The Case For Gen Y

So here we are, 2022.

Most of our biggest directors are still Boomers, such as…

• James Cameron
• Ron Howard
• Chris Colombus
• Frank Darabont
• Kathryn Bigelow
• Gus Van Sant
• Robert Zemeckis
• Peter Jackson
• Michael Moore
• David Lynch
• Stephen Spielberg
• Sylvester Stallone
• Ron Underwood
• Oliver Stone
• Sam Raimi

By no means is that an exhaustive list.

These days, the directors who aren’t Boomers are either the direct offspring of famous actors and directors, or radical activists appointed to the role. Once you get past the Gen Xers like Judd Apatow who marketed mainly to Millennials, I cobbled together a list and it turned out pretty underwhelming with names like Ryan Coogler, Lena Dunham, and Gia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola‘s granddaughter). Through careful gatekeeping, it seems the Boomers still handle most of the big budget mega-titles even into the 2020s, while the later generations get the lower budget scraps tossed their way (along with surefire failures like Fantastic Four reboots).

Part of the blame for this state of Boomer dominance ironically lays at the feet of Gen Y. Too many from that generation are still eager to consume the latest Star Wars entries and make after work runs to Wal-Mart to buy Back to the Future-themed Funko Pops. It seems they’ll want more Transformers, G.I. Joe, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, and Goonies merch ’til they die.

Gen Y tends to hold the movies and experiences of their youth as sacrosanct because the 1980s were the happiest time many of them can remember. There was still this limitless hope for the future, and they couldn’t know the rug would be pulled out from under them before they ever reached adulthood. The 1986 Challenger explosion was so shocking partly because it was a portent, foreshadowing what their future would hold.

80s USA was much like 80s Japan, fueled by a booming, hopeful economy with a seemingly optimistic future. People trusted each other and held civilized, respectful discussions the likes of which you just don’t hear anymore. Due to a healthy sense of nationalism, activities like picking up litter and putting away grocery carts were treated as part of everyone’s civic duty, and volunteers were lined up who actually enjoyed doing that kind of thing. There’s an unusually magnetic nostalgia for that era, similar to how people felt about childhood in the Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood-like 1950s.

It was up to the Silent and Boomer generations to entertain the Ys during their childhood, and entertain them they did. What followed was an explosion of original, fresh IPs the likes of which may never be seen again, from unforgettable cartoons to Rated R movies that were so cool, they begged to lure in the young-uns. What 80s kid didn’t at least sneak a watch of Robocop, Predator, or Terminator?

The works often portrayed a Star Trek-like utopian future where good always defeated evil and everyone got along despite their differences. It was a reality where science could solve any problem, and karma was a reliable mechanism you could set your watch to. Gen Y bought this fairy-tale world wholesale. They believed that racism had been utterly vanquished and that the people in charge of institutions (and the nation) had everyone’s best interests at heart.

This lala land reality was reinforced by parents telling their cereal-shoveling children that they could be whatever they wanted and do whatever they wanted (so long as they went to college). In the parents’ eyes, the only thing that could possibly derail this plan was saying “yes” to drugs or failing to save up enough money to go to college (collecting baseball cards couldn’t hurt, either). And many of them were well-meaning, just trying to be good parents in the exact ways the magic TV box was instructing them.

Boomers had–and still have–the bad habit of believing everything they hear on TV and read in the news. There was a time when journalistic integrity was real, but that time has long passed. Sadly, they were programmed to believe and respect the talking heads so much that they can’t see through even the most obvious propaganda smokescreens.

But Gen Y learned over time that they were lied to. A lot. Over and over again. As a result, they’re starting to see through smokescreens everywhere.

For instance, they were told to get into computer programming because it was the “future”.

Gen Y listened, only to soonafter hear that, no, computer programming is an over-saturated field. And even then, they didn’t know most programming jobs would later get outsourced to India where they start teaching computer programming from early childhood, leaving most U.S. computer programming majors with perma-mid-level service desk jobs.

Then they were told there was a shortage of police officers.

Like the previous generations, Gen Y was raised to believe that police officers were brave, real life heroes, so it’s no wonder many Gen Ys graduated with law enforcement degrees only to find out that, no, police budgets were suddenly being cut and there was a hiring freeze. No Gen Yer could have predicted how hated cops would one day become or how broken society would get because of it.

