Episode 634 - Boomer-myth
May 8, 2023
Generational tensions are a cultural constant. It's popular to pick on the young and say they're lazy, irresponsible, stupid, changing things in silly ways etc, but it's also just as popular too defend them and debunk myths associated with younger people, we don't have that with older people and I find that a bit sad and disturbing. This cast tackles the myths associated with “boomers”.
Topics and Show Notes
The idea is that “boomers” are all wealthy, they're out of touch, they ruined the environment, they own everything, they're homophobic, transphobic, racist, conservative, they own their own homes (which they bought cheap), They were all hedonists in the 1970s and 80s and splurged on expensive drugs, they own EVERYTHING, they all had it easy with no issues in their lives like younger generations, their parents were a generation of heroes that fought in WW2 and they were losers, they're in all the senior positions, they all went to university for free and so on.
Like everything there are seeds of truth from which the myths grow. As you get older you have a tendency to accumulate and you usually want to keep what you have, you acquire more responsibilities, you rise to more senior positions if you hang around long enough, you have more time and seniority so you CAN go into things like politics. This is why politicians and CEOS often tend to be older- a simple demographic tendency. Though those people make up a tiny, infinitesimal portion of Baby-boomers and you'll probably find that more and more of those are in reality Gen-X anyway now.
They often had jobs for life because the culture and the economy supported that back then but it also kept them in those jobs and gave them very little mobility or creativity. They bought houses and started families because that was the path that most of them were utterly locked into, their jobs were their whole lives. Most of them never went to university at all, it was only a comparatively tiny elite, this is why university was cheap- because it kept most of the baby-boomers OUT. There was no reason for big student debt because there were so many less students so there was more public money to spend on the lucky few.
Lest we forget that the Baby Boomer generation suffered many issues- unlike Iraq 2 and Afghanistan which were very short wars with 100% volunteers and mainly hostile occupations, Vietnam was a hot war where many unwilling conscripts were forced to fight and die for many years. The terrorism that Babyboomers had during their lives was terrifying- with passenger planes regularly being hijacked and blown up, car bombings all the time, mass shootings, ships and buses regularly hijacked, mass-kidnappings and so on. Not to mention the constant threat of total nuclear annihilation. Many grew up with almost nothing and very little food during and after WW2 as rationing still continued many years after in a lot of countries. There were huge economic downturns in the 1970s and many were forced out of work. The oil crisis in the 1970s made driving almost untenable for a while and started the development of electric cars.
The Boomer generation were the first to seriously tackle sexism in the workplace in a big way, fighting for equal pay and conditions. They were the first to successfully fight homophobia and make sure we had gay rights. They tackled the nuclear issue and instituted the non-proliferation treaties, test ban treaties, and disarmament treaties, they fought for animal rights, they got whaling banned and fur hunting of seals, they fought for the rights of indigenous peoples, they gave us De-segragation, they fought apartheid, They tried to save the environment, they saved the freakin' ozone layer, they gave us safer cars, they gave us environmental protection and pollution laws and controls, and so much more!
Ironically with ALL that we blame the Baby-boomers for, they tend to be responsible for most of the good stuff that younger generations wrongly take credit for.
Of course not every baby-boomer was behind all those things but enough of them were that it created real and massive change in the world, so much that we're still all benefiting. And remember too that not all the the people in the younger generations are involved in good, positive measures today either.
No, the “boomers” did NOT ruin all the stuff.
As a Gen-Xer myself I just know they we ride on their coattails. ;)
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Ballad of Bill - Awesome, jazzy, gloriously meandering rock tune! The bass guitar opens the door, followed by cymbals, violin and an almost Arabic sounding distorted electric guitar!
Topics and shownotes
Links
- Future topic: War-cast?
Thread on the topic of the Boomer-myth - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/179352/
Featured comic:
Mirage - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/may/02/featured-comic-mirage/
Featured music:
The Ballad of Bill - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Ballad_of_Bill/ - by TheBalladofBill, rated E
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/banes
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
VIDEO exclusive!
Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks!
- https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck
Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts!
Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Episode 632 - Star Wars
Apr 24, 2023
We finally gave in to temptation and just started chatting about Star Wars. For our Patreon video we were talking about the idea of pivotal pop-cultural landmarks that changed the cultural landscape in various ways. Star Wars definitely qualifies… but instead of finding other examples we just decided to indulge in a Star Wars only cast. We didn't do more than scratch the surface unfortunately though. It's a cool cultural phenomena and it's something we always refer back to when we talk about story structure. SO please bear with us as we indulge!
Episode 614 - Super groups!
Dec 19, 2022
Inspired by Banes we did a Quackcast on SUPER TEAMS! You know those groups like the Justice League, the Avengers, the Suicide Squad, or even Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy from The Journey to the West (Monkey Magic is my fave version). These are super powerful characters on their own but together they're even more awesome because their strengths and weakness complement each other in interesting ways. DD had its very own super team in the form of the Heroes Alliance, where a lot of DD creators got together to work on a shared universe. And back in the 2000s DD had a “Civil War” even with Keen Space (AKA Comic Genesis), where a huge number of our creators and theirs participated in something like a DC Vs Marvel crossover battle.
Episode 593 - Risky Business
Jul 25, 2022
The risks of online creative success We live in a wonderful time where you're able to turn your creative passion into a job that can support you just by using freely available online services like YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Patreon, Ebay, Paypal, Etsy, Webtoons etc. You can start with nothing more than your computer or phone and end up with a thriving business based on your passion project. It's not easy, achieving enough success where you can quit your day job still tends to take a lot of work, but once you get there it can be amazing. However, that's not the end of the story unfortunately.
Episode 584 - Drawing gender
May 23, 2022
We start off with the idea of talking about art techniques, tips and tricks we've mastered and could help people with but the cast turned into a discussion about drawing male and female characters- also trans, androgynous, etc. There's an art to representing gender in imagery! It's super important to remember that the way we see gender in art is mainly culture based rather than an innate biological reaction and the perception of gender in art is different according to your cultural background. It's basically a visual language that everyone learns, but as an artist you have to learn to actually “speak” it, and that's not as straight forward as you think.
Episode 576 - Retro Adventure heroes
Mar 28, 2022
Retro adventure heroes are an interesting and unique sort of hero. The trope was revived and crystallised by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, but it had existed long before then and continues to persist now in many forms. They're not without their problems But I like these characters. I love their outfits, their competency, intelligence, self sufficiency, and their penchant for exploration and discovery.
Episode 574 - Odd-ball, norm-ball, every ball!
Mar 14, 2022
I consider Drunk Duck (or the Duck Webcomics) to be the Heavy Metal of webcomic hosting sites, because like that excellent anthology comic publication we celebrate the oddballs. On DD we have comics of all different styles, many that would find it hard or even impossible to promote themselves anywhere else. We're open to all skill levels and all styles. We only promote things we consider to have high quality or high potential in our features, but we don't have a particular style prejudice, we don't only feature things that give us a homogeneous, unified look. We're proud of our variety! We don't gate keep or block anyone from access to our site and we feel that's one of our greatest strengths.
Episode 572 - Myths of fiction part 2
Feb 28, 2022
Last week we did a thing of the persistent myths of fiction- fictional conventions that we all just accept, and are repeated over and over and even influence real life- for example: that people are blasted back in reaction to being shot. It started as a way of making shooting scenes more dramatic and obvious on film, but became a convention and we all believe it so much that it influences reality- it's part of the famous JFK conspiracy about a “second shooter” because people foolishly think JFK's head rocking “back and to the left” indicated the direction of a gunshot. The kinetic energy of a bullet is imparted to the medium it strikes, typically through heat and destruction when it hits a soft target like a human.
