Jonathon I. Oake
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This article is about the life and times of an idea called "Generation
X," and, in particul- ar, it is about the articulation of this idea with
regard to contemporary visual culture. According to Jim Finnegan,
"[N]othing has been assumed to be so thoroughly incorporated, so cliché,
as the term Generation X. The common-sense consensus in both academic
popular culture studies and subcultural theory, as well as in the
'alternative' youth culture industries themselves, is that Generation X
is so passé, so universally un-hip, that even by remarking its passing
one risks marking oneself as square beyond repair." It is perhaps
because of the rank unhipness of the notion of Generation X that the
subject remains almost wholly untouched by those working under the
rubric of cultural studies. Subcultural theorists, it seems reasonable
to assume, prefer their subcultures to be far more radical, both
aesthetically and politically, than the middle-class, white-boy angst
that the term Generation X suggests.
This article therefore addresses something of a void within cultural
studies. I would suggest this void to be quite a large one, since Gen X
was one of /the/ subjects of U.S. public culture during the 1990s. My
purpose here is to partially recuperate the notion of Generation X for
cultural studies if only because I believe such a project holds valuable
lessons for those wishing to apprehend the historical conditions of
contemporary subcultural formations. My argument here is that Generation
X qua subcultural configuration, itself a construct of various layers
(mainstream, niche-targeted, and independent) of U.S. media vectors in
the 1990s, is somewhat removed from how subcultures are understood in
already-received (what might be called "traditional") versions of
subcultural theory. In essence, I suggest that Generation X is more
usefully defined as a spectatorship rather than as a group of
individuals with common practices and rituals. Through a reading of the
emblematic Gen X film /Reality Bites/, I argue that the subcultural
specificity of Gen X subjectivity revolves more around a unique
relationship with media—particularly visual media—rather than a visual
style (e.g., dress, music tastes, etc.).
Indeed, the purpose here is not to call into question the media's
representation of the Xer subculture. The function of disputing media
representations of the Xer subculture has been under way for some time
within the subculture itself, making an academic retread of this
exercise somewhat irrelevant. Moreover, this article aims to use the
example of Generation X to question many of the assumptions underpinning
such a practice. In this article I will limit myself to analyzing only
media representations of Gen Xers rather than conducting any
ethnographic research into the "authentic" Gen X subculture itself. The
purpose here is not to infer any truths about "actual" Gen Xers from
these media representations, however, but to illuminate the historical
role that media representations have had in the constitution of the
"authentic" Gen X subculture. Following theorists such as Sarah
Thornton, I argue that the Generation X subculture is thoroughly
dependent on the media—even the mainstream media—for its very identity.
Whereas past subcultural theorists have tended to dismiss mass media as
a "repressive" mechanism that aims to nullify the radical potential of
subcultures, I argue that, in the case of contemporary subcultural
formations, the media can just as easily act as a "productive"
mechanism. That *[End Page 83]* is, the media helps to generate and
proliferate subcultural identity even as it appears to be subjugating
and containing it. To demonstrate this point I look to the varying
receptions of the Gen X film /Reality Bites/. To further explore the
interconnections between the categories of "media" and "authentic
subcultural identity," I go on to give a detailed reading of the film's
narrative, which itself serves as a rumination on subcultural identity.
It is first necessary, however, to introduce the notion of Generation X.
Generation X, On-Screen and Off
Prior to 1991, no one in the U.S. mainstream media talked about
Generation X or even indicated that they knew such a category existed.
And then, almost overnight, Generation X became one of the most talked
about subjects in the U.S. media and remained so for several years. The
absurd nature of this "discovery" was, according to /Spin/ magazine
publisher Bob Guccione Jr., akin to the media "all of a sudden noticing
France" (Ritchie 9). The term /Generation X/—borrowed from Douglas
Coupland's 1991 novel of the same name—began to operate in public
culture as a catch-all label for a particular formation of problematic
youth. Generation X came to be understood as the nascent generation, the
people who would one day usurp the heroic sixties generation (the baby
boomers) and force them into retirement. Talk of a "generation gap" and
"generational warfare" ensued, and the opinion makers of the mainstream
media (many of whom were self-declared baby boomers) lined up to
question the sensibilities and values of youthful America. For example,
according to /Time/ magazine, Xers
have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the
Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder. They have few heroes, no
anthems, no style to call their own. They crave entertainment, but
their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial. They hate
yuppies, hippies and druggies. They postpone marriage because they
dread divorce. They sneer at Range Rovers, Rolexes and red
suspenders. What they hold dear are family life, local activism,
national parks, penny loafers and mountain bikes. They possess only
a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation
with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them
to fix. (Scott 56)
This quasi-anthropological approach was a popular one within the
mainstream media and quickly became the dominant modality through which
the American public was made familiar with this mysterious new entity. A
notorious article in /Newsweek/, for instance, sought to characterize
Gen X as "The Whiny Generation" that seemed to the author to possess a
presumptuous sense of entitlement. The author of this article—David
Martin, a self-identified baby boomer—explained that he was "fed up with
the ceaseless carping of a handful of spoiled, self-indulgent, overgrown
adolescents" (Martin 237). Such a tone, which constitutes Xers as
anthropological objects to be studied, is characteristic of much of the
early discourse within the mainstream media concerning Gen X. This
coverage, focused largely within the pages of North American news
magazines (/Time/, /Newsweek/, /Atlantic Monthly/, /New Republic/), is
centered very heavily, to quote the title of one such article, "On the
Character of Generation X" (Schaub 3). For instance, in 1998 the journal
/American Enterprise/ published opposing pieces titled "Gen X Is OK"
(Ericsson 38-41) and "No . . . Generation X Is Not OK" (Sacks 46-48).
Such commentary eschewed any historical, social, or economic
contextualization, and thus, according to Sherry Ortner, "one may come
to feel . . . that there is a kind of Baudrillardian process at work—a
free play of signifiers with no referent, really, at all" (416). Media
commentators often seemed to be arguing about media representations
without pausing to consider either the empirical accuracy of such
representations or—better—the function that those representations might
perform.
