughter tries toa r range a visit between her father and his gra n d-children, he is often too pinched for time to seethem. His daughter feels hurt and angry—first tomiss out on a father, then a grandfather.

Reflecting on these generational jumbles,M r. de Lissovoy commented: “To d ay ’s hype isthat ‘You can get it if you really want it’—a mate,c a reer and love still sells a lot of ticke t s. We ’ re theGeneration of Individual Choice. Which? Which?Which? But the bottom can fall out from some ofthose choices. And in the end, we ’ re orphans.

Arlie Russell Hochschild Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity 77

We’re supposed to take care of ourselves. That’sour only choice.”

Not every young person I have ta l ked withhas felt so adrift. The 20-somethings of the 90’sh ave more material re s o u rces than their pre d e-cessors—ample job opportunities, for example.

Still, Mr. de Lissovoy’s feelings reflect some-thing true about America these days. Despite therecent economic miracle, we are experiencing ac a re deficit. Social services have been cut; hos-p i tals release patients 24 hours after surgery torecover at home. But who is home to do the car-ing? Two - t h i rds of mothers are working. One-quarter of households are headed by singlem o t h e rs; they need help, too. Pa ra d ox i c a l l y,American individualism and pride in self-suffi-c i e n cy lead us to absorb rather than resist thisdeficit: “Care? Who needs care? I can handle it,”thus adding one problem to another.

2 0 If in previous decades large historic eve n t sd rew people together and oriented them to action,the recent double trend towa rd more choice butless security leads the young to see their lives inm o re individual terms. Big events collectivize, lit-tle events ato m i ze. So with people facing impor-tant but private pro b l e m s, and thinking inindividual, not collective, terms, the coast becameclear in the 80’s and 90’s for the marketplace tos talk into this cultural void and introduce genera-tion-defining clothes, music and videos.

G e n e rations X and Y function as market gim-micks nowa d ays. The market dominates not justeconomic life, as the economist Robert Ku t t n e ra rgues in “Everything for Sale,” but our cultura llife as well. It tells us what a generation is—aPepsi generation, a Mac generation, an Internetg e n e ration. And a magazine about shoot-’em-upcomputer games calls itself Nex t G e n .

Ad ve r t i s e rs are appealing to children over theheads of their pare n t s. Juliet B. Schor, an eco-nomics lecturer at Harva rd, suggests that theyounger generation is the cutting edge of a full-b l own market culture. More than $2 billion isspent on advertising directed at them, 20 timesthe amount spent a decade ago. Most of thea d vertising is transmitted through television; it is

estimated that yo u n g s t e rs increased their view-ing time one hour a day between 1970 and 1990.T h ree out of five children ages 12 to 17 now havea TV in their bedroom. Ad ve r t i s e rs are trying toenlist children against their parents’ better judg-ment, Dr. Schor said re c e n t l y, and ove r wo r ke dp a rents sometimes give in and go along. If Dr.Schor is correct, Generation Y might be definedeven more than Generation X by what its mem-b e rs buy than by what they do or who they are.

M a r keting stra t e g i s t s, meanw h i l e, are turn-ing over all the generations fa s t e r, slicing and dic-ing the life cycle into thinner strips. In thecomputer industry, an advertising generation isnine months; in the clothing industry, a season.In department sto re s, between the displays fo rgirls in their preteens and teens, is a new age,“ t we e n s.” The identity promised by a style or ab rand name for one generation is marked offf rom an increasing number of others. And thestyles continually replace old with new.

This creates a certain consumer logic. Olderc o n s u m e rs buy what makes them feel yo u n g ,while young consumers, up to a point, buy whatm a kes them feel older. So the preteenager willbuy the tween thing while the teenager will buythe 20-something jacket, and the 40-year-old willbrowse in the racks for 30-year-olds.

25 To be sure, every American decade has fa s h-ion marke t e e rs define generational looks andsounds, but probably never before have they soto tally hijacked a genera t i o n ’s cultural ex p re s-sion. Allison Pugh, a 33-year-old married motherof two and a graduate student in sociology at theUniversity of California at Berkeley, said: “I defi-nitely feel like people just two or three ye a rsyounger than me are the beginning of anotherg e n e ration. But I can only say why by pointing tosuperficial things, like how many pierces theyhave, how high their shoes are and what kind ofmusic they listen to. I roomed with a girl just twoye a rs younger and she listened to SmashingP u m p k i n s, Nirvana and Hole. I was ‘old’—as inout of it—even just a few ye a rs out of college. Is tarted to sound like my mother: ‘That’s notmusic; what is that noise?’ ”


L i ke Ms. Pugh, Mr. de Lissovoy is considere dold to the generation at his heels. He is wired, butfeels ambivalent about it. “What I don’t like isd i s p o s a b i l i t y, hy p e rspeed, consumption,” hesaid. “I’d like to reduce these. What I want moreof is fa c e - to - face interaction, a value on re p a i r,families living nearby each other. I’d love to livein a multigenerational, multiracial cohousing pro-ject. And a more leisurely pace of life. I wa n tsome pretty old-fashioned things.”

The 60’s generation is hitting 60, and withsome computer nerds striking it rich, 60’s - e rap rotests are not defining the new generation. Butthat era ’s flame is not dead. In front of a larg egathering at the Pa u l ey ballroom on the Berke l eycampus a few months ago, the Mario Sav i oYoung Activist Awa rd for 1999—named after theleader of the 1964 Free Speech Move m e n t — wa sg i ven to Nikki Bas, a 31 - year-old American of Fil-ipino descent who coordinates Swe a t s h o pWa tch, a campaign against the poor pay andworking conditions of third - world wo r ke rs whom a ke football uniforms and other clothing soldon American college campuses. Mr. de Lissovoyre m e m b e rs hearing about Mr. Savio from his60’s activist mother, but he does not know NikkiB a s, is no longer a student and is under timepressure at work. So he is not signing up.

Still, from a distance he wa tched the pro t e s t sin Seattle against the World Trade Org a n i za t i o nlate last ye a r, and they kindled a sense of the

importance of history that he feels the market isdriving out. “I hated the mindless anarchists whob ro ke shop windows,” he said. “But the otherp ro t e s t e rs who went there to speak up againstm e g a - c o r p o rations running the show, and for thefamily farm, local communities, monarch but-terflies and sea turtles—they are taking the longv i ew of the planet. We usually think it’s the olderg e n e ration that wants to pre s e r ve the past, andit’s the young who don’t mind tearing things up.In Seattle, the young enviro n m e n talists had theireye on histo r y, and it was the old who had an eyeon their pocketbooks.”

U l t i m a t e l y, market generations are genera-tions of things, and they can make us fo rget gen-e rations of people. “My generation doesn’t knowhow globalization will turn out,” Mr. de Lissovoysaid. “But we won’t see how globalization ismessing us up if we’ve forgotten how the worldused to be. Whichever way, we don’t see thatwhat we are doing is fo rgetting the past. Andwe’re nobodies without a sense of history.”

30 He recalled how baseball caps with X’sbecame popular with teenagers, especially inD e t roit, after Spike Le e ’s film on Malcolm Xcame out. “When a TV interviewer asked a kidabout the X on his cap, he didn’t know who Mal-colm X wa s,” Mr. de Lissovoy said. “He didn’teven know he was a person. We need to appre-ciate the work it ta kes to get us where we are.Otherwise we aren’t anywhere.”

Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton Generation 9-11 79

G E N E R ATION 9-11

Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton

Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton are writers for N e w s w e e k. This article appeared inthe November 12, 2001 edition, almost exactly two months after the terrorist attacks. Here is anexcerpt from the article, the opening section that presents the view that “kids who grew up withpeace and prosperity are facing their defining moment.” The rest of the article consists of re p o rt-ing on what happened at the University of Michigan in the days immediately following 9/11.

Notice that Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton use roughly the same idea of a genera-tion that Arlie Russell Hochschild does—an age group that finds its collective identity in a deci-sive historical moment. As you read, pay attention to how Kantrowitz and Naughton set upthe problem of generational identity.


1 It was a sleepy, gray afternoon—a challenge to anyp ro f e s s o r. And for the first few minutes of classlast week, Unive rsity of Michigan sociologist Dav i dSchoem had some trouble rousing the 18 fre s h-men in his seminar on “Democra cy and Dive r-s i t y.” One student slurped yogurt while anothers t re tched his arms wide and yawned. A few oth-e rs casually took notes. But the lassitude endedabruptly when Schoem switched the discussion toA m e r i c a ’s war on terrorism. For the rest of theh o u r, the students argued passionately and artic-ulately about fo reign policy, racism and mediac ove ra g e. Then, New Yo r ker Georgina Lev i t to f f e red one view that stopped the debate cold.“September 11 has changed us more than we re a l-i ze,” she said. “This just isn’t going to go away. ”

At Michigan and campuses all around thec o u n t r y, the generation that once had it all—p e a c e, pro s p e r i t y, even the dot-com dream ofretiring at 30—faces its defining moment. Col-lege students are supposed to be finding theirplace in the world, not just a profession but alsoan intellectual fra m ework for learning and under-standing the rest of their lives. After the terrorista t ta c k s, that goal seems more urgent and ye tm o re elusive than eve r. In the first week, theyp rayed to g e t h e r, lit candles and mourned. Nowt h ey ’ re packing teach-ins and classes on inter-national re l a t i o n s, the Mideast, Islamic studies,even Arabic. Where they once dreamed of earn-ing huge bonuses on Wall Street, they ’ re nowthinking of working for the government, maybejoining the FBI or the CIA. They ’ re energ i ze d ,anxious, eager for any information that will helpthem understand—and still a little bit in shock.

