Suburbia (1983)

This review of the Penelope Spheeris film "Suburbia," one of the few movies I remember vividly from those misspent teenage years, really nails the 80s for Gen X.  1000misspent hours, indeed. 

Millenials feel they're in a similarly overwhelming dystopia, but those in NYC and SoCal don't realize those cities were like presentday Detroit, no one remembers stagflation and long gas lines, and the looming threat of thermonuclear war that was more real than it now seems, in the era of Red Dawn and Footloose remakes. 

The way WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the repressive 50s and McCarthyism, the Vietnam war, and everything else that was era-defining in the past seems either faded or overhyped.  Only in retrospect.  You had to be there, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you remain jaded about all teens and twenty-somethings to come and their sulks and rebellions.  Generational gaps are endlessly funny things. 

I love reading intergenerational discussions on the interwebs of who had it worse and who's more annoying.  The idea that anything changes is so micro-focused.  The glaciers melt, the mountains crumble, and the core belches.  Stars burst into life, fade away and radiate.  One thing I love about 80s punk and new wave was a baseline awareness of this bigger picture peeking through so many songs- Atomic!

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