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A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.
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A slacker is someone who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.
According to different sources, the term "slacker" dates back to about 1790 or 1898. [1] [2] "Slacker" 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". [3] [4]
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, specifically someone who avoided military service, equivalent to the later term "draft dodger". Attempts to track down such evaders were called "slacker raids". [5]
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 7 September 1918, read, "Slacker Is Doused in Barrel of Paint". [6] [7]
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." [8]
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". [9] 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. [10]
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 George McFly, Biff Tannen, and a group of teenaged delinquents as "slackers". [11] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single "Slack Motherfucker", and the 1990 film Slacker . [12] The television series Rox has been noted for its "depiction of the slacker lifestyle ... of the early '90s". [13] [14] [15]
"Slacker" became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a type of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes. This type became a stereotype for members of Generation X. [16] Richard Linklater, director of the aforementioned 1990 film, commented on the term's meaning in a 1995 interview, stating that "I think the cheapest definition [of a slacker] would be someone who's just lazy, hangin' out, doing nothing. I'd like to change that to somebody who's not doing what's expected of them. Somebody who's trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it." [17]
The term has connotations of "apathy and aimlessness". [18] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an antimaterialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever. [12]
"Slackers" have been the subject of many films and television shows, particularly comedies. Notable examples include the films Slacker , Slackers , Clerks , [19] Hot Tub Time Machine , Bio-Dome , You, Me and Dupree , Bachelor Party , Stripes , Withnail and I , The Big Lebowski, Old School , Ferris Bueller's Day Off , Trainspotting, Animal House , and Bill and Ted, as well as the television shows Freaks and Geeks , Spaced , and The Royle Family .
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". [20]
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a guard and a paymaster, during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison.
Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins in Catholic teachings. It is the most difficult sin to define and credit as sin, since it refers to an assortment of ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and conditional states. One definition is a habitual disinclination to exertion, or laziness. Views concerning the virtue of work to support society and further God's plan suggest that through inactivity, one invites sin: "For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.".
Slacker is a 1990 American comedy drama film written, produced, and directed by Richard Linklater, who also stars in it. Filmed around Austin, Texas, the film follows an ensemble cast of eccentric and misfit locals throughout a single day. Each character is on screen for only a few minutes before the film picks up someone else in the scene and follows them.
Dazed and Confused is a 1993 American coming-of-age comedy film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film follows a variety of teenagers on the last day of school in Austin, Texas, in 1976. The film has no single protagonist or central conflict; rather, it follows interconnected plot threads among different social groups and characters, such as rising ninth graders undergoing hazing rituals, a football star's refusal to sign a clean living pledge for his coach, and various characters hanging out at a pool hall. The film features a large ensemble cast of actors who would later become stars, including Jason London, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, Nicky Katt, Joey Lauren Adams, and Rory Cochrane.
Abbott Lawrence Lowell was an American educator and legal scholar. He was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933.
The Wall Street bombing was an act of terrorism on Wall Street at 12:01 pm on Thursday, September 16, 1920. The blast killed 30 people immediately, and another 10 later died of wounds that they sustained in the blast. There were 143 seriously injured, and the total number of injured was in the hundreds.
Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regular employment.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016); and the romantic comedy Hit Man (2023).
Before Sunrise is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan, and is the first installment in the Before trilogy. In the film, Jesse and Céline meet on a Eurail train and disembark in Vienna to spend the night together.
Webster Thayer was a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, best known as the trial judge in the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
Alvan Tufts Fuller was an American businessman, politician, art collector, and philanthropist from Massachusetts. He opened one of the first automobile dealerships in Massachusetts, which in 1920 was recognized as "the world's most successful auto dealership", and made him one of the state's wealthiest men. Politically a Progressive Republican, he was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1916, and served as a United States representative from 1917 to 1921.
Severino Di Giovanni was an Italian anarchist who immigrated to Argentina, where he became the best-known anarchist figure in that country for his campaign of violence in support of Sacco and Vanzetti and antifascism.
Sacco & Vanzetti is a 1971 historical legal drama film, based on the trial of Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose guilty verdict and execution was considered a politically-motivated miscarriage of justice. The film is directed and co-written by Giuliano Montaldo, and stars Gian Maria Volonté and Riccardo Cucciolla in the title roles. The cast also features Cyril Cusack, Milo O'Shea, Geoffrey Keen and Rosanna Fratello.
Calvin Hooker Goddard was a forensic scientist, army officer, academic, researcher and a pioneer in forensic ballistics. He examined the bullet casings in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre and showed that the guns used were not police issued weapons, leading the investigators to conclude it was a mob hit.
Boston is a novel by Upton Sinclair. It is a "documentary novel" that combines the facts of the case with journalistic depictions of actual participants and fictional characters and events. Sinclair mixed his fictional characters into the prosecution and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
"Root hog or die" is a common American catch-phrase dating at least to the early 1800s. Coming from the early colonial practice of turning pigs loose in the woods to fend for themselves, the term is an idiomatic expression for self-reliance.
Edward Holton James was an American socialist and, later, fascist. He was the nephew of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James.
The United States Immigration Act of 1918 was enacted on October 16, 1918. It is also known as the Dillingham-Hardwick Act. It was intended to correct what President Woodrow Wilson's administration considered to be deficiencies in previous laws, in order to enable the government to deport undesirable aliens, specifically anarchists, communists, labor organizers, and similar activists.
The following events occurred in August 1927:
"Here's to You" is a song by Ennio Morricone and Joan Baez, released in 1971 as part of the soundtrack of the film Sacco & Vanzetti, directed by Giuliano Montaldo. The song was written by Baez and Morricone themselves. The lyrics consist of only four lines, sung over and over. The song became a freedom anthem, sung in demonstrations and featured in other media.