Ally Sheedy was Cooler Anyway
Allow me to begin with a few words about myself. Crimson is my name, writing is my game. I am an audiophile and bibliophile, all about the learning. I got myself sucked into this nifty site through a years long friendship with Autumn. That said, the story that she requested I bring to you:
Watch this video!!! Now, read this:
My first thought when this video started, with the anchorman’s “Tonight we have a warning about a teen phenomenon…,” was to hurl my computer through a plate glass window. Then, I realized that it wasn’t poor Chloe’s fault that seemingly intelligent people refuse the simple process of social education. So I set her back down and continued listening.
As I mentioned before, I am an audiophile. Music is one of the most powerful forms of communication that we have and to hear it being acosted in such a way seriously pains me. Here’s a little crash course in what these people don’t get.
First of all, a simple math problem for you to chew on. Hormones + School pressures + Peer pressure = teen angst. Raging hormones cause sexual excitement at all the wrong times. They cause disfiguring and mutiliating acne (just ask any 16-year-old with a bad case of it). They cause distracting interests in the opposite (or same, if you prefer) sex. School is all about competition. Be the best in your chosen extra cirricular endeavor, be that sports or theater or knowledge bowl. Get good grades so that you can get into a good college and then get a good job (that crock of crap is another rant for another day). Teenagers are horribly cruel animals. They will destroy each other at the drop of a hat, even members of their own pack (or flock or murder…did she just say “teens” and “murder” in the same breath?!).
Trevor Kelley and Leslie Simon wrote a book (which you can see the reporter holding in his hot little hand) called Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture. Trevor Kelley and Leslie Simon work for AP (Alternative Press) Magazine and were, just last week, on the Fuse network’s Steven’s Untitled Rock Show, talking about and promoting the book. They address many of these issues from the standpoint of journalists in the mix. They spend day after day after endless day with these emo bands, you know, the ones stirring up all the trouble. If anyone has any authority to report on the subject, it would be Trevor and Leslie, not some stuffed-shirt local news reporter from Bumsville, Utah.
Basically, here’s the scoop. Not all “cutters” are emo, not all emo kids cut. I went to high school with some of the poppiest, preppiest Barbie dolls I’ve ever met and they cut. They cut because it was the “in” thing in the 90’s. Oh wait, the in thing in the, what decade was that? The 1990’s. So, what you are saying, Crimson, is that this isn’t a new thing?
Moving on, not all emo kids wear black. Not all kids who wear black are emo (some of them are called Goths, Wizkid, and some of them listen to heavy metal and express their emotions by hitting things smaller than themselves). Not everything starts with the Internet, Al Gore, and emo definitely is one thing that didn’t. One of the first bands I ever heard the tag emo applied to (in 2002) was Weezer. Weezer is by no means dark or new, but they are definitely pre-Internet craze. The blue album came out in 1994…there’s that 90’s business again.
As for emo guys wearing girls’ pants and make up…Kiss was doing the make-up thing long before these kids were glimmers in their horny adolescent parents’ eyes. And, seriously, take a good long look at Nick Zinner or Tyson Ritter. Do you honestly think a guy who is 5′10 and has a 25 inch waist can find jeans anywhere but the junior girls’ department? As for “gender bending,” did anyone else notice that all of the so-called gender benders in that shot were boy-types? It seems that even when attacking the emotional issues of today’s teens and twenty-somethings, girl-on-girl is still cool.
I think my favorite part of the whole story was the blonde mother (end sarcasm). First, she calls her kid on his/her cell phone and asks, “What’s emo?” Then, after the kid explains it to her in his own words (which were obviously the blanket description of those outside the emo culture), she has to clarify, “But that’s not you, right?”
Clearly this hysteria, like most bouts of it, is being fueled by a lack of education as well as a lack of any desire to have an education. The short and curly of the whole thing is that emo culture, or music, fashion, whatever you want to call it, has made it okay for kids to have emotions. It is finally okay to be Ally Sheedy when all around you are expecting Molly Ringwald (would someone out there please help to clue in those who missed the Breakfast Club and therefore that painfully obvious pop-culture reference)
The problem is that humans have this uncontrollable need to blame someone or something for all of the bad in their cozy little suburban worlds. Do you all remember about ten years ago when Blink 182 was blamed for some kid’s suicide because the kid was playing Adam’s Song when he died? Today it’s emo music (in an aside, I’d like to find the clueless bastard who put together the AFI montage, as well as whoever gave the idiot reporter the lyrics to I Will Follow You into the Dark, and stab him or her in the head with a pencil, is that emo enough for you???), yesterday it was gangsta’ rap, before that heavy metal and video games. In the 40’s it was swing music and swing dancing. Bet you didn’t know that Count Bassie and the FREAKING jitterbug were responsible for pre-marital sex, the Great Depression, heroin…Hitler….Hiroshima…the atomic bomb….should I continue, or do you get the point?
The hell of it all is that the media understands this human need to place blame so they latch on to something hip (something that word is not) and exacerbate that need with expose’s and urgent social warnings on the local news at 9. Is it any wonder that I turned my back on journalism long ago?