Our Adolescent-Forever Class
It’s not Forever 21; It’s Forever 15. Is it Generational or Tribal? Or just Human Nature?
The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren't as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young.
In the Shadow of Vladimir Putin’s Mother
I found this image of Putin haunting and revealing. The accompanying story paints an equally disturbing picture of his youth. The premise of this post, and of the many articles that I link to here, is just that: Youth. And our never-ending quest to recapture it. Or, more correctly, to redefine it for our current psycho-social needs.
The first paragraphs of the story
Elderly women huddled against bitter cold picking their way through rubble spilling from the smoking ruins of a blackened apartment building. Stiffened bodies lying grotesquely askew on broken pavement. Household belongings strewn on the ground, backlit by roaring flames. Hollow-eyed children struggling from bomb shelters to line up for food, water.
This is not Ukraine today, but Leningrad under siege by the Wehrmacht during World War II. For 872 days, from 1941 to early 1944, Hitler’s Nazi forces sought to pummel into submission the city now known as St. Petersburg. But against the brutal German campaign to force them to their knees, the people of Leningrad held. Under vicious attack by aggressors to whom they had done no wrong, Leningraders were empowered by moral certainty. They were in the right, and they knew it.
That theme is a major focus of my writing. Indeed, my whole thought process and my ideas of Freedom stem from and revolve around the emotions and experiences of my youth. Not just the painful periods, but the moments of joy that imprint on our souls for a lifetime. And how to make sense of them now.
I’ve written before how those psycho-social skills that we learned in adolescence are so perfectly suited. For a teenager surviving hi-school. Not so much for adults navigating this Now-Normal. But, historically, we’ve seen this pattern.
I believe I connect to my readers because of our shared universal experience of adolescence. All human beings go through it. How we feel about ourselves currently is how we learned to feel about ourselves as a teenager.
Sadly, for some, there are no moments of youthful joy in life to carry them through the darkness. For others, those childhood moments will be the only joy they’ll ever have. The impulse to keep these memories close and to subconsciously live their opposite destinies is equally strong for both types of souls. And then, maybe, the leftovers take control.
For Putin, the homicidal paranoia instilled into him in his youth manifests itself in adulthood by projecting the demons of his adolescence onto the Ukrainian people. This allows him to slaughter them as payback for his entire miserable life.
The fact that he supplants innocent victims for Nazi aggressors somehow convinces his nation to follow along. I think only the Russian people can determine how long that might be for. Let’s pray it’s over soon.
Fast Fashion: Forever 21 and Renderings of Adolescent Self-Definition
Ramblings of a Baby Teacher is written by Alison Blair and is an interesting post written a few years ago. I found it after entering “forever adolescent” in the search bar. A fellow Substacker just wrote about blogs that fade away. You can check it out here
Fast Fashion: Forever 21 and Renderings of Adolescent Self-Definition
In my Adolescent Development class, the clothing chain Forever 21 was recently discussed. The discussion revolved around how Forever 21 tries to consistently keep up with what is the current perceived youth trend, and how quickly the store can put out an article of clothing or accessory that centres on a popular musical act or cultural hot topic, as exemplified by the pre cut Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and Unicorn makeup brushes above. In Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right, Tina Wells touches on this phenomena, labeling it as fast fashion which Wells defines as the “get it before it’s gone” (10) mentality. Wells exemplifies how Forever 21 executes their fast fashion structure: “you admire your friends dress, she tells you it’s from Forever 21, you go the following week, and it’s nowhere to be found.” (10) This suggestion that adolescents crave exclusivity in their fashion choices and are constantly seeking the newest and ahead of the curve trends is certainly not unique, however it does touch on the idea of adolescents beginning the self-discovery that will continue throughout their adult lives. Perhaps this desire to have the article of clothing or accessory that nobody else has stems from a deeper need to be unique and a self-defined individual which can begin in the early stages of adolescence. The journey of self-discovery is certainly not one that ends in adolescence, or at all; however, as more agency is given to adolescents, they express their self-discovery more freely which allows stores like Forever 21 to thrive on this fast fashion phenomena.
Reading that post, and others highlighting this take on generational differences, one might assume that this is a recent phenomena. Mistaken assumption.
I’m fascinated by the term. Forever-Adolescent. I thought, foolishly, that this condition was uniquely of our time. That it afflicted just the Millennial or Z or Y cohorts. Not exclusively of their own desire or making. But they’ve owned it and made it their brand.
I do believe the Forever-Adolescent has made a comfortable living out of stunted potential. Which says more for evolutional adaptability than individual achievement.
Not “legally” driving on my 16th Birthday was unthinkable. Being unemployed during hi school was unimaginable. Living at my mom’s house after the age of 18 was un-American. Gen-X didn’t have a comfortable adolescence so time-freezing it as a life-style was a hard Fuck No!
Here’s a whole post on “Slippers in the Street”. The perverse habit of wearing house-clothes outside. Just another symptom.
