On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, fran sendbuehler wrote:
> Speaking of "Re: Here we go, thread #8", Randall P. Lusson hath scrawled:
>
> |> 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).
I was not suggesting that they were prophetic in any way
whatsoever. They were just being as generally antagonistic as possible.
>
> 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.
i don not think the Sex Pistols were trying to predict
anything. They just wanted to smash it all up.
>
> 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.
I agree with that. It is something that we all live with, although
many people just choose to ignore it.
>
> 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
>
I was raised a suberban teenager in the late seventies and early
eighties. I have never known teenage males of any race or economic
class, coming from any economic climate to need an excuse to fight. They
seem to have been made to do just that, and have always done so, at least
as far as my limited historical viewpoint can determine.
Randall