Generation gaps in popular culture

This article is somewhat old now, but it provides an interesting perspective on the generation gap between people born 1945-1964 ("Baby Boomers") and people born 1985-2000 ("Generation Y" or "Millennials") that's currently becoming a major theme in the cultural discourse.

One thing I do find curious, just like the author, is that I don't see that many people figure out where Generation X - that is, people born 1965-1984 - fit into the equation. Back in my high school days I remember reading a lot of literature whose main theme was the generation gap between *that* generation and the Baby Boomers.

As a matter of fact, I notice in everyday life that whereas both Boomers and Gen-Yers tend to think very much in terms of high-minded abstract ideals, Gen-Xers value everyday common sense and a type of post-modern folk wisdom more when it comes as a foundation for their worldviews. In other words that they are more skeptical of the "grand ideological narratives" that the Boomers are perceived as having lost faith in and a lot of us Gen-Yers/Millennials seem to be in the process of re-constructing as displayed in something like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This article touches on some of the same points, and also adds that much of the most influential art from the last many years was distinctly the work of Generation X's distinctive zeitgeist outlined above - making it so interesting that Gen X gets lost in the shuffle during the formation of that grand narrative. Perhaps generation gaps are just more readily apparent among artists than the rest of the population? See also people born *during* WW2 getting lost in the shuffle when it came to the Greatest Generation/Baby Boom culture clash in the 1960s/1970s...

Leonardo DiCaprio comes pretty close now to being on the scale of DeNiro, Pacino and company. Gen X's influence on culture seems to be more focused on more niche subcultures, which fits into the Zeitgeist of avoiding large "big idea" histories. Quite a few of 1980s/1990s indie culture filmmakers, authors and musicians seem to be overwhelmingly Gen X. (Björk, Bret Easton Ellis, Polly Jean Harvey, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino)

Come to think of it, it looks like back when people started using the "generation X" term back in the 1980s it described anyone born from the 1960s onwards a lot of the cultural personalities defined as such (Steve Albini, Daniel Clowes, Douglas Copeland, Richard Linklater, Lydia Lunch etc) have been retro-actively re-defined as tail end of the Baby Boomers. Quite a few people born in the early 1960s do seem to have more in common with older Gen-Xers than with people born in the 1950s anyway. Jim Derogatis, born 1964, seems to write a lot about this generation gap in Milk It his book about rock music in the 1990s.

Again it seems like generation gaps are more readily apparent among artists than the rest of the population, perhaps because that's a segment of the culture that most readily embraces and promotes a selfconsciously avantgarde ethos.