Season 1, Gen X — Episode 5 — Streetwise (1984) + Kids (1995) w/Shalon van Tine
Death is a PhotographShow Notes
DDP is joined today by cultural historian Shalon van Tine [https://www.shalonvantine.com/] to discuss Martin Bell's Streetwise [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetwise_(1984_film)] (1984) and Larry Clark's Kids [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_(film)] (1995).
As of two months ago — all the hosts of DPP are now on the wrong side of thirty. Consequently, there couldn't be a better time to dive into the archives and explore some youth culture both Chase and Sam are too young to remember — 1980s streetkids in Seattle and 1990s skaters in Manhattan.
Was Gen X really as independent as they say they were? And where did this latchkey ethos come from: family breakdown, liberation, austerity, neoliberalism, outsourcing, the corrosion of the counter culture, the end of social democracy?
With Gen Z dubbed, rightly or wrongly, 'puriteens [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/puriteens-sex-negative-lgbtq-pride-tiktok-twitter-1180208/]' by the mainstream press (with teen pregnancy, drug use and drinking down), why were their parents, in contrast, so darn hedonistic?
Find out in today's episode.
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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.