Lamestain

i grew up with the 80s in stark delineation, the movies and media of the time not understood by me yet still prominent.  my first R-rated movie was Maximum Overdrive when i was five, we owned a copy of Thriller, and a Thompson Twins album, and tv held a compliation of Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island reruns in constrast with Diff'rent Strokes and the Cosby Show.

because of an army brat i dated whose dad was stationed in Germany, i own a piece of the Berlin Wall.  i remember having nightmares of World War Three, and hearing about Iran-Contra on the radio.  i started playing D&D at 6 (in 84), and had to wax in the numbers on the dice in the red box.

all that shaped and changed me.                                                                                                                  

in 87, when Operation: Mindcrime came out, i was nine.  i was way too young to know why the anticommunist rhetoric was so passionate, or why so many people hated Reagan's stance on social issues.  it was the same year that Star Trek came back to tv, and the nation was afraid.  from movies, i got that ther were a lot of poorer people, some rich people, and who your friends were was really important.

musically, i was woefully uninformed.  at that point, whatever was popular on the radio was what i heard, and i hadn't really made much my own.  that year, in fourth grade, i learned about David Lee Roth and Def Leppard, and it was the first year that i was aware of social cliques.

Nikki's screaming at the start of "Speak" itself is reminiscent of the echo chambers of modern politics and punditry.  but also of the individual finding their own voice, even if it's a bad or detrimental one, as a young adult.  "Listen to me!" each says, with clothing or music or the political stands taken.  each group, each clique, each stereotype lived up to or rejected screams it as we use what we see to figure out who we really are.

the 80s were, in retrospect, a time of social upheaval.  the world shifted, and came to rest in a different configuration by the end of its time.  as a kid, i was saved from most of the worry it caused.  but in many ways, the current and recent struggles are no different.  the reagan-era did much to embolden the top earners and to magnify their influence, but also disenfranchised the young, the poor, and those who stumbled into the job market at the wrong time... having no upward movement as Boomers held on until retirement, feeling stuck and lost without opprotunity.  so too did the bush-era and past leave a whole generation behind.  in each, a potential Nikki.  in each, a lost soul who could become the victim of a manipulator.  in each, all of us at our lowest, looking for a way out.

this time, too, was a shift in music.  as much as Queensryche has never been much for the glam (though the video for "Queen of the Reich" is pretty 80s hairtastic), they were a seattle band around when seattle changed the landscape of their industry.  they never wore flannel, they didn't really reincorporate punk into their repertoire, they created and performed a rock opera instead of having concerts that were just glorified jam sessions.  but they were at the crux of a paradigm change.  perhaps Operation: Mindcrime was itself a great signpost, pointing at the reasons why Grunge arose -- it incorporates elements of dissatisfaction, lostness, drug abuse, powerlessness at the hands of both traditional society and those who reject societal norms, the rise of the individual looking for meaning,

every so often, i'm reminded of the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the significance that video had on music.  the lighting, dim sepia instead of the brighter tones... the black-clad cheerleaders with red anarchy signs on their uniforms, an ultimate subversion from the stereotypical 80s "popular crowd" gatekeepers... a band that looked homeless and unkempt, but playing with such passion and ferocity that it was impossible to look away... the crowd in the bleachers, also unkempt grunge-clad skateboarder-style everymen-and-women forced to be there, suddenly included and supported instead of hanging out in disinterested knots at the back...

it was as if suddenly, another voice was heard over a loudspeaker.  not the cheerful announcer who told you daily about all the great fun you should be having, but a lower voice telling you it was ok to not do what you aren't into, and that you were still alright, and that there were others like you.  in a small conservative town, it was like a life preserver.

oh well, whatever, nevermind.

and it was ok.

that's Nikki, in a nutshell -- all he ever needed was someone to tell him it'd be ok, and to respect him, and to help him get his feet.  instead, he fell in with the wrong people and got worse, ending with the wrongest of wrong who used him for their own gains.