The purpose here, however, is not to dispute the accuracy of the
representations of the Gen X subculture within this first wave of media
hysteria. I follow Sarah Thornton in arguing that traditional approaches
within subcultural theory "tend to position the media and its associated
processes in opposition to and after the fact of subculture," when media
(including mass media as well as niche and underground media) is in fact
constitutive of subcultural identity ("Moral Panic" 189). According to
Thornton,
The idea that authentic culture is somehow outside of media and
commerce is a resilient one. . . . Scholars of youth and music
culture are among the most tenacious holders of the idea. One
explanation for this is undoubtedly that their studies reproduce the
anti-mass-media *[End Page 84]* discourses of the youth formations
they study. While youth celebrate the "underground," academics
venerate "subcultures"; where one group denounces the "commercial,"
the other criticizes "hegemony"; where one laments "selling out,"
the other theorizes "incorporation." ("Moral Panic" 176)
The effect of traditional theoretical approaches to spectacular
subcultures thus reifies a distinction between "subculture" and "media"
that I hold to be untenable in the case of Generation X. In my analysis,
the term /Generation X/ designates not an authentic subculture that
preexists its media representations but an identity that is always
already performed within mediated space. In the words of Thornton,
"[M]edia and other culture industries are there and effective right from
the start" (/Club Cultures/ 117). Indeed, the wave of media hysteria
that attacked the sensibilities of Generation X apparently had the
effect of precipitating a previously nonexistent subcultural
subjectivity for Xers. Suddenly a space was opened within the media for
a new breed of commentator such as Douglas Coupland, Richard Linklater,
and Bob Guccione Jr. to speak on behalf of Generation X.
While the commentary of the news media created one important public
space for the performance of Xer identity, I would argue that visual
media was even more important. Cinema was singularly influential in the
production and dissemination of the idea of Generation X. The film
industry (both Hollywood and independent) was enormously enthusiastic in
its willingness to represent Gen X, and the most enduring images of Xers
come from films such as /Slacker/, /Reality Bites/, and /Clerks/. I
would argue, however, that the first inklings of Generation X on-screen
came with the changing representations of children in the 1980s and
early 1990s. Prior to the 1980s, it was extremely rare to see a
Hollywood film in which the hero is a child. From then onward, however,
it became almost the norm in the biggest of Hollywood blockbusters (such
as /E.T./, /Back to the Future/, /Home Alone/, and /Ferris Bueller's Day
Off/). I would argue that the notion of generational conflict between
Gen Xers and their boomer parents and the treatment of youth in
subcultural terms (i.e., as an autonomous social formation with shared
meanings and representations) have their roots in these 1980s "kids'
flicks." Many of these films (/Ferris Bueller's Day Off/, /Home Alone/),
which were heavily marketed toward children and adolescents, enact an
opposition between savvy, competent kids and dim- witted adults. In
/Ferris Bueller's Day Off/, for instance, the adolescent protagonist
comes up against a variety of older authority figures (parents,
schoolteachers), all of whom are metonymically identified with the world
of grown-ups. It is implicit here that youth is not understood as a
primarily developmental or biological concept but as a social formation
that stands in resistance toward grown-up society. Such a narrative
strategy, I would suggest, mobilizes the same nebulous conception of
generational subjectivity that later, more recognized Xer films also
employ.
According to most media commentators, the first "authentic" cinematic
representation of the Xer came in 1991 with the release of Richard
Linklater's film /Slacker/. Released in the same year as Coupland's
/Generation X/, Linklater's small independent production—made on a
budget of just $23,000—was enormously successful. In large part, this
success might be attributed to the extraordinary amount of coverage
given to the film by various levels of media that felt that it
encapsulated the spirit of Generation X (Rushkoff 44-49). The success of
/Slacker/ was followed by what can only be described as a feeding frenzy
on the part of both major and independent U.S. production companies,
which commissioned literally hundreds of projects, trying to replicate
the success of the Linklater film. These included much of the remainder
of Linklater's seven-film oeuvre (with the singular exception of /The
Newton Boys/), which explored similar territory to /Slacker/ from a
variety of different angles, the films of Kevin Smith (/Clerks/, which
emulated /Slacker/ in terms of budget and box-office success, as well as
/Mallrats/ and /Chasing Amy/), and a variety of other films, such as
/Singles/, /The Last Days of Disco/, /Bodies, Rest and Motion/,
/Spanking the Monkey/, and other non-American examples of the genre,
such as Australia's /Love and Other Catastrophes/, Greece's /Apontes/,
and Britain's /The Low Down/. Typically, these films made use of a
quasi-ethnographic style that sought to document the lives of
contemporary white middle-class youth, prominently featured soundtracks
made up of the then-current vanguard of the alternative scene, and were
highly intertextual with regard to visual culture.
A turning point within the brief period of "Gen X fever" came with
1994's /Reality Bites/. This major studio attempt to cash in on the wave
of Gen X-marketed films of the time was seen by many outside *[End Page
85]* the mainstream media as a crass and tasteless marketing ploy and
was heavily criticized by some commentators on Gen X issues (Rushkoff
299). Following the release of /Reality Bites/, it arguably became more
difficult for the film industry to aggressively market its products
toward the youth demographic it aimed for, lest it too be accused of
cashing in on the Gen X phenomenon. Parodies of the "typical" Xer began
to emerge, for instance, in /Clueless/ (1995) in the character of Cher's
slacker brother, who idles away his time by reading Nietszche while
lazing by the pool, or the amusing interplay between Dr. Evil and his
Xer son, Scott Evil, in /Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery/
(1997). Both representations attempted to ridicule the Xer subculture
according to the popular image that had been disseminated through the
media. Generation X, according to this image, was self-absorbed,
pretentious, and whiny.
