Monday, October 31, 2011

Not X Nor Y: Generation Catalano? by Rebekah Hakkenberg


This is the single most RIGHT ON thing I have ever read about my "in-between" generation:

Claire Danes' Angela—and Heathers' Veronica Sawyer and Freaks and Geeks' Lindsay Weir—also fall into a trope of television and film that's an especially apt representation of Generation Catalano (or at least those of us who were white and from the suburbs): the girl who doesn't know where exactly she fits in, because she's smart (full disclosure: the struggle Lindsay has over whether to stay on the Mathletes hit a little too close to home), wants to be popular, and has to leave her old, dorky friends behind. The show or movie's dramatic tension is then largely about her identity crisis as she ping-pongs among different cliques and wrestles with the seemingly monumental decision of whether to stay in on a Friday night and do her calculus homework or go to a keg party in the woods. Yet My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks each only made it through one season before being canceled; they failed to resonate with a broader audience.
(Dorree Shafrir writing for Slate)

I'd rather be Generation Angela Chase, or Generation Ricky, or Rayanne, but the rest rings truetruetrue.

1 comment:

  1. I actually wore an army jacket all through high school and I dated a cool pot-head. And I played badminton. One Generation Lindsay Weir T-Shirt please.

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