posted
Okay, this has really been bothering me lately, but why the hell is EVERYTHING on the planet being described as angsty?
My best friend is incredibly into music. She listens to, and knows the names of more bands than I thought could even have existed at one time. And it seems like every other band she listens to, she describes as angsty.
Books now are angsty. Harry Potter is angsty. Teens on the OC and Dawson's Creek are angsty. Anakin Skywalker is angsty.
Do I just not know what angst means? Even four or five years ago, I rarely ever heard anything ever be described as angst like, and not the word is some sort of pop culture epithet. I was under the impression that angst was just a feeling of agitation or apprehension, or Angst as a noun, a feeling of disatisfaction with the world or some philosophy. But seriously, it's getting really annoying to have everything having to do with someone between the ages of 12 and 25 being described as angsty.
One final question.
Does this post now make ME angsty?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Quote by Mr. Kurt Cobain from "Serve the Servants" on Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero
"Teenage angst has paid off well Now I'm bored and old..."
Now for a breif theory upon which I've expounded WAY more often than my friends deserve, poor devils.
How I define/pronounce the following:
AHngst. n : an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom. (dictionary.com)
AIngst. n. non-philosophical version of more or less the same feeling.
Teenage AIngst. n. ironic, slightly mocking term for the depression that every teenager seems to have nowadays, but is nevertheless horribly painful and damaging.
Ever read Prozac Nation? I didn't. Or at least I didn't finish it. I found it to be too optimistic... But there are one or two bits that have stuck in my mind. At the end of the book there's an afterword relating to Kurt Cobain's suicide, and the "depression culture" that was all of a sudden thriving. It's rather discouraging that so many people connect and identify with the self-hatred, depression, and general bad feeling that is expressed in Nirvana's music. Why is it so popular? AIgnst. Or rather, Teenage AIngst.
An "unspecific feeling of anxiety...about the world or about personal freedom" is, IMHO, a pretty good definition of adolescence. But I don't thing it's often "philosophical." Therefore it needs a new term: AIngst. Or Teenage AIngst.
The trouble comes when people either don't know the actualy meaning of AHngst and use it to mean AIngst, confusing philosophers horribly in the process.
I belive that the "angst" that gets bandied about nowadays is more of the AIngst variety. Perhaps a different term should be used. I occassionally substitute another term for "Teenage AIngst", but due to the rules of Hatrack I can't write it here. Nirvana (more specifically their song "Smells Like Teen Spirit") are often said to have defined this current generation of young hooligans such as myself. So in deference to thier influence, I use "Teenage AIngst." Maybe others do the same, maybe I'm just a freakish depressed Nirvana fan... Anyway, there's my theory.
I bet this was way more than you ever wanted to hear about anyone's opinion on angst. Well, sorry. But I can never resist the opportunity to celebrate the genius that was Kurt Cobain.
Just because I feel ironic and emoticon-y: Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Poor old Kurt. He was awesome. Why did he die? That was just wrong. I almost can't listen to Nirvana anymore because I get so sad about poor dear Kurt. The better I know him through his music, the more of a tragedy I find his death to be.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Anytime I hear the "Kurt Kobain was a genius" line, I cringe a little bit. I like Nirvana, and I think that Kobain was an exceptional musician and writer, but it's not like he cured polio or discovered an underlying law of the universe...
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I also cringe. I like his music well enough, but whenever I see someone bemoaning his needless and tragic death, I think about the theory that it couldn't have been a suicide because there was too much heroin in his system for him to have been able to operate a gun. Uh... yeah. Hard for me to have a whole lot of respect, there.
Kurt Cobain does seem like a good subject in a discussion of teenage angst, though. Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Yes, there are such things as musical geniuses. But personally, I think using the phrase to describe Kurt Cobain is stretching the phrase to its breaking point. Not all good musicians are geniuses. In fact, very few of them truly are.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
More discussing of angst, less discussing of Kurt Cobainm unless directly related to angst. I'm on a mission to solve this conundrum. Princess Leah had the right idea, nice post btw, that's on the track of what I was looking for.
posted
While I hate to sound like the Old Guy, I have to point out that every generation for quite some time has had a subgroup of people, usually teenagers, who develop a pessimistic outlook on life. Instead of scorning them as outcasts, we've just gotten better at marketing to them Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Well, he was really a great artist. And it IS a terrible tragedy that he died. I don't particularly associate him with teen angst, though. Wasn't he 30 when he died?