While a comprehensive survey of the media representations of the Xer
subculture is scarcely possible here, I wish to draw attention to one
aspect in particular within this coverage. I want to suggest here that,
in the final analysis, the term /Generation X/ always seems to designate
something in the order of spectatorship. In other words, being Gen X has
something fundamentally to do with being a spectator in a way that being
a baby boomer, for instance, does not. To take a few examples from the
debate over the generation gap, conservative commentators such as Allan
Bloom and Peter Sacks decry the ruinous effect TV has had on young
minds. With regard to the democratic process, political lobby groups
such as Lead or Leave and Third Millennium claim that Generation Xers
have been reduced to the status of spectators through their own cynicism
and apathy. In polemical, pro-Gen X tracts such as Douglas Rushkoff's
/GenX Reader/, Xers are also rendered as spectators in that they are
forced to stand by and watch as baby boomers monopolize public life.
Even the supposed speech codes of Gen Xers position them as spectators.
According to linguist Raymond Gozzi Jr., "[T]he main linguistic marker
of an X'er is the use of the word 'like.' I have wondered about this
verbal tic, and have yet to see a satisfactory explanation of it in
print. Here's my stab at it: 'like' is used to set a stage, a scene,
like television." Furthermore, in the wave of Gen X-targeted films I
mentioned earlier, the category of Gen X is also tethered to the
category of spectatorship. For example, consider the spectatorship of
the Xer characters in /Reality Bites/ who are perpetually watching and
talking about film, TV, and advertising, the lengthy discourses on /Star
Wars/, pornography, and trashy B-movies by the characters in /Clerks/
(1994), and the relentless intertextuality and referencing of popular
culture in contemporary films about—or targeted toward—youth and youth
culture.
By way of contrast, I would suggest that baby boomer
identity—representing the hegemonic regime of taste against which
Generation X is measured—is associated far more with "doing" than with
"watching." That is, boomer identity is correlated more with
/participation/ in historical events (such as Woodstock and anti-Vietnam
War demonstrations) than with standing back and watching (Howe and
Strauss). Throughout the media discourse on the baby boom generation
(particularly in the late 1980s and 1990s, when boomers matured into the
preeminent social class in America), boomers' identity is seen to hinge
on metaphors of action and achievement. Boomers are constructed as the
prime movers of recent American history—as "reformers," "activists," and
even "revolutionaries." To underscore this point, /Time/ magazine said
of the boomers that "they believe in J.F.D.I.—just frigging do it"
(Kunen 29).
Even the boomer touchstones that /are/ spectatorial in nature—for
instance, the 1969 moon landing, as experienced through the TV set—are
inscribed as quite exceptional instances of a peculiarly "active"
spectatorship. That is, the mass "act" of spectatorship becomes an
historical event in itself, such that people remember where they were
when they saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, as if, in this particular
instance, "watching" was tantamount to "participating." For instance,
consider a nostalgic magazine article, written at the time of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the moon landing, in which the author
reminisces about how he drove his family to view the launch of /Apollo
11/. Titled "One Small Drive," the article conflates the family's act of
spectatorship with the event itself, such that family members are
reinscribed as participants in history (Franzen). At the conclusion of
the article this becomes explicit—the author recalls that, after viewing
the shuttle launch, the family made sure that they "followed closely on
television the spaceship's journey. We were a part of it now" (Franzen 37).
Thus, the deviance of Xer subcultural subjectivity lies in its perverse
privileging of "watching" over "doing." While baby boomers are
mythologized as those who made history, Xer identity is presided over by
the trope *[End Page 86]* of the "slacker": the indolent, apathetic,
couch-dwelling TV addict. Another piece written around the time of the
moon landing anniversary makes this point abundantly clear. Next to a
grainy image from the moon landing, the author notes that "when those
over 40 look at it, they hear the words 'The Eagle has landed.' But when
twentysomethings look at it, they hear the electric chords that
accompany the image when MTV goes to station identification. If you
slept through the moonwalk in your cradle and grew up with Star Wars,
it's possible that the movie was as impressive to you as Apollo 11 was
to your parents" (Adato 8). While boomers supposedly identify with the
"actual historical event" signified by the image, Xers recall only the
appropriation of this image by throwaway entertainment media. Likewise,
the article seems to detect something perverse about Xers relating to
/Star Wars/—mere trivial entertainment—in the same way that their
parents relate to the "actual historical event" of the moon landing. The
implication seems to be that, for Generation X, the categories of
"media" and "reality" have become fatally confused, inverted, or perhaps
dissolved altogether.
Generation X as a Spectatorial Subculture
Peter Sacks, author of /Generation X Goes to College/, recounts a scene
from the action movie /Crimson Tide/ (1995), suggesting it functions as
an allegory for some aspect of Generation X's character. While this
theory is open to question, I would suggest that the scene—written,
incidentally, by Quentin Tarantino, who was drafted in by the movie's
producers to add flourishes of genuine Xer dialogue—succinctly captures
the importance of the discursive link between Gen X subcultural identity
and the trope of the spectator. Sacks recounts the scene thus:
Picture this: the fate of the Earth depends on a young radio
technician re-establishing the submarine's communication with the
outside world. Denzel Washington (the sub's heroic executive officer
who challenges the authority of "This is the Captain" Gene Hackman),
employs the following, quintessential postmodern tactic. In order to
make the consequences of not fixing the radio "real" for the
technician, Denzel tells the young man to think of him (Denzel) as
Captain Kirk of the Starship /Enterprise/, and pretend that Kirk has
given him an order to fix the radio, or else billions of people will
die. Of course, the young man who watched /Star Trek/ growing up can
fully relate to the fictional image of Captain Kirk a lot more than
to his own executive officer and the all-too-real consequences of
failure. And so the technician hops to it, sweating profusely, gets
that damned radio fixed, and the world is saved. (/Generation X Goes
to College/ 119)
In this example, it is the young man's spectatorship, in the guise of an
implied enthusiasm for /Star Trek/, that allows him to apprehend his
"real" situation. The implication, of course, is that the Xer
technician—and, by extension, Generation X as a whole—is more
comfortable dealing with mediated "fantasy" than with "reality." He must
refer to his own spectatorship—visualize himself within the
mise-en-scène of a /Star Trek/ episode—in order to apprehend his
immediate reality. Such a notion reverses the commonsense assumption
that rigidly opposes spectatorship to reality—that is, the notion of a
cinematic or televisual spectator as one who, by definition, escapes
reality and indulges in fantasy. For the technician, spectatorship
emerges not as something that defers or resists reality but as something
on which reality—indeed, the fate of humankind—fundamentally depends.
