June 13, 2013

Pictures of teenagers in the good old days

Was just browsing through the photography section of the library stacks and saw a book called Teenage by Joseph Szabo, with an intro by Cameron Crowe (the writer of Fast Times at Ridgemont High). You'll have to find it at a library, too, since it was released in such small numbers.

Luckily Szabo has a website where he's put up a selection of teenage life during the '70s and '80s around Long Island, New York. See here, here, and here.

You don't see pictures like that from when the Silent Gen were teenagers in the mid-century, and you don't see them for Millennials either. Even Gen Y has pretty lame pictures from their teenage years -- the mid-'90s to early 2000s. I must emphasize this because so many people look at these as shots of a constant presence in the world called "teenage life." But they capture a very specific moment in the oscillating zeitgeist.

Perhaps the most succinct way to describe the differences between the '70s / '80s atmosphere and the mid-century before and Millennial age after is wild vs. tame, or animalic vs. machine-like. The teenagers in Szabo's pictures don't look like they've been programmed by engineers or trained by a team of handlers.

No entirely blank faces, nor caricatured kabuki masks to emotionally distance themselves from the viewer, whether by under-stimulation or over-stimulation. It's just the right level to engage a fellow human being. Even the goofballs aren't distorting their faces that much. They're all animated around their friends and peers, unlike today's and the mid-century's teenagers who sat still and showed little excitement in the physical presence of their friends.

But if they were looking at the photographer / viewer as outsider, they have this look like a feral animal has toward anyone who tries to approach it. Everybody looks streetwise. Slightly, not comically narrowed eyes, direct stare, inner eyebrows slightly raised in suspicion, corners of the mouth in a slight frown.

And look at how touchy-feely they were -- especially the girls. I sure was born about 10 or 20 years too late. It's not all exaggerated and hammed up purely for the camera or to whore for attention from the onlookers (that's more '90s and 21st century). It's more like the creatures you'd see in a nature documentary, entirely lacking in self-awareness and just going for it.

The strangest feeling you get looking at old (but not too old) pictures of teenagers is how mature their facial expressions are, yet how adolescent their bodies look. Some dude with hardly any hair on his chest has a genuine thousand-yard stare, and some babe with tight, glowing skin on her legs has a pensive mid-life-crisis look on her face. Teenage body and grown-up behavior -- that heady combination must have made heads spin among the older generations. (Though maybe it looked familiar to the Flaming Youth survivors of the Roaring Twenties.) You can see why there was such a fascination with them when the youthquake was in full swing.

I wonder if that's how the prevailing parenting style changes direction -- when a generation that grew up so quickly has kids of their own, they remember their own hurried youth and try to put the brakes on their kids' development. Then when the sheltered and stunted have kids, they want them to have the more footloose and fancy-free social life that they never got to enjoy as youngsters themselves.

4 comments:

  1. "I wonder if that's how the prevailing parenting style changes direction -- when a generation that grew up so quickly has kids of their own, they remember their own hurried youth and try to put the brakes on their kids' development. Then when the sheltered and stunted have kids, they want them to have the more footloose and fancy-free social life that they never got to enjoy as youngsters themselves."

    Neil Howe and William Strauss argue this in their book "Generations". It has some things in common with yours, though the crime rate isn't worked into the theory.

    "Prophet" generations are "indulged" as children(allowed to do what they want, but also given what they ask for). Baby-boomers are an example of prophets.

    "Nomad" generations are "neglected" as children(allowed to do what they want, but not given any help). Gen-Xers are an example of nomads.

    "Civic" generations are "protected" as children(essentially, restricted from doing risky things, but not forced to do things either). The Greatest Generation and the Millenials(according to Strauss and Howe) are civics.

    "Adaptive" generations are "suffocated" as children(prevented from doing risky things, and also forced to do things by their parents). The Silent Generation is an example of adaptives; and according to Strauss and Howe, the "Homeland" generation(born after 2005).

    So, one difference between the Boomers and Gen-Xers is that the Boomers were given lots of help and goodies by their elders(in addition to having freedom - the best of both worlds). Gen-Xers, on the other hand, didn't get any help or treats(though they were given freedom to do what they wanted).

    If you wanted to apply this schema to your ideas, "Generation Y" would be the civic generation. Members of Gen Y were held back from doing risky things, but they weren't forced to engage in a plethora of preplanned activities, either. Millenials, on the other hand, were not only held back from risky behavior, but were also forced to do a bunch of stuff they didn't want to do. The Millenials were small kids when parents began loading up their children with soccer practice, chess practice, volunteer work, etc.

    -Curtis

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  2. Now, how does this effect personality? Once again according to Strauss and Howe:

    Prophets(Baby-boomers) = Individualistic, Idealistic

    Nomads(Gen-Xers) = Individualistic, Pragmatic

    Civics(Greatest Generation) = Community-oriented, Idealistic

    Adaptives(Silent Generation) = Community-oriented, Pragmatic

    -Curtis

    ReplyDelete
  3. Something I was wondering was if there is a statistic which correlates with equality vs. inequality?

    -Curtis

    ReplyDelete
  4. One thing I notice about those photos is that it reminds me of photos of adults in the 1960's: everyone is grungy and hairy looking. The adults in the 60's (and I don't mean the flower children or rockers: I'm thinking of construction workers, blue collar guys: the vibe you get from Martin Scorcese films-or meathead from All in the Family) all seem extremely hairy (arms, moustaches, razor shadow, etc) to me as compared to later eras.

    This may be a function of the camera and black and white photography, or it may be a function of the setting: it seems like New Yorkers are just grungier than everyone else.

    I grew up in the same era, and my memory of that time is really of a weird combination of colorful, clean wholesomeness with rebellion: think of skateboard kids with long hair and an attitude, or feathered long hair of Farrah Faucett on 15 year old girls. They don't project grunginess like those photos do, but they do project a bit of streetsmarts or confidence, as well as independence.

    anon

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