When I hear him sing, I feel like I know him, like he's a friend of mine, and like I didn't look after him well enough, and so he died. I feel like I should have been paying closer attention, you know? Reaching out to help. Okay, since I didn't know him, there wasn't too much I could actually do, but it doesn't make it any less sad that it happened.
People mourn for him because they loved him. Why is that wrong?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Chris: Good point. But there's a world of difference between a "pessimistic outlook" and depression. And yeah, maybe the corporate world has caught on to the "uhnn, I'm alternative and angsty" trend. But back about 15 years when Nirvana was just starting out and just getting popular, "alternative rock" was actually still alternative. People listened to Nirvana and bands like them for different reasons, but I'm sure one huge factor was that they identified with the emotion that Kurt puts into his songs. That emotion is not just a "pessimistic outlook." It's (to quote "You Know You're Right") "PAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIINNN". "Teenage Angst" as a term has its own bunch of people who don't subscribe to my definition, anyway, the fools!
Tatiana: Not 30. He's a member of the popular Rockstars Who Died Dramatically At 27 Club. and
quote: People mourn for him because they loved him.
Yup. I'm from Seattle. I was at some pretty hardcore ten-year anniversary events last year. We love the man because he knew what we were feeling but said it better than we ever could.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
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What conundrum? It's a buzzword. Buzzwords come and go all the time, especially among young people. For several years, young people were going around calling everything "groovy" irrespective of whether or not they contained any actual grooves. "Angst" is just one of the buzzwords young people are using today. Sooner or later it will fade. I really think that's all there is to it, and there's no point in trying to read any more into it than that.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:While I hate to sound like the Old Guy, I have to point out that every generation for quite some time has had a subgroup of people, usually teenagers, who develop a pessimistic outlook on life. Instead of scorning them as outcasts, we've just gotten better at marketing to them
People probably haven't ever heard of the Lost Generation.
quote: . . . we were feeling but said it better than we ever could.
And, yet again, brings up the question of the usefulness of public education.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
To get at my definition of angst, one would have to take a look at what I define as an "angsty" story:
We meet Hero. Hero is confronted with Problem. Hero worries about Problem. Hero eventually reaches a point when Problem dominates his or her mind. Hero overcomes Problem, or Hero succumbs to their emotions.
Essentially, you have a plot where a person's conflict with themselves augments or takes the place of a conflict with the outside world, to an extreme.
posted
I like Nirvana. I like Kurt Cobain. Kurt, however, is not a musical genius. Kurt was a man who wrote the right kind of music at the right time. He found a market, and that market was cashed in on.
Even when I am feeling down, even when I am "depressed", I have never identified with his music. But you don't have to identify to enjoy listening. Genius is not the word. Entertaining is more on the mark.
As for our "angst ridden culture", I agree with Chris. Marketing is so good these days that companies are able to sell directly to the dissaffected who, in earlier days, may have fallen by the wayside. Look at the store "Hot Topic". If that isn't an example of marketing genius then I don't know of one. Selling mass-produced, cheesy, trendy shirts to the teenagers who claim to hate mass-produced, cheesy, trendy shirts! All your money ends up in the same place as buying at the gap, yet you and your friends can pretend to be unique and cool!
"Angst" is just cashing in on more of the same feeling. If you can write a song or a book or a movie that captures the trendy feeling of the emotionally downtrodden, you can make a few quick bucks.
posted
It's an ANNOYING buzzword. Everything is NOT angst ridden. Thus my conundrum is how to get people to stop using it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
If it were possible to stop people from using words, I would have abolished "flammable" a long time ago. There's nothing you can do but avoid it yourself and ride it out. And die a little inside if it never does go away.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Mine is "random". Seems to me that far too many valley girl/surfer dude teenagers use that word without any notion of the meaning of it.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote: Kurt, however, is not a musical genius. Kurt was a man who wrote the right kind of music at the right time. He found a market, and that market was cashed in on.
Even when I am feeling down, even when I am "depressed", I have never identified with his music. But you don't have to identify to enjoy listening. Genius is not the word. Entertaining is more on the mark.
Entertaining? Yeah, so much fun to listen to "All Apologies" and "Lithium" and "Dumb". It really gets the party started! That's definately why *I* do it! Yup! And Kurt had so much fun with it, too!
