Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm really glad you're listening live right now. I love live radio and I especially love being in conversation with you, which we'll do in just a second when we talk about Generation X. I also want to remind you that all of our conversations are available to listen to anytime. You can download them wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find them on our show page at wnyc.org where we have transcripts. This is a great resource, especially if you want to go back and get some information, like the name of one of the Brooklyn shops we talked about yesterday on our Go Local segment. Again, check them out at wnyc.org and navigate to the All Of It show page. Now, let's get this hour started with an appreciation of a certain generation.

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All right. When you hear that song, if you put your hand in the air and pumped your fist, it is likely you are a member of Gen X. Like the song says, don't forget about Gen X, the New York Times style magazine devoted time to our generation titled, Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? The article notes how much Gen X has influenced culture and how much our current culture is missing a spirit that has defined this generation of people now in their late 40s and 50s. Amanda Fortini wrote in the piece.

She said about Gen X, It's a moment, a mood, an ethos, an enduring way of being, the hallmark characteristics of which anti-corporatism, anti-authoritarianism, ironic detachment, artistic independence and existential horror of selling out and a live and let live philosophy of life feel like the antidote to a lot of what is currently wrong in in our culture. Amanda, welcome to All Of It.

Amanda Fortini: Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Where did you get the idea to explore Gen X's cultural impact?

Amanda Fortini: My editors actually brought me the idea. They didn't really define it. They just said, "We're doing a package about Gen X. We want you to write something about Gen X. We think it's interesting that so much of what they made has shaped our culture and that it either it endures or is coming back around again. Like we have Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter playing Vladimir and Estragon on Broadway.

They were the original Bill and Ted. We have Pavement songs going around TikTok. I just thought about, "What do I want to do with this?" What I thought is that something about the way that Gen X was raised or the conditions of our upbringing, of our life, our existence as children and adolescents and teenagers was particularly conducive to making art. That's the angle that I took in the piece.

Alison Stewart: For our listeners, we are going to talk to Kiana Reeves and Alex Winter after this conversation.

Amanda Fortini: Oh, fantastic.

Alison Stewart: Just for practical purpose, what went into your consideration for who to call Gen X?

Amanda Fortini: It is a subject of much murkiness. The Pew research center says '65 to '80. Those are the parameters of the cohort we call Gen X. But somewhere along the way that got changed because the original parameters, if you speak to a lot of what we would call early Gen X was '61 to '81 or '61 to like late '70s, originally, '61 being the year after the FDA approved the birth control pill.

That was a defining moment of a new generation. Then there are other people who, like there's a Harvard housing study who puts it at '65 to '85. I really think that 61 to 81 are the correct parameters of Gen X. Even those early Gen Xers, like Doug Copeland who wrote the novel Generation X, he was born in 61. He's the one who really defined the name and some of the characteristics of the generation. To leave him out of it would be weird, and Doug Rushkoff too, another important Gen Xer, compiled an anthology called the Gen X Reader, also born in 1961.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, especially those who are Gen Xers, what makes your generation great or unique? Give us a call or text us now. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. What do you think have been some of Gen X's greatest cultural contributions? Who's an actor, a writer, an artist from Gen X that especially admire? 212-433-9692. How do you find yourself as a Gen Xer reflecting back on your childhood? Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You grew up in the Illinois suburbs, Amanda?

Amanda Fortini: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What do you think is the most Gen X thing about your childhood?

Amanda Fortini: My childhood was pretty typical suburban childhood. What is the most Gen X thing about my childhood? It's interesting because I was going to say I read for the piece Bret Easton Ellis collection White. He's written several canonical works of Gen X literature. He talks about growing up in the San Fernando Valley suburbs and just roaming around without parental supervision, moving from house to house where it seemed only other kids were living.

That was very similar to my childhood too, in Wheaton, Illinois as an adolescent. My parents were divorced. That's very Gen X. My mother worked. She wasn't around very much because she had a two hour commute. And even when she was, she was a what I call a laissez faire parent, which is again, very typical Gen X.

