Read on Twitter
More Gen X navel-gazing. We were raised on the idea that 1) We were all going to die in a nuclear fireball. 2) Should that not happen, whatever future we did get would be dismal and we would be the first generation worse off than our parents. Dystopia is all we were promised.
If you want to trigger Gen X trauma, mention THE DAY AFTER. This TV show, that I saw when I was 11, was assigned to us by school. It was apocalypse porn.
Its hard to imagine the nuclear Sword of Damocles that hung over all our heads. Gen X parents comforted their children by showing them on a map how close they were to a major strike zone and were assured we would be vaporized in seconds during first strike. My mom did.
If you want to see what it was like inside the head of a Gen X elementary school child, I have a helpful video.
Nuclear war was CONSTANT. Movies like WARGAMES might seem quaint now, but to use they were very real. And our entertainment was saturated with it. We were never allowed to forget for an instant that we were living lives on the brink of destruction.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that we were raised with an absolute lack of faith in institutions. For many Gen Xers, who was our first president? This guy right here!
Daily life pretty much confirmed that dystopia was all we had to look forward to. I remember once in 4th grade I think we were making monster puppets. My teacher was horrified when I proudly showed her my puppet with OPEC written across its forehead.
Fast forward to 1986. Lets give the kids a little hope! Something to dream about! Let them believe they DO have a future! And what is more hopeful than space! We'll do a major event where we send a teacher into space.... yes!!!
I'll never forget it. Junior High. All the classes were huddled in the library, with the big TV on a cart rolled in so we could watch it live. There was our big Gen X hope for a bright future....
I think it was pretty much after that I just said "fuck it." Study hard? Why? Go to school? Why? Do the right thing? Why? We were all going to die. What could possibly be the point. Better by far to embrace the chaos and death and ride with it.
I was amazed went Kurt Busiek rightly pointed out the Challenger Explosion as the hinge pin of society in ASTRO CITY. I hadn't really thought about it like that, but he was absolutely right. That was the last vestiges of hope for the children of GEN X, blown up in their faces.
I'm no sociologist, but I think a key difference between Gen X and Millennials must be the Berlin Wall. From a timeline standpoint, which side were you raised on? Raised after the fall it was in a world that seemed like the dark days were over, that you WOULD have a future.
Not us though. We were promised dystopia, and BY GOD we got it! The world outside my window is almost exactly the one I was raised to expect as a young toddling tyke.
Yep, yep.... seems like things are right on target!
So thanks mom! (We were all raised on single parents, don't forget. Latchkey kids.... if I saw my mom for six hours in a single week that must have been somebody's birthday!) for preparing me properly for the world we live in! You were right all along!
I should say "Thanks TV!" Because come on.... we are Gen X kids. We know who REALLY raised us.
Ha ha! I TOTALLY forgot we had an entire love song written to TV. We love you TV! Please love us back!!!
