Talk:G.I. Generation
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This article seems to be heavily POV. Someone more knowledgeable should really tone the style down. The invention of the atomic bomb is attributed to G.I.Generation and used as evidence for the power of that group, although the one who participated in the project belong to great number of other groups, as well. The whole idea could be described as misleading as best, and the the generation being discribed as god-like is just over-the-top. Santtus 17:20, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
- Agreed. Someone went overboard writing this. While WWII veterans and their generation did great things they could hardly be described as godlike. Shall I look through the history and see if I can find an author and ask them to readjust? --Darxide 14:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
- By all means. This is not my area of expertice, but finding some good writers would be a start. Santtus 20:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
John Steinbeck. Ralph Ellison. Langston Hughes. Joseph Heller. Eudora Welty. Lillian Hellmann. Howard Fast. Some good sci-fi (one of the few areas in which GIs did well in literature): Robert Heinlein. Isaac Asimov. Ray Bradbury. Rod Serling. Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek). Much of the creativity went into screenplays, so give credit where it is due to the likes of Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, Jr. Does anyone want to recognize the screenplay as a great literary field? Then GIs may be redeemed for cultural achievements.
But much mass-market schlock best forgotten -- Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Suzanne. Practically no poetry. GIs were better marketers and teachers than creators. --66.231.41.57 18:07, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
- It should also be noted that Superman was an artistic response to give hope to a disillusioned generation that grew up during the Great Depression. He was not meant to be a symbol of American domination.--Damae 06:20, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Actually I'm concerned it's closely lifted from Strauss and Howe's book. The bias it exhibits is due to their assertion that there are generational archetypes, so they were making their case that this generation fits archetypal norms. Even in that way it is missing the boat: The Strauss and Howe theory considers this type of generation a "Civic" generation, and asserts that it's characterized by being group-oriented. So, this way of viewing things would have the G.I's carrying out, under the direction of the previous generation, the idealistic directives of two generations before. The point they were making is there's something like a generational "set-up" that has momentum building by the confrontational Idealist generation (the Missionaries in this case) and the intermediate Reactive generation (the Lost) are honed to be extremely pragmatic and therefore good leaders for the civics when they are in fact called upon socially to execute, with heroism. It's because of this -- again, as per this theory -- that other generations appreciate them. (P.S. Note that the Depression-era kids were actually the following generation, the Silents.)
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At the least, "Superman" is a generational icon, and arguably the most enduring cultural icon from a generation that is surprisingly weak in creating cultural icons, contrasted to what else they did. Just as noteworthy is the character's blandness, and the GI generation is not known for wild expression in art, literature, or music. Accessible? Sure -- as none since. "Superman" could be the basis of legends for centuries as some of the other contemporary comic-book heroes with dark sides cannot be remembered. "Superman" has no dark side.
It's worth remembering that the contemporaries of American GIs include those heroes of Britain and Russia who did their share to save their countries from the nazi onslaught -- but America's GI contemporaries in Germany included some of the jackbooted thugs and the bulk of the kamikaze pilots (among other pathological types) of Germany and Japan. Contemporaries of American GIs included major nazi war criminals like Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Adolf Eichmann, and Reinhard Heydrich as well as many of the horrible characters essential to leading innocent people to their doom or mistreating American (as well as British, Russian, Polish, etc.) GIs. Other contemporaries of American GIs became the rigid, hide-bound communists who either heated up the Cold War (Kim il-Sung) or created political and cultural morgues (Leonid Brezhnev, Erich Honecker, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Todor Zhivkov, Enver Hoxha) where they ruled with cults of personality that covered the hollowness of their personalities. The international scene is not so benign for this generation as it is for Americans.
American GIs seem to have done well at almost everything except at avoiding groupthink that ensured that if they committed to a folly (such as the Vietnam War) that they could not detach easily from the folly. Their collective personality was unsuited to the charismatic personalities that inspire others to overachieve as they did, and such may be the cause of their weakness. Superb workers and colleagues, they just weren't leaders by personality. Someone else (Missionaries) told them what to do, and someone else (the Lost) told them the tricks. There was something missing in the GI persona, and they themselves couldn't figure it out. It's also worth remembering that our GIs had the good fortune to have decent leaders from the older Missionaries and the pragmatic (if scourged of its worst tendencies) Lost. Had America had pathological leaders similar to those of the Axis powers, then GIs would have been the compliant followers of such types.
One symptom of the deficiency was the bland commerciality of GI culture, infamously exemplified in "easy listening" music was certain to get an equal-and-opposite reaction. It was accessible, but blatantly formulaic -- and ultimately empty. GIs created vast suburbs of conformist culture, likewise empty of individuality. Others would have to fill the void, and those would be the first generation (Boomers) to have had the security in childhood (a GI creation, to be sure) to ask questions for which adults had no answers. --66.231.41.57 18:07, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
This view discounts the fact that a huge number of jazz musicians were of the G.I. Generation. Bebop was the creation of musicians of this generation, and it certainly was not considered blandly conformist in its time.