Moreover, while spectatorship is usually conceived of as something that
inhibits action, in this instance it is the spectatorship of the Xer
technician that releases him from paralysis and allows him to perform
his job.
In the final analysis, therefore, Gen X spectatorship saves the day.
Before that, however, it emerges as a pathological trait that the canny
Denzel Washington character must negotiate. Likewise, in the mainstream
media discourse on Gen X, the particular set of viewing practices I have
designated here as Gen X spectatorship are often marked as pathological,
in contrast to a normative mode of watching that is usually associated
with the recent historical past. Gen Xers are variously shown to lack
the proper affective response to what they watch, fail to distinguish
between good and bad viewing, spend too much time as spectators rather
than as actors, are excessively cynical in their attitude to what they
watch (yet are also too easily seduced by what they watch), and rely
excessively on what they watch rather than what they experience. Peter
Sacks's complaint about his Xer students typifies the characterization
of Gen X spectatorship as deviant: "I quickly found that my *[End Page
87]* students, who had learned to count and spell from Big Bird and
Grover, didn't want me—a real live mortal—for a teacher. They wanted an
entertainer. They preferred a video image to flesh-and-blood reality. I
couldn't compete with the noisy, glitzy spectacle of sounds and images
that my students had grown used to in popular culture" ("No . . .
Generation X Is Not Ok" 46). The assumption common to both /Crimson
Tide/ and Peter Sacks is the notion that Gen X spectatorship functions
according to an alternative, alien logic. For instance, following the
episode of mass murder at Columbine High School by Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold, voices in the media isolated the problem in the perverse
spectatorial practices of contemporary white middle-class youth. It was
said that Gen Xers Harris and Klebold were pathologically absorbed in
the violent imagery of films and video games to the point where they
could not distinguish between fantasy and reality. Conservative journal
the /National Review/ typified the discourse on Gen X spectatorship when
it suggested, apropos the Columbine massacre, that the standard Xer
"knows how to tune in almost anything projected on a two-dimensional
screen, and tune out almost everything real. The default setting on
late-model adolescents is 'entertain me.' . . . It's easy to slip into
an I-am-watching-myself-on-television trance, to drift away from the
here and now, to freeze out the suffering of your schoolmates . . . if
you've had enough practice flipping the remote control" (Long). If
spectatorship represents the terrain on which Generation X is attacked,
it is also the ground from which defenses have been launched. In the
many recent pro-Gen X and proyouth films marketed toward a younger
demographic, young characters are often marked by an innate visual
literacy—an ability to read advertising, TV, and film texts. This
literacy is lacking in their elders, who emerge, comparatively speaking,
as credulous and dim-witted consumers of visual texts. In /Home Alone/,
for instance, the child-hero Kevin uses then-current 1980s technology
such as the VCR and tape deck to successfully dupe the adult criminals
trying to gain entry to his house. In /Ferris Bueller's Day Off/ the
adolescent protagonist employs a similar scheme by using his synthesizer
to fool his parents into thinking he is lying sick in bed. Likewise, in
/Reality Bites/ the cultural tastes of the young Gen X character Lelaina
are favorably contrasted with the awful TV show on which she works and
that is targeted toward much older viewers. In order to see how the
competing discourses of "media" and "reality" are negotiated within Gen
X subjectivity, I wish to focus on a piece of cinema now inexorably tied
with the notion of Gen X—/Reality Bites/.
Media and Reality in /Reality Bites/
Released in 1994, /Reality Bites/—directed by Ben Stiller—was a
box-office success in a period that saw the release of a number of
notable films arranged around the idea of "youth" (albeit in very
different manners), including Amy Heckerling's /Clueless/ (1995), Larry
Clark's /Kids/ (1995), and Kevin Smith's /Clerks/ (1994). As well as
being a commercial success, the mainstream media overwhelmingly declared
it to be an artistic one. Released as it was in the midst of media
excitement over the idea of Generation X, many felt it was an accurate
document of the Gen X subculture. According to Desson Howe, reviewing
the film for the /Washington Post/, "/Reality Bites/ sings, jokes and
dances to the culture of the so-called post-baby boomer. . . . By aiming
specifically—and accurately—at characters in their twenties, [the
filmmakers] achieve something even greater: They encapsulate an era" (72).
By way of contrast to the U.S. mainstream media, the nominally
"underground" media detested the film for its attempt to commercialize
the Gen X zeitgeist. According to one reviewer, "[A]ll I've heard about
this film lead [/sic/] me to believe it would be some sort of anthem to
those 'coming of age' in the late 80s/early 90s. Well that's not what it
was to me. My guess is that it's what someone older might /think/ that
anthem should be like. . . . And if this film were my reality, I'd agree
that it bites" (Pali). For the voices of U.S. alternative niche media,
/Reality Bites/ marked the recuperation into the mainstream of the
alternative aesthetic of more "authentic" cultural artifacts. Chuck
Kleinhans, for instance, viewed "the star-powered /Reality Bites/" as a
"less imaginative, less politically committed, and less interesting
'Hollywood copycat' of /Slacker/" (324). Indeed, the cinema of
Generation X walked a fine line between being seen in the alternative
and/or youth media as either authentic or simply a marketing ploy. The
low-budget independent films /Clerks/ and /Slacker/ were given the nod
as having "cred" (i.e., credibility), while the big-budget major-studio
/Reality Bites/ was dismissed (Vincenti; Pali). Indeed, the theme of
"cred" was a strong one also /within/ *[End Page 88]* Gen X visual and
music culture. In /Reality Bites/ the main character's principal concern
is whether or not she is "selling out" by having her documentary aired
on a crass MTV-style channel, while Cameron Crowe's /Singles/ (1992)
foregrounds the cred-obsessed anguish of an alternative musician.
