Chloe Town

ONTREAL (CUP)--

he ‘Generation X’ mythology was vaguely compelling at first. It really was. Fashioning ‘McJob’-trauma and game-show banter as an ideology was hard to resist. So was the chance to further lambaste creepy fortysomethings who still pine for their (pre-sellout) hippie days. But that was all before I realized that the most intriguing aspect of the Gen X phenomenon is the fact that it refuses to go away. ‘or over a year now we have been threatened and shamed into fearing the impending crisis of a ‘New Generation Gap’’. A tirade of magazine icles (Time, Details, The Atlantic), newspaper editorials (hundreds across the continent - just add mine to the pyre) and radio shows (CBC had an tt on ‘Morningside’ and ‘Centrepoint’ last week) have successfully duped many of us into believing the rhetoric that Xers are a disillusioned, ticulate mass of restless, apathetic, angst-wrought youths. Now aside from the more obvious objections I may have for this character sketch, I have one big bone to pick with this trend. Far, far too often ‘high-horse pontificating has been done by didactic, belligerent old-folk -- leaving no room for their victim’s response. While they gleefully flay ilive, we are left with no option but to meekly whimper in the sidelines. Figures. Isn’t it just like those narcissistic Boomers to, once again, slip way into the limelight -- even when the talk is about us. y suspicion is that most of this Gen X hype has been fabricated and sustained as a means of “marketing the millennium’. Through labelling and dging our generation as lame and unthreatening, we become an easy colour-by-number outlook for the 21st century. Not only are we pigeonholed Nasse, but we are targeted to appease the fear of young-blood competition for Boomers. hat was once a charming metaphor for a generation’s frustration with mall-culture and a dwindling job-market has clearly festered into our

loitative enemy. And since I don’t accept for one minute that ‘‘we’’, as a generation, can be defined by this or any other terminology, I’d really 0 can the X lingo.

And as for that grunge thing I’ve heard so much about, don’t get me started.@

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