Causes and Effects

What causes these proposed differences in generations?  

To introduce this, consider the different historical and social events recognizable by a 10 year old child (born 2005) 30 year old young adult (born 1985), or middle aged 50 year old (1965). None remember JFK. The youngest doesn't remember 9/11. The oldest was allowed (required) to walk to school as young as 8, while the youngest may be accompanied at all times, still. The middle one was a child when the Internet exploded with the invention of the World Wide Web. Experiences such as these impacted who they are and what they do. And many are shared across multiple years, so that say, those born during about 1982-2004 have much in common with this hypothetical 30-year old. 

Not only does it matter what events are shared but how old each was at the time. A child may quickly take it for granted that all information everywhere is instantly accessible. A major economic downturn affects the older person set in their ways differently from the child who can't really do anything but adapt to her family's change in income. We can expect that people who are in the same stage of life during particular historical events will have related outlooks. People are especially going to be impacted by what happened during their youth, which is to say about their first 20 years. The years right after that, when they are young adults starting families and careers, will largely complete their view of the world and how it works. If childhood is relatively stable (think 1950s) and young adulthood triumphant (Nixon resigns!) outlook will be different from a turbulent childhood (say the 1890s) that leads into mixed success as adults (like World War I). 

Bringing it back to my main goal here, these related outlooks are likely to affect how they view stories, whether in film or video or text. 

Bulworth

I'm not going to go too far into how Bulworth is clearly an Artist story.  (Which it is). After all, haven't yet described here how they end up as stories of the Doomed and the Damned, victims and perpetrators. 

And would at some point like to talk a bit about how Warren Beatty (Silent, 1937) was one of the drivers behind New Hollywood, particularly with his involvement in Bonnie & Clyde. 

All I'm going to go into here, though, is how I was watching this 1998 film about a senator who sets up a mafia hit on himself and thinking

<spoiler alert>

 "It would make perfect sense for the GenX Halle Berry character to be the real assassin - Nomads are usually the amoral ("bad") ones after all."

And moments later, that very character gives Senator Bulworth a perfectly cogent analysis of how African-Americans really need jobs, and how World War II yielded a lot of jobs that fed directly into the Civil Rights movement,  hitting instead on pragmatic and pecuniary touchstones for Nomads in general and GenX in particular.

And THEN, moments after that, we find out that, while she isn't exactly the assassin, she is working directly with him, looking for a ten grand payday.

Go figure. 

Generational Attributes

Below we have some attributes of the different generational archetypes - the recurring sorts of generations - as originally proposed in the book Generations. It included many points of comparison between the generational archetypes - that is, the recurring sorts of generations.  Authors Neil Howe and William Strauss identified them  by comparing contemporary and historical figures to find what they had in common.

The listing below is of positive and negative attributes noted from members of these archetypes. This comes from a single chart, which includes a dozen more points of comparison, so there are certainly additional details on how generations change over time. As we go along, we will find more, but this should be a useful overview to investigate  how we can distinguish characters who belong to different generations.  

Archetype	Positive Attributes	Negative Attributes
Hero	Rational Selfless Competent	Overbold Unreflective Insensitive
Artist	Caring Open-minded Expert	Indecisive Guilt-ridden Neurotic
Prophet	Principled Resolute Creative	Ruthless Selfish Arrogant
Nomad	Savvy Perceptive Practical	Amoral Pecuniary Uncultured

For example, let's consider John McLane of the movie Die Hard, and which of the above attributes describe him best. He's clearly not an Artist, by this standard, as he matches none of those attributes. (We might consider him an Expert policeman, but even that pushes beyond the Everyman story there.) He's a bit more of a Hero, although he isn't really Selfless - he is as threatened by Hans Gruber's gang as anyone else, so whatever he does helps him, too. He is also relatively sensitive and reflective, particularly when talking with his other cop friend on the ground. He's not even too bold, really - he tries to get the police to take care of the issue early on. There's a better fit still with the Nomad attributes, but he's neither amoral or in it for the money, and the practical step would have been staying out of the way once he escaped. 

But is he ruthless? He kills every terrorist  he can. Arrogant? Yippie-ki-yay... Principled and resolute? Definitely. Creative? Let us count the ways. We can suggest, then,  that he is probably part of a Prophet generation, and that his story will be what fits a Prophet.

And we'll soon get to what that means....

