This was originally a Twitter thread, posted on 22 APR 02019.

Changes from the Twitter version: Lightly edited or re-expanded from the original text, linked to sources, and notes.

Addendum, October 2022, after the release of Black Widow filled in significant aspects about Natasha, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier filled in some details about Sam and Bucky. I have also updated links that experienced bit rot to their archive.org instance.

To an extent, Generational Theory is bullshit. There are no dividing lines between people born in, say, 1944 versus 1946.

Their experiences, if they are of the same race, nationality, gender, class, and socioeconomic status, are likely to be far more similar than different.

But that similarity is primarily the effect of all of the other axes, not their temporal location.

Growing up in abject rural poverty versus extremely affluent, urban Old Money Knickerbocker society is a bigger divide, even if both people were born on the exact same day.

Generational Theory exists primarily as a marketing tool, and as media frame, because it’s easier to market goods & services to generally similar groups of people.

Generational Theory is also the result of the homogeneity in media markets that evolved in the mid 20th century. Continue reading “Generational Theory, As Exemplified by The Avengers (MCU)” →