In Generation X, one of the protagonists, Andy, reflects that “we live small lives on the periphery we are marginalized and there’s a great deal in which we choose not to participate.” It’s no coincidence that Gen X’s greatest artistic legacy is probably grunge, which is all about glorifying marginalization and alienation. It was a show that most accurately portrayed my high school experience, minus the dating of Jared Leto, in part because it aired while I was actually in high school. There’s also no Facebook or instant-messaging or cyberbullying (just regular old bullying). There’s no texting Jordan leaves a note for Angela in her locker. So even though the themes of the show are in many ways timeless, today, My So-Called Life also seems like a time capsule, and not just because of the Scrunchies. Like you know what it is even,’” she says in a voice-over in a midseason episode. “People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. I vote Generation Jem.” “ Generation I Watched Saved By The Bell during its first run.” “ I’m born 77, I claim the Xers, just because it’s better than the alternative.”īut what seemed to be the best moniker for our micro-generation was a Teen Vogue editor’s suggestion: “Generation Catalano.” Jared Leto’s Jordan Catalano was a main character in the 1994-95 ABC series My So-Called Life, a show that starred Claire Danes as Angela Chase, a high school sophomore struggling with the thing that teenagers will struggle with as long as there are high schools: who she is. WHO WILL SPEAK FOR ME.” To my surprise, replies flooded in: “ I was thinking the same thing today. So, half in jest, I posted on Twitter: “I’m not Gen X and I’m not a Millennial either I’m some low-birthrate in-between thing. And, while the proud alienation of the Gen X worldview doesn’t totally sit right, we certainly don’t yearn for the Organization Man-like conformity that the Millennials seem to crave. A rebel,” will do that to a kid-but we were too young to claim Singlesand Reality Bites and Slacker as our own (though that didn’t stop me from buying the soundtracks). We identify with some of Gen X’s cynicism and suspicion of authority-watching Pee-Wee Herman proclaim, “I’m a loner, Dottie. The Carter babies-anyone born between his inauguration in January 1977 and Reagan’s in January 1981-are now 30 to 34, and, like Carter himself, the weirdly brilliant yet deeply weird born-again Christian peanut farmer, this micro-generation is hard to pin down. I was born during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a one-term administration remembered mostly for the Iran hostage crisis, the New York City blackout, and stagflation. I’m older than Noreen but younger than Mat, and neither characterization rang exactly true to me (most demographers place me and my peers at the tail end of Generation X).
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