Slacker

This article is about people who lack work ethic. For other uses, see Slacker (disambiguation).

A slacker is a person who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.

Origin

According to different sources, the term slacker dates back to about 1790 or 1898.[1] It gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early to mid 20th century, when Sudanese labourers protested their relative powerlessness by working lethargically, a form of protest known as "slacking".[2][3]

World wars

1942 US poster cautioning against slacking in the workplace

In the United States during World War I, the word "slacker" was commonly used to describe someone who was not participating in the war effort, especially someone who avoided military service, an equivalent of the later term draft dodger. Attempts to track down such evaders were called slacker raids.[4] During World War I, U.S. Senator Miles Poindexter discussed whether inquiries "to separate the cowards and the slackers from those who had not violated the draft" had been managed properly. A San Francisco Chronicle headline on September 7, 1918, read: "Slacker is Doused in Barrel of Paint".[5][6] The term was also used during the World War II period in the United States. In 1940, Time quoted the U.S. Army on managing the military draft efficiently: "War is not going to wait while every slacker resorts to endless appeals."[7]

Evolution

The shift in the use of "slacker" from its draft-related meaning to a more general sense of the avoidance of work is unclear. In April 1948, The New Republic referred to "resentment against taxes levied to aid slackers".[8] An article tracking the evolution of the meaning of the term "Slacker" in defamation lawsuits between World War I and 2010, entitled When Slacker Was a Dirty Word: Defamation and Draft Dodging During World War I, was written by Attorney David Kluft for the Trademark and Copyright Law Blog.[9][10]

Late 20th century onwards

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan's character Mr. Strickland chronically refers to Marty McFly, his father, Biff Tannen, and a group of teenage gangsters in Part II as "slackers"."[11] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single "Slack Motherfucker", and the 1991 film Slacker.[12] Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a subset of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes.

The term has connotations of "apathy and aimlessness".[13] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.[12]

Slackers have been the subject of many films and television shows, particularly comedies. Later examples include the films Slackers and Clerks,[14] The 2007 movie Slacker Uprising describes an attempt to rouse those under 30 to participate in the 2004 U.S. election.[15]

The Idler, a British magazine founded in 1993, represents an alternative to contemporary society's work ethic and aims "to return dignity to the art of loafing".[16]

Music genres including Grunge, Nu-Metal, Skate punk, and some aspects of rap music (such as Eminem and Cypress Hill) are often associated with Slacker culture.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Online Etymology Dictionary, slack (adj.)". Douglas Harper.
  2. ↑ V. Bernal, "Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: The Gezira Scheme and 'Modern' Sudan", Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12, 1997, 447–79
  3. ↑ Robert Sydney Smith, Warfare & Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (University of Wisconsin Press 1989), 54-62
  4. ↑ New York Times: "Take Slackers into Army", September 10, 1918, accessed April 21, 2010
  5. ↑ Christopher Cappozolla, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43-53, quotes 50, 229n
  6. ↑ For one of many uses of the word during the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, see G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948), 119
  7. ↑ TIME: "The Draft: How it Works", September 23, 1940, accessed April 13, 2011. See also: New York Times: "Wheeler Assails Bureau 'Slackers'", September 29, 1943, accessed April 21, 2010; New York Times: "Nazis Round Up Slackers Facing British 8th Army", August 14, 1943, accessed April 21, 2010
  8. ↑ Michael Straight, Trial by Television and Other Encounters (NY: Devon Press, 1979), 76
  9. ↑ "When "Slacker" Was A Dirty Word: Defamation And Draft Dodging During World War I | Trademark and Copyright Law". www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
  10. ↑ http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2014/06/when-slacker-was-a-dirty-word-defamation-and-draft-dodging-during-world-war-i/
  11. ↑ Internet Movie Database: "Memorable quotes for Back to the Future (1985)", accessed August 6, 2010
  12. 1 2 "slacker". Random House, Inc. 2006.
  13. ↑ Compact Oxford English Dictionary. "slacker".
  14. ↑ New York Times: Tom Lutz, "Doing Nothing", June 4, 2006 accessed August 6, 2010, and excerpt Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
  15. ↑ Internet Movie Database: "Slacker Uprising (2007)", accessed August 6, 2010
  16. ↑ The Idler: "About The Idler", accessed August 6, 2010
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