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54 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Three for Honesty, April 23, 2004
This review is from: Generation S.L.U.T.: A Brutal Feel-up Session with Today's Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace (Paperback)
I borrowed Beckerman's book from a friend after seeing him appear on Bill O'Reilly's "The Factor." I almost immediately began to like Beckerman as he drug out two verbal cannon balls that absolutely no one any older than Beckerman would dare drag out. First, was his insinuation that there was a backlash from the feminist revolution affecting Generations X and Y. Secondly, he slipped a comment about parents buying their 13 year-old daughters thong panties in under the wire, and neither Bill nor his other guest either heard it, or knew quite how to respond. The fact that Beckerman is willing to raise these issues in such a point-blank fashion earns him three stars. Here is where he loses two stars. Firstly, he detests the culture of teen sex without emotional connection, but MTV publishes the book. This is the reason I borrowed the book rather than buying the book. If I am as outraged by the trashy `poptarts' in the malls being `chaperoned' by their `fifty-going-on-fifteen' mothers as Beckerman, I am unlikely to be a big fan of MTV - the largest purveyor of classless and clueless as cool. He should have held out for a more credible publisher. Secondly, Beckerman's `story and stats' technique doesn't work for me. If he wanted to write a story it would have had to have some subtlety (see the short story "Lust" by Susan Minot for example), and if he wanted to write social commentary, he should have simply done it (see "A Return to Modesty," by Wendy Shalit, or "Modern Sex: Liberation and its Discontents," edited by Myron Magnet). Ultimately, Beckerman's language and stylistic tactics are products of the same generation's relativism he is so critical of. Beckerman is right to indict a shameless generation, and incriminate the parent's for the part they've played in it. He is right not to play the pedantic games sociologists, psychologists, and the various others with an agenda to propagate do; however, what he lacks is maturity, and this should not be confused with pedantry. With maturity will come depth, and with depth durability - Beckerman may yet write what will become this generation's testament, but this book is not it.
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Silly stick figures, May 12, 2005
This review is from: Generation S.L.U.T.: A Brutal Feel-up Session with Today's Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace (Paperback)
I'll admit it - the quoted review by Hunter S. Thompson was a large factor in my decision to buy this book. After having read the book, I can only assume that when he read it, Thompson was, well ... Hunter S. Thompson.
This story may have some relevance to some small segments of today's teens - but it's certainly not representative of the majority of them. The 'bad guy' is an overblown Eddie Haskell (anyone else remember Leave It To Beaver?), held up as an icon of success by parents, fantastically wealthy from his own earnings, amazingly sadistic, and totally without fear of consequences - easy to despise, difficult to believe at all.
Are there parents as absent and ineffectual as this book depicts? Certainly. Are there teens as vicious and depraved as are shown in this story? Oh, probably. Is anyone as shallow and unthinking as the author claims is typical in the generation being "exposed" in this book? If there is, I've never met them.
By the author's own admission, he was unable to lose his virginity until he was 18, yet he describes a high school world of casual sex and weekend orgies with no consequences at all. In essense, he whines about being excluded from this world he invents while he sneers at it.
Some titilating scenes, a fair narrative voice - not a total waste of time, but it certainly does not live up to the hype.
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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Scary, Yes. True, No., February 5, 2005
This review is from: Generation S.L.U.T.: A Brutal Feel-up Session with Today's Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace (Paperback)
There are two very frightening things about this book: the fact that the author seems to believe what he's saying, and the fact that others who haven't recently been teenagers may believe him also. But there aren't any actual facts in Generation S.L.U.T. Even many of the statistics that Beckerman has compiled are disputable and based on questionable data collection methods. His analysis of why today's adolescents are "sex-crazed" is that the feminist movement is to blame, yet he does no analysis of the male villain of the fictional sections of this book, a young man who turns disturbing power fantasies into reality. In fact, all of his fictional characters lack development-Beckerman created so much external drama that the real internal struggles are never apparent. Which is sad, because there is a lot to be said for the young and depressed who are often feeling too alone to say anything for themselves.
This book purports to be a voice for Generation Y, but Beckerman is too caught up in his own misogynistic universe to really analyze the situation with true depth. If you want to find out what's really going on with today's young people, I suggest you speak to someone a little more balanced . . . unfortunately, the balanced ones don't seem to be published.
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