Likewise, Richard Linklater's /SubUrbia/ (1997) unfolds as a
philosophical dialogue on the implications of success when a "sell-out"
musician returns to his home town to visit his old school friends. The
dialectic of "popularity" and "authenticity" (interchangeable with
"media" and "reality," respectively) is indeed a popular one within the
cinematic representations of Gen X. In many cases the Xer protagonist
flirts with the temptation of popularity, only to return, by the end of
the film, to the moral high ground of impoverished authenticity.
Significantly, I would suggest, the characters who represent the morally
dangerous threat of inauthenticity—for instance, Ben Stiller's TV
executive in /Reality Bites/ and the sell-out musician in
/SubUrbia/—always seem to be representatives of the media and/or
entertainment industries. More will be said later on this dialectic
between "media" and "authenticity," particularly in its significance to
/Reality Bites/.
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In Reality Bites (Universal Pictures), valedictorian Lelaina
Pierce (Winona Ryder) gives a pro-Generation X speech. <53.1oake_fig01.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 1*
In /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures), valedictorian Lelaina Pierce
(Winona Ryder) gives a pro-Generation X speech.
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The film itself concerns the lives of four twenty-something young adults
living in Houston, Texas (which, along with Seattle, was considered a
nucleus of alternative youth subcultures at the time). The film starts
right after the four graduate from college and tracks their attempts to
either insert themselves into or desperately evade the "grown-up" world
of full-time employment. The first thing one notices about the film—and
which many have noticed—is the degree to which it ardently attempts to
address itself to the eighteen-to-twenty-five demographic, according to
the readily available set of markers and codes with which the media had
recently begun to designate that group. In the opening scene, set at a
college graduation ceremony, valedictorian Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder)
delivers a speech that seems to have come straight out of a pro-Gen X
tract like /The GenX Reader/ or /Revolution X/. Attacking "the
generation that came before us" (i.e., baby boomers), Lelaina defiantly
announces that members of "her generation" aren't interested in working
eighty-hour weeks so they can afford to buy BMWs. The use of such
inflammatory rhetoric clearly signals the film's aspiration—identical to
the aspiration of books like /The GenX Reader/—to simultaneously speak
for and produce a constituency called Generation X.
The aesthetic vocabulary of /Reality Bites/ relies on a veritable
archive of visual and media culture. The film attempts to address a Gen
X spectator by positioning its assumed audience in relation to the flood
of pop-culture reference points that dominate much of the film—for
instance, an entire scene written around the forty-ounce Big Gulp. In
the words of Bill Salzmann, *"*[/Reality Bites/ Director, Ben] Stiller
assumes an audience which has been well-trained by the media. The
privileged viewer must relate to the Xer identity and be accustomed to
symbolic shorthand of film and advertising. . . . 'Getting' /Reality
Bites/ represents a culmination of years of media training."
My contention here is that this particular positionality with regard to
popular/visual/media culture—affected by "years of media training" and
enacted within /Reality Bites/—is not simply an attribute to be lazily
ascribed to "actual" Gen Xers but defines the term as such. According to
traditional subcultural theory, youth subcultures differentiate
themselves from the hegemonic culture through their organization of
"spectacle"—that is, the way in which they deploy visual markers
constitutive of a recognizable subcultural "style." However, in a
society that, as Guy Debord has famously argued, is itself organized as
spectacle, I follow commentators such as Simon Frith and Celia Lury in
arguing that youth subculture in general—even the category of "youth"
itself—might be usefully redefined as "spectatorship" rather than as
*[End Page 89]* "spectacle." Following this argument, the category of
"youth" may have come to designate not a collection of actually existing
subjects but a set of (viewing) practices.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
After graduation, the group of friends sing 'Conjunction Junction' on a
rooftop in Reality Bites (Universal Pictures). <53.1oake_fig02.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 2*
After graduation, the group of friends sing "Conjunction Junction" on a
rooftop in /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For David Cannon, what gives Generation X its specificity is the fact
that its identity coagulates around a particular experience of popular
culture in a media-saturated world. Cannon writes, "[D]escribed by some
as the first global generation, they are joined together not by a common
ideology but rather a sophisticated knowledge of consumer products" (2).
Celia Lury suggests, "In this [media-saturated] environment, young
people are principally defined as an audience." Moreover, "/it is the
distinctive activities of young people as members of an audience that
marks them out as young/" (Lury 218, emphasis added). Following such an
argument to its logical conclusions, Simon Frith, in the context of an
analysis of U.K. television programming in the 1980s, has declared that
"[i]n this model 'youth' became a category constructed by TV itself,
with no other referent: those people of whatever age or circumstances
who watched 'youth' programmes became youth. 'Youth,' in this account,
no longer describes a particular type of viewer, who is attracted to a
particular type of program but, rather, describes an attitude, /a
particular type ofviewing behaviour/" (75, emphasis added). Such a
critical move signals a shift away from viewing "youth" (or, in my
analysis, Generation X) as a concrete collection of individuals and more
as a performative subjectivity, that is, a category of historically
enabled behavioral norms, linked in this case to visual culture.
According to J. P. Telotte, cult-film spectators differentiate
themselves from the mainstream through acts of film spectatorship as
performance. For Telotte, the cult is "a longing to /express/ the self,
to express difference" (12). According to Brett Farmer, who extends the
description to include gay spectatorship, this type of spectatorship
might be described as "identificatory performativity," that is, a
spectatorship that is "essentially performative in nature" and is "a
practice through which the cultist performs his or her 'difference' from
the mainstream" (29). What is theoretically crucial here is that through
the act of spectatorship, cult spectators /produce/ as well as /express/
their difference. To put it another way, cult spectators go to cult
films because they are cult spectators, and yet they are cult spectators
because they go to cult films. Cult and/or gay spectators thus /rely/ on
cult films for their very identity, since their identity cannot be
constituted in isolation from the texts that define it.
