In the 1960s the torch was passed from age to youth, but in the 1970s
the torch is being handed back again. Youth —the obsession of a few
years ago, the hope of some, the fear of others —no longer makes great
waves. While the 1969 rock festival at Woodstock was hailed as an epic
event of liberated youth, the even bigger 1973 festival at Watkins Glen
was considered a casual outing. Between these two festivals youth
somehow lost its mystique. Two years ago, Sociologist John Seeley wrote: “The young are
seemingly America's Number One love, Number One enemy, Number One
public problem and Number One private preoccupation.” Today the
young would rank way down on almost anybody's list of preoccupations. The radical young firebrands of the '60s—the Mark Rudds, Mario Savios,
Jerry Rubins, Tom Haydens—have all but dropped out of sight. Today's
heroes have left their youth a long way behind them. Henry Kissinger
and Buckminster Fuller , Margaret Mead and Dorothy
Day , John Sirica and Walter Cronkite look and act their
age. Surely no one has done more for age than 76-year old Sam Ervin,
whose Watergate hearings are a parable of the times. One by one,
bright young men who had gone astray filed before the aged patriarch to
do penance and seek absolution. Nor was Ervin averse to providing them
with a few homilies on conduct. “Ervin embodies wisdom, and he
demonstrates that he knows how to cut it,” says Atlanta
Psychiatrist Alfred Messer. Teenagers have blossomed out in Sam Ervin
T shirts, and Rolling Stone has put his jowly face on the cover. Youth is not making the scene the way it used to. The gusher of books
and articles glorifying the young has largely dried up, and younger
people are writing more sympathetically about their elders. David
Kaufelt's first novel is appropriately titled Six Months with an Older
Woman—and they are comically instructive months. One of the best of
the recent books on older people, Nobody Ever Died of Old Age, was
written by 34-year-old Sharon Curtin, a '60s radical. The youth cult films of the '60s catered to the grossest fantasies of
the times. In Wild in the Streets, a 19-year-old becomes President and
puts over-35s in concentration camps. In // …
rebel students gun down parents and teachers for no apparent reason.
Today Hollywood vaults contain films of this sort that were made after
the generation battle had cooled; they are no longer box office. Current films seem to be putting youth back in its place. In his past
roles, Steve McQueen often played the rebel —against home, hearth or
system. But in Junior Banner he is a dutiful son who finally wins
enough money to send his pa to his dreamland, Australia. In The Emperor
of the North Pole Lee Marvin is trailed by a brash youth who wants to
replace him as king of the hobos. But the crown stays squarely put on
the gray head. At the end of the film Marvin boots the youth off the
rails, shouting: “Kid, you got no class, you'll never make it!”