I t ’s too soon to tell whether 2001 will be morel i ke 1941, when campuses and the country we reunited, or 1966, the beginning of a historic rift. Sofar, there have been only scattered signs of anascent antiwar movement; at Michigan and otherc a m p u s e s, students’ views are in sync with the re s tof the country’s. In the NEWSWEEK Poll con-ducted last week, 83 percent of young Americanssaid they approved of President George W. Bush’sjob performance and 85 percent favo red the cur-rent military action. These figures are consistent

a c ross all age gro u p s. But students also unders ta n dthat the future is increasingly unpre d i c table andthat long-held beliefs and assumptions will bes eve rely tested in the next few ye a rs. “Our gener-ation, as long as we ’ ve had an identity, was know nas the generation that had it easy,” says GregEpstein, 24, a graduate student in Judaic studies atMichigan. “We had no crisis, no Vietnam, no Mar-tin Luther King, no JFK. We ’ ve got it now. When weh ave kids and gra n d k i d s, we’ll tell them that wel i ved through the roaring ’90s, when all we care dabout was the No. 1 movie or how many copies analbum sold. This is where it changes. ”

What will they make of their moment? It’sa l ways tricky to genera l i ze about a generation, butb e fo re September 11, American college studentswe re re m a r kably insular. Care e rs we re their majorconcern both during the high-tech boom (how tocash in) and after (how to get a job). Ac c o rding tothe annual survey of college freshmen conductedby UCLA’s Higher Education Re s e a rch Institute,only 28.1 percent of last ye a r ’s freshman classreported fo l l owing politics, compared with a highof 60.3 percent in 1966. Nationw i d e, campusactivism has been low key through the 1990s.That was true even at Michigan, the birthplace ofSDS and a hotbed of antiwar protest during Viet-nam. Alan Haber, a 65-year-old peace pro t e s t e rand fixture on the Ann Arbor campus since hisown student days in the 1960s, says that befo reSeptember 11, there was no central issue thatignited eve r yo n e, just a lot of what he describes as“little projects”: protests against sweatshops ornuclear we a p o n s. He thinks that may change asthese campus activists begin questioning the U.S.m i l i tary effo r t s. “This situation,” he says, “bangson the head and opens a heart.”

5 Despite their perc e i ved apathy and politicalinexperience, this generation may be uniquelyqualified to unders tand the current battle. “I thinkt h ey re a l i ze more than the adults that this is a clashof culture s,” says Unive rsity of Pe n n s y l vania pre s-ident Judith Rodin, “something we haven’t seen ina thousand ye a rs.” While their parents’ high-schoolh i s tory lessons concentrated almost exc l u s i vely onWestern Europe, they’ve learned about Chinese


d y n a s t i e s, African art, even Islam. They are morelikely than their parents to have dated a personf rom another culture or ra c e, and to have friendsfrom many economic and ethnic backgrounds.Their campuses as well are demographically ve r yd i f f e rent from those of a generation ago. “It’s gonef rom a more elite institution to more of a micro-cosm of the population,” says David Wa rd, pre s i-dent of the American Council on Education, anational association of colleges and unive rs i t i e s.

Others argue that this spirit of tolerance canhave a downside, particularly now. When author

D avid Bro o k s, who wrote a widely discussedAtlantic Monthly article on rampant pre - p ro f e s-sionalism at Princeton last ye a r, returned thereafter September 11, he found a surging intere s tin global affairs and issues of right and wrong—but also a frustration with the moral relativism ofmuch of the curriculum (see this we e k ’s We bE xc l u s i ve at News week.MSNBC.com). One stu-dent told him that he had been taught how todeconstruct and dissect, but never to constructand decide.

Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton Generation 9-11 81

S UGGES TIONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1 . Written before 9/11, Arlie Russell Hochschild calls attention to the fact that twenty- and thirt y -

y e a r-olds in the 1990s did not face a defining historical event such as the Depression, Wo r l dWar II, or Vietnam. Nonetheless, she suggests that “underneath this confusing, ambiguousflow of events is a trend toward a more loosely jointed, limited-liability society, the privatiz-ing influence of that trend and the crash-boom-bang of the market” as the defining featureof a generation. What exactly does she mean by this trend? In what sense does it pro d u c ea shared consciousness, just as the historical events she lists have done for earlier genera-tions? Think here in particular of how marketing creates generations.

2 . Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton’s “Generation 9-11” seems to assume that Sep-tember 11, 2001, re p resents a defining historical moment in the life of a generation. Notice,h o w e v e r, that they leave the meaning of this defining moment open-ended, asking “whether2001 will be more like 1941, when campuses and the country were united, or 1966, thebeginning of a historic rift.” Clearly, they are using 1941 to refer to the bombing of PearlHarbor and the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II, on one hand, and 1966 to re f e rto beginnings of an antiwar movement and the deep split in the American public over theVietnam Wa r, on the other. You are reading this excerpt several years after 9/11. Lookingback, to what extent does that defining moment of September 11, 2001, now resemble 1941or 1966? Consider whether these historical analogies are helpful at all in understanding theimpact of 9/11. Are there other, diff e rent historical precedents that might be clarifying?

3. What is your view of the influence of 9/11? Is it a defining moment? If so, how? If not,why not?

SUGGESTI ONS FOR WR IT ING1. Read Barbara Kantrowitz and Keith Naughton’s entire article in the November 12, 2001

Newsweek. Jot down your own account of what happened in your school or communityimmediately following 9/11. But don’t stop there. Step back and ask, from your own per-spective several years later, what the meaning of those events is. Write an essay that bothdescribes what happened around 9/11 and what you now see as its meaning.

2. Arlie Russell Hochschild links two notions—personal choice and personal insecurity. Wr i t ean essay that begins by explaining what she means by this linkage. Give examples fromyour own experience or draw on what you’ve read and what you know. To what extentdoes the link help to explain the collective mood of a generation?

3 . Update the two readings. Write an essay that explains the impact of 9/11 on yourg e n e r a t i o n .

HOWL (1955–56)

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg(1926–97) is one of greatest American poets of the twentieth century. Draw-ing on Walt Whitman and William Blake for inspiration, Ginsberg wrote “Howl” over a periodof time in 1955 and 1956. It quickly became both the anthem of the Beat Generation andthe source of an obscenity court case (in which “Howl” was judged “legal” in 1957). Gins-berg subsequently published books of poetry such as Planet News (1963), The Fall of Amer -i c a (1971), and Plutonian Ode (1980). Along with Jack Kero u a c ’s novel On the Road, “Howl”defines the sensibility of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and forms a key link to Bob Dylan,the antiwar movement, and the counterculture of the 1960s.

“Howl” is divided into three parts. Notice that Part I is actually one long sentence, linked byclauses that begin with “who.” Part II focuses on Moloch, the pagan deity in the Old Testa-ment to whom children were sacrificed. Part III uses direct address—to Carl Solomon, to whomthe poem is dedicated: “I am with you in Rockland,” the mental institution where Ginsberg metSolomon (and where perhaps the theme “the best minds of my generation destroyed by mad-ness” begins).


C LA SS IC R E AD IN G


I1 I saw the best minds of my generation destroye d

by madness, starving hysterical naked,d ragging themselves through the negro

streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the

ancient heavenly connection to the sta r r ydynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and ta t t e rs and hollow - eye dand high sat up smoking in the supernatura ldarkness of cold-water flats floating across thetops of cities contemplating jazz,

5 who bared their brains to Heaven under theEl and saw Mohammedan angels staggering ontenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through unive rsities with ra d i-ant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake -light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who we re expelled from the academies fo rc razy & publishing obscene odes on the windowsof the skull,

who cowe red in unshaven rooms in under-wear, burning their money in wastebaskets andlistening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards return-ing through La redo with a belt of marijuana fo rNew York,

10 who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpen-tine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried theirtorsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking night-mares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

i n c o m p a rable blind streets of shudderingcloud and lightning in the mind leaping towa rdpoles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all themotionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backya rd green tre ecemetery daw n s, wine drunkenness over thero o f to p s, sto re f ront boroughs of teahead joy r i d eneon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tre ev i b rations in the roaring winter dusks of Bro o k-lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for theendless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on ben-zedrine until the noise of wheels and childre nbrought them down shuddering mouth-wrackedand battered bleak of brain all drained of bril-liance in the drear light of Zoo,

15 who sank all night in submarine light ofB i c k fo rd ’s floated out and sat through the sta l ebeer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening tothe crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who ta l ked continuously seventy hours fro mpark to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to theBrooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conve rs a t i o n a l i s t sjumping down the stoops off fire escapes off win-dowsills off Empire State out of the moon,

ya c ke tayakking screaming vomiting whis-pering facts and memories and anecdotes andeyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jailsand wars,

whole intellects disgorged in to tal recall fo rs even days and nights with brilliant eye s, meatfor the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

20 who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jerseyleaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards ofAtlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-with-d rawal in Newa r k ’s bleak furnished ro o m ,

who wa n d e red around and around at mid-night in the ra i l road ya rd wondering where to go,and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxc a rs boxc a rs boxc a rsracketing through snow toward lonesome farmsin grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cro s st e l e p a t hy and bop kabbalah because the cosmosi n s t i n c t i vely vibrated at their feet in Ka n s a s,

25 who loned it through the streets of Idahoseeking visionary indian angels who we re vision-ary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Bal-timore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the China-man of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter mid-night streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome throughH o u s ton seeking jazz or sex or soup, and fo l-l owed the brilliant Spaniard to conve rse aboutAmerica and Eternity, a hopeless task, and sotook ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mex-ico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of

d u n g a rees and the lava and ash of poetry scat-tered in fireplace Chicago,

30 who re a p p e a red on the West Coast inve s t i-gating the FBI in beards and shorts with big paci-fist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing outincomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their armsp rotesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capita l-ism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphletsin Union Square weeping and undressing whilethe sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, andwailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferryalso wailed,

who bro ke down crying in white gymnasi-ums naked and trembling before the machineryof other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shriekedwith delight in policecars for committing nocrime but their own wild cooking pederasty andintoxication,

