by Steven Hill
Rock and roll stars loom large in the psyche of America's youth. In a world seemingly spinning out of control, the pied pipers of rock have acted as poets, pillows, and jesters for each successive generation. The Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Who, the Sex Pistols, the names roll off the tongue like a gallery of rock n' roll Hall of Famers, many of whom became millionaire heroes, rebelling against the establishment and mining the rich and seemingly inexhaustible vein of teenage angst and alienation.In the 1990's, few rock stars rode this pinnacle higher than Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Paradoxically, like so many other rockers, Kurt Cobain became a success by the standards of the establishment he railed against. When he committed suicide on April 5, 1994 at the age of 27, he abandoned his 15 to 30 year old fans known as Generation X who had come to rely on his furious lyrics, his primal scream singing, and his power chord slams to alert that establishment about their alie
nation.Generation X has a lot to be alienated about: few good jobs, declining prospects, drive-by shootings, unprecedented levels of teen violence and suicide; Prozac-happy therapy, the haunting specter of AIDS where an act of love can become an act of death, Beavis and Butthead mean-spiritedness sufficing as social commentary, absentee parents trying to make it in the two-income economy. Generation X is the one that will suffer most from present governmental policies of free trade, and 14 years of Reagan-Bush-Clinton econ
omics.I was one of thousands who gathered on April 10 at the flag pavilion of the Seattle Center for a memorial for Kurt Cobain. The mood of the crowd was initially quiet and somber - never have I seen so many stand so quietly at the usually-festive Seattle Center - as every face seemed to be wrestling with the question "Why?" It occurred to me how much Cobain exemplified the dire lack of substance which rock n' rollers generally offer to their fans. Rock stars get great big houses and fancy cars in the exchange; Cobain's artist's garret was a palatial spread overlooking the sparkling blue waters of Lake Washington. Fans hung out at the bottom of his long driveway, or at Tower Records where he sometimes shopped, hoping to catch a bit of his glow. After all, we live in a competitive society, and there's winners and losers, and if we can't succeed ourselves we can at least stand close to those who have, imagining that some of their shine might rub off. As often as rock stars promise their youthful audiences the illusions of freedom and hipness, the rocker either ends up dead, burnt out, or eventually waltzes off into the sunset with their millions. Meanwhile, their working class audiences put their noses to the grindstone of the free market, having to content themselves with their rock n' roll memories. In fact, rock and roll has never been able to deliver what it promises to its list
eners.What Generation X needs is an understanding of why they have declining prospects and bleak futures. They need to understand about the export of their jobs overseas, about the free trade policies of their government that are ruining the hopes for their future, merely to enrich the usual Fortune 500 profiteers and a handful of professionals and technocrats. Is there any labor curriculum for these youth in their high schools and colleges, so that they can truly understand who they are - that is, a part of the international working class, about to become fodder for the multinational corporations who are busy devising schemes to drive up their profits by pitting the workers and environment of one country against another? One of Cobain's lyrics hinted at this reality: "You can't fire me because I quit, throw me in the fire, and I won't throw a fit." The latter part of this lyric is exactly what the multinational corporations have in mind - the workers of the world are slotted to fulfill a role as the international disposable worker, the carbon copy unit good for tossing on the fire to stoke the profit mac
hines.Generation X seems to have little understanding of such matters. MTV (which is owned by communications industry giant Viacom, which also owns Nickelodeon and Showtime and recently acquired Paramount Communications/Studios for a hefty $10 billion) isn't about to tell them, and neither did Kurt Cobain tell them, at least not very much. Cobain's relentlessly self-probing and self-effacing lyrics were about being lost, a loner, a misfit; they were long on angst and alienation, but short on direction or even naming the problem. By and large, Cobain was a rebel without a clue, part jester and part pariah, and that quality gave his music a certain sweetness and wit rolled up inside its fury. But when the song ends, and the primal screaming stops, the competitive economy and free trade pacts pump on as before. And the noose around Generation X, indeed all of us, is just a little bit t
ighter.Cobain's gone, but his generation is not. Has anyone told Generation X how much the world needs them? Let's hope Cobain's generation finds a better solution than he did. They deserve more substance than what Cobain offered them; they need poets and rockers who can point them in the right direction, rebelling against a multinational corporate structure preparing to auction them off on the trading block. Generation X's embracing of Cobain's solipsistic brand of rebellion, and its retreat from very much analysis or activism, is a disturbing sign. For as bad as the conditions are now, they can and most likely will get a whole lot worse. The future of this generation is headed for one like that of the illegal brazos at the end of the film El Norte, fighting each other for decrepit jobs, pleading "Take me! Take me!" to the callous fo
reman.Cobain's suicide note stated: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." But Generation X has another option - it's called 'fighting back.' It's not as easy as laughing and singing Nirvana songs and throwing toilet paper into the air, like the revelers scaling the Seattle Center fountain after Cobain's memorial; it's not as sexy as orgasms and getting high. And it will require more effort than rolling over and playing dead. The collective shotgun is pointed at the head of Generation X. Will they pull the trigger, or will they decide they are going to struggle, and fight back, against the economic and social forces closing in around
them?The world needs you, Generation X. We're in a fight for our lives. Don't pull a Kurt C
obain.
Steven Hill is a thirtysomething free lance writer living in Seattle. His articles, commentaries, fiction, and poetry have appeared in Z Magazine, The Humanist, New Internationalist, Transforming a Rape Culture published by Milkweed Editions, Seattle Times, Crossroads, The Madison (Wisconsin) Edge, Minnesota Review, La Voz, African Literature, Analysis and Critical Perspectives and others.
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