For Telotte and Farmer, "identificatory performativity" describes cult
and gay spectatorships, respectively. I want to suggest that it also
holds for the spectatorial formation of the Gen X subculture. For this
reason, I define *[End Page 90]* Generation X /as/ a spectatorship—that
is, as the point of contact between subjects and texts. Gen X
spectatorship, I would argue, marks the historical reification of
spectatorship to the level of subjectivity. The characters in /Reality
Bites/, I would argue, make this theoretical proposition perfectly
apparent—even when they are not participating in actual spectatorship,
they are still defined by the trope of the "spectator" or, in other
words, by their relationship to contemporary media culture.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Reality Bites (Universal Pictures) the friends sit around
talking about the TV show Good Times. <53.1oake_fig03.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 3*
In /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures) the friends sit around talking
about the TV show Good Times.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to /Reality Bites/, being part of Generation X is seen to
fundamentally hinge upon performing a particular spectatorial
relationship toward popular culture. At the most manifest level, the
four main Gen X characters—Troy, Lelaina, Vicki, and Sammy—are shown to
be constantly watching TV. Moreover, even when they are not actively
watching TV, they always seem to be somehow engaged by their
spectatorship. Their conversation and other social interaction rely to a
remarkable extent upon references to TV, film, and advertising. In the
opening scene, the four main characters happily sing the 1970s
children's TV theme song "Conjunction Junction," and when Troy moves in
with the other characters, he is welcomed by new flatmates aping the
rhetoric of advertising: "Welcome to the maxi pad with new dry weave. It
actually pulls moisture away from you." Douglas Coupland calls this
tendency "O'Propriation," that is, "the inclusion of advertising,
packaging, and entertainment jargon in everyday speech for ironic and/or
comic effect" (107).
Within the logic of /Reality Bites/, I would suggest that it is the
specificity of this relationship between the subject and consumer
culture that constitutes the subject as being of Generation X. In one
important scene, several of the main characters, along with sundry
friends, are grouped in the lounge room of their share-house, fondly
reminiscing about old episodes of U.S. TV sitcom /Good Times/ with an
attitude that is simultaneously ironic and mocking yet also deeply
nostalgic and affectionate. Michael Grates (director Ben Stiller), a
wealthy TV executive (in other words, a yuppie), enters the room and
attempts to participate in the conversation but clumsily fails to
exhibit the right attitude of ironic disattachment. The "authentic" Xers
in the room stare blankly at him, making it clear that he "doesn't get
it"—in other words, that he fails to participate fully in the
spectatorial practices of the Gen X subculture. Later in the film,
Michael himself acknowledges this fact, noting that he "do[es]n't know
the secret handshake" of Xer coolness.
Indeed, throughout the film, the character of Michael Grates constantly
marks the point of comparison for the more privileged mode of engagement
with visual culture demonstrated by the Gen X characters. When Michael
is attempting to woo Lelaina, he plays the desperately "uncool" 1970s
album /Frampton Comes Alive/ by *[End Page 91]* Peter Frampton, and when
he is trying to give confidence to Lelaina he says, with absurd
earnestness, "Who's the boss, huh? Tony Danza? No. It's you." Michael's
stance toward popular culture is pictured as too earnest and lacking in
irony, as in his nerdy, fetishistic attitude toward /Planet of the Apes/
paraphernalia. While he earnestly invests too much in popular culture,
however, he simultaneously fails to invest enough. When Lelaina trusts
him with her earnest and heartfelt video documentary of her friends, he
treats it with disdain. Indeed, his position as a TV executive marks him
as someone who regards pop culture as a site of profit making rather
than a source of joy, as it frequently is for the Gen X characters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Reality Bites (Universal Pictures), Michael admits to Troy
(Ethan Hawke) that he does not <53.1oake_fig04.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 4*
In /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures), Michael admits to Troy (Ethan
Hawke) that he does not "get it."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most often, the yuppie character is unfavorably compared to Ethan
Hawke's "slacker" character of Troy, who represents a substitute for
Generation X in general. Troy's brand of nonchalant, intellectual yet
lowbrow cynicism is constantly placed in opposition to Michael's earnest
demeanor. Troy is presented as a young man of great intellect (sitting
in a coffee shop, he casually flicks through Heidegger's /Being and
Time/), yet who, having dropped out of his philosophy course, is
paralyzed by apathy and cynicism. As an "authentic" youth subcultural
figure (he plays in an alternative rock band called Hey That's My Bike),
he emerges as the ultimate victim of the hegemonic recuperation and
incorporation accomplished by yuppie MTV executives like Michael. Troy's
particular brand of spectatorship positions him as an avid, obsessive
lover of pop culture yet who—unlike Michael—is intellectually "above"
it. To again quote from Douglas Coupland, Troy's spectatorial activities
show him to be an aficionado of "Recreational Slumming: The practice of
participating in recreational activities of a class one perceives as
lower than one's own" (113).
Constantly lounging on the couch, Troy seems to gaze on the entire world
as if it were a TV show, opting to watch—and make sarcastic
comments—rather than participate. Even though, for much of the film, his
father is perilously close to death as a result of prostate cancer, Troy
can scarcely muster the appropriate affective commitment—the
personification of what Fredric Jameson has termed "the waning of
affect" in postmodern culture (11). Troy qua Generation X takes the
model of spectatorship appropriate for watching a vulgar TV show and
turns it into a way of being-in-the-world, of relating to reality as
such. For Troy's hypercynical spectatorial posture, social reality is so
penetrated by "artificial" media and consumerism that no privileged
ground exists from which to distinguish between the two. Troy's mode of
spectatorship suggests that contemporary social reality may perversely
depend on a prior reference to a cinematic or televisual modality in
order to constitute itself. In other words, reality is a product of
spectatorship. Timothy Murray in /Like a Film/ has argued this precise
*[End Page 92]* point, suggesting that in the late twentieth century the
"cinematic" is a privileged mode through which reality is apprehended—it
is reality itself that is "like a film," hence the title of the book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lelaina documents her friends' lives with her video camera in Reality
Bites (Universal Pictures). <53.1oake_fig05.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 5*
Lelaina documents her friends' lives with her video camera in /Reality
Bites/ (Universal Pictures).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
An example of conspicuous product placement in Reality Bites
(Universal Pictures). <53.1oake_fig06.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 6*
An example of conspicuous product placement in /Reality Bites/
(Universal Pictures).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, I would argue that the narrative of /Reality Bites/ is
structured by a constant dialectical movement between the two pillars of
"reality" and "media." This tension only appears to resolve itself at
the conclusion of the film. While mainstream media accounts of
Generation X tend to denigrate Xers for their perverse attachment to
fantasy instead of reality, in /Reality Bites/ the hierarchy implicit in
this critique is occasionally reversed. Fantasy often appears to be
ranked above reality, hence the title of the film ("reality bites" can
be translated as "reality sucks"). Likewise, when Lelaina is sacked from
her job, she asks, "Why can't things just go back to normal at the end
of the half hour, like on /The Brady Bunch/?" Reality is compared to
mediated fantasy and is found to be deficient. A fundamental continuity
between reality and mediated fantasy is hinted at, whereby the former
emerges as merely a degraded subset of the latter.
