Then, Graff astutely observes, there’s a cultural dimension to today’s student angst that stands in vivid contrast to the greater optimism of his and my generation. Colleges and universities do too little to prepare graduates for the realities of postgraduation life. Contemporary society’s intense age segregation means that many 20-somethings have few adult role models or mentors, apart from parents, to provide advice or support.The passage through the 20s lacks a well-defined road map of expectations as emerging adults navigate these difficult years, in stark contrast to the post–World War II generation that followed a clear developmental sequence into adulthood.It’s typically not until the late 20s or even the 30s that young people acquire a stable job, marry, bear children and purchase a house, resulting in a protracted period of uncertainty separating graduation from adult maturity. Attainment of the markers of full adulthood takes place far more slowly than in the past.It’s getting harder and universities are doing little to help.” How so? Graff has argued persuasively, “Growing up was always hard to do. More contemporary accounts, like Candice Carty-Williams’s 2019 British Book of the Year–winning Queenie, also deals with the struggle to chart a direction in life, find a job and forge meaningful relationships and define an identity separate and apart from one’s parents’ expectations.Īs the historian Harvey J. Then, too, there’s Douglas Coupland’s 1991 cohort-defining Generation X, which describes the lives of post–baby boom 20-somethings mired in “low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry” and “their fanatical individualism, pathological ambivalence about the future and unsatisfied longing for permanence, love and their own home.” Then there’s Sylvia Plath’s semiautobiographical 1963 novel, The Bell Jar, with its unforgettable portrait of the protagonist’s anxiety and disorientation following college graduation, as she undergoes a series of professional setbacks and traumas only to discover her inability to conform to her culture’s ideal of conventional womanhood. Salinger’s 1961 description of “ the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood,” the “ crippling self-awareness” that some young people feel as they try to define an adult identity. Popular literature offers many revealing and riveting accounts of what it’s like to stumble through young adulthood. It’s during this decade that too many young lives go off the rails, with long-term consequences for their career trajectory and personal happiness. The 20s is a time of exciting opportunities, self-exploration and concerted efforts to establish independence but also a moment when many young adult lives stumble through young adulthood, moving to a new town, taking a succession of toxic or casual jobs, engaging in succession of casual romantic or sexual relationships, and, at times, returning to the parental home. It’s been superseded by the quarter-life crisis, when many 20-somethings undergo a rough, troubled transition into the real world of early adulthood. What I see isn’t simply inclusiveness, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, but an understanding of the world that is captured by that widely used and racially inflected word “dark”: grungy, distasteful, foul, capricious, troubling and anxiety-inducing. I can’t help but look at this century’s coming-of-age movies and ask what they reveal about the 80 percent of students who are of traditional college age. These pictures reflect the moment when they are made, shape the way the young view and understand society and help young people define their identity. Less now perhaps than in the past, movies are never mere entertainment. What are the movies that define today’s undergraduates? The titles might be less familiar to you, but these films share a common theme-the torturous path toward coming of age: Frances Ha, The Hunger Games, Real Women Have Curves and Twilight. For the millennials, there were the especially sordid coming-of-age films tales Kids, Thirteen, Slacker, Fight Club and Reality Bites. For the baby boomers, these included The Graduate, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and, of course, Bonnie and Clyde (“They’re young … they’re in love … and they kill people”).įor Gen X, there was The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Mean Girls and The Matrix. There are movies that help define a generation.
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