Arrested Development 📚 Pop Culture And The Erosion of Adulthood

Christopher Owens 🔖 “We wanna be free. We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded."

Sampled by Psychic TV, Mudhoney and Andrew Weatherhall, this quote from Peter Fonda’s character in the cult exploitation flick The Wild Angels succinctly enunciates the mood of the 60’s counterculture: escape from mainstream society through communal living and reaching ecstasy via sex and drugs.

Undoubtedly very shocking to conservative types in that period but when the above is the default mentality for rebellion nearly 60 years on and has inflicted political thinking, is it fair to now think of it as a refusal to grow up? And if it is the latter, could that help to explain why people are being arrested for tweets or being killed for holding differing opinions?

While not a novel concept in 2025, it has taken a while for this view to filter through. But people like Andrew Calcutt were making such an argument nearly 30 years ago.

According to an old bio:

Dr Andrew Calcutt trained as a magazine journalist back in the days of cow gum and paste-up. He became culture editor of Living Marxism/LM and commissioning editor of Channel Cyberia (one of the earliest online magazines in the UK), before joining the University of East London as its first ‘hackademic’. As a journalism academic, he is concerned ‘for the future of journalism, alongside the future of my students in journalism’.

Considering the state of journalism these days, he has a lot to be concerned about.

In the book, Calcutt sets out his belief as such:

A new political order has emerged in which the victim is supreme, and adults are treated more like children. Meanwhile, many adults are more likely to think of themselves as victims, or to identify with the motif of the authentic, innocent child. The result is a convergence between on the one hand the spontaneous development of a cultural personality which is victimized and childlike, and on the other hand the remoulding of the individual’s relationship to the state in accordance with his supposed immaturity. The convergence of these trends is facilitated by the already existing non-adult language provided by the counterculture and the pop culture which succeeded it. The key question in such circumstances is whether adulthood will go into abeyance; or whether the end of adulthood can be resisted by a critique of infantilism and the reclamation of subjectivity.

Reading these 1998 sentences in 2025, it’s both a relief to see that such a mentality was being discussed/called out at the time and it’s depressing to think of how further entrenched we are in such a mentality thanks to the institutionalising of identity politics, further dividing us from each other.

Beginning with the rave scene and the then recent death of Leah Betts, Calcutt discusses how one of the most cited aspects of Ecstasy is the feeling of warmth and security, thus working as a 90’s equivalent of LSD in that people on it may have had a great time but the idea of it being the basis of a political movement is ridiculous given the placid passivity it produces.

When considered with the fact that clubbers often spoke of how a safe environment was needed for raving, one wonders how out of touch the Tories must have been over the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill when all they had to do was ensure there were medical staff on site and both Tory politicians and crusty ravers would have been on the same page. Then again, why should I be surprised considering that the most articulate message from that scene was "Fuck em and their law".

Describing such an outcome as the logical outcome of a fifty-year tradition where pop culture has become the means which people find their identity, surpassing politics and religion and acting as both in loco parentis, Calcutt takes us on a journey from Antonin Artaud, jazz, the Beats, hippies, punk, Rastafarianism and rave. All the while demonstrating how their use of politics was merely for clout and how the death of genuine politics after the Cold War means that we’re stuck with an infantile worldview facilitated by the state interfering in our lives.

Quite the journey and quite the subject matter but the pace and writing keep us ticking along at a steady rate, allowing us to absorb a particular idea/section before bringing in another angle to compliment or contrast what you’ve just read.

His discussion of how those with mental health issues were often venerated as geniuses or oppressed by society for seeing through bullshit norms (e.g. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Jello Biafra’s claim that mental illness was the road to freedom) is quite chilling when you consider how Iryna Zarutska’s killer had a (since removed) GoFundMe set up because:

…Decarlos Brown Jr. was failed categorically by the judicial system and the mental health services of North Carolina, and as such is not entirely to blame for what happened…

While there may well be some truth in that statement, it’s an incredible act to do considering the widely circulated video of her murder and his boasts about committing such a heinous act.

While it certainly isn’t perfect (there are a few factual errors when discussing certain musical acts and the constant quotes from other media can get tiresome in places), there are a few words I would use to describe it: Prescient. Thought provoking. Irritating.

You will think of little else long after finishing it.

Andrew Calcutt, 1998, Arrested Development: Pop Culture and the Erosion of Adulthood. Cassell. ISBN-13: 978-0304339556

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.