John Hughes helped define my childhood and the generation that grew up in the 80s. The above YouTube video brought chills down my spine thinking back to my teens and before the age of mobile communications, emails, the internet, and the archipelago of technologies and platforms that we call social media.
I felt compelled to write something in tribute to Hughes, and yet when I saw this montage of clips over The Who’s “Teenage Wasteland” I couldn’t help but think of the recent article in the Guardian that said today’s cyberkids are already “over” social media.
I’m fascinated how rapidly our society has changed since the time of Hughes’ films, and as I look ahead I wonder where we’re headed if malaise has taken over our youth to the extent that they’ve already transcended beyond the online communities. I spent a decade studying youth cultures from the 1960s to the present, and understand how media perceptions of the counterculture shaped emerging lifestyle markets of music, media, clothing, and merchandise.
Those kids of the counterculture grew up to found the advertising business we see today, and their appropriation of social scientific methodology into trendsetting, forecasting and focus groups contributed to manufacturing the niche stereotypes captured in Hughes’ films. How ironic that the people who were so against the establishment in “The Sixties” would put in place the mechanisms to feed sparks of individuality back into consumer habits via advertising, marketing, and PR.
Understanding the recurring patterns of the past makes us more conscious of how naive we are to attach ourselves to the present. Nonetheless, I find myself identifying with the following clip from Conan O’Brien, and I can’t help but wondering what’s next. John Hughes sadly died at 59 years old, but the simple pleasures he brought us through film serve as poignant reminders that everything is still amazing.