They were also told there was a teaching shortage around the same time, only to come out of college with teaching degrees just in time for teachers to receive massive lay-offs. In the following decades, the Gen Y teachers who did manage to make it into the profession would dare voice their disagreements with Common Core Math or other radical curriculum, only to get driven out of the industry for good.

In the 80s, students were told about the “taste regions” of the tongue, had to memorize lies about the history of their country and the world, about the Fed, what money is, and where it comes from, how Pluto was a planet, that the Brontosaurus was real, that carbs belonged at the bottom of the food pyramid, that whistleblowers would be heralded, thanked, and celebrated as heroes rather than be held as political prisoners, and that one could complete college with any liberal arts degree and still get whatever job they want.

They got the mixed messaging of being told to not have babies, yet were heavily encouraged to have underage “safe” sex at every turn. They were told not to do drugs, yet were given all the knowledge and details they’d ever need to procure them, courtesy of D.A.R.E. It was almost as if the Boomers were trying to set up Gen Y for failure. (Don’t push the shiny red button, kids!)

Gen Y took all of that to heart while staying quiet, respecting their elders, and learning to conform. They were good little unambitious puppets, which might be why the Boomers grew to loathe them so much. Perhaps they saw their parents in their children. Or perhaps they saw their children as purely transactional. (If $$$ cost exceeds burden threshold, eject from house.) In the meanwhile, kids were told to stay quiet at the dinner table and were discouraged from asking questions. Their mothers were over-impressed by every small victory, while their fathers were perpetually unimpressed and hands-off. As a result, they grew up with myriad insecurities and, in the end, were left to piece together reality on their own.

Now Gen Y has no idea how to navigate this new sociopolitical landscape where you’re supposed to be a loud, obnoxious attention-seeker if you want to be successful. Needless to say, Gen Y disagrees with a lot of what’s going on today, and that is no doubt one of the reasons they’re getting silenced off social media and memory-holed. Boomers don’t like to be reminded of their failures.

The Shangri-La they were promised was never meant to be. Thanks to the closing down of coal mines, factories, and other economic cornerstones, the job market has dried up. College tuition saw massive inflation just in time for Gen Y to get kicked out of the house and into a dire world where homelessness was a real and constant threat on a burger flipper’s wage. Many were mugged by reality so hard, they ended up falling into the nostalgia of their childhood as a means of escape.

Those who did manage to find happiness typically didn’t follow an easy path to get there. It was an uphill struggle for sure, filled with a lot of demeaning work and self-taught lessons. Their career Boomer parents often didn’t leave them with very many life skills or bother to help them out financially. If not outright latchkey, they were raised by babysitters, the school, and TV. In other words, they were raised by the state, giving the state carte blanche on future generations. It wasn’t until the wide adoption of the Internet that Gen Y was finally able to learn how to repair a car, install a bathroom sink, garden, manage finances, invest in stocks, and be a mom or dad. That which wasn’t learned on the Internet was brute-forced through trial and error. School of hard knocks.

In the mid-90s, the Boomers started to realize they’d all but destroyed the reality that came before them. The pastoral 1950’s world of Lassie was no more. Paradise was truly lost, and there was no telling how future generations would react to that knowledge. So it was up to directors like David Lynch and Tim Burton to bury the truth by selling the propaganda that the 1950s (and by extension the “American Dream” itself) were secretly terrible under the surface, full of miserable people pretending to be happy just to keep up appearances. And that’s propaganda in a nutshell: Find emotionally-manipulative fringe examples and make them seem far more commonplace than they actually are.

Thankfully, Gen Y is getting sick of it, along with Gen Z. The Boomer armor is finally starting to crack. The spell cast by mainstream movies, comic books, and novels isn’t holding anymore. The lies have added up, and the Sci-Fi utopian predictions have all but crumbled. While the Boomers won’t let go of their national, congressional, and CEO positions anytime soon (while packing the positions underneath them with Millennials), Gen X has a strong foothold with names like Elon Musk, and Gen Y is starting to step into leadership roles locally, chipping away further at the armor. They’re getting over their feelings of self-doubt and are ready to finally take a stand.

(What all this has to do with writing comes in the next post.)