|> It seems to me that the only reason anybody would listen to a
|> future proclamation by the Sex Pistols is that they were able to grasp a
|> hold of and represent predominate attitudes of the day. At that time
|> there was economic decline and no hope for a worthwhile life for anyone
|> not in the ruling class. The seventies were also a time when a public
|> understanding of how one's own future is directed by historical trends
|> simply beyond most people's control.
|> If you were young, from the working class, and had a worthless
|> education your future was nought. The Sex Pistols (really McClaren)
|> identified this situation and made a movement out of these feelings. The
|> youth saw nothing good ahead for themselves, their future was shit. One
|> act of defiance possible and accesible was simply to claim there was no
|> future.
Yes, though at the time they weren't recognised as prophetic... in the
sense that many of us who grew up in the seventies (I'm thinking
particularly of myself, now in my mid-thirties) were brainwashed by
societal values to believe we would have the same things as our parents (or
to at least hope for a reasonable facimilie, with appropriate
time-differences.. better car, better stereo, etc).
We were, essentially, raised to believe that the circumstances of society
could pretty much not prevent things from continuing as they were, and that
any serious attempt to change things (ie, the sexual revolution of the
sixties) was no more than a fad.
The Sex Pistols, in proclaiming that a non-educated working class person's
future was naught, (nought? dunno), they were also prediciting the end of
how things were -- envisioning a new future. Not necessarily a happy one,
however. What they predicted, essentially, was change on an order never yet
seen but from the point of view of a society in terrible turmoil. And that
turmoil is happening.
How many of you see yourselves as able or willing to have the same sort of
lives as your parents' generation? Of the three kids my parents had, only
one has turned out anywhere near where they were at, at the same stage in
his life... but for the fact he has no kids. Of my parents' generation,
only one couple in the family had no children. My grandmother, by the looks
of things, will never be a greatgrandmother, dead or alive. She's 96 and
has five non-childbearing grandchildren.
How many of you see your future as totally different from your parents, and
at the same time, totally incomprehensible to your parents? I live in
precisely the neighbourhood my father's parents worked very hard to get out
of. I want to be here... but then, I recognise that it's highly unlikely
that I will ever own a house much less a car (both financial capability and
actually not wanting either of those things). My parents' generation
strived to be consumeristic, materialistic, wanting always the thigns they
didn't have as kids. Their kids mostly dont' want the things they had,
considering all that stuff as excess baggage.
How many of you are living in circumstances appreciably different from what
your parents had at your age? (educationally, materialistically, in terms
of societal mores/structures, where you live, etc...)
All of this applies to all economic classes, essentially, though it was
drawn from the pov of someone who started out middle class and ended up
living in poverty.
Prophecy is a wonderful thing...
|> Youth willingly grabs hold of such defiant and yet vaccuous
|> proclamations without engaging it in any philosophical evalutation. To
|> me it was all a glorification of a nihilistic defiance, brought on by
|> McClarens's art school education ( involving no doubt discussions of
|> existentialist attitudes or beliefs).
|> In all, it amounted to wealth for a few record producers and did
|> nothing to help those who grabbed onto such statements in the first place.
|> We can see the same attitude in the residue that is grunge today,
|> although I hope it is starting to fade.
The nihilistic thing that pervades youth in the 90s is the same nihilism
that pervaded the 70s. Then, it was seen as totally extreme and frightening
(the riots of the early 80s in the UK, for example)... now, it seems to me
to have become merely yet another element of what we all live with, in big
cities, particularly.
Last night, suburban teenagers had a tiny fenderbender (not more than a
scratch) outside my window (a busy street running from the downtown core
north to the suburbs, one way). Four or five car loads of people got out of
their cars and started _pounding_ each other, pushing the odd one into
oncoming traffic.
These are supposedly "good" kids, out for the night with a parent's
borrowed car... go figger.
violence and economic frustration go hand in hand... that sort of
phenomenon used to be limited to the lowest echelons of society. Now, it
extends much further than that, and will continue to do so as long as
people are bored, economically deprived, or otherwise frustrated by just
not being able to do what you want in life, for whatever reason.
And no, I'm not in the depths of some depression...
fran