Top 5’s for Gen Y
July 25th, 2008 by Justin Richards in Arts, Film, Music, Television, Whatnot
Arts writer Amanda Schurr and I were discussing the new JC Penney commercial that riffs off The Breakfast Club. These are the days when advertisers, filmmakers, radio programmers, basically all producers of media, are trying to cash in on Gen X nostalgia.
At 32, Amanda is a tweenie, an XY-er if you will (She does have a strong handshake, come to think of it. Jk, Amanda, don’t beat me.). But born in 1985, I landed soundly in Generation Y, or the Millienial Generation. “I wonder,” I said to Amanda, “where people will mine for nostalgia when my generation is the consumer class.”
So we bring you the beginnings of a collaborative list: movies, music and TV shows that molded the impressionable adolescent minds of my generation. Our lower bound for release dates is the year 2000, when I and others born in the Year of the Ox were learning to drive. In homage to High Fidelity, we deliver our lists in chunks of five. Note that these aren’t necessarily the best releases, just culture shapers. A qualifying candidate either affected American behavior on a large scale or altered the course of its medium. First are my lists, with Amanda’s to follow:
Films
Borat
Garden State
Napoleon Dynamite
Fahrenheit 9/11
Donnie Darko
TV shows
The Colbert Report
Scrubs
Curb your Enthusiasm
Lost
American Idol
Albums
“White Blood Cells” by The White Stripes
“Justified” by Justin Timberlake
“Hot Fuss” by The Killers
“Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” by Outkast
“Give up” by The Postal Service
July 25th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I definitely think Jerry Maguire should have been included in this top five movie list.
And what about books?
July 25th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I don’t think books shape culture that much until they are made into movies. At any given moment there are probably like 5 Americans reading a book and 30 million watching something.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to put Chuck Palahniuk, Dan Browne or Jonathan Safran Foer on any lists. Why is it that it seems easier to identify good mainstream tv shows/movies and albums than to identify good mainstream books? Correct me if I’m wrong.
And Chuck Klosterman’s work might be a counterexample, but I don’t know if he’s well-known enough to make a list.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
And Jerry Maguire was released in ‘96.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Oh, I didn’t realize that 1996 wasn’t included in our generation.
I would include Klosterman on the list - in fact - he’s who I had in mind when writing my initial comment, but you’re right, he’s not well-known enough. I suppose all of the well-known authors of our generation aren’t so much influential as they are easy to read. That’s disappointing when you think about it.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Jerry Ma freaking Guire? Really? Really? One of Cameron Crowe’s weakest films. (okay, Elizabethtown was a lower point.) Though it’s still got one of the best lines ever: “That’s not a dress. That’s an Audrey Hepburn movie.” And the running through the airport scene is pretty amazing, too. But seriously, though, Jerry Maguire? Lame. Weak.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Did you know bees and dogs can smell overrated movies a mile away?
July 29th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I really will revisit this with a few picks for my own generation, promise. At the moment, I’m too busy comparing chins with Jay Leno and, from your gen, dear J.R., Rumer Willis.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
I totally agree with your television and movie list. Great realization. But I must say that I have no idea who The Postal Service is.. So, being firmly grounded in Gen Y, I would replace that with one of the teenie-bopper boy band albums or one of the blond female singers that we grew up with. Think about how we are STILL fixated on Brittany to this day…
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I think in any other generation we would have had a list of books, but for some reason our generation doesn’t seem to read books for pleasure that often so a list of literature would probably ended up being a list of Newspaper articles or Magazines/Graphic Novels or something to that effect. So I appreciate the fact that that list isn’t in there.