My sisters, I have two younger sisters and I were just allowed to do whatever we wanted, which involved a lot of television watching, while we made our way through like sleeves of Ritz crackers or microwaved cheese on chips in the microwave, riding our bikes outside when I was a teenager, just a lot of hanging out in people's houses without any adults around in wood paneled basements and in garages, playing with Ouija boards and things. My memories of that time are just of other young people or being alone. They don't involve adults a lot. I think you even see that in a lot of the culture of the time period, the movies and the shows.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting, in your conversation with Gen X contributors, what struck you about how they were reflecting on their generation?

Amanda Fortini: That is a good question because I spoke to a lot of different people for the piece. I spoke to a lot of artists. I spoke to the thinkers, like I said, Doug Rushkoff and Doug Copeland and Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and Liz Phair. A couple of things struck me. One is that they didn't consider themselves slackers. That's one of the stereotypical portrayals of Gen X is that we were like, because of all these couch potato movies, that we were slackers, that we didn't take initiative or were lazy or whatever.

I think that a cynicism and distrust of institutions is often confused or conflated with being lazy or being a slacker. Then the other thing is that they just made things, they didn't worry about, how am I going to get it published, how am I going to get it out into the world. They created those avenues whether through zines or independent labels.

Liz Phair made her first album, it started as a few cassette tapes called Girly Sounds that she made in her parents bedroom. It was like the young people say today, you can just do things, which today's young Gen Z and things, they say that I think because we, for a long time following Gen X, we thought we had to have a corporate intermediary to get our work into the world. Gen X shows you it's not the case.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a couple of calls. Let's talk to Jason from Queens. Hey Jason, thank you so much for making the time to call All Of It.

Jason: Hi. Hello. Nice to talk to you. I'm part of Gen X too, born in the '70s. Positive and a negative comment. A couple things I feel like always get left out of the talk a little bit, we focus on 80s and punk rock, which is great, I love, but we forget about the golden age of the American rave scene which was happening also at the same time as the golden age of American rap, hip hop, both in the early to mid-90s that I think are really both important cultural inputs of that generation that were really interconnected, I think, but overlooked a lot when we look at the John Hughes movies and stuff.

That actually brings this negative side, the John Hughes movies that I loved as a kid, they did not age well, some of them. Another thing even worse is a lot of people my age now, my age group in their late 40s, early 50s, white males, we are the biggest Trump supporters in the country, a huge conservative backlash of that generation. I wonder if there's any comment on why that happened.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, you talked about how a lot of Gen Xers are independents.

Amanda Fortini: It's hard it's hard to typify or classify Gen X based on how they behave in one election because they basically classify themselves as independents, the 2022 Gallup poll found 44% of Gen X think of themselves as independents, and that is more than any other generational cohort. That's the highest number of people who call themselves independents of all the generations. They tend to vote based on candidate and issue rather than party or ideology.

A lot of Gen Xers who maybe did vote for Trump in this election, and again, that's a very complex topic to get into because it really breaks down by demographic where you live. Urban Gen X did not do that necessarily. It depends on if you're in a city, your age, da da da, but a lot of them voted for Barack Obama and then eventually voted for Trump. It's a nuanced topic. They classify themselves as independent.

To speak to the other point the speaker made, I did spend a long time in the piece talking about the golden age of hip hop because I do think it gets overlooked and it's really important. Even white kids in suburbia were listening to hip hop and it was a really important cultural moment.

Alison Stewart: I'm talking to Amanda Fortini. She's the author of the article in the New York Times Style magazine, Is Gen X Actually The Greatest Generations? We want to hear from you. What do you think have been Gen X's greatest cultural contributions? Who is Gen X public figure that you admire? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Amanda, you write about reaching out to people who are famous, who are Gen X, and they didn't want to talk to you.

Amanda Fortini: Some of them didn't want to talk to me, yes.

Alison Stewart: Which is really interesting. What did that tell you about them and about being a member of Gen X?

Amanda Fortini: I don't want to out people, but one of them wrote a very famous book that's very beloved to Gen X. I reached out to him and he said, "I'm going to politely decline." A couple others just didn't want to talk and then came around and decided that they would talk.

