Los Angeles is Burning

Growing up in the “Los Angeles private school circuit” this book is surprising relatable. Now I don’t exactly know how that makes me feel, because while reading this all I can think of is “Wow these kids are such assholes”. Am I a huge asshole? Are all my high school friends assholes?  Now I’m not so sure, and I guess the point of this blog post is to work through those two questions while looking at the text. I apologize in advance for an extra long blog post.

So I guess I should clarify what I mean by “this book is relatable”. First off, I’m nowhere nearly as wealthy Clay and his friends, and I have never been involved in drugs the way that Clay and his friends are. That being said, friends/peers/acquaintances of mine, fall into one or both of those categories. I have, however, been to most places that Clay describes in the book; in fact my best friend’s family has a house in Palm Springs. I’ve had late nights at the Du-Par’s in Studio City after the house party that we all left because it “just wasn’t good”, I’ve driven all the routes that Clay’s driven. But enough about me.

Clay’s issues stem from a broken family that tries to cover up its faults with money. The drugs are a way to cope, to escape. This image is all to real; I’ve seen several kids, with parents who have more money than anyone can imagine, use the never ending supply of money to fund their “perma-high” of weed, cocaine, and Xanax. I see the meaningless sex that Blair, Alana and Kim discuss (everyone seems to be sleeping with everyone) as kids trying to break away from their boring, wealthy, white, heterosexual parents who represent something that they don’t want to grow up to be. The drugs are an embodiment of that as well.   

Now what do I make of all of this? These kids are real. The superfluous wealth is real. The designer clothes are real. The designer drugs are real. So are Clay and his friends the lost generation? Maybe. In 1985 (when this book was published) they were. Would they be considered the lost generation today? I don’t know. All the people that are described in the book, the people who I know real life analogs for, aren’t considered lost (at least not most of them) they’re just considered hipsters.

So if we’re doing the same things that kids did 30 years ago but 30 years ago they were lost, and today we’re hipsters, what does that mean? Is it just a change in definition, or is there something I’m missing?

-Ameet