Rebellion Redux...?

Day 31: The Sun Has Got His Hat On! Hip, Hip, Hip Hooray!
- from the musical, Me And My Girl

I have been doing more subbing lately, which has put me into close contact with lots of teenagers. As all of us who have lived through those years are well aware, adolescence is a time for testing boundaries and finding one's own way. This instinct is alive and well in the younger generation. Over the past few days I have seen pink(ish) hair, newsprint-style shirts extoling the virtues of various musical groups, rubber bracelets galore, and an increasingly large number of young people who look like my friends and I did in 1986. It looks like a pop culture retrospective once in a while...I even saw a kid with a Rubik's Cube a few days ago.

In the '80s, we teenagers were rebelling against the staid conservatism of the Reagan era, yet a young, vital, charismatic president was on the horizon. We embraced the materialism offered by our cozy middle-class environment, yet we railed against the heartlessness of a greed-based culture. Female rock stars used sexuality when the talent failed, and the 40-ish crowd benignly chuckled and reflected upon their own similar rebellion in the 1960's.

What is the point of all this? Basically that everything, even styles of rebellion and individuality seem to follow a common (and repetitive) arc. Is that good or bad? Probably neither...just a fact.

In today's News From The Motherland...a Baroness has servant trouble...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8273241.stm

Cheers!
FLT3