NEWSWIRE: 1/16/18
- Jason Perlow, an Xer Star Wars fan, comes to grips with the fact that the series is no longer geared toward his generation. Perlow observes cynically that even his beloved franchise is subject to the whims of cash-hungry marketers: “[T]he big money is to be made on the millennials and their children. Gen X is a freaking rounding error of potential sales in comparison to this demographic.” (ZDNet)
- NH: This is a whiny article. But it's true that The Last Jedi, while selling well at the box office (opening weekend: $220 million), was a lowest-common-denominator Disney crowd-pleaser: It got lots of likes from audiences (especially Millennials) only vaguely familiar with Star Wars. But it got a vicious kickback from plenty of old-time (Xer and Boomer) Lucas mavens. Their criticism: Plot lines that don't make sense; no strong central protagonist; too many irrelevant extras; little respect for Joseph Campbell's mythic archetypes; a bathetic portrayal of the aging Luke Skywalker; and too much progressivism (good/wise characters all women; evil/broken characters all men). As ever, Disney perfectly captures the cultural moment.
- Millennials in Catalonia are leading the charge for independence. Still feeling the effects of the Great Recession and looking for new options, Millennials across Europe are embracing Eurosceptic ideals. (CNN)
- NH: "We are fighting to defend our language, our traditions and our culture. This is what our ancestors fought for." Quite a remark... and from a Millennial Catalan? You got that right. Like many separatist--or proto-separatist--movements in Europe (Flemish, Bavarian, Northern League), the Catalan insurgency features a wealthier-than-average region protesting its impoverishment by a national government that subsidizes poorer regions (Wallonia, Germany east-of-the-Elbe, Mezzogiorno). The Catalans, in turn, complain that all their hard-earned income is going to "lazy" Andalusia. In all of these regions, youth are leading the separatist cause, which is merging with Euroscepicism in part because the EU won't lift a finger for rebels against their EU member nations.
- Millennials may be at risk for a new health hazard: shingles. A disease normally associated with the elderly, shingles may be poised to hit Millennials hard earlier in life because of the popularity of the chickenpox vaccine. (American Council on Science and Health)
- NH: What's the downside of vaccines that eradicate chickenpox, aka varicella, aka herpes zoster? Turns out that one of the functions of active chickenpox infections among children was to renew the immune response of nearby older people--and protect them against those relapses of chickenpox (the virus remains dormant in nerves cells) known as shingles. Now that kids no longer have chickenpox, older people are breaking out in shingles more often. And the most susceptible older age group is young adults age 25 to 35. Time to thank your protective mom and dad, kids!
- Data from Russia’s statistics agency indicate that there were over 100,000 more deaths than births in the country during the first 10 months of 2017. These data are indicative of a demographic anomaly: a falling absolute number of births (due to unfavorable demographics) combined with a rising total fertility rate. (MercatorNet)
- NH: Ah, Russia: A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a demographic anomaly! Putin is deploying more pronatalist policies to get fertility moving again. But, as he correctly noted, the current birth dearth is "predictable" given the cataclysmic drop off in births back in the early 1990s, which today presents itself as a very small cohort of childbearing-age women. The anomaly is that the fertility rate among this age bracket of women has actually been rising pretty dramatically, pushing the Russian total fertility rate (TFR) back up to 1.8 (about where the United States now is). If Russia can stay at 1.8 or higher over the next decade or so, they will experience a sizable birth resurgence.
- Kimbal Musk’s accelerator, Square Roots, is helping Millennials quit their office jobs and become farmers. For this generation, farming isn’t just about selling crops, but about using sustainable practices and producing organic food to make a difference in the world. (CNBC)
- Columnist Mark Kennedy notices a new informality and humor in newspaper obituary sections that he attributes to Boomers. A Boomer himself, Kennedy quips: “We’ve put our imprint on everything else for almost 70 years. Why not death?” (Chattanooga Times Free Press)
- NPR host Kelly McEvers says that 2017 was “the year of Gen-X references” in popular entertainment. From Stranger Things and its homage to the latchkey-kids-on-bikes genre to the Full House reboot, it’s clear that Xer studio heads are exerting their power to bring back some of their childhood favorites. (NPR)
- NH: Let's not forget Ready Player One, directed by Boomer Steven Spielberg but written by two Xers, Zac Penn and Ernest Cline. Due to be released this March, this sci-fi movie follows the text of Cline's novel, which is an orgiastic celebration of 1980s-era pop culture references. (See: "Spielberg Releases Trailer for Xer Sci-Fi Flick.")
- A new global study finds a correlation between major family-oriented religious holidays (like Christmas in the United States) and higher interest in sex. Cultural factors have long been known to play a part in the timing of fertility-rate fluctuations worldwide—a relationship that, until now, has been difficult to quantify. (Scientific Reports)
- NH: To ask why births seasonally peak around September is to ask, equivalently, why conceptions seasonally peak around Christmas. The traditional explanation--that this timing of fertility (like the timing of Christmas itself) is a primordial adaptation to the crop-harvest climate cycle--is overturned by this new research. Turns out that huge family get-togethers cause a rise in interest in sex (as measured by Web search data) and a rise in conceptions no matter when in the seasonal year they occur. (E.g., Australia has the same pattern as North America.)
- CNBC interviewed college students to get their opinion on Bitcoin—and the results were hardly encouraging. While many admitted they saw the appeal of Bitcoin, others were fearful of a bubble and said they would much rather invest in time-tested assets like stocks, which speaks to this generation’s risk-averse mindset. (CNBC)
- Millennials are more likely than older generations to say parents should encourage young children to play with toys and participate in activities associated with the opposite gender. A stigma-free generation that discourages the use of labels, Millennials want children to have the right to choose how they play. (Pew Research Center)
- NH: Interestingly, both genders and all generations are more enthusiastic about girls being to exposed to boyish toys than about boys being exposed to girlish toys. Will such cross-gender exposure (persuading Target to get rid of pink and blue zones, for example) actually change the kinds of toys boys and girls will play with? Probably not, according to most researchers: Even young rhesus monkeys, given the choice, gravitate toward the stereotypical toys of their gender.
DID YOU KNOW?
Graying Action Stars Still Pack a Punch. When The Commuter hit box offices last Friday, lead actor Liam Neeson became just the latest sexagenarian to defy the action genre’s “young tough guy” stereotype. In fact, in recent years, the idea of a grizzled, gray-haired action hero has become a trope of its own. The Star Wars franchise alone has produced two of these leading men lately in Mark Hamill (who was 66 when Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit the big screen last year) and Harrison Ford (who was 73 when he last portrayed Han Solo in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens). Ford, in fact, will star in the upcoming 2020 Indiana Jones film when he will be a ripe 78—the same age as Clint Eastwood was in 2008’s Gran Torino. As we’ve mentioned before (see: “The Silver-Haired Screen”), the lasting cultural influence of Boomers, combined with this generation’s immense spending power, guarantees that these graying stars won’t cede the spotlight anytime soon.
