Millennials Think Authority Figures Are Untrustworthy Idiots, And Modern Culture Is To Blame

by: Anna Mussmann

The myths, folk tales, and fiction of every culture are part of a feedback loop that both reflects and also shapes cultural values. Such tales provide their listeners with heroes to be imitated and enemies to be despised, with dreams to be chased and errors to be avoided, and, above all, with a sense of what is normal in the world. Through stories comes a sense of shared culture and a shared way of interpreting life. Youths of ancient Greece and Rome were immersed in the hierarchic, heroic culture of The Iliad. Uncle Tom’s Cabin magnified nineteenth-century disapproval of slavery. The Andy Griffith Show upheld trust in the wisdom and authority of sensible, masculine American virtue. These stories all helped to shape the social outlook of young people and to prepare them for entrance into the adult world. In the last forty years, the stories that our culture provides for our youth have acquired a strangely regressive message. It is a change that both reveals and contributes to the tribalism and generational isolation of our era.

It is obvious that in books written specifically for young people, our current heroes are allowed to break a great many former taboos: Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games kills people (initially in self-defense but, also, later for revenge) and teenaged Hazel of The Fault in Our Stars sleeps with her boyfriend and lies to her parents about what she was doing at the time. In addition, countless action movies portray “heroes” who pull off high-stakes heists, litter the screen with collateral damage, or use deception to vanquish their foes. Our culture may not treat these misdeeds as laudable, but neither do we feel that they disqualify anyone from being a good guy or even a role model. There is only one rule that a modern, fictional young hero must never break.

The modern young hero must never waver in unfailing loyalty to his or her band of friends. Such loyalty is essential because, in most contemporary stories, the older generation is absent, evil, inept, or unable to understand. Even family-centered tales such as Pixar’s Finding Nemo present scenarios in which it is the adults who must apologize to the children. 2013 Newbery Honor winner Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz is representative of this trend in fantasy. It follows three children from foggy, grimy, nineteenth-century London. One little girl is the sole survivor of five siblings, neglected by her wealthy parents and raised in an atmosphere of stifling grief and guilt. The other two protagonists are penniless orphans who work for a sinister puppeteer with magical powers. When the puppeteer kidnaps the wealthy girl, all three children are caught in a struggle for survival. They are not all “good” kids in the traditional sense—one of them is selfish and a thief—but they are ultimately loyal to each other. In the end, it is they who are able to find the answers with which to defeat and even redeem their adult enemies. The message of such stories is that the world is a dark and frightening place, but that personal loyalty to a few key friends (a type of love) will get one through.

This type of story might seem merely an extension of the traditional fairytale in which the hero is invariably an orphan or an abused youngest-son. However, in traditional tales, group loyalty is not the key to success. Typically the hero is aided by aged women, talking animals, or other mysterious characters who offer cryptic but necessary aid. Such a structure communicates a sense that even if the world is dangerous, one is never dependent only on one’s peers, because powerful and benevolent forces exist and will come to one’s aid (such a message is part of the value of fairytales, according to C.S. Lewis ). It also suggests the value of obedience to certain rules: the traditional fairytale hero must follow his benefactor’s apparently arbitrary advice, without understanding it, in order to succeed. Both of these concepts encourage multi-generational cooperation. In contrast, the hero of modern youth literature is very, very rarely saved by obedience to an adult figure. He is more likely to triumph by deviating from whatever advice the grown-ups have given or whatever rules they have laid down.

Mid twentieth-century novels also contain rule-breaking protagonists, but the flavor is different from that of current tales.

Breeding distrust

Mid twentieth-century novels also contain rule-breaking protagonists, but the flavor is different from that of current tales. John Dennis Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series (published in the 1960’s and ‘70’s and based on the author’s late nineteenth-century childhood) narrates the adventures and misadventures of a boy who is very clever, entrepreneurial, and sometimes difficult for adults to handle. This character gives the priests at his strict Catholic boarding school quite a run for their money in The Great Brain at the Academy as he employs various money-making schemes. However, his contest with the adults is not without goodwill. They are clearly benevolent, honorable, and often wise. His task is to learn to live successfully within the rules created by adults (a delicate balance for an entrepreneur with a head full of schemes) but not to actually escape all obedience. Other vintage tales like Paddington Bear or even Amelia Bedelia allow young readers to glory in characters who “get away” with causing havoc. Yet these stories are only funny because they are set within a framework of adult-created norms. Because they ultimately reinforce the idea that adults provide safety, they do not encourage intergenerational hostility. Rule-breakers in contemporary fiction are different: they do not find security in the shadow of the adult world. They break out of the adult world as if its shadows are cold, dank, and dangerous.

There are many possible explanations for why adults write fiction that encourages young people to distrust us. Perhaps we are postmodern enough to feel that adults i

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