Poshdeluxe

arcade fire: keep the car runnng

today’s gonna be one of those days when i ask you guys to give me yr opinions, not only cos i’m curious but because, as usual, i’m not sure of my own opinion.

earlier, jezebel linked to an article in the new york observer entitled “american cutie.” now, just yesterday, i was writing about cuteness, so i was immediately intrigued. but it was the subheading that really got me:

“The Rising Age of Obama May Look Twee, Naïve and Idealistic, But Like Gwyneth Paltrow, the Hobbits, Arcade Fire and Iron Man, It Shows a Scrappy New Generation That Has Learned to Fight”

wow. that’s a lot of things. a lot of things i LOVE!

so i read the article, which you can find here.

and you know, i’m not entirely sure what it’s about. i suspect that it’s actually not v. well-written, and it seems more like a rambling blog post (not that i would know what those look like) than some kind of editorial. but i can’t help but find it interesting, since tom mcgeveran, the author, throws out all kinds of things that attract me: mcsweeney’s, belle & sebastian, christina ricci, lord of the rings… and well, maybe that’s his point.

ok, i actually really don’t get his point. but here’s my attempt at presenting a passage that might capture it:

(note: the person speaking is win butler, from arcade fire)

***

“It’s finally our turn to have a great president,” he said, and at this point the crowd was going wild. “I’m sick of fine presidents and good presidents and mediocre presidents. I’m sick of Rutherford B. Hayes and James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore. We got Barack Obama! Barack Obama, for crying out loud!”

In other words, Win Butler was going for the naïve moron vote. The crowd that was somehow equating Hillary Clinton and Millard Fillmore was not the Oxford Union debating society. But still, elevating Barack Obama beyond the stage of the Children’s Crusade was turning him into the Tough Twee candidate. Why Tough Twee? The crowd had the affect and information base of children, the idealism of the truly protected and insular—the province of child-voters since the beginning of the republic.

***

yeah, that probably didn’t explain much, did it? if i had to take a stab, i would say his point is that our generation has been twee-obsessed, twee meaning cuteness, innocence, the sweetness and playfulness of childhood. and yet now we’re become “tough twee,” for some reason that i don’t think he quite explains but maybe assumes that we’re old enough to feel like we should be political, like we can change things in this country. like we want to be taken seriously.

and mr. mcgeveran doesn’t want to take us seriously.

***

The Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the Twee nail on the head. A great battle is taking place, and by a series of unfortunate circumstances, the little Hobbits have gotten involved.

J.R.R. Tolkien described the race of tiny creatures he invented thusly: They are “unobtrusive.” They “love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools.” They are “shy of the Big Folk.” Hobbits were Twee Pioneers. But at least they took on Sauron frontally and beat the crap out of him.

***

i will admit, i do feel a certain affinity with the hobbits. first of all, eating meals every hour of the day is pretty much the best idea i’ve ever heard (SECOND BREAKFAST, ANYONE?!). plus, i hate conflict. and their houses look so cozy! yay hobbits!

and it’s not like the hobbits were simple-minded, necessarily. they just had simple lifestyles.

even though i think we’re attracted to ideas of simplicity (farmer’s markets, etc.), i don’t think our generation has a simple lifestyle. it’s more materialistic, yes, but it’s also more complex. we are INUNDATED. we inundate ourselves. i gorge all day long on bands and celebrity gossip and books and the lives of my friends and yes, even world events, and none of that (ok, maybe the whole perez hilton thing) is empty. my preferences shape me, the world shapes my preferences, so then i shape the world? maybe?

then again, i do feel naive sometimes. but i’m young (ish?!!). that’s when you’re supposed to be naive, right?

and the only way to learn about things is to experience them… and i think people getting involved in the presidential race, feeling *excited* about it, can only be a good thing.

perhaps mr. mcgeveran doesn’t trust our input into the political process. i get the feeling that he believes we’re too educated about indie rock or irony or hipster fashion to have room for anything else, esp. things like foreign policy and our trade deficit.

that leads me to the main question that’s been on my brain (in spite of all of this rambling): what does our generation actually care about? what ARE our values? and how do they translate into politics, into the future of our country?

i know, i know, we aren’t all the same cos we were born in the late 70s-early 80s. i’m not trying to label anyone here. i’m just curious about the FORCE of “us.” where will our values take us in the future? what will the country look like when we’re no longer naive, twee little hobbits?

what will happen when we’re in charge?

LINKS

meet my new hero, the nancy drew of mac laptops!

you guys. check out my new favorite reality show. WOW.

if i ever have kids, i should probably move out of america first. why does our country hate maternity so much?

jonah hill is apparently gonna make a movie of “21 jumpstreet.” i will miss you, johnny depp, but this is an AWESOME idea.

fun food art! yay! i esp. loooove the broccoli poodle.

have you guys heard of “the night of a thousand stevies”? uh, awesome?!! guess where i’ll be a year from now?! with a lace shawl and sequined beret?!

ian brown: illegal attacks

about two weeks ago, thomas friedman wrote an op/ed piece in the NY times about my generation, which he calls “generation q.” for me, generation talk has always been confusing– am i an X? Y? millennial? reality bites? regardless, i consider myself one of the “young people” he’s talking about. if you have a minute, you should read it.

in the editorial, friedman states that he is impressed by both our optimism and intelligence, especially given the fact that we have refused to allow the post 9/11 world to deter us from reaching out to the world:

***

Whether it was at Ole Miss or Williams or my alma mater, Brandeis, college students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever.

