I put this up on Facebook but think it's something this forum would do a good job of kicking around and into better shape.
I'm pretty much pulling this one out of my arse as I write so feel free to contradict but I've been thinking a bit about the Boomer generation, many, though by no means all of whom are fighting a rearguard action on various fronts, from politics, identity issues, to music, and to comedy. I've been as baffled as anyone as to why this most privileged of generations (NHS, welfare state, job security, affordable housing, EU membership) should, as if out of spite, seek to deny their offspring the opportunities they had.
I'm talking at the upper end about people who wear jeans well into their 70s; the first generation to experience rock'n'roll, youth culture and have, understandably, clung to that feeling of youthfulness throughout their lives. This doesn't include my Dad. He was 21 when "Rock Around The Clock" happened - far too old by the standards of the 50s to partake in the mania. He is the last of a generation who forfeited their youth and all hankerings for that state when he was about 19.
I think part of the bitterness they hanker is the bitterness of age. Not just age but a feeling that a contemporary, "woke" generation, on a series of pretexts, be it race, feminism, is seeking to erase or invalidate their own, different-times experiences. For them, it's insult to injury not only to realise they are in the winter of their years but to be told that the culture of their Spring and Summer, what they consider to be a liberal flowering, was addled with latent racism, sexism, that what they considered to be a vanguard of modern thought was still very unreconstructed in key ways. No one likes being browbeaten, especially by a bunch of kids who in childhood at least, never had it as hard as they did. (How this generation will fare in adulthood is another question, of course, but . . )
I especially see it in comedy appreciation pages for programmes like Porridge, Steptoe, Dad's Army. I'm a member of these pages because I love these shows. Other members love them to but in their comments a lot of them can't resist barbed, wistful comments about how some of these shows' occasional non-PC moments "you couldn't get away with these days"; as if things were healthier when you could. There's a frustration, I suspect, that these shows aren't on mainstream TV any more, farmed out to channels like UK Gold and therefore they feel "cancelled". New comedy, with its more refined sensibilities and more naturalistic, even avant-garde approach alienates them, if they watch it for more than a few minutes at all.
They take solace in grumbling. On the Porridge page, someone put up a post claiming, without evidence, that Netflix had dropped Porridge because of the racist quips at the expense of one of the black prisoners. Few, apart from Neil Kulkarni bothered to ask for a source for this story. For most of the respondents, it was an easy cue to grumble about snowflakes, and the mad, insane pace at which anti-racist forces were destroying all we once held dear.
Again I'm not even so sure if these people were primarily motivated by racism; more a sense that a) their culture, their memories were being canned and b) affronted that despite the lack of racist bones in their bodies, there were some who felt that there was still further work to do in representation of POC on TV than what they themselves thought was satisfactory.
I wonder if a cumulative sense of such resentment causes some people to harden, to take up reactionary attitudes they'd never entirely purged in their youth, their comfortable happy youth; that, in short, White Britain Was Great. White Britain Was Fun. We Were The Best. Well . . .
I'm pretty much pulling this one out of my arse as I write so feel free to contradict but I've been thinking a bit about the Boomer generation, many, though by no means all of whom are fighting a rearguard action on various fronts, from politics, identity issues, to music, and to comedy. I've been as baffled as anyone as to why this most privileged of generations (NHS, welfare state, job security, affordable housing, EU membership) should, as if out of spite, seek to deny their offspring the opportunities they had.
I'm talking at the upper end about people who wear jeans well into their 70s; the first generation to experience rock'n'roll, youth culture and have, understandably, clung to that feeling of youthfulness throughout their lives. This doesn't include my Dad. He was 21 when "Rock Around The Clock" happened - far too old by the standards of the 50s to partake in the mania. He is the last of a generation who forfeited their youth and all hankerings for that state when he was about 19.
I think part of the bitterness they hanker is the bitterness of age. Not just age but a feeling that a contemporary, "woke" generation, on a series of pretexts, be it race, feminism, is seeking to erase or invalidate their own, different-times experiences. For them, it's insult to injury not only to realise they are in the winter of their years but to be told that the culture of their Spring and Summer, what they consider to be a liberal flowering, was addled with latent racism, sexism, that what they considered to be a vanguard of modern thought was still very unreconstructed in key ways. No one likes being browbeaten, especially by a bunch of kids who in childhood at least, never had it as hard as they did. (How this generation will fare in adulthood is another question, of course, but . . )
I especially see it in comedy appreciation pages for programmes like Porridge, Steptoe, Dad's Army. I'm a member of these pages because I love these shows. Other members love them to but in their comments a lot of them can't resist barbed, wistful comments about how some of these shows' occasional non-PC moments "you couldn't get away with these days"; as if things were healthier when you could. There's a frustration, I suspect, that these shows aren't on mainstream TV any more, farmed out to channels like UK Gold and therefore they feel "cancelled". New comedy, with its more refined sensibilities and more naturalistic, even avant-garde approach alienates them, if they watch it for more than a few minutes at all.
They take solace in grumbling. On the Porridge page, someone put up a post claiming, without evidence, that Netflix had dropped Porridge because of the racist quips at the expense of one of the black prisoners. Few, apart from Neil Kulkarni bothered to ask for a source for this story. For most of the respondents, it was an easy cue to grumble about snowflakes, and the mad, insane pace at which anti-racist forces were destroying all we once held dear.
Again I'm not even so sure if these people were primarily motivated by racism; more a sense that a) their culture, their memories were being canned and b) affronted that despite the lack of racist bones in their bodies, there were some who felt that there was still further work to do in representation of POC on TV than what they themselves thought was satisfactory.
I wonder if a cumulative sense of such resentment causes some people to harden, to take up reactionary attitudes they'd never entirely purged in their youth, their comfortable happy youth; that, in short, White Britain Was Great. White Britain Was Fun. We Were The Best. Well . . .
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