GENERATION X - SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE EVE OF THE MILLENNIUM As the transition to the year 2000 approaches the visions of the future portrayed by popular cinematic releases are becoming increasingly dark and apocalyptic (Armageddon, Deep Impact, End of Days), continuing a theme that stretches back at least to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) where the Modernist geist (world-view) is first turned on its head in the presence of a popular box office audience. In Kubrick’s great masterpiece the motif of the human knowledge-bearer standing over nature and the cosmos and subduing it through the use of reason and machines, present in so much science-fiction of the 1950’s, is abandoned - instead, in 2001, humans are the unwilling and impotent pawns of transcendent forces beyond their comprehension. For all of our progress and despite its attendant tools of science and reason etc., We are not in control - HAL will not close the pod bay doors! The motif has gathered prominence in popular forms ever since - in both Terminator (1984) and Blade Runner (1991) to name just two it is multi-national companies exploiting technology to enhance their own wealth who are at fault whilst in Jurassic Park (1991) it is science itself together with the ephemeral notions of discovery and knowledge that are called into serious question.        The sense of progress, technology, and the society in general spiraling out of control and heading for an imminent apocalyptic disaster (the subject of Alvin Toffler’s prophetic Future Shock, 1970) are all gathered up in the darkly apocalyptic TV series Millennium (created by Chris Carter of The X Files fame) in which a typically post-modern mix of eclectic signs, images, symbols, and oracles, drawn from a variety of religions, philosophy’s and belief systems, all point inexorably to an imminent apocalypse as the hero (Frank Black) struggles with increasing futility and frustration against the overwhelming, tangible power of evil. That TV programs such as Millennium accurately reflects the collective mood of the current generation is borne out by social researcher Hugh Mackay, who concludes his most recent work Generations with the observation;   The belief that life will improve, nationally and globally, is a minority  position. More than half believe that the 21st century is more likely  to be  a bad  time of crises and trouble than a new age of peace and prosperity.  (1997; 173). The same dynamic is noted by theologian Stanley Grenz;  For the first time in many years, members of the emerging generation do  not share the conviction of their parents that we will solve the enormous  problems of the planet or that their economic situation will surpass that of  their parents. (1995; 94). This new, emerging generation have attracted a variety of labels, itself indicative of the pluralist and eclectic environment in which they exist. For some, the children of the baby-boomers are ‘baby-busters’, for others, they are the post-doom generation,  or the "options generation" (Mackay 1997; 138), because they inhabit a constantly changing, unpredictable world, characterised by impermanence and flux, and for whom the need to be perpetually flexible and prepared to adapt and change is axiomatic. The lack of a fixed, moral and purpose-giving centre in Technopoly means that the current generation is the first "to grow up without having had a moral framework clearly espoused and unambiguously articulated by their parents" (Mackay 1997; 146).  Because their world is constantly changing and in a process of perpetual redefinition, the current generation exists in an ongoing state of angst and uncertainty that manifests itself in ‘the last straw syndrome’, whereby relatively mild incidents can push one over ‘the edge’ into drug abuse, road rage, and suicide etc.  As film writer John Ryan (1998; A17) notes, "if older people don’t understand the deep seated disillusionment of young kids, it’s because they had free education, job certainty and economic independence by their mid-20’s". It is not only the younger generation, however, who experience this angst. In what is officially a time of peace and stability in the USA, "popular culture is displaying almost Cold War levels of paranoia" (Lawson 1997; A11), whereby almost everyone, from the most alienated and disadvantaged, to the super-rich, are perpetually at risk. The same dynamic is present in Australian sociological research, which reveals a ‘silent majority’ in perpetual "end-of-century anxiety" and "an ageing population increasingly fearful of technological change, economic inequality, unemployment, immigrants and the pernicious influence of American culture" (Guilliatt 1997; 18), a phenomenon perhaps nowhere more visibly, and publicly, manifested than in the rise (and decline?) of Pauline Hanson’s One nation party.    The experience of generation X is one of powerlessness and alienation, brought about by the recognition that, although we cannot switch off the engine driving technological progress, the "horrifying truth is that, so far as technology is concerned, no one is in charge" (Toffler 1970; 390).  For baby-boomers, the loss of control appears first in the experience of Vietnam. Apocalypse now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic treatment of the state sanctioned and technologically enhanced savagery of the Vietnam war, begins with a hauntingly apocalyptic napalm attack over which Jim Morrison announces in song "This is the end" and "all the children are insane". For generation X, however, the madness has moved from off-shore killing fields such as Vietnam, to the very streets of every urban metropolis.  As the renegade Col. Kurtz in Jospeh Conrad’s great metaphor (from the novella Heart of Darkness, 1901) had ignored the warning to "never get out of the boat" and abandoned himself to the primeval jungle where evil becomes necessary, even desirable, so the ‘boat’ of civilisation (like the Titanic) has clearly run aground in the sense of urban dislocation and hopelessness greatly exasperated by the economic depression of the early 1990’s, producing a sort of post-Nietzsche world in which the ‘death of god’ has been fully realised and the socio-religious ‘signposts’ constructed by Western civilisation removed by modernist scientism and postmodernist subjectivity.  Such dislocation and pessimism is powerfully present in John Singleton’s strikingly realistic film Boyz n the Hood (1991), where the only way out of the cycle of drugs, guns, poverty and early, violent death for African-Americans growing up in a Los Angeles ghetto is the remote chance of an academic or sporting scholarship.  The same sense of despair, set in the same city and made the same year, is portrayed in Falling Down (1992), via the medium of a white, middle class male, whose life degenerates into violence after the break up of his family, the loss of his job, and the indignity of being declared "not economically viable... over-educated, under-skilled... obsolete". More sinister is Oliver Stone’s portrayal of social and familial deconstruction in Natural Born Killers (1994). Here an overtly pessimistic, apocalyptic, motif dominates from the moment Mickey announces "the whole world’s coming to an end Mel". The constant symbolism is, henceforth, of inexorable descent into violence and death,  this understood as the only possible outcome for those "thrown into a pit of slime and forgotten by God". Into the economically depressed social malaise of the early 1990’s appeared the sound recording that seemed to most accurately define the experience of generation X - Nirvana’s aggressive 1991 compact disc Nevermind.  The defining track and biggest selling single of that year (Smells Like Teen Spirit) summed up the loss of optimism, even the will, of the current generation to construct an ideal future. The cry of the MTV generation is not "enter the new age of Aquarius" but "here we are now, entertain us!". It is as though the collective ‘teen spirit’ spoken of has nothing to contribute and nothing to say, or if it has, doesn’t believe anyone is listening anyway. Hence the closing refrain shrugs "O well, whatever, never mind".  If we really are the unwilling pawns of transcendent forces beyond our control or comprehension - be it the evolutionary impulse or determinism of the Christian (Calvinist) variety - then let us all say, on the eve of a new year / century / millennium with Kurt and the boys "Oh well, whatever, never mind." The image I would rather close with returns us to 2001 - which someone has rightly called "a secular movie about God." The black obelisk (a metaphor for the transcendent, divine, supernatural, God etc.) exists, albeit obscured, somewhere in the cosmos. It summons humans towards itself. It has done so since the times of humanity’s primitive origins. It continues to do so now.