It told me that Gen X is just very conflicted about the spotlight. Selling out, when I say we have an existential horror or dread of selling out, I mean it, we do, and having the spotlight put on you is tantamount to selling out to a lot of Gen Xers. They want to make their work in quiet. They don't want to be out there branding themselves and promoting it and doing all the things that we tell artists that they have to do these days.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, sometimes when I'm out and about and I see the West Village girlies with their cameras out, posing on the street, I'm just like, "Whew"

Amanda Fortini: Influencers of New York.

Alison Stewart: It just makes me want to vomit a little bit. It's like, "Why are you doing that? Why are you selling yourself as an entity? Just go on and live your life or go on and make something." I find it really difficult.

Amanda Fortini: Absolutely. Influencer culture is probably the most antithetical thing to a Gen X ethos that you can come up with.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Oren, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Oren, thanks for calling All Of It.

Oren: Hey, Alison, thanks for having me. My remark is that as a childless, early Gen Xer, I observed from the valuable, neutral vantage point my friends being the best parents ever, and then later on, I started working with a lot of people from their kids generation, people who are now in their mid-20s to in some cases, later-30s, and they were so wonderfully brought up.

They're so responsive and thoughtful and serious. They're so well adapted. I want to say, based on my anecdotal experience, that, boy, our generation, they must have really turned out some amazing kids. Their parental toolkit must have been fantastic.

Alison Stewart: Thanks so much for the comment. This text says, "There are, of course, numerous cultural touchstones and foundation of today's culture rooted in Gen X. I feel, as the last complete generation, pretty much left to our own devices, no cell phones, fairly lax adult oversight, it's like we all got to be feral, there's a real resilience and willingness to just figure things out among Gen Xers, and there's no evidence of our shenanigans, so we carry on with abandon."

Amanda Fortini: That's all true, I think. We were left to our own devices, and we were basically feral. There's a very funny Gen X meme that's like, "The sports drink of my childhood," and it shows a little kid drinking out of a garden hose. People are like, "Why couldn't you go in and drink out of the sink or get a drink?" We were locked outside all day.

Like my mother would give our babysitter, because I didn't have two parents, so we had a lot of babysitters, give them a little bit of money, like 20 bucks and tell them to take us to the public pool all day. We were not to come home until dark and we were all sunburned and everything. Even then, sometimes we weren't supposed to come home until after dinner. We were feral, for sure.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the New York Times Style magazine article, Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Amanda Fortini. She's the author of an article called, Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? It's in the New York Times Style magazine. If you're a member of Gen X, what has been Gen X greatest cultural contribution? Who is a Gen X public figure that you admire? Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

As you can see, I am repping Gen X. I am wearing one of my MTV shirts. I've spent a lot of time at MTV. A lot of folks at Gen X watched MTV. You noted that Kurt Cobain's death announcement was a real turn for Gen X. Why do you think that was such an important-- I remember that day. What was so important about that day?

Amanda Fortini: I think he was really a hero to so many young people in terms of like we were talking about, he embodied so many attitudes and qualities of Gen X, anti-corporate, he spoke against ticket prices anti-authoritarianism. He was just a really amazing artist. Some people say he was like, "Oh, he was our JFK dying," or something. I actually watched it on--

I don't know if I would go that far, but I just think it was like a watershed moment for Gen X. It was the first time that someone that they had poured all of their hopes and dreams, and that embodied so many things, even had divorced parents and talked about it a lot and made it okay for other kids to be emotionally troubled. It was the first time that someone who was a symbol of all of that died. That's the best I can say. We were young people.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to Carrie from Union City. Hi Carrie, thanks for calling, All Of It. You're on the air.

Carrie: Hi, Alison. It's very exciting to talk to you because I myself watched a lot of MTV. I watched a lot of you on MTV. I think MTV is probably one of the greatest attributes to society that Gen X created. I was telling the screener that as someone I was born in '71, I grew up in a rural suburban area in Maryland. The amount of creativity and things that were forced upon us--

I didn't live in a city. I was more on a farm. We were really forced to dig into our creative juices and our ideas in a way that is not really necessary today because everything's at your fingertips. What I find interesting because I've worked in the beauty industry for almost 30 years in a adjacent to retail, is that I feel like Gen X's are so good at researching. They're so good at finding it out and figuring it out.

