Slackers
Broadcast Date: Dec. 6, 1994
"Some are born to laziness," announces Mark, a struggling actor who acts like it's no struggle at all. He spends his "working hours" at a coffee shop ("the den of slack") smoking cigarettes and reading books that rationalize his parasitic existence. He's the archetypal slacker – an intelligent Generation Xer that rejects the work ethic outright. Standing in sharp contrast, Brian, an early-rising collection agent, thinks slackers give his entire generation a bad name.Slackers
• The term "slacker" (meaning a loafer, idler or freeloader) was popularized by the 1991 film Slacker, directed by Richard Linklater. The movie depicts "A day in the life in Austin, Texas among its social outcasts and misfits, predominantly the twenty-something set...who in some manner just don't fit into the establishment norms, move seamlessly from one scene to the next, randomly coming and going into one another's lives." (Internet Movie Database)More Generation X on film:
• The Breakfast Club (1985, dir. John Hughes)
• St. Elmo's Fire (1985, dir. Joel Schumacher)
• Say Anything (1989, dir. Cameron Crowe)
• Singles (1992, dir. Cameron Crowe)
• Dazed and Confused (1993, dir. Richard Linklater)
• Clerks (1994, dir. Kevin Smith)
• Reality Bites (1994, dir. Ben Stiller)
• Another cultural hallmark of Generation X was "grunge" music, which grew out of guitar-heavy rock bands rooted in Seattle and the American northwest. Grunge was embraced by Xers as a sort of antidote to "corporate" pop music. Prominent grunge bands included Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Alice in Chains and Canada's Sloan.
From Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture:
• 101-ism:The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
• Knee-Jerk Irony:The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation.
• Option Paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.
Slackers
Medium: Television
Program: CBC Alberta News
Broadcast Date: Dec. 6, 1994
Guest(s):
Reporter: Catherine Legge
Duration: 4:19
Last updated:
Dec. 16, 2009
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3:51
Quebec and eastern Ontario have now been suffering through three days of violent weather.
Slackers.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: Dec. 16, 2009.
[Page consulted on Feb. 13, 2012.]