In Generations, incidentally, Strauss & Howe use different names for these archetypes. The above versions came into use a few years later. I'll include them here because I may lapse into them sometimes: 

Hero: Civic

Artist: Adaptive

Prophet: Idealist

Nomad: Reactive

Starting Out With Generations

Why does it make sense that Maverick should be more of a troublemaker?

To explain that, here's a look at the generational model previously mentioned, from the book Generations or its follow-up The Fourth Turning. It looks at historical events as a repeating cycle involving four different generational types. Each generation consists of individuals born over a period of about 20 years, who as a result share a common historical perspective:

Prophet - Children during a post-war period of conformity and stability. They later oppose those existing organizations, taking disciplined moral stands, while being resistant to alternative points of view.  The Boom generation (born 1943-1960) is the current Prophet archetype.

Nomad - Raised during a period of spiritual tumult and social upheaval fomented by the previous Prophet generation.   Seeing the results of moral certainty at a young age, they become known for being pragmatic and cynical. They can also get a reputation for being "bad," one that starts soon after their first members are born. Generation X (born 1961-1981) is the current Nomad type.

Hero - Born during a tumultuous but exciting period as old social structures are torn down, allowing individualism to shine forth. They become paragons of teamwork, taking on major enemies like slavery and Nazis, then building up new organizations in the aftermath.  Current Hero generations include the GI Generation (born 1901-1925) that were young adults during WWII, along with Millennials, (born 1982-2005).

Artist - Going through childhood during major crisis periods like the American Revolution and World War II, Artist generations value compromise and fairness.  The Silent generation (born 1926-1942), along with the generation currently in childhood (born since 2005) are Artist archetypes.

This blog will investigate the extent to which these generational types affect the kind of stories that are written, and which ones succeed in connecting with their audience. Not only is any creative person a product of their generation, each member of the expected audience will be as well. There are biases, expectations, and perceptions of their world that make different stories personally resonant - or baffling.

Which brings us back to Tom Cruise (born 1962), who is part of Generation X - a Nomad generation - the "bad" ones. That's one reason why being more of a jerk works as a character trait in Top Gun, just as it worked in Edge of Tomorrow. (And Rain Man, and Taps, and...) 

Top Gun

Lots of people liked Top Gun. It made over $300 million dollars, at a time when 1/3 of that was a major milestone for movies. Tom Cruise, who had proven himself a solid lead in Risky Business, was now seen as a bona fide bankable star. It even lead to increased recruitment for the U.S. Navy, perhaps due to its view that, a decade after the end of the Vietnam War,  the military was again competent and effective.

Acknowledging that it's not a great movie, though, should be uncontroversial. Critic's reviews are middling at best. It was nominated for no major awards, although it did win an Oscar for Best Song - "Take My Breath Away." The love scene set to that song is probably one of the most memorable things about the movie, along with the impressive aerial sequences and - for a certain segment of the audience - the beefcake volleyball scene. So what went wrong?

Or perhaps, really, what could have gone better?

Maverick could have been a much bigger jerk. And he should have been.

To see why, let's take a look at the possible directions of a movie about a Navy pilot going to Top Gun "best of the best" school:

1) Pushed aside by political forces he can't control, iconoclastic Maverick has to reach inside himself to learn to be the exceptional pilot that nobody believes he is.

2) Bad boy Maverick overcomes his faults of arrogance and impulsiveness to become a true leader.

3) When young but promising Maverick and the rest of the Top Gun team face an unstoppable adversary, they have to learn to fight together for anyone to survive.

The black-visored enemy in the Indian Ocean is ominous but not a real danger to the carrier or the United States. While the Top Gun pilots work together, the real challenges Maverick faces are internal. So, are they about recognizing his strengths (option 1), or overcoming his faults (option 2)?

What would Maverick find if he was to reach inside himself? Probably arrogance and impulsiveness. Besides his natural piloting skills, he has a strong personal / professional relationship with Goose, a way with the ladies, and ... that's about it. Nothing about him - nothing we learn in the entirety of the movie - says that there are strengths inside that he's ignoring, that he just has to let himself go and be free.