35 who howled on their knees in the subwayand we re dragged off the roof waving genita l sand manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass bysaintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those humans e raphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic andCaribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the eve n i n g sin rosegardens and the grass of public parks andcemeteries scattering their semen freely towhomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle butwound up with a sob behind a partition in a Tu r k-ish Bath when the blond & naked angel came topierce them with a sword,

40 who lost their love b oys to the three oldshrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the hetero-sexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks outof the womb and the one eyed shrew that doesnothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellec-tual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with abottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigare t t e sa candle and fell off the bed, and continued alongthe floor and down the hall and ended fainting on

Allen Ginsberg Howl 83

the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and comeeluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a milliongirls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyedin the morning but pre p a red to sweeten thes n a tch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks underbarns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado inmyriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero ofthese poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denve r —j oy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girlsin empty lots & diner backya rd s, mov i e h o u s e s ’r i c kety rows, on mounta i n tops in caves or withgaunt wa i t resses in familiar roadside lonely petti-coat upliftings & especially secret gas-sta t i o nsolipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys to o ,

who faded out in vast sordid mov i e s, we reshifted in dre a m s, wo ke on a sudden Manhatta n ,and picked themselves up out of basements hun-gover with heartless Tokay and horrors of ThirdAvenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-ment offices,

45 who walked all night with their shoes full ofblood on the snowbank docks waiting for a doorin the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on theapartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under thewartime blue floodlight of the moon & theirheads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination ordigested the crab at the muddy bottom of therivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets withtheir pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darknessunder the bridge, and rose up to build harpsi-chords in their lofts,

50 who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlemc rowned with flame under the tubercular sky sur-rounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and ro l l i n gover lofty incantations which in the ye l l ow morn-ing were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feettail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure ve g-etable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat truckslooking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to casttheir ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarmclocks fell on their heads every day for the nextdecade,

55 who cut their wrists three times successive l yunsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to openantique sto res where they thought they we regrowing old and cried,

who we re burned alive in their innocentflannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts ofleaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the ironregiments of fashion & the nitro g l ycerine shrieksof the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas ofsinister intelligent editors, or were run down bythe drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actu-ally happened and wa l ked away unknown and fo r-gotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soupa l l ey ways & fire t r u c k s, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair,fell out of the subway window, jumped in thef i l t hy Pa s s a i c, leaped on negro e s, cried all ove rthe street, danced on bro ken wineglasses bare-foot smashed phonograph re c o rds of nosta l g i cE u ropean 1930s German jazz finished thewhiskey and threw up groaning into the bloodytoilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colos-sal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the pastj o u r n eying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,

60 who drove crosscountry seve n t y t wo hours tofind out if I had a vision or you had a vision or hehad a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Den-ver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain,who watched over Denver & brooded & loned inD e n ver and finally went away to find out theTime, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathe-drals praying for each other’s salvation and lightand breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair fora second,

who crashed through their minds in jail wa i t-ing for impossible criminals with golden heads


and the charm of reality in their hearts who sangsweet blues to Alcatraz,

who re t i red to Mexico to cultivate a habit, orRocky Mount to tender Buddha or Ta n g i e rs toboys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotiveor Harva rd to Narcissus to Wo o d l awn to thedaisychain or grave,

65 who demanded sanity trials accusing theradio of hypnotism & were left with their insan-ity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw pota to salad at CCNY lecture rs onDadaism and subsequently presented them-s e l ves on the granite steps of the madhouse withs h aven heads and harlequin speech of suicide,demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who we re given instead the concre t evoid of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapyp s yc h o t h e ra py occupational thera py pingpong &amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned onlyone symbolic pingpong ta b l e, resting briefly incatatonia,

returning ye a rs later truly bald except for awig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visiblemadman doom of the wa rds of the madtowns ofthe East,

7 0 Pilgrim Sta t e ’s Ro c k l a n d ’s and Greys to n e ’sfoetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul,rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-benchd o l m e n - realms of love, dream of life a nightmare,bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fa n-tastic book flung out of the tenement window,and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the lasttelephone slammed at the wall in reply and thelast furnished room emptied down to the lastpiece of mental furniture, a ye l l ow paper ro s etwisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and eventhat imaginary nothing but a hopeful little bit ofhallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am nots a f e, and now yo u ’ re really in the to tal animalsoup of time—

and who there fo re ran through the icys t reets obsessed with a sudden flash of thealchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog themeter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps inTime & Space through images juxtaposed, andt rapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visualimages and joined the elemental verbs and set thenoun and dash of consciousness together jumpingwith sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

7 5 to re c reate the syntax and measure of poorhuman prose and stand befo re you speechlessand intelligent and shaking with shame, re j e c t e dyet confessing out the soul to conform to ther hythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time,unknown, yet putting down here what might beleft to say in time come after death,

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothesof jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band andb l ew the suffering of America’s naked mind fo rl ove into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani sax-ophone cry that shivered the cities down to thelast radio

with the absolute heart of the poem of lifebutchered out of their own bodies good to eat athousand years.

II1 What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed

open their skulls and ate up their brains andimagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcansand unobtainable dollars! Children scre a m i n gunder the sta i r ways! Boys sobbing in armies! Oldmen weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch!Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch theheavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison!Moloch the crossbone soulless jail-house andC o n g ress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings arejudgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Molochthe stunned governments!

5 Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!Moloch whose blood is running money! Molochwhose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whosebreast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose earis a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind win-d ows! Moloch whose skys c ra p e rs stand in the long


s t reets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fa c-tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whoses m o ke s tacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks!Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hyd ro-gen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whomI dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker inMoloch! La c k l ove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Molochin whom I am a consciousness without a body!Moloch who frightened me out of my natura le c s tasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wa ke up inMoloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

10 Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisi-ble suburbs! ske l e ton treasuries! blind capita l s !demonic industries! spectral nations! invinciblemadhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

T h ey bro ke their backs lifting Moloch toH e aven! Pave m e n t s, tre e s, ra d i o s, tons! lifting thecity to Heaven which exists and is eve r y w h e reabout us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! mira c l e s !ecstasies! gone down the American river!

D reams! adorations! illuminations! re l i g i o n s !the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and cru-cifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epipha-nies! Despairs! Ten ye a rs’ animal screams andsuicides! Minds! New loves! Mad genera t i o n !down on the rocks of Time!

15 Real holy laughter in the river! They saw itall! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They badefa rewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude!waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! intothe street!

III1 Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland where

you’re madder than I amI’m with you in Rockland where you must

feel very strangeI’m with you in Rockland where you imitate

the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Rockland where yo u ’ ve mur-dered your twelve secretaries

5 I’m with you in Rockland where you laughat this invisible humor

I’m with you in Rockland where we are gre a twriters on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Rockland where your condi-tion has become serious and is reported on theradio

I’m with you in Rockland where the fa c u l t i e sof the skull no longer admit the worms of thesenses

I’m with you in Rockland where you drinkthe tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

10 I’m with you in Rockland where you pun onthe bodies of your nurses the harpies of theBronx

I’m with you in Rockland where you screamin a straightjacket that you’re losing the game ofthe actual pingpong of the abyss

I’m with you in Rockland where you bangon the cata tonic piano the soul is innocent andi m m o r tal it should never die ungodly in anarmed madhouse

I’m with you in Rockland where fifty moreshocks will never return your soul to its bodyagain from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Rockland where you accuseyour docto rs of insanity and plot the Hebrewsocialist revolution against the fascist nationalGolgotha

15 I’m with you in Rockland where you willsplit the heavens of Long Island and re s u r re c tyour living human Jesus from the superhumantomb

I’m with you in Rockland where there aretwentyfive thousand mad comrades all togethersinging the final stanzas of the Internationale

I’m with you in Rockland where we hug andkiss the United States under our bedsheets theUnited States that coughs all night and won’t letus sleep

I’m with you in Rockland where we wa ke upelectrified out of the coma by our own souls’ air-planes roaring over the roof they ’ ve come tod rop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself


imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions runoutside O starry-spangled shock of mercy theeternal war is here O victory forget your under-wear we’re free

I’m with you in Rockland in my dreams youwalk dripping from a sea-journey on the highwaya c ross America in tears to the door of my cotta g ein the Western night


SUGGESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. After you’ve read “Howl,” write for a five minutes or so. What is your overall reaction to

the poem? Pick out two or three especially striking lines or images in the poem. Now,meet in a group of four or five. Compare your reactions to the poem. How would youaccount for differences and similarities? What lines or images did you and other groupmembers pick out? What do these selections from the poem reveal about it?

2. As noted above Moloch (in Part II) is a pagan deity in the Old Testament who demandsthe sacrifice of children. How does the sacrifice of children form a major theme in thepoem?

3. “Howl” defined the sensibility of a generation. What poem, song, or other form of cul-tural expression does that work today?

SUGG ESTI ONS FOR WRITING1. “Howl” is filled with anxiety, fear, desire, and hope. Write an essay that sorts out the

conflicting feelings in the poem.2. Who would or could write a version of “Howl” today?3. Write your own version of “Howl.” Begin with “I have seen the best minds of my gener-

ation…” and go from there. Write a poem or an essay, as you see fit.

CHECKING OUT THE WEB

1. As Michael Pope suggests in “Gen X’s Enduring Legacy: The Internet,” themeanings ascribed to Generation X have changed over time. Do a Web searc husing “Generation X” as the keywords. Surf through several sites, payingattention to the representation of Generation X that comes to the surface.What meanings and characteristics of the generation appear in each? Whatdo they have in common? What differences do you see? How would youaccount for these differences and similarities?

2. The readings in this chapter reveal how adults represent young people. To geta sense of how young people today represent themselves on-line, check outa number of teen e-zines. YO: Youth Outlook at http://www. y o u t h o u t l o o k . o r gand About Teens at http://www.aboutteens.org are places to start, but thereare many others e-zines for youth and college-age students. How do teens andcollege students represent themselves, their concerns, and their interests?

3. Allen Ginsberg was a spokesman for the Beat Generation of the 1950s. Yo u ’ v eread his poem “Howl.” Do a Web search to put the poem in the historicalcontext of the Beat Generation and bring the results to class.

V I S U A LC U LT U R E Representations of Youth Culture in Movies

The identity of a generation takes shape in part through the movies. Since the 1950s,movies about teenagers and youth culture have explored generational identities andintergenerational conflicts. In The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, and Rebel Without aC a u s e (the1950s); The Graduate and Easy Rider (the1960s); S a t u rday Night Fever a n dAmerican Graffiti (the 1970s); River’s Edge, The Breakfast Club, and Fast Times at Ridge -mont High (the 1980s); and Do the Right Thing, Boyz’n the Hood, Slackers, and C l e r k s(the1990s), to name some of the best-known movies, Hollywood and independentfilmmakers have fashioned influential representations of young people.

This section considers how movies represent various youth cultures and theirrelations to adult culture. Think about what the term re p re s e n t a t i o n means. A key termin cultural analysis, it is more complex than it appears. At first glance, it seems tomean simply showing what is there, reflecting life as it occurs. But the complexitycomes in because the medium of representation—whether language or movingimages—has its own codes and conventions that shape the way people see and under-stand what is being shown. By the same token, representation is not just the resultof a writer’s or filmmaker’s intentions. Readers and viewers make sense of the codesand conventions of representation in different ways, depending on their interests andsocial position. So to think about the representation of youth cultures in films in ameaningful way, consider how the images of youth culture in film have been filteredthrough such conventions as the feature film, the Hollywood star system, and theavailable stock of characters and plots viewers will recognize and respond to.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY FILMS

James Gilbert

James Gilbert is an American historian at the University of Maryland. The following selectionis taken from Gilbert’s book A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to Juvenile Delinquencyin the 1950s (1988). Here, Gilbert traces the emergence in the 1950s of juvenile delinquencyfilms and popular responses to them. This selection consists of the opening paragraph ofG i l b e rt ’s chapter “Juvenile Delinquency Movies” and his analysis of The Wild One, BlackboardJungle, and Rebel Without a Cause.

Notice how Gilbert sets up his dominant theme in the opening paragraph, when he explainsthat widespread public concern with juvenile delinquency presents Hollywood with “dangero u sbut lucrative possibilities.” Take note of how Gilbert defines these “possibilities” in the openingparagraph and then follow how he traces this theme through his discussion of the three films.



Whereas, shortly after the screening of thismovie the local police had several cases inwhich the use of knives by young people wereinvolved and at our own Indiana Joint HighSchool two girls, while attending a high schooldance, were cut by a knife wielded by a teen-

age youth who by his own admission got theidea from watching “Rebel Without a Cause.”

Now Therefore Be It Resolved by theBoard of Directors of Indiana Joint High Schoolthat said Board condemns and deplores theexhibition of pictures such as “Rebel Without a

Cause” and any other pictures which depictabnormal or subnormal behavior by the youthof our country and which tend to deprave themorals of young people.

Indiana, Pennsylvania, Board of Education tothe MPAA, January 9, 1956

1 The enormous outpouring of concern over juve-nile delinquency in the mid-1950s presented them ovie industry with dangerous but lucra t i ve pos-s i b i l i t i e s. An aroused public of pare n t s, serviceclub members, youth-serving agencies, teachers,a d o l e s c e n t s, and law enfo rc e rs constituted a hugepotential audience for delinquency films at a timewhen general audiences for all films haddeclined. Yet this was a perilous subject to ex p l o i t ,for public pre s s u re on the film industry to set awholesome example for youth remained unre m i t-ting. More ove r, the accusation that mass culturecaused delinquency—especially the “new delin-q u e n cy” of the postwar period—was the focus ofmuch contemporary attention. If the film indus-try approached the issue of delinquency, it had top roceed cautiously. It could not present delin-q u e n cy favo rably; hence all stories would have tobe set in the moral firmament of the movie Code.Yet to be successful, films had to evo ke sympathyf rom young people who we re incre a s i n g l yintrigued by the growing youth culture of whichd e l i n q u e n cy seemed to be one va r i a n t .

S ta n l ey Kra m e r ’s picture, The Wild One,released in 1953, stands in transition from thesomber realism of “film noir” pessimism ande n v i ro n m e n talism to the newer stylized ex p l o-rations of delinquent culture that chara c t e r i zed them i d - 1 9 5 0 s. Shot in dark and realistic black andw h i t e, the film sta rs Marlon Brando and Lee Mar-vin as rival moto rcycle gang leaders who invade asmall California town. Bra n d o ’s character is rive nwith ambiguity and potential violence—a pro m i-nent characteristic of later juvenile delinquencyh e ro e s. On the other hand, he is clearly not anadolescent, but not yet an adult either, belongingto a suspended age that seems alienated from anyre c o g n i zable stage of development. He appears tobe tough and brutal, but he is not, nor, ultimately,

is he as attra c t i ve as he might have been. His char-acter flaws are appealing, but unnerving. This isobvious in the key symbol of the film, the moto r-cycle tro p hy which he carries. He has not won itas the townspeople assume; he has stolen it fro ma moto rcycle “scra m b l e.” Furthermore, he re j e c t sa nything more than a moment’s tenderness withthe girl he meets. In the end, he rides off alone,l e aving her trapped in the small town that hisp resence has so disrupted and exposed. Theempty road on which he travels leads to similarnameless towns; he cannot find whatever it is heis compelled to seek.

B ra n d o ’s re m a r kable performance madethis film a brilliant triumph. Its moral ambiguity,h oweve r, and the very attra c t i veness of the alien-ated hero, meant that the pro d u c e rs needed toinvoke two film code strategies to protect them-s e l ves from controve rs y. The first of these was aninitial disclaimer appearing after the titles: “Thisis a shocking sto r y. It could never ta ke place inmost American towns—but it did in this one. Itis a public challenge not to let it happen again.”Framing the other end of the film was a speechby a strong moral voice of authority. A sheriffb rought in to re s to re order to the town lecture sBrando on the turmoil he has created and then,as a kind of punishment, casts him back onto thelonesome streets.

Aside from Bra n d o ’s stunning portrayal ofthe misunders tood and inarticulate antihero, thefilm did not quite emerge from traditional modesof presenting crime and delinquency: the use ofblack and white; the musical score with its fo re-boding big-band sound; the re l a t i vely aged per-fo r m e rs; and the vague suggestions that Bra n d oand his gang we re refugees from urban slums.F u r t h e r m o re, the reception to the film was not, assome might have predicted, as controve rsial aswhat was to come. Of cours e, there we re objec-t i o n s — for exa m p l e, New Zealand banned thefilm—but it did not provo ke the outrage that then ext group of juvenile delinquency films inspire d .

5 The film that fundamentally shifted Holly-wo o d ’s treatment of delinquency was T h eB l a c kb o a rd Jungle, p roduced in 1955, and in which

James Gilbert Juvenile Delinquency Films 89

t raditional elements remained as a backd rop fo rc o n t e m p o rary action. The movie was shot in blackand white and played in a slum high school. But itclearly presented what was to become the drivingpremise of subsequent delinquency films—thedivision of American society into conflicting cul-tures made up of adolescents on one side andadults on the other. In this film the delinquent char-a c t e rs are portrayed as actual teenagers, as highschool students. The crimes they commit are, witha few exc e p t i o n s, crimes of behavior such as defy-ing authority, status crimes, and so on. Of mostsymbolic importance is the transition in music thato c c u rs in the film. Although it includes jazz num-b e rs by Stan Ke n ton and Bix Beiderbecke, it is alsothe first film to feature rock and roll, specifically,“ Rock Around the Clock” played by Bill Haley.

The story line fo l l ows an old formula ofAmerican novels and films. A teacher begins ajob at a new school, where he encounters enor-mous hostility from the students. He stands upto the ringleader of the teenage rowd i e s, andfinally wins over the majority of the students. Initself this is nothing controve rsial. But B l a c k b o a rdJ u n g l e also depicts the successful defiance ofd e l i n q u e n t s, who reject authority and terro r i zean American high school. Their success and theirpower, and the ambiguous but attractive pictureof their culture, aimed at the heart of the filmCode and its commitment to uphold the dignityof figures and institutions of authority.

Still cautious, the studio opened the filmwith a disclaimer. It also used a policeman as avoice of authority who explained postwar delin-quency in this way: “They were six years old inthe last wa r. Father in the army. Mother in adefense plant. No home life. No Church life. Noplace to go. They form street gangs….Gang lead-ers have taken the place of parents.”

Despite this pro t e c t i ve sermonizing, the filma roused substantial opposition. It did so for manyre a s o n s, but principally because it pictured a highschool with unsympathetic administra to rs andt e a c h e rs in the grip of teenage hoodlums. Give nc o n t e m p o rary fears of just such a situation, and

the belief that such was the case throughout theUnited Sta t e s, the film’s realistic tex t u re wa sshocking. But other elements distressed somea u d i e n c e s. For exa m p l e, the leading adolescentc h a racter is a black student, played with enor-mous sympathy and skill by Sidney Po i t i e r. Andthe clash of cultures and genera t i o n s, which laterbecame sta n d a rd in juvenile delinquency films,was in this, its first real ex p ression, stated withs tark and frightening clarity. For exa m p l e, in onecrucial scene, a teacher brings his precious col-lection of jazz re c o rds to school to play for theb oys, hoping, of cours e, to win them ove r. Hise f forts to reach out to them fail completely. Thestudents mock and despise his music and thend e s t roy his collection. They have their own music,their own culture, and their own language.

