B-52s

The National Broadcasting Company - soon to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Lorne Michaels Productions - has been showing "Vintage SNL" in the 10:00 slot on the last few Saturday nights. These have been significant, if not classic, episodes from past seasons. The first was Richard Pryor hosting in the first season. The second was Steve Martin hosting with The Blues Brothers performing. Last night was Alec Baldwin's first time hosting, on April 20, 1990 - Earth Day - with the B-52s performing.

The B-52s had recently been at the top of the charts with "Love Shack," a good-time party anthem. This episode had them performing less-known singles, including the title track, from the same album.  It was a surprising contrast with their previous appearance on SNL, only 10 years before, which had been as unnerving as any other new group that showed up in those first years of Saturday Night. 

• Discordant keyboards - in one case played literally on a toy piano. 
• Female vocalists with caterwauling vocals and bouffant hairdos that had been out of fashion for years.
• Half the band falling to the ground, as if struck dead, at the bridge of Rock Lobster
• Speaking of which: A song about a beach party and the dangerous ocean life nearby. Or something.
• And one about "All sixteen dances" - like the Hippogriff, the Escalator, and the Aqua-Velva.
• Surf music undertones, but definitely not the Beach Boys.
• Nor punk nor rock nor blues nor anything really that was heard before. 
• Plus cowbell. Seriously. Played front-and-center by Fred Schneider.

And all this in two songs comprising less than 8 minutes of performance time.

On this Earth Day show, however, they were more clearly a regular pop group. They were certainly more polished, less dangerous.  While some of the change in perception is due to looking back 24 years, a glance at Rock Lobster or Dance This Mess Around in 1980 shows how seriously unexpected they had made themselves. Compared to that, the 1990 version seems tamer, more a part of the world - normal, even.

Whereas, looking at that first performance, it really is, even now, seriously weird. 

Danger

In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, film critic Mark Olsen has a feature on "New Dangerous" filmmakers, entitled "Danger is the realm's new coin."

The thing that binds these films is that they all risk failure, the possibility that the sleek, knife-edged dive into the water could also be a sloppy belly-flop.

The description of a new and unexpected direction in new films made it seem possible as an sign of the Millennial generation breaking out their own style in film.

However, most of the filmmakers mentioned are Gen X and Boom, not Millennials. 

• Chris Rock (b. 1965)
• Kevin Smith (b. 1970)
• Jonathan Glazer (b. 1965)
• Jason Reitman (b. 1977)
• Alejándro G. Iñárritu (b. 1963)
• Shira Piven (b. 1961)
• Dan Gilroy (b. 1959)
• Olivier Assayas (b. 1956)

There are some Millennials, or at least they appear to be. Surprisingly difficult to track down their birth dates....

• Alex Ross Perry 
• Justin Simien - 30 years old according to The Advocate
• Gillian Robespierre - Millennial membership inferred completely on incidental evidence

In any case, the connecting thread isn't generational. The non-Millennials are middle-aged or older, and might be looking for a different direction in their individual careers as they move past young adulthood.  Perhaps some new attitudes towards film are informing their artistic choices. The Millennials' films do sound different - a romantic comedy about abortion, a satire about race set at an Ivy League college.

Maybe it's starting. Not a problem, if not - it's a bit early, yet.

Lear

An article in the Los Angeles Times discusses King Lear with regards to the aging Boomer generation. It begins with an indication that Boomers would find it a fitting role for their generation, which (as described below) doesn't seem quite right. However, the actual focus is on actors being of an appropriate age to take on the role, as the culmination of their career. The starting point was a production starring Boomer John Lithgow (b. 1945) in the title role, with Annette Bening (b. 1958) as  his daughter Goneril.

The play appears to occur during a Crisis period, with a kingdom sundered and the king wandering mad. Of course, it's Lear himself who divides the kingdom and evidently instigates the Crisis. His older daughters take advantage of their father's poor judgement to pursue their own agendas. The youngest daughter, meanwhile, allows herself to be exiled rather than engage in untoward flattery.

As an old man in a Fourth Turning, Lear would make sense as either a Prophet or Artist, but his actions point toward the latter.  Like the Compromise Generation in the mid-19th century, he takes actions that can be considered fair (Why shouldn't all his daughters be given an equal share? Why shouldn't we let the individual states vote up-or-down on slavery?) but which exacerbate existing problems and rivalries to the point that the nation collapses. Further, his decision isn't for any purpose more noble than to avoid future trouble and retire easily:

Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now.

The rest of the characters appear to fit, as well.  Goneril and Regan behave exactly as Nomads could be expected, practical but amoral. They indulge their father's request for words of love, receive their part of the kingdom, and then plot against him.  It's feasible that the youngest, Cordelia, could be a Hero, as a child born late to an Artist generation parent might be.  Her actions, at least, show a Hero story: She loses her share of the realm when she refuses to humor her father,  works with others to help him ... and ends up as a sacrifice (in all but name) for her troubles.

Which doesn't mean Boomers or other Prophets would be unable to handle the part. Although the Times' McNulty does not seem overly impressed. Although he goes on to say, as others have in the past, that Lear is better as literature than on stage. He does mention three exceptional filmed versions: two by Heroes (Scofield and Olivier) and one by an Artist (Ian Holm). If no recent Artist portrayal on stage has changed his mind, perhaps that's correct.

Robin

There's a post from a while back that notes that while Generation X may discount the importance of the Awakening, there were still unavoidable influences that weren't always adversarial or otherwise negative.

Similarly, while Boomers may be Gen X's least favorite people as a group, many of them had a direct and positive influence. Including the late Robin Williams.

There are people who think Dead Poet's Society is not only a great but an important film.  There are probably fewer that consider Hook a compressed microcosm of the post-Awakening Boomer mindset, even if it seems like an example to Gen X of What Not To Do When You Grow Up. (It does, however, have a Prophet who succeeds without sacrifice, based on pure moral superiority, in an effort to save the next generation....)

If there was one undeniable chunk of his art that touched us when we were willing to listen, though, it was the comedy album Reality ... What a Concept. Frequently played at parties or wherever people were together in the early 80s,  the source of its subversive attitude wasn't easy to pin down.  It was definitely different from the albums put together by the previous generation of comics. The only similarity was in having cuts where one section ended and another began, usually where a specific persona was started or stopped. The rapid-fire references, and lightning moves from one line to another, all said that How Things Were Done didn't have to be the only way. It was funny where you knew what he was saying, it was funny where you didn't, it was funny when he was ridiculing Old(er) Hollywood ("send in the clowns") or then-active televangelists ("I know you can walk without that chair!").

Prophets are supposed to rebel against What Came Before, tearing down so that a new world can be built up again. Some, Robin Williams, do it more thoroughly than others.  Nobody will quite be able to walk in his footsteps, for he made quite a mark.