#NOTALLANYBODY

(Sherman's Lagoon)

 

(Rudy Park)

And so it begins. 

Time for the Baby Boomers to shuffle off this mortal coil and let Gen X take the spotlight, poor bastards.

Sherman makes the cultural references while Rudy takes the viewpoint and it's music to my weary old ears. Now we can just f-f-f-f-fade away. 

It's really happening and I know that because I heard it last night on All Things Considered, and, no, it's not because they keep resuscitating the Star Wars franchise.

It's worse than that, as they explained, in one of those giggly, unscripted podcasty exchanges you young folks love so much:

HOLMES: Well, one that I think sticks out is they are remaking, I guess, the movie "Jumanji."

MCEVERS: (Laughter).

HOLMES: Which I don't even remember very well. Glen, do you - are you a...

WELDON: Sure.

HOLMES: ..."Jumanji" rememberer (ph)?

WELDON: I - Yeah. So it's a film starring Robin Williams about a board game that comes to life. There's rhinoceroses that take over town. It is a film that you would think for which no one was clamoring.

Well, good luck, Gen Xers, as your memories get put through the commercial pop culture sausage machine.

Assuming there is such a thing as a "Gen Xer." But, as Rudy suggests, every generation needs a kicky, catchy nickname.

And, as he implies, that's kind of a new thing. I blame Faith Popcorn, who seems to have drifted away, which is appropriate given that she reported on ephemera and fads back when she mattered and yes I'm sure she's still alive but she isn't being quoted every other day, which is the point.

If you aren't being quoted, you aren't still alive. That's the rule in pop culture.

I've got a kid slated to attend the Jumanji press preview Monday night. Since he's only 11, his dad is going with him, but I don't know if a conversation on the ride home will factor into his review. Some parents maintain a real hands-off policy with the kids' assignments and he may be too gobsmacked to comment on it anyway.

The trailer looks pretty funny, and it does have a tagline of "Welcome to the Jungle" to cement its Gen-Xieness, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the original movie.

Machs Nix. Your generation is whatever the ones who make the movies say you are.

"The Big Chill" was all about former protester-Boomer-types ("Running Dog" shoes? Really?) who sat around questioning whether they'd sold out or grown up or whatever, and the producers didn't even get the music right -- it was nearly all Motown.

That was jock music.

They simply took "The Return of the Secaucus Seven" and put it through the Hollywood Veg-O-Matic, the same way Jann Wenner put the LA Free Press and the Berkley Barb and the Boston Phoenix through the same homogenizer and came out with Rolling Stone.

The only moment of truth in the whole movie is when William Hurt's character says "a long time ago we knew each other for a short period of time."

Tom the Dancing Bug explained it all in 2007:

 

 

And he was a lot less grumpy about the whole thing than I had been, a decade earlier:

So the other day I read the start of something from the Wall Street Journal before I ran into a paywall, but apparently they're not going to call the current crop "Millennials" anymore, and this piece from the BBC ponders the whole thing to an extent that seems to wander back and forth between being part of the solution and being part of the problem.

I think the answer is that, if you're talking about whiny little snowflakes who blame all their problems on Baby Boomers, you don't call them "Millennials."

You call them "whiny little snowflakes who blame all their problems on Baby Boomers," secure in the knowledge that there's no such thing as a "Baby Boomer" either and that there are a whole lot of young people who don't whine.

Though it doesn't matter if they do. It's not our fault anymore. We're done.

Now everything wrong with society is the fault of those Gen Xers.

They screwed up everything.

 

Consarn it.

 When Generations Actually Meet

 

Comments

[Ignatz]

Music is fine now, but the radio really IS awful. I think they have a playlist of about 20 songs, and it doesn't seem to change. When I was a kid, the radio station had MORE songs than I had in my house.

[Gabe]

I had to look it up but the original Jumanji came out in 1995. That's after the youngest Gen Xer was 12 and into the next generation. So I guess that makes this the first remake of a movie from after my time but I'm not sure since it's hard to keep up with all the silly movies they make nowadays.

[sean martin]

Actually, the original Jumanji, despite its vintage CG, holds up pretty well. I kinda doubt the remake will. I'm sure it'll be fun and all, but, you know, the Rock aint no Robin Williams, who really made a lot of that film so much fun to watch.

Personally I love watching Dwayne's movies. They're complete and utter brain candy with zero pretension. And he appears to be having a blast making them, so why not enjoy them in the moment before they hit the five buck bin at WalMart?

But in all seriousness, the whole remake thing really is getting way out of hand. Now we're seeing Ocean's 8, with an all female cast. I imagine it's going to ride a wave of popularity until it actually opens and folks find out it's a whole lot of nothing, just like the attempted GHOSTBUSTERS reboot last year.

I'm waiting on the Millennial movie exec who says, "Hey, know what people would really like to see again? CITIZEN KANE! But this time we'll make it all dark and edgy!" You know it's gonna happen, Mike.

[Kathleen E Donnelly]

I was at UC Berkeley in the 60s, and the music from The Big Chill fits right in. We liked Motown! The FSM members fifty years later haven't changed - teachers, lawyers, social workers, some businessmen, trying to make the world better, even in retirement. The first baby-boomers were college freshmen in 1964.

[Ben Fulton]

I was twelve in 1979. The Dukes of Hazzard debuted and the Bee Gees won four Grammys and Tom is so very, very wrong.

[Mike Peterson]

We liked Motown -- I saw the Tops and Dionne Warwicke more than once -- but the idea of former radicals getting together for a weekend without any Airplane or Doors or Big Brother or the Dead or even the Beatles sounds more like a product placement deal than a serious attempt to tell the story.

And I think 12's a little young, but the point remains.

[Paul Berge]

The CG in the original Jumanji was supposed to be a little off, as I remember. I'm not sure how the new movie explains how the original involved critters breaking out into the real world while the sequel has real people getting sucked into the game, but I'm not worried about it, either.
On the other hand, how come Emperor Palpatine couldn't use the Dark Side of the Force to stop himself from falling to his death, and who the hell is Snoke?

[Mike Peterson]

BTW, Kathleen -- agree that the idea everyone sold out and became bankers is BS. Of my politico friends, as you say, they became teachers, social workers, attorneys, one in the EPA, all continuing from within. I can only think of one real sell-out and he's more than counterbalanced by some true social heroes.

And when we get together, we don't sit around asking each other if we've sold out because it's pretty freaking obvious that we haven't, which is another strike against Kasdan's attempt to be John Sayles.

[Brent]

Yeah, if Jumanji is going to recognize a change in the cultural nostalgia, then it really marks the beginning of the end of Gen-Xs hour in the sun, because 1995 is getting into their time and out of ours (which would be things like the 80s revivals). Much like the job market where we got two quarters a few years ago where we were the dominant force (between Boomers retiring in December and Millennials entering at the end of school), Gen-X spent most of it's time being co-cultural nostalgic with one or the other. Such is our way... we Finlandize with the generations around us, not caring much about our role in things. Our power is in our lack of power.

[woodrowfan]

Well, "Big Chill" is better than "Dazed and Confused" which is the generational movie for us Late Boomers. Although "Dazed" has better music than "Chill." ;)