What Maverick does have to do,  is learn how not to be an insufferable arrogant jerk who thinks The Man is keeping him down. He needs to realize that a Mach-speed flyby of a busy airfield is not cute. And that in competitions with rules, following the rules is part of winning the competition. Even if they seem arbitrary and pointless, like "hard deck is 10,000 feet"

That this is Maverick's problem should be clearer. While everyone tells Maverick where he's screwing up, he always has an out: 

• Risked his plane in a rescue - from a situation that may have been his fault in the first place - and buzzed the carrier, but manages to get his Top Gun shot anyway.  
• Goes below the hard deck to target Jester and gets off with a warning - even after another dangerous "flyby stunt." 
• Iceman points out that he is "unsafe," and that he should have been helping Cougar and Merlin rather than messing with the MiGs. 
• Charlie tells him his improvised maneuvers are seriously flawed, only to say she's falling in love with him later.
• Loses Goose permanently,  although the official inquiry says it wasn't his fault. 

Maverick really needs Redemption: He needs to be saved, or to save himself. That's difficult, though, if it's not clear that he has significant faults. When his serious and dangerous errors are discounted - ignored, overlooked, missed - we have to find some other way for him to succeed, something else to overcome.  In Maverick's case, there isn't much to work with. Not only does that make his own arc more difficult to manage, it removes effective ways for Charlie or Goose or Iceman to interact with him, too.

It does seems like the movie was meant to go in this direction. Iceman wins the Top Gun award, not Maverick, who learns important lessons like "You Never Leave Your Wingman." The flaws pointed out by characters as noted above are in the movie, so you can get this narrative out of it, if you like.

Still, it would work better if Maverick was more of a pompous ass right from the start, and if his actions had consequences rather than punchlines. Have Cougar's weapon's officer point out right away that hotdogging the MiG-28s was what got them in trouble, rather than waiting until Iceman can suggest it half a movie later. Make the penalties for breaking the rules impact the Top Gun award, which will let the audience (as well as Maverick) know what is really acceptable, and what is not.

It's worth noting that Cruise's character in Edge of Tomorrow doesn't have this problem: With the fate of humanity on the line, he practically refuses an order to go into battle, going so far as to attempt blackmailing the general orchestrating the assault. (Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.) This gives him a huge karmic hole to climb out of, so when Sergeant Farell declares that "Battle is the great redeemer," we know it's the truth and a necessary goal.

Welcome

This is a blog about stories, and storytelling, and how they work or don’t.

That’s the plan. Nothing more nor less, ultimately.

In part, it will be about how particular types of stories work better or worse during particular periods of time. Consider popular movies made at the start of the New Hollywood period, for example:

• Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• Rosemary's Baby (1968)
• M*A*S*H* (1970)
• The Godfather (and The Godfather Part II, of course) (1972/74)
• Chinatown (1974)

With those that started being made only a couple of years later

• Jaws (1975)
• Rocky (1976)
• Star Wars (1977)
• Airplane! (1980)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

They are different in tone, in outlook, in what happens to protagonists and how antagonists are handled. What changed? Was it that Spielberg and Lucas showed up, or is something more fundamental behind it? Had the audience changed, and if so, how?

It should not be unreasonable to expect audiences to change over time. If, as here, the change is rather sudden, one would expect a reason for it, some shared experience that caused everyone to view the world in a different way. And while that can happen, one might expect such shared experiences to be obvious. Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives, for example, was released in 1946, as troops returned home from World War II. Husbands and fathers and boyfriends coming back to their former lives, changed by their wartime experiences, was common to people across the country. Was something like that happening in the middle of New Hollywood? And can we use these observations to understand why the stories started to change so much when they did?

Assuming this all pulls together as expected, it should result in additional ways to understand how stories connect. If it really works well, it should yield tools that can be used to adjust what is happening in a story, so that it 

• Matches with how our minds handle story structure
• Fits with personality types we appear to expect, and the places they are expected
• Works as well as possible with the target audience for the story.

A primary tool for all of this will be generational analysis, in particular the model set up by Neil Howe and William Strauss.  Its view of  repeating historical patterns helps to identify broad social experiences that may show why the sort of story people expect today are notably different from what was expected in the 1960s or the '80s or the '40s. 

A basic summary of how this generational model works will be necessary. While one could pick up a copy of the original Generations or The Fourth Turning, having a summary focused on the goal at hand has its advantages. After a few days of setting that up, we’ll be able to examine stories that work within that framework. 

Before that, though, I’ll put some skin in the game by giving an analysis of a film that was popular, made a lot of money, but isn’t considered a “great” movie - that is, it didn't quite work.