At some points in the film, mediated fantasy emerges as a support or
guarantee of reality. Throughout the film, the action is interspersed
with clips from the video documentary Lelaina is making about her circle
of friends. Whenever something shocking or significant (i.e., "real")
happens in their lives, Lelaina immediately produces her video camera,
and the film switches to handheld camera mode. This sudden change
immediately makes the viewer acutely aware of the presence of the
camera. Far from undermining the impression of reality, however, it
merely serves to underscore the "reality" of what is occurring
on-screen. In this instance, reality seems perversely to rely on the
exaggerated framing effect of the cinematic or televisual mode.
Likewise, director Ben Stiller has argued that the innumerable product
placements in the film actually enhance and sustain its "reality"
effect. Multitudes of consumer items make prominent appearances, from
Snickers, to BMW, to Camel cigarettes, to NutraSweet. As one Internet
critic sarcastically remarked of the extensive use of product placements
within /Reality Bites/, "Save your money on this one. You might need it
to go shopping" (Vincenti). When product placement began in the 1950s,
TV shows such as /I Love Lucy/ would grind to a halt while Lucille Ball
heaped praise on a washing powder or cigarette brand. Such a clumsy
device no doubt had the consequence of rupturing the reality effect of
the show. With regard to /Reality Bites,/ however, director Stiller
argues, no doubt correctly, that if he had either avoided using consumer
products altogether or else used fictional consumer products, this would
have ruptured the reality effect for his intended viewers, who are
bombarded with thousands of mediated brand images every day (Salzmann).
At other points in /Reality Bites/, however, the category of "media"
emerges not as a support of reality but as that which thwarts or
prevents reality from fully coming into being. For instance, the
narrative is driven by the unspoken romantic bond between Lelaina and
Troy. *[End Page 93]* However, whenever it threatens to come to the
surface and become real, one of the characters (usually Troy) causes it
to dissipate with a sarcastic comment, usually drawn from media
discourse. At one point he cradles Lelaina's face in his hands, stares
into her eyes, and says, "I am really in love with you." He then begins
to giggle, obviously amused by the words he has just spoken, which seem
to have come from a tacky TV soap opera. Jedediah Purdy in /For Common
Things/ describes this uniquely contemporary experience in the following
way: "[W]e can have no intimate moment, no private words of affection,
empathy, or rebuke that we have not seen pronounced on a thirty-foot
screen before an audience of hundreds. . . . They are superficial, they
belong to other people and other purposes; they are not ours" (12).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Reality Bites (Universal Pictures), Troy tells Lelaina that he
loves her, then begins to laugh. <53.1oake_fig07.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 7*
In /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures), Troy tells Lelaina that he
loves her, then begins to laugh.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, the affective charge of Troy's words is immediately thwarted
by his calculated self-mockery. Douglas Coupland has given this
apparently universal Gen X tendency the name "Derision Preemption," that
is, "[a] life-style tactic; the refusal to go out on any sort of
emotional limb so as to avoid mockery from peers" (150). The characters
of /Reality Bites/—most especially the cynical slacker, Troy—employ
derision preemption as a matter of course. When asked to describe his
delight when Vicki is promoted, Troy stares blankly and drawls, "I'm
bursting with fruit flavor," and when Lelaina bashfully admits that her
career goal is, ultimately, to "make a difference in people's lives,"
Troy replies that he "would like to buy them all a Coke."
Spectatorship thus often emerges as that which stops something from
happening, stops reality from fully emerging, stops anything from being
"really real." In the case of Troy and Lelaina, sarcasm and
self-referentiality obstruct the natural trajectory of desire for the
majority of the film. Even when Troy says directly to Lelaina, "I am
really in love with you," there always lingers the suspicion that he is
merely quoting with irony from some cheesy media source. Indeed, there
is always something impeding the kind of Habermasian ideal speech
situation in which each subject can fully articulate his or her desire,
and this "something" is always metonymically related to a phony and
artificial consumer culture in which the subjects are embedded. At the
end of the film, however, the dialectical tension between reality and
media magically resolves itself in classical Hollywood tradition. Troy's
father dies, and when he returns from the funeral, his speech is
unusually earnest, direct, and free of derision preemption. He and
Lelaina are suddenly able to articulate their desire directly and
without impediment. Indeed, the scene is notable for the fact that it is
the quietest one in the entire film and that it is one of only a handful
of scenes set outside. While the other such scenes are set in the
bustling cityscape, Troy and Lelaina's earnest conversation takes place
near trees and grass, far away—geographically and conceptually—from the
TV set and friends discussing TV shows and hence, to borrow from Don
DeLillo, far from the white noise of media culture that otherwise
derails and overwhelms their communication.