Public response to B l a c k b o a rd Jungle p ro-vided a glimpse of the audience division betwe e ngenerations and cultures. Attending a preview ofthe film, producer Brooks was surprised, andobviously delighted, when young members ofthe audience began dancing in the aisles to therock and roll music. This occurred repeatedly ins h owings after the film opened. But other re a c-tions we re more threatening. For example inRo c h e s t e r, New York, there we re reports that“ young hoodlums cheered the beatings andmethods of terror inflicted upon a teacher by agang of boys” pictured in the film. But box officereceipts in the first few weeks indicated a smashhit, and in New York City the first ten days atLoew’s State theater set a record for attendance.

N eve r t h e l e s s, the film caused an angry back-lash against the film industry. Censors in Mem-p h i s, Te n n e s s e e, banned it. It was denounced bylegal org a n i za t i o n s, teachers, rev i ewe rs like BosleyC rowther of the N ew York Times, and even by theTeenage Division of the Labor Youth League (acommunist org a n i zation). The National Congre s sof Pa rents and Te a c h e rs, the Girl Scouts, theD.A.R., and the American Association of Unive r-sity Women disapproved it. The American Le g i o nvoted B l a c k b o a rd Jungle the movie “that hurtAmerica the most in fo reign countries in 1955.”And the Ambassador to Ita l y, Clare Booth Lu c e,


with State Department approbation, fo rced thef i l m ’s withdrawal from the Venice Film Fe s t i va l .

1 0 Fo l l owing swiftly on this commercial suc-cess was Rebel Without a Cause, a very differe n tsort of film, and perhaps the most famous andinfluential of the 1950s juvenile delinquencye n d e avo rs. Departing from the somber wo r k i n g -class realism of B l a c k b o a rd Jungle, Re b e lsplashed the problem of middle-class delin-q u e n cy across America in full color. More ove r, itss y m p a t hy lay entirely with adolescents, playe dby acto rs James Dean, Natalie Wood, and SalMineo, who all live wholly inside the new yo u t hc u l t u re. Indeed, this is the substantial messageof the film: each parent and figure of authorityis grievously at fault for ignoring or otherwisefailing youth. The consequence is a re b e l l i o nwith disastrous re s u l t s.

Once the script had been developed, shoot-ing began in the spring of 1955, during theheight of the delinquency dispute and followingfast on the heels of the box-office success ofB l a c k b o a rd Jungle. Warner Bro t h e rs approved alast minute budget hike to upgrade the film toc o l o r. In part this was a response to the box officeappeal of the sta r, James Dean, whose East ofEden was released to acclaim in early April.

When it approved the film, the Code Au t h o r-ity issued two wa r n i n g s. Geoffrey Shurlock wro t eto Jack Warner in March 1955: “As you know, weh ave steadfastly maintained under the re q u i re-ments of the Code that we should not approves tories of underage boys and girls indulging ineither murder or illicit sex.” He suggested thatthe violence in the picture be toned down. Fur-t h e r m o re, he noted: “It is of course vital thatt h e re be no inference of a questionable or homo-s exual relationship between Plato [Sal Mineo]and Jim [James Dean].” A fo l l ow-up commenta r ysuggested the need for further changes in thearea of violence. For example, Shurlock noted ofthe fight at the planetarium: “We suggest merelyindicating that these high-school boys have tirechains, not showing them flaunting them.”

Despite these cautions, the film, when it wa sreleased, contained substantial violence: the acci-d e n tal death of one of the teenagers in a “c h i c k i erun”; the shooting of another teenager; andPlato’s death at the hands of the police. Further-m o re, there remained strong echoes of Plato ’shomosexual interest in Jim.

The film also took a curious, ambiguous posi-tion on juvenile delinquency. Overtly, it disap-p roved, demonstrating the terrible price paid fo rmisbehavior. Yet the film, more than any otherthus far, glorified the teenage life-styles it pur-ported to reject. Adult culture is pictured as inse-cure, insensitive, and blind to the problems ofyouth. Te e n a g e rs, on the other hand, are portraye das searching for genuine family life, warmth, andsecurity. They choose delinquency in despair ofrejection by their pare n t s. Indeed, each of the thre eyoung heroes is condemned to search for the emo-tional fulfillment that adults deny: Dean for thec o u rage his father lacks; Natalie Wood (as his girl-friend) for her fa t h e r ’s love; and Plato for a fa m i l y,which he finds momentarily in Dean and Wo o d .Instead of being securely set in adult society, eachof these values must be constructed outside nor-mal society and inside a new yo u t h - c reated wo r l d .What in other films might have provided a re c o n-ciling finale—a voice of authority—becomes, itself,a symbol of alienation. A policeman who befriendsDean is absent at a decisive moment when hecould have prevented the tragic ending. Thus noadults or institutions remain unscathed. The end-ing, in which adults re c o g n i ze their own fa i l i n g s, isthus too sudden and contrived to be believa b l e. Itis as if the appearance of juvenile delinquency insuch a middle-class setting is impossible toexplain, too complex and too frightening to beu n d e rs tood in that contex t .

15 And also too attractive, for the film picturesdelinquent culture as an intrusive, compelling,and dangerous fo rce that invades middle-classhomes and institutions. The producers carefullyindicated that each family was middle class,although Plato ’s mother might well be consid-e red wealthier than that. Te e n a g e, delinquent cul-t u re, howeve r, has obvious working-class origins,


s y m b o l i zed by souped-up jalopies, lev i s, and T-shirts that became the sta n d a rd for youth culture.In fact, when Dean goes out for his fa t e f u l“chickie run,” he changes into T-shirt and lev i sf rom his school clothes. Furthermore, the filmp resents this delinquent culture without judg-ment. There is no obvious line drawn betwe e nwhat is teenage culture and what is delinquency.Is delinquency really just misunders tood yo u t hculture? The film never says, thus reflecting pub-lic confusion on the same issue.

A second tactic of the filmmake rs posed aphilosophic problem about youth culture andd e l i n q u e n cy. This emerges around the symbol ofthe planetarium. In the first of two scenes there,D e a n ’s new high school class visits for a lectureand a show. The lecturer ends his pre s e n ta t i o nabruptly with a frightening suggestion—theexplosion of the world and the end of the uni-ve rs e. He concludes: “Man existing alone seemsan episode of little consequence.” This ex i s t e n t i a lre f e rence precedes the rumble in which Dean isfo rced to fight his new classmates after theyp u n c t u re the tires of his car. The meaning is clear:Dean must act to establish an identity which hisp a rents and society refuse to grant him. This is are m a r kable translation of the basic premise ofc o n t e m p o rary Beat poets, whose solitary searc hfor meaning and self-ex p ression tinged seve ral ofthe other initial films in this genre also.

Another scene at the planetarium occurs atnight, at the end of the film. The police have pur-sued Plato there after he shoots a member of thegang that has been harassing Dean. Dean fo l l owshim into the building, and, in a reprise of the ear-lier scene, turns on the machine that lights thestars and planets. The two boys discuss the endof the world. Dean empties Plato’s gun, and theconfused youth then walks out of the building.The police, mistaking his intent, gun him down.Once again tragedy fo l l ows a statement aboutthe ultimate meaninglessness of life.

By using middle-class delinquency toexplore questions of existence, this film undeni-ably contested the effectiveness of tra d i t i o n a lfamily and community institutions. There is eve n

the hint that Dean, Wood, and Mineo representthe possibility of a new sort of family; but this isonly a fleeting suggestion. In the end it is familyand community weakness that bring tragedy forwhich there can be no real solution. Without thestrikingly sympathetic performances of Dean,Wood, and Mineo, this picture might have fallenunder the weight of its bleak (and pre t e n t i o u s )m e s s a g e. As it wa s, howeve r, Rebel Without aCause was a box office smash, and Dean’s short,but brilliant career was now assured.

As with B l a c k b o a rd Jungle, the MPAA was thefocus of furious reaction to the film. Accusations ofc o pycat crimes, particularly for a stabbing in Indi-ana, Pe n n s y l vania, brought condemnations andpetitions against “pictures which depict abnormalor subnormal behavior by the youth of our coun-try and which tend to deprave the morals of yo u n gp e o p l e.” The MPAA fought back against this accu-sation in early 1956 as Arthur DeBra urged ani n vestigation to discover if the incident at the Indi-ana, Pe n n s y l vania, high school had any re l a t i o n-ship to the “juvenile delinquency situation in theschool and community.” As one writer for theChristian Science Monitor put it, “the new Wa r n e rBrothers picture will emerge into the growingn a t i o nwide concern about the effects on youth ofcomics, TV, and movies.” This prediction wasbased upon actions already ta ken by local censors.The Chicago police had ord e red cuts in the film,and the city of Milwa u kee banned it outright.

20 On the other hand, much of the re s p o n s ewas positive. As Variety noted in late 1955, fa nl e t t e rs had poured in to Hollywood “fro mt e e n a g e rs who have identified themselves withthe chara c t e rs; from parents who have found thefilm conveyed a special meaning; and from soci-ologists and psychiatrists who have paid tributeto the manner in which child-parent misunder-standing is highlighted.”

