For this blog post, I will be comparing the element of Curator’s Exhibitionism from Conquergood’s Performing as Moral Act, to the large generation gap between Millennials and Baby Boomers. More specifically, the misunderstandings that come along with viewing other generations as well as the judgements towards one or the other. Curator’s Exhibitionism is the idea that people will focus solely on other’s differences, rather than overlooking them. This idea is very relevant when comparing two generations to one another which is commonly seen between older and younger generations.
More recently than not, people of the Baby Boomer era and before, have been expressing their judgements to the younger generations upon the internet. In the midst of memes, elderly Facebook rants, and Twitter updates, both older and younger generations seem to have a vast amount of differences. The first example that came to mind was a video published by Daniel Brea on Vimeo earlier this year, titled “A Millennial Job Interview.” This video picks at the expectation of Millennials to be tech savvy, but not in the way that employers would like them to be. In the first 30 seconds of the video, the young women (interviewee), is portrayed with a high-pitched voice and making little to no eye contact (due to her phone in front of her) during her interview. The older man who is interviewing her asks about her proficiency with various Microsoft Applications, to which she giggles and says no. She then explains that she is proficient in Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine (R.I.P), and Twitter. The man then explains that he needs her to be proficient with technology so that she can research and comb through information that he gives her. The young woman explains that she has Siri and that she can just ask her phone whenever she needs to know something for the job.
The connection between the idea of Curator’s Exhibitionism and the video, “A Millennial Job Interview,” are the assumptions made by older generations about Millennials and how they are presumed to act in the work place because of their “obsession” with social media. The satirical tone in the video is sort of mocking the intelligence of those within the younger generations. As more and more older generations judge Millennials, the more apparent it is that they are solely focusing on society’s new reliance to technology and how it is dumbing “us” down.
The most interesting part of Curator’s Exhibitionism is neglecting to understand the differences that an individual has instead of trying to figure out why they are so different in the first place. I’ve noticed that when the older generation rants about the younger generation, they don’t really mention that we have little to no choice in the way our society runs. Technology has had thousands of breakthroughs just in the first thirtyish years of Millennial’s lives. Not only does technology make life a little easier for the average human, like I don’t know maybe the invention of properly functioning INTERNET, but also the idea of connection between humans and easier ways to interact with one another through social media. For a lot of Millennials, the majority of our social life remains on social media. It is how we were “raised” in a way, through the “social media” age. On the other hand, older generations were raised without internet, cell phones, and god forbid a television without more than four channels. They adapted to their society’s way of communicating in the same way we adapted to the invention of social media which is our current way to communicate.
In my opinion, the most important part of communication is understanding the difference between the person you are communicating with instead of overlooking it or simply not understanding them at all.
The link to “A Millennial Job Interview”:
https://vimeo.com/239050403
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