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Old Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like ”Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them ”Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.”

***

with the rise of community service centers on college campuses, as well as programs like teach for america, i definitely feel like our generation is truly trying to care for our community, locally and globally. we’re young, so we’re supposed to be idealists, right?

mr. friedman then goes on to express his bafflement with our lack of political engagement:

***

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

(and)

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

***

honestly, i felt pretty deflated after reading his words. i’ve signed online petitions and sent emails to my congressmen, but i can’t shed the nagging feeling that none of it really matters. then again, street marches and boycotts seem like relics from the past… would they make any sort of impact in our high-tech, internetted, 700 channel, globalized society?

then i read a response to the editorial, written by courtney martin. i think she’s close to my age, and she’s extremely articulate and smart and thoughtful. in short, i’ve deemed her to be my spokeswoman. read her retort, and join me in my crusade to nominate her for the (new) president’s cabinet.

instead of generation Q, courtney labels herself a member of generation Overwhelmed and says:

***

We are not apathetic. What we are, and perhaps this is what Friedman was picking up on, is totally and completely overwhelmed. One of the most critical questions of our time is one of attention. In a 24-7 news climate, it is all but impossible to emotionally engage all of the stories and issues you are taking in, and then act on them in some pragmatic way. So instead, young people become paralyzed. (It seems that all of us are a bit paralyzed. After all, what are Friedman’s peers really doing? And aren’t his peers the ones with the most straightforward kind of power?)

My generation tries to create lives that seem to match our values, but beyond that it’s hard to locate a place to put our outrage. We aren’t satisfied with point-and-click activism, as Friedman suggests, but we don’t see other options. Many of us have protested, but we — by and large — felt like we were imitating an earlier generation, playing dress-up in our parents’ old hippie clothes. I marched against the war and my president called it a focus group. The worst part was that I did feel inert while doing it. In the 21st century, a bunch of people marching down the street, complimenting one another on their original slogans and pretty protest signs, feels like self-flagellation, not real and true social change.

When Friedman was young and people were taking to the streets, there were a handful of issues to focus on and a few solid sources of news to pay attention to. Now there is a staggering amount of both. If I read the news today with my heart wide open and my mind engaged, I will be crushed. Do I address the injustices in Sudan, Iraq, Burma, Pakistan, the Bronx? Do I call an official, write a letter, respond to a MoveOn.org request? None of it promises to be effective, and it certainly won’t pacify my outrage.

***

exactly! how do we choose? and if we are able to focus our attention on one issue, what do we do about it? is there any way to make a change, or will the previous generation have to die before we can begin to shovel ourselves out of the debt, the pollution, the injustice?

courtney writes:

***

We do our best. We pursue careers and seek answers to questions that we believe are important. So many of the young New Yorkers standing around my living room that night were professional activists — social workers and teachers and nonprofit workers. We discuss the latest current events, send one another links to our favorite blogs or videos on the subjects, grab drinks after work and hash it all out. We study like hell. My generation knows so much about so much. We read everything and anything that we think might point us in the direction of some kind of political enlightenment and psychic relief.

***

i hope we’re doing our best. i really do. i try to read as much as i can, talk about things that are important to me, seek out other people’s opinions and perspectives. i *do* believe that we are the most “aware” generation that has ever existed, but now we have to figure out how to translate that awareness into change. the problem is that we don’t really have a model to follow. we’re crammed full of information, but we’re clueless. as courtney points out:

***

We can’t be you, because we don’t live in your time. We don’t have the benefit of focus, the cushion of cheap rent, the luxury of not knowing just how complicated the world really is. Instead we have corporate conglomerates, private military contracts, the WTO and the IMF, school debt, and no health insurance. We are savvy and we are saturated and we are scared.

We are painstakingly composing our Facebook profiles because we did our daily round of news sites, and it left us feeling powerless and unsafe, like the only place to put our energies was inward. We are studying abroad because it feels like the only obvious way to interact with the world we care so deeply about. We are dancing at house parties on Friday nights because we talked about your op-ed, the war in Iraq, rape in Congo, but in the end, we just felt overeducated and underutilized.

You call that quiet. I call that coping.

***

a-men, courtney.

so, guys, what do we do? i (honestly) have visions of hipsters pulling youtube pranks to send a message to washington, or pants world going hacker-style and messing with the bank accounts of congressmen while rollerblading through the streets.

any other ideas?

ok, i gotta go add some photos to facebook.

LINKS

my favorite current affairs series is back with a piece which compares china and the u.s. to pamela anderson and kid rock. i think china might have a little less silicon, though.

soccer moms just got a whole lot more badass.

lobsters escape imenent death! sounds like a new pixar movie…

the california fires ate up a large elvis memorabilia collection, but the *owner* of the collection is actually the most interesting part of the story.

BREAKING NEWS. ace of base and aqua are BOTH reuniting!!! thank goodness, cos i’ve been really hoping to get a song stuck in my head for 17 consecutive days.
meredith sent me this site which challenges yr vocab while donating rice to starving countries [insert rice university joke here].