the first moment of gen-x
I think I have uncovered the moment when Generation X became Generation X. That is, the moment when that generation began to show its colors, to take on the characteristics that later defined it. After all, it's not just a set of years in which people were born; it's a way of being.
Right around 1977, at Harmony Hills Elementary, a girl, possibly Camille Brown, having just experienced something exasperating, uttered that glottal sigh (which I'll spell "xhhhh") known to all schoolchildren to be an expression of disgust and displeasure, and said, "Xhhhh! What's your function?"
There you have it: the ironic stance, the joking-but-not-joking, the in-reference to a piece of wall-to-wall pop culture (in this case, Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction"), re-appropriated toward one's own purposes. 17 years before the first episode of Friends, it's all there.
As I've remarked before, all the raw materials for this kind of statement were present for generations. You could have had a radio station that played The Best Of The 20s, 30s, And Today back in the forties — but you didn't. You could have had ironic allusions to The Wizard of Oz by Lucy and Ricky — but you didn't.
So, one fine day in 1977, elementary-school kids all over the country spontaneously said something not-new and entirely new, and a generation was born.
Right around 1977, at Harmony Hills Elementary, a girl, possibly Camille Brown, having just experienced something exasperating, uttered that glottal sigh (which I'll spell "xhhhh") known to all schoolchildren to be an expression of disgust and displeasure, and said, "Xhhhh! What's your function?"
There you have it: the ironic stance, the joking-but-not-joking, the in-reference to a piece of wall-to-wall pop culture (in this case, Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction"), re-appropriated toward one's own purposes. 17 years before the first episode of Friends, it's all there.
As I've remarked before, all the raw materials for this kind of statement were present for generations. You could have had a radio station that played The Best Of The 20s, 30s, And Today back in the forties — but you didn't. You could have had ironic allusions to The Wizard of Oz by Lucy and Ricky — but you didn't.
So, one fine day in 1977, elementary-school kids all over the country spontaneously said something not-new and entirely new, and a generation was born.
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