What's Behind the 'Dreaded Irony' of Generation X

The New York Times Style Magazine is going big on Generation X, as evidenced by the headline on its cover story: "Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation?" Writer Amanda Fortini, herself a member, focuses on how a group often written off as "slackers" has generated so many artists with work that resonates. The piece includes interviews (and group photos, including a Simpsons-esque illustration) with several, from musician Liz Phair to actress Molly Ringwald to writer Brett Easton Ellis, as Fortini explores an inclination to "see through zealotry and self-involvement" and shun "self-congratulatory middlebrow earnestness that characterized a lot of postwar art."

• As Ellis puts it: "That stripping off the mask of boomer propriety and finding something else to align yourself with—that's what created us, that's what made us different from them," he says, citing in particular "the dreaded irony that everyone complains about when talking about the detached nihilism of Gen X."
• The "slacker" label is thus off base, suggests Fortini. "Somewhere along the way, cynicism and ironic detachment became conflated with laziness," she writes. "Of course, in their desperation to strike a pose of cool alienation, Gen X ironically pioneered the flat, affectless voice of the internet age to come."
• Fortini explores whether the upbringing of Gen Xers might "have provided the ideal conditions for making art." In many cases, that involved parents who were "checked out" for different reasons. "So many Gen X artworks, especially the famous teen movies (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Risky Business) that on the surface seem merely to be about hanging out are in fact about finding a separate peace with one's friends when adults have failed you."
• Read the full story, which digs into the confusion of who belongs to Gen X: One common definition incudes those born from 1965 to 1980, but the man who coined the term in his 1993 book Generation X includes older folks including himself with this definition: "If you were born in the '60s and you don't remember the JFK assassination, you're X," says Douglas Coupland.