Speaking of what has gone before
As a social phenomenon, this was not without precedent: From the grave survivors of the First World War, Britain's gilded and bohemian youth turned and partied. Mad treasure hunts across London, absurd costume balls, the creation of "sex appeal" with "silken legs and scarlet lips," the "Bright Young People"--pursued and dissected by the press (and brilliantly documented in D.J. Taylor's book of the same name) --were pushed into frivolity. What else could they do when their elders, older by just a few years, had the last word on seriousness?
Then, turning to America and our particular obsessions
But in America not growing up took on a purer complexion, an authenticity, in a world populated with "phonies"--the arch term of Catcher's Holden Caulfield's rebellion. Zinn, in a similar fashion, excoriated the phony story the U.S. told about itself, replacing it with a tale of genocidal depredation and delusion. That has some use, but it is also, like adolescence, a state of illusion. What is the upshot of exposing fakery except the belief that a morally unassailable authenticity is possible? What is Zinn's account of an evil ruling class and an honest, oppressed people other than adolescent historiography--a point driven home with an excruciating lack of self-awareness in the movie Good Will Hunting, when Matt Damon tells his shrink, played by Robin Williams, that A People's History will "knock you on your ass”?
I read Professor Zinn’s alternative history book in prison. The Oldest sent it to me when she was 15. Seems apropos somehow. I remember while reading it familiar emotions I felt as a teenager. Back when I had to listen to the Dean of Students pontificate about why I shouldn’t ditch school to smoke pot.
Rage. Disbelief. Horror. Shame. Guilt. Envy. Lust. The All-Stars of Adolescence. An interesting, and perhaps insightful, epilogue of said Dean of Students: Dean Fero is, in fact, a convicted murderer. And a remorseful lifer. He shot and killed his boss in 1985 during a “Performance Evaluation.”
I found a couple of articles about this guy. To think, just three years after I graduated, this man that had screamed at me in his office and beat my ass with a custom paddle named The Punisher as a 16-year-old, pulled out a gun and killed a man in an office.
I’m literally glad I made it out alive. One wonders about his adolescence. I broke bread and traded commodities with convicted murderers. Some were remorseful. Some were not. Adolescence had a lot to do with with the difference.
Former Principal Convicted Of Killing Boss
Throwing Away the Key: New Mexico’s ‘30-year lifers’ denied a fair shot at parole
Why Adolescence Lasts Forever
Popularity. That is the reason. The Fonz had it. Kardashians - check. Tiger - check. The Bad Orange - check. Admit it: Who in high school was more popular than you and you were jealous of?
For me it was Steven Archuleta. He got the girl. He was athletic. He had better longer hair! And a car. What an asshole! So glad I got over it. Someday. The ethos we didn’t as much agree to as submit to as children was thusly expressed
You might be knocked on your ass, but to what end? What was there to believe in when marriage and family, society and country, and liberty and equality were all revealed to be messy constructs and not the simple renderings of childhood? Why even risk disillusionment when adolescence, and the guilt-free role of minor inquisitor, can be maintained as a cultural ideal?
Glenn Greenwald is a terrific writer. And an amazing journalist. He has been called a pedophile for “grooming” his husband before they were married. So much for gay men and victimology.
I’ve written on this topic before, in the Beyond 1984 post below. The person Greenwald is criticizing is Taylor Lorenz, a 36-43 year old female who writes about teen-culture for a living. How shallow is that? Oh wait - that’s a great topic - keep reading!
Anyways, Ms. Lorenz is an actual person that attended a Swiss Boarding School. I wish I knew which one. (Full Disclosure: The closest I ever got to hi-school royalty was making out with a drunk prom-queen in the back seat of a 1976 Trans Am.) It’s kind of a mystery.
Not the making out in the Trans Am, the boarding school. All her bios just state that “she attended a Swiss boarding school.”
Doesn’t truly matter, I guess, they are all pretty damn expensive and out of reach of most victims, er, people. Everyone is entitled to their own privilege.
Being the humble but diligent and intrepid conveyor of words strung together, I must yield to the victimological vernacular vocabulary voluntarily vomited. Mind you, she is calling MSNBC out as being part of a “right-wing smear campaign.” Really?
Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – Devo
Perfect headline for a perfect ending. If my Substack is useful for nothing more in my life than converting everyone that reads me into a raving DEVO fan, then it will be a life well lived. Not every song is for every soul. I get that. No band really truly is.
But for doing what they believe in and for maintaining that belief since their adolescence they have earned my utmost respect and unwavering support. They should be a for-sure fixture of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.
DEVO = De-EVOlution. Are we regressing as a culture instead of moving forward? In 1970, the students who would go on to form Devo asked themselves this very question when they witnessed the infamous May 4th Kent State shootings. At that moment Devo were born as equal parts art project, performance art, rock & roll satire, and punk band. They produced a sound that was fresh to the world, a wild amalgam of sharp-edged punk rock guitar angst, Kraftwerk-inspired synthesized modernity, jagged motoric rhythms, and detached spoken word vocalizations. The primary lineup featured two sets of brothers, Bob (guitar) and Gerald (bass) Casale, and Bob (guitar) and Mark (keyboards) Mothersbaugh, along with Alan Myers (drums).
