Generational Trauma July

I think the apple’s rotten right to the core + IRL Book Club details below

If you’re on BrooklynTok, CharliTok, BratTok, QueerTok, LesbianTok, or DanceTok, you’ve seen the “Apple” dance. Set to Charli XCX’s “Apple”, hundreds of people (including the cast of Twisters, the male and female casts of Summer House, and the Empire State Building) have participated in the jaunty dance. On the other side of TikTok, fans are using the song to explore generational trauma in fiction. As someone who spent a long time on Tumblr, they instantly won me over.

I’ve been calling July “Generational Trauma July” on Instagram for weeks now. As “Apple” trended and the edits started appearing, it became clear to me that the song —about Charli recognizing maladaptive patterns in herself due to her upbringing— perfectly captured the moment that we’re in, both in fiction and online. 

I’ve talked about The Trauma Plot on TikTok about a dozen times, but the point still remains: the easiest way for an author or screenwriter to flesh out a character is to give them a traumatic backstory that explains all of the pain. Critic Parul Sehgal indicates that this ploy often removes texture from a character, making them a series of symptoms instead of a fully fleshed out person. 

“Our hearts were never one.” Top to bottom: Otto Hightower, Aemond Targaryen, Aegon Targaryen, Helaena Targaryen, Alicent Hightower. Edit link below.

The generational trauma plot is interesting because it is so relatable: everyone (or, almost everyone) has parents. They fuck you up, your mum and dad, as the infamous poem goes. On House of the Dragon, the writers have gone out of their way to portray the Greens as nuanced and flawed individuals due to the sins of their parents: Alicent’s complete emotional unavailability is a direct result of her father’s inability to comfort her in times of crisis, even explicitly rejecting her when she tries to confess a crime earlier in the season. Aegon’s monstrosity, Aemond’s (some might say heavy handed) sexual affair with a woman that looks exactly like his mother, Alicent’s emotional stasis at fifteen (the age she was when her father arranged to marry her to a man three times her age): all of their issues can be traced upward, like a family tree.

Long Island Compromise, released July 9th, takes this concept and ratchets it up to eleven. (I linked to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s incredible piece about trauma in the New York Times two weeks ago, and pieces of it still reverberate in my brain.) The book begins with a kidnapping of a wealthy Long Island businessman and takes us into the present, where his three adult children have grown up stunted and alienated from their parents, their spouses, their souls, and each other. 

Taffy Brodesser-Akner on trauma.

TBA recently gave an interview (Mother Jones) where she said “Every generation deals with trauma the best way that they know how, right?” By contrasting our current understanding of trauma with that of Holocaust survivors, who were trained not to discuss the horrors they witnessed and how that affected them, TBA paints a portrait of a generation armed with the tools needed not to overcome— but to live with— what they have experienced. 

L-R: “Big Kathy” Richards, Kyle Richards, Kim Richards

Another edit that took my breath away was one about the Richards sisters of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills/being related to Paris Hilton fame. I’ve talked about codependent family dynamics before, and the way families get subsumed by addiction, and how each time the sisters argue, years of resentment get unearthed.  Kim supported the family as a child star before marrying multiple rich men and being consumed by her addictions, while Kyle married well and supported her sister during the worst of her rocky years. Kim resents Kyle for buying the family home, Kyle  resents Kim for being an addict (“mom died worrying about you”, she spits at her sister during one infamous argument) and pulling the entire family into her never-ending drama. When you factor in the eldest sister, domineering Kathy, the portrait becomes all the more vivid. Kyle’s people pleasing, Kathy’s rigidity, and Kim’s shame all stem from the same source, and the fact their assorted trauma responses are still as prominent as they are at their current ages (Kathy is 65, Kim is 59, Kyle is 55) says so much about the way trauma can continue to hinder someone’s life.

L-R: Piper, Prue, and Phoebe Halliwell.

Inspired by the untimely death of Shannen Doherty (rest in peace, queen) I’ve been rewatching Charmed. I was ten when I started watching this show and understood the tragic familial circumstances of the Halliwell sisters on an intellectual level, but the emotional contours of their upbringing escaped me. Abandoned by their father in 1977 when the girls were seven, four, and two (Prue, Piper, and Phoebe, respectively), the sisters lost their mother a year later and never truly recovered. Prue’s exasperation with Phoebe’s life choices is incredibly familiar for any eldest sibling, especially one that forged a rocky path to adulthood. Prue’s obsession with control, Piper’s initial spinelessness, Phoebe's aimlessness: all their neuroses stem from the very obvious wounds they carry due to being functionally orphaned.

Elsewhere on TikTok, two separate, but related trends bubbled up in July: in one, people post revealing slideshows of their core wounds set to Zach Bryan’s “Bass Boat”. (Normally, I’d link a few examples, but these are so personal in a way that makes me feel bad about sharing them.) The trending lyric? 

Image text: “Cause I was raised by a woman who was hardly impressed/And I carry that shit real deep in my chest”

The other trend involves people taking turns revealing horrible things that have happened to them while pouring candy into a bowl. “My father threw me into a glass cabinet because he thought I was having sex.” “I walked into the backyard to find my father who had ‘unalived’ himself”. To me, it seems that people are eager to unburden themselves.

Grey’s Anatomy has been throwing generational trauma at people since 2004!

People have talked about Gen Z’s propensity for trauma dumping (I have experienced this irl and it is truly off putting I am so sorry!) but it seems that a release is needed: every trend is an opportunity to explain what exactly happened to them in order to be understood. As a Millennial, this is fascinating, since a few years ago the dominant mode of thinking went that you would “unlock” the thing that was wrong with you as a way to overcome it: and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (the infamous Grey’s Anatomy season four finale comes to mind: Meredith realizes she has abandonment issues because of her terrible mother and allows Derek to love her, building him a house of candles to begin their life together). 

I’m of two minds about this. When I wrote about Victimhood in December, I said that people online are constantly participating in the victim Olympics, constantly trying to one up each other with the saddest possible stories (and undermining what’s really happened to them) in order to win internet arguments. This weekend on Twitter, people were arguing about how “everything is trauma now”. I definitely agree there has been some dilution over the past ten years, but is this just people being more understanding of the ways we can be hurt and the ways this hurt lingers in the body?

TBA’s essay opened my eyes to the fact that occasionally, there’s no getting over what has happened to us. My family is from the Caribbean: keep calm and carry on is how my parents (and their parents, and their parents) handled adverse situations. The idea that there is no cure, no magic solution, no pill or potion to get over a shitty childhood is a little bit terrifying. I think of my own rigidity and shudder: my skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel. I think 2024 has opened my eyes that perhaps, cloaking oneself in victimhood and freezing up aren’t all that different: they’re both trauma responses, and you can’t have a trauma response without trauma.  

Neat Little Morality Slogans

• TtB Book Club: see you tonight! Details here. We’ll likely be in the basement due to the rain.

• Edits here: Succession | House of the Dragon

• This masterpiece is basically the generational trauma syllabus: Succession, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Aftersun, The Iron Claw, BoJack Horseman, Ladybird, All of Us Strangers, The Farewell, and May December are all represented.

• I have so many more images I wasn’t able to use because of email length- maybe I’ll post them on Instagram?