Kurt was pretty darn innovative in his songwriting, guitar playing, and vocal style. Berlioz was pretty darn innovative as well. Both of them changed music, thier music was enjoyed by many and also shocked and offended many others. Some people only hopped onto the trendy music bandwagon of thier day. Same with Copeland, Bernstien, and Beethoven too.
I don't think too many people would deny that the non-rock members of the list were musical geniuses. I wouldnt (good, since I picked them, right? ). But I don't like Berlioz. and I get pretty darn bored after about 10 minutes with almost everything Copeland has written. You don't have to like or identify with someone's music to recognize thier talent and brilliance. I maintain my claim of musical genius.
I'm getting too worked up about this. I'm going to stop now. Let's see if I obey my own orders! It'll be a suspensful drama.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Sorry Leah, there are many rock musicians that I would actually call musical geniuses, Kurt will never be one. I am not being biased about Rockers, I am a rocker myself and happen to enjoy that form of music more than any other. Kurt just wasn't a genius, to me. His style wasn't that different from many others who came before him, he just made it more popular. Too many of his songs were at worst stolen covers and at best stolen ideas to classify him as a genius.
But you can disagree, I don't mind too much. I've had this argument with my buddy Dale, who worships Kurt as a god, many many times.
posted
I would define "teenage angst" as a general discontent with life ranging from problems with parents, boyfriends, teachers, the law, etc., to a restless powerlessness about a growing realisation of the evil in the world.
Teenagers tend to be more "angsty" than adults because they are in that period where all of a sudden they can see their "deserved freedom" being restricted by their parents and also the world issues they are suddenly percieving they see in a more black-and-white way than the older people.
Harry Potter is considered angsty because he too has reached that teenage time of life when he feels restricted by the adults around him (they "misunderstand" him) and also he is aware of the many evils (in his case Voldemort and pals) in the world that before were only a sort of distant one-off series of battles- something that could never hurt him.
I wouldn't describe angst as depression. Angsty teens can be depressed as well but the angst tends to provide a counteracting drive that pushes them out of depression and into rebellion. I think depression probably comes when they realise that rebellion really isn't going to do much good.
Not all teenagers are angsty.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Kurt was pretty darn innovative in his songwriting, guitar playing, and vocal style. [. . .] Both of them changed music, thier music was enjoyed by many and also shocked and offended many others.
I submit that neither of these qualities constitute "genius".
Many people have been innovative in various fields without being geniuses. It doesn't take genius to do something a little different from what's gone before. That's a basic human trait, in fact.
As for being popular and controversial at the same time . . . well, that's music for you. It certainly doesn't take genius to get some people to love you and others to hate you. Find me one musician who is universally loved or hated, and then I'll say you're closer to finding an actual genius.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I can't believe I forgot about this earlier, but if you check out TomDavidson's website, he has his poetry posted there. He has an entire section titled Angst. Of particular interest is the poem GinX, since is mentions your friend Cobain.
Yes, I am a huge TomDavidson fan, yes I have read all his poetry on the website, what are you gonna do about it?
posted
I had angst once. Lots of stream of conscious prose about things designed to make me feel, to break me out of the other dysfunctional teenage emotion: Apathy.
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posted
Hey, don't knock apathy. Apathy is how I survived much of my teenage years (granted, I had extraordinary circumstances.) Well, apathy and immersing myself in books.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
To me apathy is necessary in some situations, otherwise we'd just be Über-emotional all the time, don't get me wrong Emotions are great but I don't want to be mr.I-make-a-huge-deal-about-everything. Apathy is good in small doses. But what I can't stand is uncorrected ignorence.
As far as musical genius, Kurt Cobain was the defining man of the early 90's in mainsteam culture. To me he's all right...but he's no Joe Strummer. Ahh Joe Strummer possibly the best musician/political music writer ever. (*I'm confident that anyone who is familiar with Joe Strummer will agree*)
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I almost can't listen to Nirvana anymore because I get so sad about poor dear Kurt. The better I know him through his music, the more of a tragedy I find his death to be.
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). But I don't like Berlioz. and I get pretty darn bored after about 10 minutes with almost everything Copeland has written. You don't have to like or identify with someone's music to recognize thier talent and brilliance. I maintain my claim of musical genius. ![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
Joe Strummer possibly the best musician/political music writer ever. (*I'm confident that anyone who is familiar with Joe Strummer will agree*)
