Was it the generation before them, who were in charge of things when the BBr’s were young? If you look at 1960’s TV shows, teenagers were portrayed as dumbshits with transistor radios glued to their heads,playing what middle-aged studio musicians thought rock sounded like (Rock by Frank DeVol - outlawed by the Geneva Convention). Older shows from the 1950’s were a lot more benign towards kids, with an attitude of “we went through the Depression and a war to become your parents, and even if you listen to (what a studio musician thought be-bop sounded like), we’ll indulge your silliness.”
On shows made later in the 1960’s all the teenagers are inside-out assholes, parading with placards painted with parodies of protest slogans; “down with bathing,” think they invented sex, think they have all the answers, etc. Where the older shows chuckled at their presumptions, now they were stereotyped to the hippy equivalent of blackface commedians
Or is it more negative today, with GenX-Y’s current depiction; who see the BBr’s as having used up all the pre-war on drugs drugs & pre-AIDS sex & selfishly divorced each other leaving they themselves to be raised by corporate hucksters? You know the TV show: the one where the lead is a 17-23 year old girl who can both rebuild any computer or kick anyone’s ass (OK, maybe there’s more than one like that), but the typical Baby Boomer is either a corporate hard on-type who doesn’t want anyone else but himself to do well, or a trailer-park burnout from Vietnam and/or Hippiedom.
Who is it you think is making TV shows these days? I think the baby boomers are in charge now, and the hateful portrait you describe may be just their attempts to make a flattering portrayal of themselves as seen through your eyes.
I remember hearing an interview about 10 years ago, on the subject of the earliest baby boomers turning (gasp, horrors) 50. One woman said that she’d been pretty free-spirited in her youth, but then had devoted more time to her career and self improvement. (There was more, but I don’t remember the details.) I heard that and thought “this is the yuppie poster child come to life.” It was every cliche about that generation embodied in one person. And she described it all like it was a good thing, and without the slightest sense of irony.
The Baby-Boomers may be the green-lighting suits (“corporate hard ons”), but I’ve read here and elsewhere of the near-impossibility for over-30 writers to find work.
More important than that, the target demographic in prime-time is young people, not middle-aged. Even CBS has shifted toward this. Any day now PBS will catch on.
(I guess I’ve tipped my hand as to which era i think is worse. In the 1960’s the criticism “you’re fucking up society” went both ways between the generations. Today, in fiction at least, I don’t see this complaint against the young in between commercials for products aimed at them)
The “Greatest Generation” and the Boomers fought it out until both sides were exhausted. You honestly can’t imagine what it was like unless you lived through it.
OTOH, the Boomers simply don’t care what the younger generations think of them. You’ll all do-nothing, apathetic, illiterate, worthless, mindless, soul-sucking shit to us, compared to our wonderfulness!
So, objectively speaking, I think it’s a non-issue.
Can you give examples Slithy Tove? I am trying to think of a show from the 60s that portrayed teenagers the way you describe, and can’t come up with any.
From what I understand (and that probably isn’t much) this is pretty much the case.
BB generation may go down as the most hated generation of all time – heck even of bunch of them don’t like them. I went to school with them and never much cared for them.
In prime-time TV (and also movies), this may be true. Boomers still control the music dollar, however, and as such I blame them for killing rock music.
Oh, “My Three Sons,” had the rock & roll-stupified kids, usually for the sake of Steve or Uncle Charlie’s reaction. Compare Hugh Beaumont’s retort to Wally’s “Gee Dad - they had cars when you were a kid?” “Yes, believe it or not, the invention of the automobile pre-dated my birth.” to to the much more condescending attitude Steve Douglas would cop with his sons. Ward’s response was more of a prompt for his boys to think the matter through and realize they’re smarter than they’ve been acting. Steve’s was more from of a conviction that his kids inhabited an entierly different culture, and a stupid one at that. And Steve embodied Middle-Class reservation: Uncle Charlie was the old working class who built America, so his gruff reactions were what the audience wished it could say to the hippies.
Or consider the potrayal of '60’s youth culture as mirrored by Jethro’s aping of it in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Like “My Three Sons,” Uncle Jed behaved like decent, humble people that couldn’t aprove but were too polite to say anything overt, while Granny provided the unvarnished condemnation.
And as far as my “You’re fucking up society” maxim, that could very well have been written on the blackboard as a departure point at any “Dragnet” writers meeting.
Greatest Generation vs. Boomers: We saved the world from Hitler, Japan and the Commies and you’re throwing it away for sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Boomers vs. Gen X and the Millenials: We dragged the world into civil rights, women’s rights and environmentalism and you’re throwing it away as slackers and cubicle drones.
I have to go with the 1960s conflict. It’s harder to get really worked up over slackers and cubicle drones than sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Why yes, I was born in the years following World War II. Why do you ask?
Now here’s where I start to object. If you were a baby boomer, then you couldn’t vote until 1967. So the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Right Act happened without you, as well as most of the desegregation. Maybe you guys can take credit for busing in Boston?
It’s still too early to put a label on the Millenials (i.e., the Boomer’s Kids) since a lot of them are still in high school.
Anyway, I dislike the whole labelling of a particular generation as “Boomers” or “Gen X” since it amounts to a lazy way for the media to stereotype a group of millions of people who all have different life experiences, interests, and opinions. That being said, I’d like to put in a word for the so-called “Silent” Generation–the kids born during the Depression and WWII who came of age during the 50’s and early 60’s. If anybody deserves credit for the civil rights and women’s rights movements (among other things) it’s them since they were the shock troops who took the brunt of attacks before most of the Boomers came of age.
