Synopsis
Screenagers
Screenager is a term coined in the 1997 by the american sociologist Douglas Rushkoff to define that generation that was the first to grew up in a situation very different from these of the previuos ages: the generation of only son, born and raised by the screen of a dreams-and-truth television, by the display of a mobile phone, and by the monitor of computers.
The thing that made me think about has been a certain ambiguousness contained in the word; my generation has a douplice relation with the new technologies: a relation of interest, and of dependence too. The idea that stands behind the use of these brand new and advanced technologies on the one hand is the mirror of a westernized ideology that sees a technologic man as a strong man. On the other hand yet we can consider the use of the new technologies like an attempt to escape the society still remaining embeded in a system, a half-succesful detachment in other words.
What I wondered was: how the technology could change the life style of the youth, and in which measure did this happen?
The world of technologies is for the youth like a "second chance", an alternative to the life in the outer world. An alternative that we choose, and an alternative we are sometimes compelled to.
I got in mind to put a screen instead of the head to the subjects because it is a metaphor to say that those screens are both like a shield for all the spite and the ferocity of the "real" world, and the container of a microcosm where everyone of us can look inside himself in a more articolated and detached way, without being conditioned by the situation in the behaviour and reflection.
Besides any interpretation you give to the screen the boys and the girls wear, that screen is anyway an element that make their identity terribly twisted and incomprehensible. Then another theme I wished to face is the loss of identity, sometimes consequence of this kind of life style.
There are teenagers who chat, surf the net and knock out in front of a television just because they have not enough bravery to face everything sorrounds themselves, bringing a mask they can wear or take away when and where they want. Others people instead do this not in order to escape but to complete themselves, evenif this point of view was victimized so many times. In both the cases anyway the screen rappresents the threshold, the border between our world and the other's one.
What I mean to rappresent are both these situations, because - in the end - they cannot be divided. I don't mean to criticize or to support the loneliness from our families and from the sorrounding, circumstance that follows the use of technology, came at a certain point. My intent is not the one to give or suggest an opinion, a point of view.
Finally, the characters raise by this idea and this reflection. Every illustration may contain other meaning, for two reasons: first every image is influenced by my feelings during its the realization, and second I always preferred leave the interpretation free :)
