20
Popular Culture Review
Generation X, the children of the early Baby Boomers, faced new
challenges as they grew up at the crossroads of cultural change. The birth years
of this relatively small generation, sometimes called a “Lost Generation” like
children bom in the 1920s, have been variously defined: 1965-1978 by
Municipal Research Services (MRSC), 1961-1981 by Howe and Strauss, and
1966-1981 by the US Census (Sweeney 166). Nevertheless, the same key events
characterized their lives: the fall of the Soviet Union, the women’s liberation
movement, MTV, grunge, the rise of home video games and personal
computers, the birth of the Internet, and the dot-com era’s boom and bust (Fogg
B18). However, according to Rob Owen, author of Gen X TV: The Brady Bunch
to Melrose Place, what was most influential was a shift in the traditional family
stmcture. “Generation X,” he writes, “was shaped by a changing society that
experienced divorce rates that rose from less than 10 percent in 1950 to almost
20 percent by 1980 . . . . in 1988 only 50 percent of American youth aged 15 to
17 lived with both their biological parents” (Owen 9). Owen also notes that the
term “latchkey kids,” defined as “children whose parents worked who returned
home from school to empty houses that they unlocked with their own keys,” did
not exist until before the birth of Generation X (41).
Maxim W. Furek, in The Death Proclamation o f Generation X: A Self Fulfilling Prophecy o f Goth, Grunge and Heroin, takes Owen’s demographics a
step further to paint an extremely gloomy picture:
Parents had been less accessible than in past decades;
working, divorcing, and existing. [Gen Xers] were less
connected to the extended safety network of neighbors,
teachers, religious leaders and social workers resulting in a
generation of isolated and scared individuals falling into a
black hole. This silent and lonely void was a place of homealone desolation where survival, not nurturing and mentoring,
was the goal. These feral children, a vulnerable population
with the least amount [sic] of coping skills, were being forced
to grow up too fast. (149-150)
Furek’s language is exaggerated, but his general point is well taken and
confirmed by family counselors’ experiences: Gen Xers’ exposure to myriad
family problems made them grow up faster than their Baby-Boomer parents
(Owen 12). As divorces increased to an unprecedented level and single-parent
and blended households became the norm, many Generation X children felt lost,
overwhelmed, and wondering where they belonged.
The Goonies, with its pirate-themed story, captures the essence of what it is
to feel like an outsider. What are pirates but a motley crew of outcasts who bond
together, break away from society, flaunt rules, and embark on an elaborate
treasure hunt? However, unlike classic pirate narratives. The Goonies subverts
the genre by replacing the main swashbuckler hero with a group of disparate,
imperfect kids from the wrong side of town who battle the dysfunctional, law