Exactly my point. There’s no reason we have to continue naming them, and honestly I think the phenomenon is running out of steam.
Menace II Society and a handful of other gang movies of that time capture the black genX experience.
Boiler Room is a sort of genX tribute to Wall Street.
The Matrix was produced later but tapped into the disillusion with society generally associated with genXers. Thomas A. Anderson is the definition of genX.
I doubt it. I think calling generations by their name is as big as it’s ever been. I mean, I don’t really remember people bitching about “Xers” back in the day (there was a little bit of it, mostly being referred to as “slackers,” not so much by our generational name), but now it’s Millennials this and Millennials that by a bunch of grumpy old folk. When Gen Z grows up, the oldsters will be bitching about them as well, as I’m sure with a name to boot.
I remember a metric shit-ton of bitching about (or at least talking about) Generation X back in the late 80s / early 90s. On par with or even more than has been the case with Millenials.
I also remember tons and tons of talk about Generation Y in the early 90s, before “Millenials” caught on. (That’s why I thought they were two different things.)
I don’t hear anybody talking about Generation Z anywhere. I didn’t even know that was the name until I looked it up the earlier today for this thread.
I don’t remember the term “Gen X” or “Generation X” really being popular until after Coupland’s book came out in 1991. Certainly, we didn’t talk about Gen X when I was in high until after that (I was in high school from '89 to '93). Searching Google Books from 1980 through 1989, I don’t see a single cite for “Generation X” referring to the generation (though there are two for a Billy Idol’s band Generation X). Generation X or Gen X only seems to appear in the next decade. Looking through the Chicago Trib archive, I see the same thing; the 80s references are only to the band; the first reference to the generation is in 1991.
There was talk of Generation X, and I was in high school and college when the term started becoming very popular, but my experience is that while we got a little scorn for being slackers or something like that, it’s nothing like all the jabber-jawing I hear about Millennials for the past decade.
I can’t believe I forgot to mention Beavis and Butthead Do America. I think Beavis and Butthead are a caricature of Generation X metalheads.
Edit: Wayne’s World is a good representation of them too.
Who in that movie is Gen X??
Jodie Foster isn’t usually associated with Generation X, but she is definitely a part of it. Silence of the Lambs for the win!
How about the films of Jim Jarmusch (Mystery Train, Broken Flowers, etc.) and Gus VanSant (My Own Private Idaho, Swoon)? They deal with themes and motifs not generally associated with Baby Boom directors, regardless of their actual ages. Also, Wes Anderson.
Black Hawk Down has the distinction of being the first major war movie released after 9/11, and the first to deal with themes made relevant by that (although it was made before the attack). Iron Man had a Gen X director and star. Dead Poets Society deserves a mention.
It’d be easier to count the ones who aren’t. It’s about a group of teenagers in the early 80s, which means they had to be born in the 60s because that’s how math works.
What about a movie like I, Tonya? Would that qualify?
Being an older Gen X’er, i would have to say that Fast Times at Ridgemont High best defined my era. Breakfast Club and Repo man were also pretty representative. Though I am not black or from a big city, Spike Lee’s early movies like School Daze and Do the Right Thing seemed to capture the era pretty well.
All the John Hughes movies from the 80’s & early 90’s IMHO:
Pretty in Pink
16 Candles
Weird Science
Some Kind of Wonderful
The Great Outdoors
Uncle Buck
Mr Mom
Christmas Vacation
Vacation
Ferris
and I’m sure there are many others I can’t recall at the moment.
I had never heard or read the term before seeing that book, and I’m Gen X.
Ahem. Gandhi.
Princess Bride
Most movies posted so far are from the eighties when the GenXers were in their teens, but the first thing I associate with Generation X is early 90s grunge done by twenty-somethings and listened to by twenty-somethings with a similar cultural and musical socialization. In this regard, Cameron Crowes’ Singles(along with its soundtrack) is my archetypical Gen X movie.
Heavy Metal (the movie)
In my mind, it was one of the earlier samples of dystopian/cyberpunkish scifi and fantasy as that style really began to rise in popularity.
Definitely a GenX movie to my way of thinking
Billy Madison.
No, really.