Quick, ask the Boomers what was so great about The Sixties™. I hope you’ve got a few months to spare, but if you boil it all down, it’s “the spirit”. They really thought they were fundamentally transforming the world, and may God have mercy on all our souls, they were right. Same thing with the WWII generation, the Progressive Era, whatever. Even those who wax nostalgic for the 80s will talk about the feeling of the age — “the last golden Indian summer of America”, as someone quoted in the comments yesterday, and doesn’t it break your heart?
Not to get all Classical Rhetoric up in here, but for prior generations, things like “The Beatles” are synecdoche. They’ll go to their graves insisting that The Beatles were “the greatest band ever”, but if you press them on it, most of them are honest enough to admit that Ringo et al weren’t such great shakes, musically. At their best, The Beatles’ songs are musically simplistic and lyrically gibberish; at their worst, they’re “Rocky Raccoon”. The Beatles are “great” because they were innovators, not so much musically but because they were so goddamn pretentious. They wanted to be not mere entertainers, but artistes, and we indulged them, and that combo — pretentiousness and indulgence — became The Spirit of the Sixties.
Thus if you answer “The Beatles” to the question “What’s so great about The Sixties?”, it’s a synechdoche for “the spirit of the age”.
Severian, “Why the 90s Was the Worst Decade Ever”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-04.
October 20, 2024
QotD: The “Spirit of the Sixties”
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