The truth of this hits hard, and please forgive the thread. I'm a Gen-Xer and a movie/TV critic, and I see it all the time in EVERY legacy property as part of my job. It’s why they freak out when, say, a Black woman is the lead in a Star Trek show. 1/🧵
That disrupts their ‘member berries about the 80s being so much better than they actually were. There's nothing wrong with nostalgia. I was a professional Star Wars expert for 4 years, so I literally made a living on it. But the right equates all that with fascist myths about the glorious past. 2/
In this case, it’s Atari and MTV and Joe Dante movies on HBO. The irony is, for all their often-problematic content, most 80s pop culture was crystal clear on the subject of fascism. (And had some strong feelings about Russians too.) 3/
Ah, as an '80s kid I have to disagree. It wasn't fascism that they were firmly against; it was Nazis. There was zero engagement with what kind of politics the Nazis had or how Nazism got entrenched or the kind of "normal people" that got suckered into it.
Furthermore, Gen-Xer’s were force-fed 50s culture by nostalgic boomers in the 80s, and resented it so much that we pretty much collectively swore a blood oath never to do that when it was our turn. 4/
Then 53% of us vote for Trump, and clap like trained seals when the likes of Hulk Hogan and Sylvester Stallone start openly goose-stepping. Too many of my people are unreliable. I’m so sorry. 5/
And it’s exactly what @gwensnyder.bsky.social said. They loved being snuggly in their rooms with their VHS tapes and video games, and mom bringing them grilled cheese sandwiches. They didn’t have to deal with grown-up realities, and applied the entitlement to their grown-up lives. 6/
It’s huge among my peers. Middle-aged white guys who like to think they earned it on the merits, and never really stopped playing that Atari. 7/
I’m reminded of your earlier thread about managers freaking out over work-from-home conditions. Same thing, same behavior 100%. “Don’t take me out of my snuggly room, mom! Back to the Future’s on!” 8/
And that’s not Back to the Future’s fault... in context. But it’s okay for other generations to have their own Cool Things. More than okay; normal. That can even be something like Star Trek or Star Wars, both of which have transcended their roots and become multi-generation properties. 9/
Grown-ups understand that; middle-aged children do not. So a beloved franchise changes – becoming more representational, for instance – and that pulls them out of their snuggly room. 10/
They don’t like, say, Black people or LGBT+ people in their snuggly room, except in certain carefully curated roles. And they feel so entitled to it that… *gestures at all the awful*. 11/
Which is especially hilarious considering that we right now live in an age when you can watch “Back to the Future” whenever the frack you want.
Right? It's not like it's hard to find.
I'm a gen xer as well and I'm so sick of the whiny maga traitors in our generation.