Quite clearly, the film became a milesto n efor the industry. It established youth culture as afitting subject for films, and created some of themost perva s i ve stereotypes that we re repeated inlater films. These included the to r t u red, alienated,and misunders tood youth and into l e rant pare n t s


and authority figure s. It did not, howeve r, lead tom o re subtle ex p l o rations of the connectionsb e t ween youth culture and delinquency. If any-thing, the opposite was true. For one thing, Deanwas killed in an auto accident shortly after thisenormous success. Furthermore, it was pro b a b l ythe seriousness of B l a c k b o a rd Jungle and Re b e l

that provo ked controve rs y, and the movie indus-try quickly learned that it could attract teenageaudiences without risking the ire of adults if itreduced the dosage of realism. Thus the genred e t e r i o rated into formula films about teenagers,made principally for drive-in audiences who we renot particular about the features they saw.


SUGG ESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1. G i l b e rt notes that Rebel Without a Cause became a “milestone” for the film industry,

establishing youth culture as a fitting (and profitable) subject and creating stereotypes ofalienated youth and intolerant adults that re c u rred in later movies. Consider to what extentthese stereotypes continue to appear in movies. How would you update their appearancesince the 1950s? List examples of movies that use the conventionalized figures of alien-ated youth and intolerant adults. What continuity do you see over time? In what wayshave the portrayals changed?

2. Gilbert says that by “using middle-class delinquency to explore questions of existence,”Rebel Without a Cause “contested the effectiveness of traditional family and communityinstitutions.” Explain what Gilbert means. Can you think of other films that “contest” fam-ily and community institutions?

3. Watch the three films Gilbert discusses—The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, and R e b e lWithout a Cause. Working together with a group of classmates, first summarize Gilbert ’sdiscussion of how each film handles the dilemma of evoking viewers’ sympathy for youngpeople while in no way presenting delinquency in a favorable light. Next, develop yourown analysis of how (or whether) each film creates sympathy for young people in theirc o n f rontations with the adult world. To what extent do you agree with Gilbert ’s line ofanalysis? Where do you differ with or want to modify his analysis?

SUGGESTED AS SIGNME NTPick a film or group of films that in some way characterizes a generation of young people.For example, analyze how The Graduate c a p t u res something important about youth in the1960s. Or look at how a cluster of three or four films portrays the “twentysomething” gener-ation of the 1990s. Or you can follow Newsweek’s example in “Raging Teen Hormones” andput together a time line that reveals some trend in youth films. (Notice how the thermometerregisters how “hot” the film is.)

Write an analysis of how the film or films re p resent youth. Do not decide whether the por-trayal is accurate, but analyze how it constructs a certain image of youth culture and whatmight be the significance of the representation.

Here are some suggestions to help you examine how a film represents youth culture:

■ How does the film portray young people? What in particular marks them as “youth”?Pay particular attention to the characters’ clothing, hairstyles, body posture, andways of speaking.

■ How does the film mark young people generationally? Are the characters part of adistinctive youth subculture? How would you characterize the gro u p ’s collective iden-tity? What is the relation of the group to the adult world and its institutions? Whatintergenerational conflicts figure in the film?

■ How does the film portray a particular historical moment or decade? What visualclues enable viewers to locate the era of the film? What historical events, if any, enterinto the film?

■ How does the sound track contribute to the re p resentation of youth culture that isprojected by the film?

■ How do the stars of the film influence viewers’ perceptions of youth culture? Do theyenhance viewers’ sympathies? Are the main characters cultural icons like James Deanor Marlon Brando?

F I E L D W O R K Ethnographic Interviews

Music is one of the keys to generational identities. Songs carry the emotional powerto define for their listeners what it means to be alive at a particular moment. Singersand musicians evoke generations and decades—Frank Sinatra’s emergence as a teenidol in the big band era of the 1940s; Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, andearly rock and roll in the 1950s; the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Motown, andthe Memphis sound of Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding in the 1960s; the funk ofParliament and War, disco, and punk bands such as the Clash and Sex Pistols in the1970s; the megastars Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, the rap ofPublic Enemy and NWA, alternative, and the grunge groups of the 1980s and 1990s.

One way to figure out how people experience their lives as part of a generationis to investigate what music means to them. The fieldwork project in this chapterinvestigates how people across generations use music daily to create, maintain, orsubvert individual and collective identities. The method is the ethnographic inter-view, a nondirective approach that asks people to explain how they make sense ofmusic in their lives. “Ethnographic” means literally graphing—getting down in therecord—the values and practices of the ethnos, the tribe or group.

MY MUSIC

Susan D. Craft, Daniel Cavicchi, and Charles Keil

The following three ethnographic interviews come from the Music in Daily Life Project in theAmerican Studies program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The project’s goalwas to use open-ended ethnographic interviews to find out what music means to people andhow they integrate music into their lives and identities. Two undergraduate classes conducted


EDWARDOE d wa rdo is fifteen ye a rs old and is enrolled in ana u to mechanics pro g ram at a vocational highschool.Q: What kind of music do you like to listen to?A: B a s i c a l l y, I listen to anything. I prefer ra pand regular…R and B and rock.Q: What groups do you listen to when you geta choice?A: When I’m by myself, I listen to rap like EricB, MC Hammer, and KRS I. People like that.When I’m with my friends, I listen to Ozzie, andPink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Metallica. You know,groups like that.Q: W hy do you listen to different stuff whenyo u ’ re by yo u rself? Different than when yo u ’ rewith your friends?A: Usually when I’m over at their house theyhave control of the radio, and they don’t like tolisten to rap that much.Q: What kind of things do you do when you arelistening to music by yourself?A: I lip-synch it in the mirro r. I pretend I’mdoing a mov i e. Kind of embarrassing, but I dothat. And I listen to it while I’m in the showe r.And…that’s about all.Q : Would you like to be a professional musician?A: Kind of. Yeah.Q: If you pictured yourself as a musician, howwould you picture yourself? What kind of musicwould you play?A: I’d probably rap. If I didn’t, I’d like to playthe saxophone.Q: When yo u ’ re walking along, do you eve rh ave a song going through your head? Do yo uhave specific songs that you listen to and, if not,do you ever make up songs?

A: Yes. I rap a lot to myself. I make up rhymesand have one of my friends give it a beat. Some-times we put it on tape. Sometimes we don’t.Q: Could you give me an example of some ofthe stuff you have put together on your own?A: I made up one that goes something like,“ N ow I have many mikes/stepped on manyfloors./Shattered all the windows/knocked downall the doors.” That’s just a little part of it. This ishard for me. I’m nervous.Q: So what kind of things do you try to puttogether in your songs? What kinds of things doyou try to talk about in your songs?A: I make up different stories. Like people run-ning around. Sometimes I talk about drugs anddrinking. Most of the time I just brag aboutmyself.Q: Do you have any bro t h e rs and sisters wholisten to the same sort of stuff?A: Ye s. My older bro t h e r … h e ’s the one who gotme into rap. We’re originally from the Bronx, inN ew York, and he doesn’t listen to anything else.My cousin, he listens to heavy metal but he’skind of switched to late-seve n t i e s, early-seve n t i e srock. He listens to Pink Floyd and all them, so Ilisten with him sometimes. I listen with myfriends. That’s about all.Q: How long have you been listening to rap?A: For about seven or eight years.Q: What kind of stuff we re you listening tobefore that?A: Ac t u a l l y, I don’t re m e m b e r. Oh yeah. Weused to live in California and I was listening tooldies…like the Four Tops and all them. In Cali-fornia…the Mexicans down there, they only lis-ten to the oldies and stuff like that.Q: Why would you say you changed to rap?

Susan D. Craft, Daniel Cavicchi, and Charles Keil My Music 95

the interviews and began with the question, “What is music about for you?” (The classes set-tled on this question “so as not to prejudge the situation” and to give the respondents “roomto define music of all kinds in their lives.”) Then the interviews were edited, organized by ageg roup, and published in the book My Music (1993). The interviews that follow come from peo-ple from three generations—ages fifteen, thirty-three, and fifty-seven, respectively.

Keep in mind that the interviews you are reading were not scripted but are the result of inter-viewers’ on-the-spot decisions. As you read, notice how the interviewers ask questions andwhen they ask for more details or redirect the conversation.


A: When I came down here, eve r y t h i n gchanged. People we re listening to different kindsof music and I was, you know, behind times. SoI just had to switch to catch up.Q: So you would say that your friends re a l l yinfluence you and the kind of music you listen toby yourself?A: Yeah. I would say that.Q: When you’re listening to music by yourself,what kinds of things go through your mind? Areyou concentrating on the words or what?A: Sometimes I think about life, and all thep roblems I have. Sometimes I just dwell on thelyrics and just listen to the music.Q: Do you ever use music as a way to changeyour mood? If you’re really depressed, is there arecord you put on?A: No. Usually when I listen to music and itchanges me is when I’m bored and I don’t havea nything to do or I just get that certain urge to lis-ten to music.

RALPHRalph is thirty-three ye a rs old, an ex p e r i e n c e dtruck driver working as a bus driver for a cityt ransit authority when he was interviewed by amale friend.

I was weaned on the music of the fifties. Mymusical taste began to form in about…well, myf i rst re c o rd album was Chubby Checke r ’s “Le t ’sDo the Twist”…that was 1961. I begged mymom for it. I saw it up at a grocery store here; Ihad to have it. So she bought it for me. I re a l l ydug that.

I still really dig those old rhythm and bluesbands back then. I was mainly a product of theB e a t l e s – Rolling Sto n e s – D ave Clark Five era. Yo uk n ow, I never really cared for the Rolling Sto n e swhen they first came out. My big group was theD ave Clark Five. I thought they we re it until I heardt h ey died in a plane crash somew h e re in Fra n c e,which was a big rumor of the day; but two ort h ree weeks later we found out they didn’t die.

