This Salon.com essay is a nice perspective on a film, "Brigsby Bear," I've not yet seen, and will wait till it arrives on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu. An early trailer struck me as a bit too self-conscious, and even cloying. But I liked its gentleness and eclectic sensibility. This later trailer seems more consistent with the writer Matthew Rowza's perspective.
My one criticism of Rowza's essay is that it overstates why Millennials get "obsessed" with certain pop culture reference points. It's not slacker-dom that causes Millennials to do this--and admittedly Rowza merely implies this reason. The better way to see this phenomenon is to ask what makes Millennials able to do this? And the answer is technology with a capital T. Millennials did not change human traits. Technology simply made it possible for certain human traits to develop further.
Take myself as an example. When I was a pre-teen and teen, I obsessed over "The Prisoner" and "The Twilight Zone." But until I became an adult, I could not watch those shows whenever I wanted, and certainly could not watch them over and over again. I had to rely on and develop a memory of dialogue and plot lines if I was lucky to set aside a time to see a rerun of the shows. I remember waking up with an alarm clock to watch a rerun of the last episode of "The Prisoner" when I read in TV Guide it would be on at 1:30 a.m. on a Tuesday on Channel 5, WNEW-television.
I was also obsessed with the late comedian, Lenny Bruce. But with Lenny, however, I had records! And trust me. I listened over and over and over again (I did not get many dates, obviously...) and I found a book of transcribed Lenny Bruce routines by John Cohen. And I read and memorized nearly all of that book. To this day, something will occur or someone will say something that literally triggers a Lenny Bruce routine line and I repeat it, mostly to confusion of the other person if it is heard by that person.
Hmmm...obsession? Oh yes it is. And I am a Baby Boomer, not a Millennial. And I was able to do that because, unlike someone who was a teen in, say, the 1920s, who only had radio and could only hear shows once at a certain time...well, you see the point. And go back further before the advent of the novel. Not much time to obsess unless one was a wealthy person who could collect things.
Technology has granted us a right to obsess. And let's not think Millennials aren't thriving as a group because of this technology that allows for obsession. It may be technology, in the sense of automation and higher efficiencies from computers. That is definitely a part of the challenges facing Millennials. But talk of "technology" as a separate part of the general systems, or something "naturally" (objectively) occurring, instead of seeing technology as something which is an integral part of a society that is promoting inequality, is what leads us astray.
I just wish people in power would take the time to read "Labor & Monopoly Capital" (1974) by Harry Braverman. It is an amazing work by a barely high school graduate, a labor organizer by trade, and a self-taught intellectual, who analyzed how a capitalist system uses technology to further control the workplace and, while it may not lead to enslavement, certainly promotes anomie and disruption of human connection. Braverman, in this book, predicts the decline of bank tellers and the rise of what we call automated teller machines (ATMs). In 1974. He says the promotion will be that it will be cheaper for the employer banks and of course cheaper for consumers. There will be a fee, the banks will say, but it will go away. And of course it will not go away. Braverman understood how the world works, at least our world.
So again these cheap drive by's against Millennials, even when offered in a kindly way, are really dodges that even good people like Rowza do not necessarily see. I am not asking that Rowza say what I've said. That is not the point of his essay. I like his essay and am now more intrigued to see "Brigsby Bear." I just want us all to notice how even a Millennial like Rowza can't help but kick Millennials, when the thing we should "obsess" over is not generations, but societal systems. We should be constantly asking: "Why isn't technology freeing us? Why is it burdening us?" For those questions are better than "Why are Millennials so obsessive over what we adults consider silly?"
We can then see which questions lead us to question true authorities over our lives and which divide us.