Maybe it's where DIY came from. I think that it's interesting when you look at a generation that's had internet since they were born and how they're so much more ready for spoon feeding of information, where I feel like Gen X really get in there and roll up their sleeves and figure it out. I think that's a really beautiful thing to watch, especially in the workplace.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling, Carrie. Chris is calling from West Milford, New Jersey. Hey Chris, thanks for calling, All Of It.

Chris: Hi, thank you. Thank you for having this conversation. It's an important one.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear your side of what you think about Gen X.

Chris: I am in agreement that I think that Generation X is definitely the powerhouse superhero generation. We grew up in a time before technology really started coming in. We had to figure things out and how to use a card catalog and not just look it up on Google. We became experts at being independent and making our own way.

I was born in 1969, and was one who, "Get out of the house by 10am and don't come back by 5:00 or until 5:00. We just really had to learn how to make our own way. I'm a Presbyterian minister and have done a lot of Research specifically on Generation X and the church. It was a time that completely changed our society because we ended up leaving the church on Mass.

A lot of that had to do with televangelists and Jimmy Baker and Tammy Faye and not wanting to have anything to do with that if that's what meant being true in church was, and just really took the bull by the horns, our own lives, because we knew that we had to.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in, Chris. The article features a photo shoot with some Gen X folks like Molly Ringwald, Nia Long, John Leguizamo, Ani DiFranco, Lisa Loeb, Glenn Ligon. I was curious what you thought, Amanda, when you thought about Generation X and feminism, because the women in that article, Claire Danes in that article, Janeane Garofalo, these are all women who I would consider feminists. I would at least consider a feminist. How did the feminism of Gen X pave the way for feminism today?

Amanda Fortini: It's a good question. Third wave feminism really came up with Gen X as a response to the Anita Hill hearings, which I talk about in the piece, which if you haven't watched them, I suggest you go back and watch them. Shocking. Then in response, it's thought to be outgrowth of what's called the Riot Grrrl movement, which was a movement that came up in response to a lot of the sexism in the punk scene on the West Coast.

We were seeing it in sassy magazine feminism, which is where I found my feminism before I even had words or language for this. I hadn't even been in college yet, but they were-- Jane Pratt, who was the editor of the magazine, was really making an effort to talk about this. How did it influence the feminism of today? I feel like we're in a moment now where we need feminism more than ever.

We're seeing a real retraction, I think, to a lot of traditional values online I see, which aren't necessarily bad, but I think when it comes to women, sometimes there's some real retrograde attitudes that are floating around out there. I'm sometimes shocked by things that I see online, on social media. I feel like we as a culture right now, it's not just from the art, but I feel like from the attitudes toward women which were changing at that time. I feel like we have a lot to learn.

Liz Phair talks a lot about that. In the piece, that was her album Exile in Guyville was an explicitly feminist response to all of the sexism in the music industry. I wish I could say we were further than we are, but like I said, I feel like we're in a moment of retraction.

Alison Stewart: Gen X was the last generation to grow up without the internet as an established part of life. How does this weigh in on the way that we reflect on Gen X today?

Amanda Fortini: Some of the callers brought that up and I think it was a good point. It's probably one of the hallmark characteristics of what defined our generation and one of the most important things to consider is that we didn't have the internet, we had to figure things out, as people have said. We had to entertain ourselves. We were bored sometimes.

We had to go to the library and write papers without the internet. I got the internet when I was a freshman in college. We didn't have cell phones. If you made a commitment or a plan to meet somebody, you were going to meet them or you were going to ghost them. We didn't say ghost at the time, but you had to follow through with your plans. I think the fact that we didn't have cell phones or social media probably formed us more than maybe equal to our parents being so laissez faire. We really just had to figure things out for ourselves.

Alison Stewart: The name of the article is, Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation? We've been speaking with Amanda Fortini and our listeners who called in as well, thank you for your time.

Amanda Fortini: Thank you, Alison. It's been a pleasure.

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Alison Stewart: Speaking of Gen X icons, two folks mentioned in that New York Times article, we'll speak with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who are now in Waiting for Godot, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It's playing through January 4th in New York City. That's next.