This Salon article about the “new slackers” really annoyed me. First of all, the reference to Richard Linklater’s film Slacker is totally incorrect. There was no “just-out-of-college temp slave” made famous in that movie. Linklater was depicting an entire culture, not some Ethan Hawke wannabe. The camera just follows interesting people around Austin, Texas, and none of them bear any resemblance to the newly unemployed dot-commers profiled in the article. What, they couldn’t spare 97 minutes for some cinematic research?
The whole thing just smacks of Schadenfreude, you know? It’s like, everybody’s been slagging off the dot-commers for a while now, but these authors have taken it a step further: “Hey! This means we can rag on Generation X for being unemployed, ambition-less, waste-of-space slackers again!” And that’s just bollocks. That stereotype was never true in the first place, and taking a few well-deserved months off after a year of working sixteen hour days doesn’t make you a derelict either. I swear, if I was in their situation and some smug, smarmy Boomer accused me of being a slacker, I’d kick their ass. *pause* Well, no, I wouldn’t. I’m a wuss. But I would use their e-mail address to sign them up for pr0n.
3 responses
have you ever read the book he wrote, _the hottest state_? oh GOD it’s such crap. which tells me two things (1) i should get off my @$$ and churn out some personal essay crap of my own or (2) it really *is* who you know.
I heard it was crap too. Oh, and he has another one coming out. It’s going to be called “Ash Wednesday” and it “will follow a broken-up young couple striving to mend their relationship while on a cross-country road trip.” Face it, it *is* who you know.
But all criticisms of his writing aside, I had a mega — and I mean MEGA — crush on him after seeing him in “Explorers” with the young River Phoenix. Nerdy boys are the best. His character in “Dead Poets’ Society” pissed me off, though, and I just can’t bring myself to say I liked “Reality Bites.” (I will admit that I lusted after him while watching it though, greasy hair and goatee and alienation and all.)
Heh. The discussions at my site are never actually pertinent to the post, but rather to a side issue that I mention alongside it. I like that. 🙂
that is an interesting phemonema re: posts vs. resulting BV discussion.
anyhow, i’ll join you and admit that i kinda liked him in “before sunrise,” or whatever that movie was that he was in w/ julie delpy. i guess i kinda like that whole epic-love-affair-condensed-into-a-weekend thing. partly because it’s happened to me. twice.
but i much prefer what i have now–an epic love affair lived out as it should be, day by day.
sappy heart, ala modest mouse. 😉
http://brigita.blogspot.com/?/2001_02_18_brigita_archive.html#2456534