There are a lot of people who say the younger generation is falling apart. The Columbine shootings, Powder Puff hazing by high school girls, oral sex in the seventh grade, tongue splitting, ecstasy, and upper middle class adolescents sporting jeans that are six sizes too big for them while listening to the gangsta rap of the late Tupac Shakur are some of the evidence used to prove that this generation of teens is the worst yet. Good old Slim Shady, aka Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers, according to boomer media heavyweights, including Dr. Phil and Bill O'Reilly, is contributing to the malaise that the Echo Boom Generation is cascading into with his lyrics of indifference, nihilism, and hatred.
The question comes as to whether the culture shapes the generation or the generation creates the culture. This really becomes the proverbial "did the chicken come before the egg or the egg before the chicken". The answer may be a little of both. This definitely may be the case of Eminem, who mostly raps about is experience of being a white man trying to make it out of the inner city of Detroit intact while living in a crazy family experience. It can be argued that by rapping, he was trying to make the best of a bad situation. He took his experience and converted it into a type of art, which is one reason why many people push music, art, and drama to be part of school budgets- wouldn't you want Johnny to take his angst out on some acrylics rather than get involved in some drive-by? On the other hand, Eminem's music is mostly marketed to middle- and upper-middle class kids in suburbia, who have no experience, other than media exposure, with what it is like to grow up in a ghetto. His being white probably raises the alarm bells more than Shakur and Fifty Cent do, because then he becomes that much more easy to identify with. One time I watched EmTV, which is a special on MTV that features Eminem as an emcee. Many of the people in the audience were white teenage boys, who tried to dye their hair exactly the same color as Slim Shady's. This overidentification is what concerns the kids' boomer parents. And when Slim Shady calls his mother expletives, overidentification is something the parents want to avoid.
Are people defined by media? If you look at most kids, they don't think Eminem or any other rap affects them negatively. They just like the music. And to be fair, Creed and Bob Dylan go over just as well with many teenagers as Eminem and Notorious B.I.G., maybe more so. So maybe the hype about Eminem is exaggerated to some extent. Maybe he is just another icon who has his day in the sun, and will pass on. Madonna was a big controversy when I was a teenager; she was going to turn everyone into blasphemers and the whole world was going to renege on traditional family values because of her. Yet Generation X is marrying and having kids in wedlock just like any other generation. Most Generation X women I know still change their name to their husband's upon marriage. Though church attendance is down amongst younger people, once they have kids, many go back.
But to some extent, media have replaced the family and community. The Internet is even called an "electronic community". Starting with the boomers who were born in the fifties, media began replacing real people from any early age. A lot of boomers remember the good old days when they grew up with Mr. Rogers as an icon, but many silents and GI generation remember fly fishing with their grandfather or hanging out in the neighborhood penny store. Maybe the mentors of the older generation were positive, and maybe they weren't. But they were real contacts with real people. Subsequent generations have been increasingly diluted with media: from TV for the boomers, to music videos and video games for Generation X, to DVDs and the Internet for the echoes. The society outside of media feels dangerous; crime, the anonymity of the outside world, and family violence make it easier to resort to connections that make one feel more in control. After all, if the song sucks, you can turn it off. You can't stop dad from beating mom or the fact that there is sexual harassment all throughout your school. Michael Jordan seems less likely to abandon you than family or friends, who have their own problems and don't always want to be bothered with you.
The problem may also lie in the definition of adolescence in this culture, which insists that kids have to rebel against their parents in order to define themselves. It is considered a "rite of passage". Considering the reputation for wildness that many boomers carry with them from their own adolescence, the current crop of teenagers has to really reach to outdo them. They don't want to be hippies like mom and dad, so Eminem and listening to gangsta rap is a way of reaching for their individuality.
Maybe adolescence has to be redefined, so individuating doesn't seem like such a shock. Mary Pipher cites many non-Western societies in which the teenagers are not expected to rebel and generally don't, unless they move to a Western society like the United States. Much of what seems like lack of direction is exactly that, as teenagers are expected to navigate through the conflicting nature of society without much of a roadmap. Society is changing so much that the adults in their lives can't keep up with the changes in the map. It's no wonder that many kids like angry music, because it mirrors the confusion that they are going through. It seems to empathize when no one else does.
