Show Notes
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In the first of our solo episodes this season, the DPP boys sit down, shut their asses up, and listen to Gen X women in the workplace, specifically Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach in Jill Sprecher's 1997 office comedy Clockwatchers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwatchers].
If Office Space, Fight Club and Falling Down express a male rage at deindustrialisation, the meaninglessness of white collar work, and arbitrary hierarchies — that is very much still with us — what does Clockwatchers have to say about the first generation of women (1965-1980) partaking equally (at least formally and legally) in the professional labour market?
Interestingly, Sprecher's female leads couldn't be further from the 'Lean In' feminism of Sheryl Sandberg that came to dominate the 2010s — and in many ways they share more with their Gen X male analogues (Tyler Durden, Peter Gibbons) than might, at first, be expected. Because, of course, everyone (no matter your identity marker) can agree that "work sucks."
Find out in today's episode.
More from Death is a Photograph
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After a year, your hosts are ready to wrap Gen X. Season One is at a close. What did we learn about the self-professedly forgotten generation? What has Banksy to do with the spirit of the age? And, most importantly we answer the question that started it all: how did the dirty girls end up in the K-Hive?
DPP is back, baby — and this time for an encore. Chase and Sam thought they'd round out the season — find a 'capstone', if you will — for the last year. That pediment takes the form of Chris Smith's fly-on-the-wall documentary American Movie (1999).
Fear the coming of the trilby. Yes, that's right — today, in the last episode of our first season, we're looking at Gen X accelerating towards middle age and a crash encounter with those coming up behind them: millennials.