I was a Beatles generation kid. I can stillremember most of the lyrics of most of the songst h ey put out. It’s a result of constant repetition of

it being drummed into my head consta n t l y … j u s tas I’m sure that like somebody who was born inthe seventies…David Bowie…I’m sure that ateenager in the seventies would know the wo rds tohis songs—“Ziggy Sta rdust,” the early Bowie stuff.

Did the Beatles direct me? Ye s, they hadsome influence on my life. I hate to admit it, butt h ey did. They always painted a rosy picturewhen I was growing up. It was all love and peace,the flower-child movement. But at that timesomeone who had a big influence on my musi-cal life was my big bro t h e r. He was bringinghome stuff like the Supremes at the A- G o -Go…blues…which I really think is the Lo rd ’smusic. Today you can’t find it anymore; there isvery little of it coming out, if any.

To d ay ’s music just depresses me; it’s like thedoldrums between 1973 to about 1978…beforethe new pop or new wave scene arrive d … t h ep u n k i e s, the pop sta rs. I can see things leadingthat way now too with all this techno-pop. Basi-cally I was into jazz at the time; that’s when I gotmy jazz influences with Monk, Bird, andColtrane. I used to listen to those people heavilyback in the early 1970 s. I really loved groups likethe Mahavishnu Orc h e s t ra. I love jazz fusion andJeff Beck, but there’s some people I really don’tc a re fo r … Pat Metheny. I never cared for him;why, I don’t know. Maybe he has no character inhis guita r. It’s like a bland speed shuffle. Where a speople like Larry Coryell and John McLa u g h l i nand Jeff Beck, Jan Akke r m a n … i t ’s just so dis-tinct…their own personal signature. But guys likePat Metheny and that guy who played with ChickC o rea, Al Dimeola, they just don’t sign theirwork; it’s all just mumbo-jumbo to me. Otherpeople like them; they sell, right? I don’t know ;that’s my personal taste. I really appreciated anyband with a truly outstanding guitarist, some-body you can say: Ah, now this is h i m…I re a l l yappreciate that, the signatures.

I like to hear music that I’m not going to heara nyplace else; judge it for myself. Another phaseof my life I went through, I really appreciated theb l u e s. From about ’67 to ’72 was really my bluese ra, when I was in college. Of cours e, a lot of peo-


ple we re blues addicts then. Everybody was get-ting drafted for Vietnam…the blues we re ve r ypopular back then. You had a lot of English bluesg roups coming out, like the original Fleetwo o dM a c, Peter Green…who I thought was a phe-nomenal blues guitar playe r, phenomenal!…dif-f e rent groups like the Hedgehogs. A lot of gro u p ss h u c ked it off and went commercial; that re a l l yturned me off to them. I also happen to likeBeach Boy music…all a rip-off of black histo r y, alla rip-off of black music…but white fun…blackfun translated into white fun. Surf music was biga round ’65 or ’66. I’ll admit it; we we re punks.

Ah, let’s see…punk. Where did punk sta r tout? Malcolm McLa ren? Malcolm McDowell inC l o c k work Ora n g e?…when he played the ultimatepunk, Alex? Was it Richard Hell in 1974 in NewYork City with ripped T-shirts and safety pins?Punk is kind of a quaint way of expressing your-self. It hasn’t come to murder yet; I wonder if it’sgonna come down to murd e r - rock? Yo u ’ ve gotsavage beating and stuff like that; I wonder if it’sever going to get there. It’ll be interesting to seewhere it goes in the future…looking ahead.

These days I like to go into a bar with a qual-ity juke b ox…go in there, dump some quarters inthe box, and listen to the old songs.

STEVES t eve is fifty-seven ye a rs old and works as asalesman. He was interviewed by his daughter.Q: Dad, what does music do for you?A : What does music do for me? Well, musicre l a xes me. In order for me to explain, I have togo back and give you an idea exactly how mywhole life was affected by music. For exa m p l e,when I was five or six ye a rs old, my mother andfather had come from Poland, so naturally allmusic played at home was ethnic music. Thise s tablished my ethnic herita g e. I had a love for Po l-ish music. Later on in life, like at Polish we d d i n g s,t h ey played mostly Polish music…since we live din Cheektowaga and there is mostly Polish peopleand a Polish parish. My love for Polish music gaveme enjoyment when I was growing up and it car-ried on all these ye a rs to the present time.

But naturally as I got educated in the Englishlanguage I started going to the mov i e s. I wa sraised during the Depression and, at that time,the biggest form of escape was musicals…peo-ple like Dick Powell, Ru by Ke e l e r, Eddie Canto r,Al Jolson, and Shirley Te m p l e. These we re bigstars of their day and in order to relax and forgetyour tro u b l e s … we all went through hardt i m e s … everybody enjoyed musicals, they we rethe biggest thing at that time. A lot of musicalswere shows from Broadway so, as I was growingup in the Depression and watching movie musi-cals, I was also getting acquainted with hit tunesthat came from Bro a d way. In that era, Tin Pa nA l l ey was an ex p ression for the place where allthese song writers used to write and composem u s i c, and these songs became the hits in themusicals.

Later on these writers went to the mov i e sand it seemed as if every month there was a newhit song that everyone was singing. Some of thew r i t e rs, like Irving Berlin, Gershwin, Jero m eKern, Harry Wa r ren, and Sammy Kahn…some ofthese songs are the prettiest songs that we re eve rwritten. Even though I never played a musicalinstrument or was a singer, I was like hundredsof thousands of people in my era who love dm u s i c. In fact, radio was very popular at thatt i m e, so you heard music constantly on the ra d i o ,in the musicals, and all my life I could sing a songall the way through, knowing the tune and know -ing the words.

Later on in life, when we get to W. W. II,music used to inspire patriotism, and also tobring you closer to home when ove rs e a s. Fo rexa m p l e, one place that just meant music wa sthe Stage Door Canteen in Hollywood. All thestars of the movies and musicals used to volun-teer their services and entertain eve r y b o d y. La t e ron, as these stars went overseas and performedfor the G.I.s, I had a chance to see a lot of theses ta rs in pers o n — s ta rs that I really enjoyed, see-ing their movies and listening to their music. Soit was like bringing home to overseas. Of course,t h e re was a lot of patriotic songs that stirre dus…we were young…say, the Air Force song like


“ P raise the Lo rd and Pass the Ammunition.”T h e re was sentimental songs like “There’ll BeBlue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dove r,” “IH e a rd a Nightingale Sing Over Berke l ey Square. ”But it was actually music that helped you thro u g htough times like W. W. II, the way music helpedyou feel better during the Depression…in daysthat I was younger.

When I came back from overseas…now I’mentering the romantic part of my life, in my earlyt wenties…it was the era of the big bands. One ofthe greatest events in music history were bandsl i ke Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, theD o rs ey Bro t h e rs and Sammy Kaye…big bandswere popular at the time you used to go to localCandy Kitchens and play the juke b ox, and, justl i ke some of the songs said, it was a wo n d e r f u ltime to be with your friends. Good clean enter-tainment; you listen to the juke b ox, dance on thedance floor.

In the big band era, we get into the populars i n g e rs who used to sing with the big bands. Theywent on their own and the era of the ballads wa sborn, and to me this was my favorite era of musicin my life. I’ll mention some of the big singers justto give you an idea of what I mean—singers likeBing Cro s by, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Marg a re tWhiting, Jo Sta f fo rd, and Perry Como.

The time of your life when you meet the“girl of your dre a m s.” I was fortunate that we hadthe Canadiana. It was just like the Love Boat ofits time. They used to have a band, and you usedto be able to dance on the dance floor. If they did-n’t have a dance band that night, they would playrecords, and you could listen to music riding onthe lake at night under the sta rs and moon. Itwas unbelievable, that particular part of life. It’sa shame the younger people of to d ay couldn’tex p e r i e n c e, not only the boat, but a lot of thethings we went through. We thought it was to u g hat that time, but it was the music that re a l l ymade things a lot happier and the reason why it’sso easy for someone like myself to hear a songand just place myself back in time, at exa c t l ywhere I was. Was I in the Philippines, or Tokyo,

or on the boat? What we re the songs that we rep l aying when I first met my wife, what we re theyp l aying when I was a young recruit in the AirForce? All I have to do is hear the songs and it’lljust take me back in time and I will relive a lot ofthe parts of my life and, of cours e, you onlyremember the good parts! (laughing) You don’tremember the bad.

Music to me is very important. One thoughtthat I wanted to mention, about going back intime: when I was just five or six ye a rs old, myp a re n t s, because they we re from the old country,played Polish music, so that when I did meet thegirl I was going to marry…every couple has afavorite song and ours was one that was ve r ypopular at that time…it was a Polish song towhich they put American lyrics. The song wa s“Tell Me Whose Girl You Are,” and I think it wasbecause my wife and I came from a Polish back-ground that Polish music was still a very impor-tant part of our life.Q: What music really did for you was to makeyou get through bad times and made you thinkof good things mostly, right?A: Well, ye s, and I would say that musicbecame part of my pers o n a l i t y. I use music to notonly relax, I use it to re l i eve tension. About thirtyp e rcent of the time I am singing, and it hasbecome part of my personality because it hasg i ven me a certain amount of assura n c e. Notonly does it relax me but I think it also bolstersmy confidence in being a salesman where yo uh ave to always be up. You can’t be depre s s e d .O t h e r w i s e, yo u ’ re just going to waste a day. Ithink music to me is also something that bolstersmy spirit.Q: Does music amplify your mood or does itchange your mood? For exa m p l e, when yo u ’ re ina depressed mood do you put on something slowor something happy to get you out of that mood?A : Well, when I was single, if my love life wa s n ’ tgoing right, I used to play sad songs. Well, I guessl i ke most young kids when their love life isn’tgoing right they turn to sad music. I know thatafter I’m married and have children and more


ex p e r i e n c e, if I get in a depressed mood then Is w i tch to happier music to change the mood.Q: What do you think about today’s music?A : (laughing) I could give you enough swe a rwo rds….No, seriously, I will answer you. I can doit right off the top of my head because I was in are s ta u rant this morning and I heard a song beingp l ayed on the radio, which was supposedly a bighit by a new big sta r. Supposedly this fellow is justas big as Michael Jackson. I think his name isP r i n c e, singing “All Night Long” [Lionel Richie],and, my God when I heard that re c o rd where theykept repeating the wo rds over and ove r, I said tomyself, “God, how terrible it is that these kids arenot getting benefit of the music that we had whenI was yo u n g e r,” because I can ta ke one phrase andwrite a modern song. I could do the lyrics. AndI’m not musical. Say, “Le t ’s Go Mud Wre s t l i n gTonight, Le t ’s Go Mud Wrestling Tonight, You andI, Le t ’s Go Mud Wrestling Tonight. We will be inthe mud, we will be in the mud. After the day isove r, it’s night so Le t ’s Go Mud Wrestling To n i g h t ! ”