I would like to point out that while this generation provided most of the labor for the great tasks of the World War II era, it was members of the previous generation who were the leaders at the time. The articles about the other generations are more analytical in comparison. Indeed, the tone of the article is far from neutral, and it seems to be mostly bombastic praise, without pointing enough concrete examples-- as though we already know what they did. Younger readers, and those born outside the cultures of the English speaking world world might not.
The so-called accomplishments of the GI generation are seen in an increasingly negative light as the years go by. It was this generation that through their worship of conformity and scientific progress devastated North America's (and to a smaller degree, Europe's)cities in the post World War II era (yes the era when they were at the height of their power, up to about 1980) by tearing down architectural masterpieces, destroying public transit, and building brutalistic freeways and shopping malls which ruined vital and diverse neighbourhoods and resulted in segregated, and for the most part uninspiring and ugly, urban environments. Much of the urban revival which Generation X and the following generations will undertake will be a deliberate reversal of the actions of the GI generation. --207.161.34.79 20:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
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GI achievements aren't so monolithic as they seem. One has, for example, the leadership that chose to buckle under (there was no moral alternative) to the demands of ethnic minorities to equal opportunity and the right to political participation; there were also the last gutter racists who either changed their ways toward the end of their lives (George Wallace, Strom Thurmond) or became symbols of racist infamy (Bull Connor, Byron de la Beckwith. The most destructive figure of GI politics aside from the leftover racists was surely Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of unusual recklessness. But a GI journalist, Edgar R. Murrow, exposed him.
African-American GI's include the first large contingent of the Black middle class, in part because of the Second World War that gave African-Americans the first opportunity to get lasting recognition as heroes (the Tuskegee airmen) and access to the benefits of the GI bill in education. Above all, the nationwide news medium of television that the likes of David Sarnoff and William Paley created allowed the most effective means of showing the plight of those left behind. Without the mass media that GIs created for commercial purposes, someone like Rosa Parks would have either deferred to white supremacy and yielded her seat or would have confronted the racist system and experienced harsh consequences without achieving any good.
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[edit] Clean up
"No generation born before or since has felt or been so Promethean, so godlike in its collective, world-bending power."
Wow. I don't know how to clean this article up, but I think it needs to be toned down and quotes sited. -Dr Haggis - Talk 23:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
That statememt is obviously lifted from Strauss and Howe and it should be either credited properly or else deleted.
Enough has been written, much of it original that blatant appropriations can be properly cited or else removed. One cannot write about generational history in the context in which this article is written without being under the influence of Strauss and Howe -- which is not a bad thing.
Nit: The Grumman Avenger (George Bush Sr's airplane) was a torpedo bomber, not a fighter plane.
[edit] NPOV dispute status considered
The article no longer has the style that would make a person unfamiliar with the subject to doubt it's adherence to the NPOV policy. How do you think about it? Should we remove the template from the article page, or is there such a reason for the dispute that I'm not aware of? I just brought this up, initially, altho not knowing much of anything about social studies or the history of the United States. Santtus
I re-read the article. It still seems to make some sweeping claims about the achievements and contribution of the generation that are unsubstantiated, opinionated and in a overall general tone not consistent with an article. I don't want to undermine the achievements of those who fought in WWII but this article needs less rhetoric and more reference.-Dr Haggis - Talk 05:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Article needs lots of work
This paragraph needs lots of work
But even this generation had its weaknesses. It too had its villains, the gutter racists, some gangsters, the McCarthyite exploiters of the Red Scare, and traitors including Axis Sally and the Rosenberg spy ring. Overseas, contemporaries of American GIs include the almost-innumerable British, French, Polish, and Russian heroes of the Second World War, but also many of the pathological types (major and minor war criminals, jack-booted thugs, and kamikaze pilots) of the Axis Powers who ensured the great human cost of the Second World War. Finally, some of the contemporaries in other lands became dictators like Ne Win, François Duvalier, Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, and especially the rigid apparatchiks of most Communist states before those became brittle targets for revolutions in central and southeastern Europe in the late 1980s.
For all their rationality and success in other areas, GI achievements in literature (especially poetry) in the creation of art are comparatively slight. GIs created a bland, accessible, conformist, commercial culture that would itself face a reaction among youth.
All in all, they have more changed the course of American history since the American Revolution. They were the bulk of the soldiers on both sides of World War II; they created prosperity in both victors and vanquished countries after the war; they kept the Cold War from becoming a nuclear war; they presided over the de-colonization of the Third World and the weakening of institutional racism in America and South Africa as well as the almost complete demise of Marxism-Leninism. They also created a firm basis of progress in scientific achievements and in entrepreneurial success.
Bolded part especially. You cant say that the GI generation sucks at literature, and then go onto cite Langston Hughes, Kerouac, etc etc as members of a supposed literature-less generation. ALso lets get a lot of references in here.Copysan 04:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] John Wayne
While I am a great fan of John Wayne, he was NOT a WWII veteran and shouldn't be listed as such. He got a deferment initally for having a family.
63.150.225.16 20:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
