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Rewind: Gen X to Millennial With strife comes immense creativity and discovery, and thus the significance of youth culture is to help us deal with the existential problems of vulnerability and finiteness, as we enter the void of deprecating adulthood. Often riddled with pain and confusion, the path from age 18-34 can inspire a young and rebel soul with great films and music. As we take a journey through four generations, these are the movies and musicians that awoke the youth culture of its decade. 1980 The THE BREAKFAST CLUB: DEAD POETS SOCIETY: “O DO THE RIGHT THING: The term most referred movie to describe the Captain My Captain” is always the “woke” has never had such significance. teenage experience in its entirety, The proper way to address Robin Williams Set in Brooklyn on a sweltering Breakfast Club created the template as the Walt Whitman-loving English summer day in 1989, the racial and of every high school archetype. teacher, John Keating. The ultimate emotional tension echoes the boiling We’re familiar with the nerd, the mentor, who introduced Carpe Diem, catastrophe of our current political weirdo, the jock, the prom queen, to the passionate poet in every state. It was the death of tolerance and the burnout. In such divisive young person, we all envied his meeting confrontation, as the themes times, watching five people, with impressionable prep school students of gentrification and police brutality different opinions and belief systems, who were members of “The Dead are still current with millennials today. tolerate each other on the day of Poets Society.” An after-school poetry Its theme song, “Fight the Power” unsupervised detention, seems like an club never seemed so cool. Seizing by Public Enemy, was a call to arms, alternate universe to something that one’s life’s purpose is high stakes in literally and intellectually. In its ultimate would never happen in real life. But the film’s suffocating wealth driven creative expression, Do the Right Thing as they embarked on the journey of prep school environment and loving showed us that there no reason to keep unlearning their parent’s influence and the arts was the ultimate rebellion. it cool anymore. Spike Lee “lit it up” and expectations, they made us feel like The heart-wrenching performance of we couldn’t look away. we could do anything. the cast is enough to make anyone stand on their desk and recite the best poetry of their lives. PRINCE: Young romance is TALKING HEADS: The band’s skinny, THE GO GO’S: They made history complicated and turbulent, but you’ve wiry, and adorable frontman, David with their album Beauty and the Beat, never known love unless you’ve heard Byrne represented all of the weird ones, as the first female group that wrote a Prince song. In the 80’s Prince who had the funkiest, new waviest its own songs and played its own provided songs that described love in sound that awakened the chicest of instruments to top the Billboard charts all its colors and hues that hit emotions geeks in all of us. Hits such as “Psycho for six weeks. Originally a punk band, you had yet to discover. Songs such as Killer” and “Burning Down the House,” they were conflicting image issues as “The Beautiful Ones,” was heartache took us into the mind of the unhinged. their fame grew and to not be pigeon- that you felt in your bones, “Little One to avoid love songs, David Byrne holed a bubble gum mall group. But, as Red Corvette” made us all want to wrote the heart torn, “This Must Be more and more girls became fans, their chase something dangerous, “Adore” The Place,” with “emotional resonance, wholesome pop sound secured a sound expresses utter adoration from gaze to but no narrative qualities.” As we bob that would define the decade. There surrender, and “Kiss” took seduction to our heads and shake our hips, the funk weren’t many all-female rock bands a level that made us shudder. When takes over, because Talking Heads to influence the masses. “Our Lips Are it all fails, “Let’s Go Crazy” leads you found a way to get to us and we can’t Sealed” and “We Got the Beat” are back to what’s most important in explain why. anthems that are unapologetically girly youth, indulgence, possibility, and self- you can’t help but wish the Go Go’s possession. were your real life best friends. FIGHT CLUB: “You met me at a TRAINSPOTTING: Drugs and BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY: “It very strange time in my life,” says Ed electronic music catapulted Danny all began in a year’s day on my 32nd Norton as the narrator, who showed Boyle’s 1996 narrative about a year of being single,” was the opening us that the rat race of adulthood group of young heroin addicts in line about a labeled spinster heading just wants to make a person punch Edinburgh, Scotland. In what would to a midlife crisis. A reinterpretation another in the face. 1999 was the be Ewan Mcgregor’s breakout role, of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, eve of the new millennium and Fight Trainspotting gave us an insight Bridget Jones was the modern Club hit us in the core of what fear to the forgotten misfits forgone heroine trying to figure out the about adulthood, which would be in neo-liberalist Europe. “Choose matters of love and career in your that it’s an existence with no meaning. Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. thirties. The ever insensitive question It’s all just stuff. The things that we Choose a family. Choose a fucking about why women in their 30’s are own will eventually going to own us. big television …” is the opening still single, was met with a smart quip, To counter this, the film introduced monologue of a young life defeated. “It could be because beneath our the radical ideology of complete The film’s harrowing visuals of a clothes, our bodies are completely mayhem, anarchy, and denouncement young person’s rock bottom is covered with scales?” It showed of consumerism, showing us that we a tragic obstacle for these self- beauty in imperfection and that you still have to feel alive for the time that proclaimed scum and “shite of the can fall in love with the jerk, but fall in we remain alive. earth.” These characters were the love with the right jerk… Mr. Darcy. hooligans in all of us trying to find their way to self-worth. 1990 NIRVANA: You can’t talk about A TRIBE CALLED QUEST: In BJORK: She gave agency to the this decade without talking about the 90s, A Tribe Called Quest was weird, curious girl. Her album, Debut the godfathers of grunge. Nirvana’s the leader an awakening transition brought experimental pop to the frontman, Kurt Cobain was a in hip-hop. They were the ultimate 90’s. With a powerhouse voice reluctant hunk, mixed with punk New York artists, as they brought a that rings right into your soul, her and metal angst, yet subdued by mix of intelligence, inspiration, and musical arrangements mixed of disenfranchisement and apathy. Like innovation to a developing music synthesizers and a string orchestra, all great rock music, Nirvana provided culture. Their Afrocentric perspective she introduced a sound that was songs that we could yell at the top mixed with the New York’s jazz and radically modern. Her innovative of our lungs and give us a reason to beatnik poetry influence has made surrealistic science music videos, feel. Their music was thoughtful and their albums some of the best hip- with Michel Gondry, were some poetic lyrics about feelings, mixed hop of the 90’s and arguably the of the best of the decade, as her with intrinsic rage and electricity. best of all of time. They talked about haunting vocals provided a beautiful Nirvana provided the right fuel could love and sex, while also tackling race soundscape to her futuristically mosh till your nose bled, while also and social justice. For any young seductive world. She’s a pop icon bringing introspection about yourself person, A Tribe Called Quest made that’s equally a visual and musical in developing and thoughtless society. listening to hip-hop, not just an genius. A risk taker that’s not afraid enjoyable experience, but a spiritual of her own ideas. and intellectual journey as well. 2000 There’s LOST IN TRANSLATION: CHILDREN OF MEN: A film ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE a beauty in misunderstanding if about a futuristic England dealing SPOTLESS MIND: An unforgettable you stay through the whole ride. with a refugee crisis, this dystopian film about forgetting. In Jim Carrey’s Lost in Translation is the film that thriller is the most relevant movie our most impressive dramatic role as the has defined millennials. An aging present and uncertain time. Alfonso heartsick Joel, who goes to have a actor and a young listless college, Cuarón’s 2006 masterpiece was a procedure to erase the memory of his find one another during a period of tell-tale promise to the events of impulsive and dramatic ex-girlfriend, morose circumstances. Despite a 2016. In a world where women can no Clementine. Michel Gondry’s visual huge age difference, the two click longer reproduce, chaos and political genius takes us through the chaotic with a romantic tension that would disorder ensue and ill-informed maze of Joel’s mind, as he makes a last- usually be unsettling, but their mutual pundits and extreme political ditch effort to hang onto the memories alienation leads to adventure, as this views rule the fate of humanity.

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