I was watching a commercial for something-or-other, and during the ad, in response to a question asked in voice-over, one of the actors turns to the camera and smirks, ‘Oh, I GOT attitude!’ (What we as a culture mean by’ attitude’, I think, is an expression of somewhat aggressive superiority). He was, of course, dressed up to appeal to that all-important demographic of males aged 12-18.
My question is this: Attitude is being used, like sex, to sell almost everything from cars to soft drinks. Does the admiration of ‘attitude’ increase intolerance and/or ignorance? And why does some doughy, middle-class mid-westerner in an SUV think he or she is entitled to any kind of attitude? Usaully, someone who’s really done something remarkable deserves an attitude. That guy who took down that shark in Florida after it bit off his nephew’s arm? HE can have an attitude. Senator John McCain can have an attitude. Most of us don’t deserve to have any sort of an attitude.
Well, “attitude” has become a sort of opposite to “boring”. People don’t like “boring”. “Boring” is boring. So they go with not-boring, which is “attitude”.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that one can actually HAVE “attitude” just by saying “I have ‘attitude.’” Nor does it mean that one can achieve the status of having “attitude” simply by following the examples and cliche’s of others who have “attitude”. See, because “following” is boring, and as such, is not-attitudinal.
You can have all the attitude you like, right up to the point that some boring-but-large person beats hell out of for it. Then you might wanna reconsider your attitude.
“Attitude” is just another trendy Madison Avenue vaporword with no meaning. I think it originates as some sort of urban youth slang meaning “a desire not to be pushed around” but it doesn’t particularly mean that any more.
Once I saw an add put out by a heavy metal band for someone who could play a certain musical instrument thatt said something like:
So I guess they wanted somebody with teased-up poodle hair who like to talk about sacrificing puppies to Cthulhu or something. The point is, the trait of resistance to social norms and restrictions is becoming mandatory. Talk about being co-opted by the powerful.
Anyway, I have a big problem with the marketing of attitude to children. I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons recently and seeing an ad for “all berries” cap’n crunch, in which some kids were taking a tour of the Cap’n Crunch factory. One of the kids pulled a random lever, rolled his eyes at the camera, smirked, and said “OOOPS!” right before being buried in a deluge of crunchberries.
At least with violence kids know that shooting people isn’t an acceptable part of everyday life. Attitude, however, seems nearly ubiquitous and Joe Lieberman et. al. don’t make political hay over it, and it seems like one sees more and more kids saying things like “talk to the hand!” to their parents. Yeeesh…
And another thing! I hate this entire fast-cut crap that we’re seeing in the media. It’s bad enough that Bruckheimer has to hire music video directors who don’t know square one about telling a story; now we have Sat. morning commercials which present more of a hyperactive sensory overload than watching “Yellow Submarine.” I’m reading “Day of the Triffids” right now, which speculates on a scenario in which civilization ends when 99% of the human race is rendered unable to see. One can’t help but wonder about scenarios in which our civilization ends because 99% of the human race is unable to sit still.
At the risk of sounding twice my age, so do I. I would add ‘cavalier disrespect’ to the new definition of ‘attitude’. No longer are kids in commercials just getting to the Eggo waffle first, parents and teachers are knocked to the floor or launched into orbit by their baditude bearing kids. I’d like to say it’s just mindless TV, but with kids being subjected to it daily, I worry that the message is taking root.
When did disrespecting authority become a marketable commodity? And why do we all feel as though we are entitled to it? It used to mean something to spit at sacred cows and say ‘I don’t care’, ala Sid Vicous. But it’s fashionable now-like all those middle class white males listening to Korn and rioting at Woodstock III, or that whole Bobby Knight/mini-riot embarrasment. What do they think they’re doing with that kind of attitude?