Their early performances around Akron, Ohio allowed them to develop their songs, performance routines (hazmat suits), and stage characters (Booji Boy). In 1978 they recorded their debut LP with Brian Eno and David Bowie both producing. Devo’s cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” showed them embracing rock history while simultaneously tearing it down – taking one of the key rock anthems of the 1960s and turning it into a nervous rhythmic groove for the coming decade. Right on time, Devo released Freedom of Choice in 1980 and hit the pop charts with “Whip It!” The band’s performance art was the perfect fit for the era of music video. Clad in black turtleneck t-shirts with bright red energy domes on their heads, they took the world by storm. But their constant use of humor and satire hid the biting criticism of modern society on tracks like “Freedom of Choice” and “Gates of Steel.” Devo set up the punch lines and expected their audiences to fill in the blanks. This technique often left people asking what they were all about. But for those who got the message (like Nine Inch Nails, Daft Punk, and Gorillaz), Devo became a beacon guiding an entire generation of new wave, industrial, and electronic artists into the future.
Consider:
Devo Artistfacts
1972-Mark Mothersbaugh Vocals, synthesizer * Jerry Casale Bass * Bob Casale Guitar * Bob Mothersbaugh Guitar * Alan Myers Drums *
Devo formed in 1972 by Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale when they were art students at Kent State University. They were both there when the National Guard killed 4 student protesters in 1970.
The band is based on the concept of "De-evolution." The theory is that man has regressed, rather than evolved over the years.
Devo considers themselves more artists than musicians. Much of their concept is portrayed in their videos, which show them all dressed alike, going through robotic motions to indicate that people have lost their individuality.
Brian Eno produced their first album.
David Bowie and Iggy Pop got them a record deal after watching a movie they scored called The Truth About DeEvolution.
"Whip It" is their only hit, but many of their other songs were covered in the '90 by groups that discovered them. Nirvana, The Foo Fighters, and Soundgarden have all covered Devo songs.
They reunited to play the Lollapalooza Tour in 1996 and 1997.
Mark Mothersbaugh writes music for TV shows and commercials. He has worked on Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Rugrats.
Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale had a small printing business in the '70s which inspired the title of a Neil Young album. Mothersbaugh was wearing a T-shirt he printed for a rust-removal company when Young saw it and used the slogan, "Rust Never Sleeps."
When their songs are used in commercials, the band re-records them so they can keep all the performance rights to the song. Says Casale: "We only half control our songs because of a terrible publishing deal we made in 1978 with Richard Branson, who basically tricked Devo. Our lawyers, who were supposed to be looking out for us, encouraged us to sign this deal, which turned out to be more than an administration deal, it turned out to be a publishing deal when it came to ancillary use, which has to do with TV and film. Every time these things come up, we only control the song for song use, like on a record or compilation. When it comes to synching it to movies and TV, we are now in bed with EMI, who bought the publishing from Richard Branson long ago. They have as much say as us and make the lion's share of the money. We can say no, but we shoot ourselves in the foot by doing so. Better to make a little money for the wrong reasons 20 years later than to never make any money at all."
Casale: "We stupidly believed that laser discs were about to happen because we read all the scientific magazines and audiophile mags and they were saying this was on the verge of happening, and certainly the technology existed. We didn't realize that what American business would do, which is typical of American business and human nature in general, was create 3 competing systems to confuse the consumer and make it impossible to buy a unit that would play laser discs except for that person's catalog. You could have 10 titles that you couldn't play on yours but somebody else could play on theirs and vice versa. Obviously, they killed it, but what we were going to do was put out laser discs. Devo would be like The 3 Stooges, you'd watch these film shorts that were music-driven with stories. We were going to put out one a year, we didn't even want a record deal. It all just became a fantasy, there was no such medium and there was no such market and there was no way to get them out there that we knew of. We started investigating putting out VHS cassettes at the time, but even then, it was a fledgling industry with VHS and Beta competing, 2 incompatible formats that people were waiting on to see who won. Nobody understood what we were tying to do, so they weren't offering any distribution deals for us. So we just gave up and signed a record deal."
Well we’ve reached the end of another missive. I write early this week as I prepare for manual labor the next two days. I’ve never sent this out on a Thursday. Beware of the word never. Like always, it commits one to forever.
Better to promise nothing and deliver everything. If only we could. How about give everything and expect nothing. Never and forever, such troublesome concepts . . .
Ric
My son was the only one of his friends that were hellbent on getting his license as soon as he turned 16. They all took drivers' ed and did what they needed to do, but there didn't seem to be the same sense of urgency that you and I might've had?