Many of them ended up working or married as a teenager. it was not connected to their age, but rather to their larger roll in society. Rites of passage in many cultures often happened around the time of puberty, when people were initiated into adulthood. That was less sure in highly stratified societies, where in elite circles the younger siblings of the first son had far less “work” to do, so ended up either becoming priests or layabouts (generally speaking of course). The people who had leisure time to pursue youthful antics were pretty much only the elite, at least in a way that informed their identity. A Teenager is a very specific category of consumption.
You’re assuming that I’ saying that there was a light switch with no shifts prior to this. Of course that’s not true and I never implied it. That doesn’t mean we can’t look at specific points and see them as a watershed moment. I think the shifts in understanding youth in the postwar period are very much that. It was not entirely novel, in the sense that no one consumed pop culture prior to this, or that hung their identity so much on their connection to mass culture, I’m saying that it has had an impact on HOW we think about the teenage years.
I agree it’s a problem, but that original cohort did dominate and continue to dominate much of our understanding of the relationship between mass culture and youth. If that’s happened, it’s literally because people bought into the concepts (which, no, were not fully developed by the boomers themselves, as Thomas Frank has noted in his work).
Yes. I know. All of that is entirely related to the rise of generational theory. Like I’ve said already.
And that’s ANOTHER reason why the watershed moment matters, because of the spread of mass consumption to an even larger number of people, including young people who for the first time, had more buying power than EVER before and far less obligations. You’re grandmother may have been a flapper, but if she grew up in a city, then that gave her more opportunities to engage with that culture. The interwar generation was also struggle with PTSD, a general sense of ennui, and then the depression. Films and radio were the primary means of engaging with mass culture, and far more people had access to it than before, but again, this YOUTH culture was not quite the same animal as teenaged culture of the postwar period, both in breadth and demographic. I’d suspect that the vast majority of people who defined themselves as flappers were probably older and richer.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. The New Deal certainly made the postwar boom, but so did the destruction of Europe, which allowed for significant growth in the American economy with little competition for a while after. It allowed for the American soft empire to expand, and for the state to become an active participant in the spread of American mass culture in new ways (that benefited the culture industries). There are many ways we can see the end of the war and the postwar expansion as a watershed, but the rise of a broadbased youth culture that helped to define that very slippery thing like a cohort IS one of those ways.
So maybe you’re a Gen Xer then? I mean, were you born in the 70s, then if so, you’re a Gen Xer.
When events happen and how they shape people’s live ARE significant, though. We live within institutions of various kinds and those shape us.
I’m saying that they came to a head in that period.
I know. I never said other wise. That doesn’t mean the material changes that happened after teh way that shape how we see the post war period should be shrugged aside just because you think they’re stupid.
Which I’ve never actually said. I’m saying that material changes that DID happen in the postwar period are materailly important in part because they shaped our PERCEPTIONS of what it means to be young and a consumer.
Yes. I’m aware.
I literally wrote my dissertation on punk, so yes, I DO know this history.
The hardcore scene (second wave) that evolved MOSTLY during the 80s were very late boomers and the real network of independent punk labels that came to define a punk identity were largerly early Gen Xers.
Oh that nonsense. The scene changed, became far more antagonistic to outsiders to the scene. Punks became more a identifiable uniform with far more defined characteristics. But that’s once again the second wave of hardcore. The first wave was made up of late boomers, who were far more experimental in their interest in music and fashion, but were turned off by the hippies or just too late to be part of the earlier youth cultures. Then you get postpunk, which tended to be bands that no longer fit in the more narrow definition of punk as defined by hardcore. Also, it was globalized by that point as well, with an interconnected archipelago of punk…