I really felt very sorry because I realize thatthe music that I’m telling you about now … m u s i cof my era…not only gave me re l a xation, not onlyg ave me a certain amount of stimulation…thelyrics of the songs actually educated me. I woulds ay thirty percent of what I know about life to d aywas gleaned from songs. You remember whatyou learned from a song. To d ay I heard Pa u l

Robeson singing “Ol’ Man River,” and I remem-ber seeing the movie with Paul Ro b e s o n — t h ebest singer of all time, and the story where it hada mixed marriage, things going on now … t h eproblems of the black people. He sang, “take meaway from the White Man Boss.” That phra s estuck in my mind because as I heard the songto d ay…and this song was sung thirty or fo r t yye a rs ago…I had also read in the editorial pagew hy Reagan isn’t the best candidate for theblacks because they are losing a lot of what theyhave gained, and I began to realize what a longstruggle these people are having.Q: So, in other wo rd s, some of the music yo ulisten to taught you about the people singing itand gave you knowledge…?A: Well, not only taught me about the peoplesinging, but about life in general, conditions. Forexample, during the Depression there was a bighit, “Brother Can You Spare A Dime?” and thewords went, “…once I built a railroad…now I’masking for a hand-out.”

It wasn’t just the person singing the song butthe times. For exa m p l e, during the war era wesang songs that were not only patriotic, but theytaught us a lot about what we were fighting for,what was so important about saving America. Ina lot of cases, the songs we ren’t written by thereligious but they had some religious ove r to n e sand brought in some sense of faith.


SUGGESTI ONS FOR D ISCUSS ION1 . E d w a rd o ’s responses to the interv i e w e r ’s questions are much shorter than Ralph’s or Steve’s .

One senses the pre s s u re that the interviewer must have felt to keep the conversation going.R a l p h ’s interv i e w, though, is one long response. Steve’s contains an extended statement thatis followed by question and answer. Take a second look at the questions that the interv i e w-ers ask of Edwardo and Steve. What do their purposes seem to be? Try to get a sense ofhow and why the interviewer decided to ask particular questions. What alternatives, if any,can you imagine?

2. Notice that the interviewees do not fall easily into one distinct musical subculture. Eachtalks about a range of music. How do Edwardo, Ralph, and Steve make sense of thesevarious forms of musical expression?

3. Each of the interviewees relates his musical tastes to particular social groups or momentsin time. How do they connect music to their relationship with others and/or their memo-ries of the past?

Fieldwork ProjectWork with two or three other students on this project. Each group member shouldinterview three people of different ages to get a range of responses across genera-tions. Use the opening question “What is music about for you?” from the Music inDaily Life project. Tape and transcribe the interview.

As a group, assemble and edit a collection of the interviews and write an introduc-tion that explains the purpose of the interviews and their significance.

EditingAn edited interview is not simply the transcribed tape re c o rding. It’s important to cap-ture the person’s voice, but you also want the interview to be readable. Taped inter-views can be filled with pauses, um’s and ah’s, incomplete or incoherent thoughts,and rambling associations. It is standard practice to “clean up” the interv i e w, as longas doing so does not distort or change the subject’s meanings. Cleaning up a tran-script may include editing at the sentence level, but you may also leave out some ofthe taped material if it is irrelevant.

Writing an IntroductionIn the introduction to the edited interviews, explain your purpose in asking peopleabout the role that music plays in their lives. Follow this with some observations andinterpretations of the results. Remember that the interviews have a limited authority.They don’t “prove” anything about the role of music in daily life and the formationof individual or group identity. But they can be suggestive—and you will want to pointout how and why.

The Music in Daily Life Project emphasizes the verbs you can use to describe peo-ple’s relationship to music:

Is this person finding music to explore and express an identity or beinginvaded by music to the point of identity diffusion, using music to solve per-sonal problems, c o n s u m i n g music to fill a void and relieve alienation andboredom, participating in musical mysteries to feel fully human, addicted tomusic and evading reality, orienting via music to reality?

As you can see, each verb carries a different interpretation.


Feildwork Project 101

A Note on Interviewing

■ Choosing subjects. Choose carefully. The three subjects you choose don’thave to be big music buffs, but you will get your best interviews frompeople who are willing to talk about their likes, dislikes, memories, andassociations.

■ Preparing your subject. Make an appointment for the interview, and be ontime. Tell your subject how long you will be spending and why you wantthis information.

■ Preparing yourself. Before the interview, make a list of questions you wantto ask. Most questions should be open-ended—they should not lead to ayes or no response. Just keep in mind that your goal is to listen, so you’llwant to give your subject plenty of time to talk.

■ Conducting the interv i e w. Remember that in many respects, you controlthe agenda because you scheduled the interview and have determinedthe questions. The person you interview will be looking for guidance anddirection. You are likely to have choices to make during the interv i e w.The guidelines used by the Music in Daily Life Project note the followingsituation:

Somebody says, “I really love Bruce Springsteen and hismusic, can’t help it, I get weepy over ‘Born in the USA,’ you know?But sometimes I wonder if I haven’t just swallowed the hype abouthis being a working-class hero from New Jersey with the symbolicblack guy by his side, you know what I mean?” and then pauses,looking at you for some direction or an answer. A choice to make.

The choice concerns which thread in the conversation to follow—the per-son’s love for Springsteen or his feeling of being hyped by the working-class hero image. You could do several things at this point in theinterview. You could just wait for the person to explain, or you could say,“ Tell me a little more about that,” and hope the person will decide onwhich thread to elaborate. Or you could ask a direct question—“Why doyou love Springsteen’s music so much?” “What makes you weepy about‘Born in the USA’?” “Why do you think you’re being hyped?” (Notice thateach of these questions involves a choice that may take the interview ina different direction.)

The point here is that a good interviewer must listen carefully during theinterview. The goal is not to dominate but to give the subject some helpin developing his or her ideas. Your task as an interviewer is to keep theconversation going.

■ Get Permission. If you plan to use the subject’s name in class discussion ora paper, get permission and make arrangements to show your subjectwhat you have written.


M I N I N GT H E

A R C H I V ELife Magazine

During the 1940s and 1950s, Life was the most popular generalmagazine in the United States, with an estimated readership oftwenty million. Founded as a weekly in 1936, Life was the firstAmerican magazine to give a prominent place to the photoes-say—visual narratives of the week’s news as well as special featuresabout American life and culture. If anything, Life taught genera-tions of Americans what events in the world looked like, bringingthem the work of such noted photographers as Robert Capa, Mar-garet Bourke-White, and W. Eugene Smith in photojournalisticaccounts of the farm crisis and labor conflicts during the GreatDepression and of battle-front situations during World War II.

In another sense, Life also taught Americans what the worldshould look like. After World War II, Life regularly featured fam-ilies in postwar America, ordinary people in their new suburbanhomes, driving new cars on America’s newly built freeway sys-tems to work, school, and church. Perhaps no other source offerssuch a rich archive of what domestic life was supposed to be in

the 1940s and 1950s in these pictorial representations of white, middle-classnuclear families.

To get a sense of how Life pictured America in the early postwar period, checkout the December 3, 1945 issue and the news story “U.S. Normalcy: Against theBackdrop of a Troubled World Life Inspects an American City at Peace.” Publishedjust four months after World War II ended, the article juxtaposed images of inter-national instability (the beginnings of the Cold Wa r, the Nuremburg Trials, and childrefugees in war-torn Europe and China) and of domestic turmoil (industrial strikesand unemployment) with the concerns of people in Indianapolis returning “theirminds and energies to work, football games, automobile trips, family reunions andall the pleasant trivia of the American way of life.”

Most college and public libraries have Life in their collection. Take a look throughseveral issues. You will find many family portraits. You could develop various projectsfrom this photojournalistic archive about family values in the postwar period, therole of women as homemakers, representations of teenagers, and the relation ofdomestic life to the Cold Wa r. Keep in mind that the photoessays on the Americanfamily not only provide slices of life from the 1940s and 1950s but they also codifyAmericans’ understanding of the ideal family and the American dream. Remembertoo that audiences did not read these photoessays on the family in isolation fromadvertisements and other photoessays. You might want to consider the overall flowof Life and how its messages about the family are connected to other messages.

Finally, you might think about why there is no longer a general magazine suchas Life that claims to picture the “American way of life.” The magazine industry todayis thriving by attracting specialized readerships based on such interests as comput-ers, skateboarding, mountain biking, and indie rock. The era of such general nationalmagazines as Life, Look, Colliers, and the S a t u rday Evening Post has clearly beenreplaced by niche marketing and subcultural ’zines. What does this proliferation ofspecialized magazines suggest to you about the current state of American culture?

reading culture - pearson · 2019-02-20 · bergenfield, new jersey. thomas hine’s “goths in...

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