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The Lounge Generation, page 2 So peachy, in fact, that they're hocking it. Currently being peddled are: space-age pop reissues and swing compilations, "Mr. Jenkins" and his Tanqueray martini, corporate-sponsored cocktail recipes and cigars. One out of two "cool" web sites has a "retro" look; the Gap sells sweater sets; Crate and Barrel puts martini glasses on the cover of its catalogue. It must be true that everyone eventually turns into his parents. Yet it's hard to believe this revival has not struck the Baby Boomers as particularly irksome and ironic. It quotes an era which was in many ways an American Dark Ages. Socially, "retro" has little to recommend it. For all the right-wing glorification of a fictitious past drawn from "Father Knows Best" and "Leave it to Beaver" reruns, most of us, no matter what our age, know that the '40s, '50s and early '60s were a time when bigotry, sexism and an almost fascist persecution of the mildest (or imagined) forms of dissent were the norm. We know that rock 'n' roll and hippiedom had an effect on the cultural climate (although perhaps these particular phenomena are given more credit than they're due where lasting social change was concerned), and yet here we go embracing a culture that not only ignores, but seems to negate, all that progress. If this neo-lounge "movement" has a manifesto at all, it is, "Above all we will be fabulous!" Shallow, yes, but as revivals go, pretty revolutionary if you happen to be born after 1966. The cheerful irrelevance and vapidity of this trend marks the first time since the late '70s that unabashed frivolity is in. And it's not just any old frivolity that's been revived, either, it's one that swung (as in swinger) in the face of institutionalized bigotry, virulent xenophobia and an almost certain atomic death. Reactionary as it may seem, this could be the revolutionary youth-trend of our generation. Not because it dares to question authority, but because it dares to tell the reigning pop-cultural authorities that their mamas were cooler than they were. For sheer effrontery and shock value, no punk rock or gangster rap call for anarchy can compete with lounge's subtle, seemingly innocuous negation of the life, times and efforts of the Baby Boomers. Three years ago, the instantly-loathed Hollywood product known as "Reality Bites" pegged us as the generation who "knew irony when (it) saw it," but just couldn't define it (paradoxically, the same movie pretended to comment -- sincerely -- on the commodification of the ideals of 20-year-olds by presenting a parodic TV version of itself as directed by the "yuppie who just doesn't get it"). Baby Boomers -- or at least those who stand to profit from youth trends in all their formats -- have neither objected to nor balked at this new "lounge" fad. The irony of it all, it seems, is lost on them, which in itself is pretty ironic. And irony sells tickets. Aaah, youth. Wasted on the young it may well be, but on high-ranking executives, never. It's Big Business -- in many ways not unlike mining, logging and oil drilling -- requiring both the ceaseless surveillance and exploration of new territories and the tireless plumbing of reliable and familiar deposits, namely, the culture of the formerly, or soon to be formerly, young. The constant re-releasing of albums by great stars of the past (now selling frozen entrees) makes that plain enough. Youth is both the ultimate product and an endless source of product. Unlike mining and logging (and unlike actual youth), Youth-as-Product is not an exhaustible resource. It keeps on keepin' on. Ravenous for more and ever-expanding (there's a sucker born every minute), the market is a gaping maw tirelessly mewling for more. These days, old hat becomes "vintage" practically overnight, and no legitimate trend lives to see itself out before it is consumed and packaged by the Youth Culture Industry. The sad part is, we keep buying it. Obviously, the actual production of popular music and fashion is not solely the province of the slick impresario. Although its icons are occasionally manufactured (witness the Frankensteinish careers of Alanis Morissette, formerly known as Tiffany, the mall-touring teen chanteuse; Menudo; and New Kids on the Block), they tend to spring unassisted from the real world (not to be confused with "The Real World"). The real world, unlike old growth forests and fossil fuels (but just like "The Real World", in this case), churns out product just by being itself. All the "marketing guru" and "trend-spotter" have to do is come along and harvest it. Yet, as any hipster knows, once you've seen something on the side of a bus shelter, it's nothing more than a commodity -- and the commodification of popular culture is not exactly news. Lounge, of course, has been "back" since long before Tanqueray decided that it was. Like many post-'60s, post-modern scavenger cultures, it has existed alongside its motley brethren in the cheaper boroughs of major urban areas for years. So if the mainstream, mass-market return of Lounge is at all notable, it is so only as an example of the engulfing, indiscriminate and ever-accelerating rate of cultural cannibalism and profiteering we experience at the hands of many of the same people who once saw youth culture as an expression of idealism. The ones who saw style as personal expression, who once truly (if misguidedly) believed that "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll" would change the world. Perhaps contrary to market analysis, the immediate result of this is that actual happenings are buried before they're dead. The culture of commodification kills culture without ever quite getting it, let alone getting it right -- or even letting it happen in the first place. As the character Presuming Ed said at the end of the film "Withnail and I" (set in 1969), "It's over. They're selling hippie wigs at Woolworth's." Fifteen years later, they were selling mohawk wigs and green hair dye. Now they're selling clip-on nose-rings and temporary tattoos. Soon they'll be selling torpedo bras. The problem is not that these things are sacred, it's that the turnover happens faster with each example. There seems to be no escaping the "e'er widening gyre" of instant commodification, not just of our signifiers, but of our selves. The currently young seem to have it the worst. At increasingly accelerating speed we become both product and consumer, whipped into a frenzy of self-cannibalization and instant self-mockery. Dante could not have made it up. Those of us in our teens and 20s control the means of production in an industry that still manages to exploit and commodify us, while turning us into loyal, brand-identified, credit-card-indebted consumers. So why do we keep paying for the things that we produce? Because we don't control the means of propagation. Advertising "creatives" kill creativity. If Marx were alive today, he'd surely be clawing at his coffin. Of course, trends, movements, fashions and eras are meant to die and make way for others. But at a time when they can no longer move forward fast enough to elude the snapping jaws of the Youth Culture Industry, they've started to move back. The '80s saw legions of underage college kids following the Grateful Dead around in converted school buses and Honda Civics. The '90s proved that punk was undead. The recent upsurge in demand for recordings of Dean Martin singing calypso, the resuscitation of the lost vices of stogie smoking and martini sipping, and the Travolta-esque comeback of porkpie hats, zoot suits, 78's and girdles, mark the third official rung in the generational regression of popular culture. It'll be fun for a while yet, but the "lounge" gesture has backfired, as they all do. We'll be stuck with our Dean Martin CDs and our martini hangovers for a little while yet. Until the '20s come back. |
