(01-16-2020, 09:18 AM)Ghost Wrote:(01-15-2020, 11:39 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Ghost
(01-15-2020, 06:43 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: More significantly, five adult generations or parts thereof. The divide between the Millennial and Homeland generations is still murky, but so it was between the GI and Silent generations.
Who knows? The youngest kids today (now in early infancy) might grow up to be Idealists (God forbid, Boomers in style, at least among the dominant ones), especially if the current Crisis resolves quickly and decisively.
There was a time not so long ago when there were five active adult generations (when the GI Generation was hanging on) about fifteen years ago.
I could recall someone on here saying that the GI/Silent division didn't really become pronounced until WWII, where people born in 1924 were able to have ranks in the war and people born in 1925 weren't (was that you?). I added that people born in 1924 were also the last to be in elementary school when Black Tuesday happened, therefore making them the last to have a likely chance to remember it.
Similarly, I don't really think that there was a split (even if it still seemed murky) between Millennials and Homelanders until Pew defined the generations in March 2018, stating that people born in 1996 were the last to have a likely chance of remembering 9/11 due to being at school when it happened and that people born in 1997 and later won't remember 9/11 because of how they weren't at school yet when it happened. I think that the 1996-1997 split is very similar to the 1924-1925 split, not to mention how they have the same Chinese zodiac animals (1924 and 1996 being rat, 1925 and 1997 being ox). Now nearly two years later, the 1996-1997 division is probably the most common divide between Millennials and Homelanders.
'Twas I, but from my memory of Generations. This said, Don Adams (born 1924) seemed more like a Silent and Paul Newman (born 1925) seemed more GI-like.
I think that Don Adams was born in 1923, not 1924. Or maybe you meant to say Don Knotts, who was born in 1924?
It also depends on other circumstances, as well.
A 1924 born person that has parents born in 1902 and is the firstborn child in his or her family will seem more like a Silent than a GI.
A 1925 born person that has parents born in 1881 and is the last born child in his or her family will seem more like a GI than a Silent.
"Agent Maxwell Smart", born in 1923 and "Barney Fife", born in 1924, acted much like a stock character of Silent comedy, the parody of GI efficiency. Paul Newman really seemed more GI-like. Of course, he did some comedy or infused some comedy into drama... but "Butch Cassidy" was Missionary and "Harry Gondorf" was a Lost character in The Sting. See also Leslie Nielson (born 1926), who could play the "efficient GI" or its parody.
Lucille Ball (born 1911) could never get away with the "efficient male GI", so she created a role that Silent men such as Jerry Lewis and Dick van Dyke, both Silent, often imitated.
Self-effacing comedy was the most obvious, and most lasting contribution of the Silent Generation to American culture, whether Andy Griffith or Richard Pryor; Joan Rivers or Carol Burnett.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.