If you are around 50, read this.
We like the old rules – because it is fun to break them.
James Gandolfini’s death concerned me. I look like him, for one thing. And he was just 51, while I turn 50 this summer. After reading about his indulgent last meal and overall conspicuous consumption, I went home and had fruit for dinner. (That will be an ongoing challenge.)
Beyond the vow to eat better and a sudden, unromatic realization of mortality, The past few days I’ve had to ask myself:
Who are we, this group of Americans around age 50?
We know we’re trapped between the two largest generations, the Baby Boomers and Millennials. We’re Jan Brady, the forgotten middle child. But what characteristic defines us?
I have a theory. It is a classic all-American, and perhaps sophomoric, sense of rebellion.
Think “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” starring Matthew Broderick (age 51). It continues to resonate for many of us. Here was not angry revolution, but gleeful defiance. Truancy as performance art.
I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I’ve been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins
We don’t want to change the system, we want to flout it, mock it, curse it. Then do it again.
We are Michael Jordan (age 50), who left the sport he dominated to try another professional sport, at which he was subpar.
We are Conan O’Brien (age 50), who waged his own private war on the latenight talk-show wars.
We are Billy Beane (age 51), who defied conventional thinking to reinvent Major League Baseball’s financial approach to talent; and we are Brad Pitt (age 49), who played Beane on the screen.
We are Eddie Izzard (age 51) who wore a dress to do intellectual standup comedy, explaining that he is “a straight transvestite or a male lesbian.”
We are the Obamas (he’s 51; she’s 49), who thrived in taking on the old status quo, and have struggled most since becoming the entrenched power.
We are Sarah Palin (age 49), who suceeded mostly in playing the maverick on the campaign trail.
And we are Gandolfini, an unusual leading man playing an unusual tough guy: A gangster whose most profound relationship was with his therapist, where he discovered vulnerability.
We rebelled because the old way was still there. We grew up with the Cold War and three network TV stations and Top 40 radio. We were the last generation to embrace uncomplicated rock ‘n’ roll as a group, to thrill when a favorite song came on the radio, believing The Clash was delivering important news.
That rebellion is gone because the old archetypes of authority are gone. It’s not fun to flout the cops when they are outgunned. The Berlin Wall is down, but there are many, smaller global threats. And we don’t know where they are coming from.
Rebellion is no longer a game. In 2011, The Protester was Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year. Dissidents and rebels and protesters aren’t playing. The stakes are real, and people who get out of line get hurt – or killed.
I fear that’s robbed the Millennials of the healthy rite of standing up to authority. Born in the shadow of 9/11, they have been manhandled by the Patriot Act, and now scrutinized under a microscope of surveillance.
Corporations have stolen their mischief, implementing a mainstream approach to innovation, as if “disruption” is good business. For them, “gaming” is an industry. Whole ad campaigns champion thinking differently, without any hint of irony.
I fear they have never stolen street signs at night, pimped cheap beer, smoked weed illicitly, sneaked in a bedroom window, stared at their shoes while being lectured by the vice principal.
When the rules were dumb, power was entrenched, and the status quo uninspired, the choice to rebel was laudable.
As Ferris Bueller said:
“You realize if we played by the rules right now we’d be in gym?”