Has anyone heard of the cartoon “Detention”? Its about a group of “bad” kids who get in trouble at school for doing “bad” things. Since I first saw the show I have been wondering what the message being sent to the children was. I guess it is that your “cool” if you get in trouble…or something. I was also thinking, 1) parents must hate a show that more or less encourages their kids to misbehave at school, and 2) What parents would even allow their children to watch this show? Oh well…
Its not that I don’t agree with the your opinions but it made me think. Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and numerous other cartoon characters have “Attitude”. Do you have a problem with them? After all, most kids that grew up watching these catoons turned out fine. Look at Ted Kazinski (sp?).
My point being that this in nothing new. This is only the next level of “in your face” marketing. When a TV show or commercial has to compete with a remote control, video games and heaven forbid playing outside they find it necessary to grab the child’s attention quickly or they loose the poor attention deficient couch potato to something else.
With adults its called “Jerry Springer Marketing”. Ok, I made that up.
I believe it is up to the parents to make sure they raise their children properly. The first time “litle Billy” snaps back with attitude he is told not act in such a manner. If he does it agian, strict punishment. But wait, will that make him cool among his peers? I don’t know anymore.
I myself don’t have a problem with Bugs Bunny, etc (altough I did find Woody Woodpecker to be kind of a a**hole). I really don’t have a problem with defiance of authority or an in your face attitude, as long as it’s well-deserved. Jackie Chan could have a huge attitude, for instance. If I was Jackie Chan and someone mouthed off to me, as an example, I’d beat 'em bloody with their own fist without even bothering to stand up!
Seriously tho, I think it is something new. The level of smugness and aggression seems to have been upped to unsettling levels. To me, it breeds kind of a morally retarded mindset to encourage massive attitude while having nothing to really base those attitudes on, either personal accomplishment or as protest against something wrong. Now it’s just attitude to have attitude.
And let’s face it, Bugs was usaully pretty laid back and Zen-like until Elmer Fudd or Pete Puma started messing with him.
Actually, Bugs Bunny never went out looking for trouble. In Chuck Jones’ world, Bugs was just a humble woodland creature, sitting around the hole, singing about carrots (“carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime, it’s maaaaaagic”), reading a book, washing his ears, doing household chores… in short, minding his own business. Only when some unwanted predator or hunter (Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam) barged into his home, and tried to make him into rabbit stew did Bugs take on an attitude, and declare all-out war on his hopeless, hapless opponent.
That’s the difference between Bugs and, say, Bart Simpson. Bugs never sought out people to harrass- he merely fought back when trouble came looking for him.
Relying on the dictionary definition, I think the implication of the word is that the person who has an attitude is opinionated. (I.e. a person with an attitude has a DISPOSITION to everything he/she encounters.)
I don’t quite understand. Neither the classical definition nor the more contemporary usage of ‘attitude’ [a state of mind or a feeling; disposition] necessarily involves being ‘opinionated’ [holding stubbornly and often unreasonably to one’s own beliefs] to my understanding, or is that your personal take on the word? And why is it good?
One can only hope to live to see the day when the petty triumphs of cutting eachother off in traffic or farting in elevators is replaced with the rejection of processed foods, relationships and political systems.
Actually, no, it’s about “sorta-good” kids who get punished far more harshly than they deserve. This undue punishment comes from a teacher who is a parody of the stereotypical army drill sergeant.
This may come as a startlement, but every generation has thought this about every subsequent generation since approximately Cicero. And yet, somehow, we seem to have evolved slightly since then.
Unless you can come up with some 17th century quotation saying, “Kids today are so polite - much more so than my generation!”, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to put up with the fact that the next generation’s values and point of view are always going to be different from the previous one’s, and that this will always cause the previous one to think that, as the Sumerian tablet predicted in cuneiform, the coming generation is so ill-mannered that it will surely be the end of civilization.
Amen, bro! That’s the whole gist of the WWF/MTV/corporate ‘attitude’. Anarchy™!
And funny how that always seems to devolve into thuggishness. Instead of wanting to ‘smash the state’ after listening to Rage Against The Machine, they’d rather burn stuff and molest girls. When you let the normals play boho, what you end up with is repressed squareheads going overboard, ala Woodstock III.