A number of film critics have suggested that the resolution of /Reality
Bites/ renders the film an artistic failure. The use of the heterosexual
romance as a device for resolving the narrative gives the film a
fundamental continuity with the earliest examples of the classical
Hollywood style, heavily ironic for a film that clearly aspires to
construct a sense of "difference" from mainstream sensibilities and also
one that assumes spectators to be as media savvy as /Reality Bites/
does. As one disappointed Internet critic declared, "[I]t lacks any
semblance of originality. Beneath a thin veneer of style lie buried all
the old cliches and formulas of typical romantic comedies"
(Berardinelli). By comparison to a film like /Slacker/, which refuses
any notion of orthodox narrative, or /Clerks/, in which irony sabotages
every attempt at narrative closure, /Reality Bites/ appears remarkably
conventional and conservative. *[End Page 94]*
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Lelania and Troy come togetherin Reality Bites (Universal
Pictures). <53.1oake_fig08.html>
Click for larger view *Figure 8*
Lelania and Troy come togetherin /Reality Bites/ (Universal Pictures).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, I also would locate the much-discussed "failure" of /Reality
Bites/ in the penultimate scene when Troy and Lelaina declare their
love; by enacting a fantasy of life without mediation, the film
sabotages its own intention to authentically represent Generation X. It
ultimately arrives at an endorsement of the mainstream conservative
position, which holds that Xers can and should recant their "choice" of
pathological spectatorship and enter into the Real World (represented in
this instance by a heterosexual relationship). Indeed, this logic is
inscribed into the very narrative. When the film activates the fantasy
of life without mediation by disembedding the narrative from visual
culture and the spectatorial relationship, it suddenly loses its
specificity as being a Gen X film. Thus, in the penultimate scene, when
Troy and Lelaina finally surpass irony and sarcasm and become a couple
in love, it is clear that they have in some sense become something other
than Gen Xers: mature adults, model citizens, heteronormative hegemonic
subjects. In the final scene, Lelaina and Troy are seen lounging in
their home, and, for the first time in the film, the TV is conspicuously
switched off and the lounge room is not clogged up with friends
discussing pop culture trivia. Instead, they are the model of
middle-class, suburban-dwelling normativity, and their radical Gen X
days are clearly behind them. I take this as an illustration of my
argument that Gen X subcultural identity can be apprehended as a
spectatorship. To put it simply, when the manifestations of
spectatorship are removed from Troy and Lelaina's lives, they palpably
cease to resemble Gen Xers. /Reality Bites/ thus arrives at something of
an endorsement of the mainstream media's denigration of Generation X as
preferring fantasy to the Real World. By the end of the movie, it seems
implicit that Troy and Lelaina have transcended Generation X—matured—and
taken a dose of reality. *[End Page 95]*
Conclusion
According to Jim Collins, the 1990s saw the emergence of two new genres
of Hollywood cinema: "eclectic irony" and the "new sincerity" (276). For
Collins, the former category (for instance, /Pulp Fiction/ and /Austin
Powers/) involves layers upon layers of referentiality and "ironic
hybridization," while the latter category (for instance, /Dances with
Wolves/ and /Field of Dreams/) "rejects any form of irony in its
sanctimonious pursuit of lost purity" (276). I would suggest that
/Reality Bites/ marks the point where Collins's two categories come
together—where self-referentiality and irony are mobilized toward
achieving lost purity. That is, although the film employs endless
self-referentiality and irony, diegetically embedded as it is within
contemporary media society, this environment provides the necessary
point from which the Gen X characters yearn for something else—a place
where the sarcasm, irony, cynicism, and apathy of contemporary consumer
society may disappear and return them to their "lost purity." However,
as my reading of the film demonstrates, such a critical move is not
without risks. When Troy and Lelaina reach out for this lost purity,
they cannot do so with their Gen X identity still intact.
The narrative of the film functions as an allegory for those who prefer
their subcultures to be far removed from mediation and incorporation. As
my reading of the film demonstrates, once mediation is removed,
subcultural identity collapses. To treat Gen X subcultural identity as
performative—in other words, as a set of spectatorial practices—is to
recognize the inescapable fact that mediation is always already at play
in the constitution of contemporary subcultural identity. While some
commentators complained about the imposition upon an "authentic"
Generation X subculture that /Reality Bites/ represented, it should be
remembered that the category of Generation X effectively did not exist
prior to /Reality Bites/. It was the film itself that provided the
occasion for the performance of Gen X identity. While commentators
clamored to declare /Reality Bites/'s representation of Gen X as wrong,
inaccurate, and irrelevant to the experience of "actual" Gen Xers, the
film has tellingly remained a strong historical reference point for
those attempting to delineate Xer identity, irrespective of whether they
agree or disagree with the film's representations. The question of
representational accuracy—of the "real" Gen X subculture versus its
"artificial" representations—thus seems somewhat beside the point once
it becomes clear that /Reality Bites/ is, in effect, historically
/constitutive/ of Gen X identity rather than a mere document. The
boundaries between "media" and "reality" are, in this instance,
profoundly fuzzy.
My argument here has been that to approach Generation X as a
spectatorship is to approach it not as an already constituted identity
but as the interface between "subject" and "text." A critical move such
as this acknowledges the presence of mediation in contemporary
subcultural formations and thus moves beyond the tendency within much
subcultural theory to view media incorporation as inherently destructive
of subcultures. My account of the media representations of Generation X
helps to counter this approach by suggesting that media—even mass
media—performs the crucial function of opening a space for subcultures
to emerge. Thus, while Generation X started as a pure product of media
discourse, the Gen X media craze created a space for more "authentic"
versions of Xer subcultural identity to emerge. While I have focused on
media representations alone, I believe further work on the Gen X
subculture needs to incorporate different approaches. I believe, for
instance, that ethnographic research should be conducted in order to
determine the way in which those targeted by media representations—that
is, "actual" Gen Xers, young people in general—approach the version of
subcultural identity proliferated through the media. The point here is
not to privilege actually existing subcultures over their media
representations but to apprehend the way in which media representations
are put to use by their "targets" and turned into new identities, in
other words, the way in which a "false" and "phony" media-constructed
identity is received and even turned against itself into something
authentic.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/Jonathon I. Oake <#top>/ is a Ph.D. candidate and tutor in the
Department of English at the University of Melbourne. His
soon-to-be-completed doctoral dissertation concerns the role played by
spectatorship and visual culture within contemporary media debates over
youth identity.
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