Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:190821 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 20/8/2019 18:09 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Wednesday 21 Au g u st 2019 The Guardian •
5
Youth protest is
an age-old sign
of failed politics
of living. Woodstock – Three Days that Defi ned a
Generation tells the well-documented story of the hippy
era and the 1969 music festival that took place in the
shadow of Vietnam and civil rights unrest.
The similarities between the two eras go well beyond
the urge to get off your face in a fi eld. In both fi lms we
hear of politicians attempting to legislate against large
gatherings; of social and generational schisms; and of
young people fi nding common purpose via music and
like-minded communities. We see this in a diff erent
guise today: our youth may not have found kinship
through a specifi c musical movement but they have
nonetheless gathered together for a higher cause. Their
attempts to tackle climate catastrophe through protest
movements such as Extinction Rebellion would seem
more urgent than the hedonistic cultural revolutions of
yesteryear. But still their elders sneer.
It has become a sport among commentators of
a certain age and political persuasion to goad and
humiliate young activists for their idealism and integrity.
Last week brought the unedifying spectacle of the radio
presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer crowing on social media
about booking a long-haul winter holiday above a picture
of 16-year-old climate- crisis activist Greta Thunberg and
noting: “Level of guilt being felt: 0%.” Fellow garbage-
spewers Brendan O’Neill, Rod Liddle and Toby Young
have variously mocked Thunberg for her appearance,
her supposed ignorance of environmental policy and –
based on the fact that Thunberg’s mum performed on
Eurovision – her privilege.
Youth movements don’t come about in a vacuum,
though that doesn’t stop the older generation from
clutching their pearls when the young reject their values.
We have seen it repeatedly, from the birth of rock’n’roll,
to the hippy, punk and rave eras. Youthful rebellion
isn’t always about sticking two fi ngers up at parental
authority. It can be about artistic innovation, political
Fiona Sturges
is an arts writeralienation and recognition of the need for social change.
It can be young people looking at the world handed to
them and reacting not with gratitude but alarm.
Yet, as Deller makes clear, similarly woven into our
culture is a distrust of the younger generation. Mid life
moral panic is as much a rite of passage as dyeing your
hair blue in your teens. Deller’s masterstroke in his
fi lm, and what elevates it above your average nostalgia-
soaked music doc, lies in how it allow s us to see a
30-year-old youth movement through the eyes of a
group of 17- and 18-year-olds. While the technological
gulf between then and now seems huge, other elements
are more recognisable, from music being blamed for
perceived social dysfunction to establishment fi gures
swooping in to make money out of a crisis. A chill
runs down the spine with the appearance in the fi lm
of Paul Staines, one-time publicist for the acid house
entrepreneur Tony Colston-Hayter (currently serving a
prison sentence for fraud), and now the brains behind
the hard-right gossip website Guido Fawkes. Not for
nothing does Deller call him an “agent of chaos ”.
These fi lms’ message is that culture is inextricably
linked to its political age. They also show us how
optimism and creative thinking can curdle over time.
When you’re young, the compulsion to fi nd like-minded
people and to eff ect change is powerful; by contrast,
middle age can make you selfi sh, complacent and bring
an urge to stamp on youthful idealism. Becoming old
and curmudgeonly isn’t compulsory, of course, as
illustrated in Deller’s fi lm by the smart, silver-haired
man in late-80s Salisbury defending Travellers against
the heavy-handed tactics of police. “It’s a free country ,”
he says. “ Everybody [should] do what they please.”
History shows us that mass movements of young
people seemingly doing as they please is often
underpinned by more serious grievances against failing
social and political systems. We ignore them at our peril.Fiona
Sturges
I
n the documentary Everybody in the Place,
the Turner prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller
delivers a talk to a group of sixth-form politics
students about late-80s acid house in Britain.
A s well as documenting the massive cultural
changes that took place, he draws a clear line
between the decline of industrialisation, the
miners’ strike, sound -system culture and
the rise of dance music. As Deller shows old footage
of whey-faced ravers in bucket hats and sports gear
dancing in fi elds and warehouses, the students look
on with a blend of baffl ement and fascination. It’s
weird, one of them says, that no one has a phone.
Another fi lm, also out now, reports on a
youth movement born from political and social
disenfranchisement, and a desire for a new wayRELEASED BY "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws