Why Mr Birling is a Boomer

Why Mr Birling is a boomer and other ways we can link "an inspector calls" by J B Priestley to modern-day society

By a (slightly depressed) Gen Z with strong political views, so just warning you.

"An inspector calls" is a play written by the author J B Priestley, and it tackles many major problems with society, such as rape culture, the superior upper class and the ongoing battle between Socialism and Capitalism. However, there is a small issue that it was written in 1945 and is based in 1912. But, despite this, we can still see strong links to modern-day society, which is totally unintentional by Priestley as unless he was psychic or a time traveller he couldn't possibly know how little the world would actually change between then and now.

In modern-day society, there are many colloquialisms which "Gen Z" and "Millennials" use which often confuse the older "boomer" generation. "Gen Z" and "millennial" referring to younger people aged around 12/13 to 20/25, and boomer typically referring to the baby boomer generation aged 40 to 60+. However, the term "boomer" has only recently had a different meaning to the baby boomer generation, and has not only confused, but offended the older generation which is totally rude because they have done nothing, and I say nothing which could anger the younger generation. definitely not things like destroying the environment or invalidating and insulting a whole community and then calling them "snowflakes" when the community gets (rightly) offended. The term "boomer" is defined by the most reliable source on the internet, the urban dictionary, as (and I quote) "a slang term for old farts who hate millennials and act politically correct to get back at them", which I think is a pretty good definition, but I would add to that definition by saying it is a person from the older generation who didn't take into account the feelings or viewpoints of a younger, more morally obligated, person and then insults them for not liking that they have to suffer for what they (the boomer) did. For this essay, we will be using my definition, for ease of reference. Anyways, that is a little off track, as I told you I would tell you about the play "an inspector calls" not who said which definition.

Now that we have all of that boring, slang definition education out of the way for any possible boomers older people who don't understand younger people, we can finally look at the character of Mr Birling. All throughout the play, we can see that Mr Birling thinks that he is always right in what he does, even if it is blatantly shown that what he did is wrong and immoral, for example when he fired Eva Smith for wanting a higher wage so she could, to quote a Thomas Sanders vine, "have enough money to Eat Today (:D)" (the :D is not said, only implied which is why it is in brackets). The whole show of Mr Birling being a bitch not caring about Eva's feelings so that he could have enough money to throw another lavish dinner party or to bribe a police officer to cover up a scandal because it would ruiN hIS pUbLic iMaGe is a typical boomer move, which is to put yourself and your money over the life of another person and their chances of survival. If this is not enough evidence to prove that Mr Birling is a boomer, then get ready for a wild ride because we are not even halfway through the first act and we haven't even gotten to how Eric is a simp yet. When Mr Birling was confronted about his Blatant Boomer-ing, he was a typical boomer and first tried to deny and avoid the whole thing, as to avoid a scandal which could ruiN hIS pUbLic iMaGe (which would be the end of the world.), then almost immediately try to bribe his way out of it, not only showing the capitalist viewpoint, which is actually what Priestley was going for would you believe, but also shows that he is a massive boomer as he uses his money to try and get out of something. Typical boomer moves there lad, no getting out of that. I could go on all day about how Mr Birling is a boomer, but I will spare you the pain and move onto Eric instead.

SIKE I not only hate myself but also you because it is 11:45 pm on a Thursday and I'm going insane let's learn you some shit about Mr Bloody Birling. All throughout the time the inspector is at the Birling household, we can clearly see that Mr Birling is not in control of the situation because the Inspector (an icon, you could even say a Queen, which I do, but we will get into that later) is a lot smarter than him and actually knows what he is talking about. Because of this Mr Birling panics and makes himself look like a fool, or to quote me, a "fuckign useless warm cucumber. You can't call him a cool cucumber because what he just did was not very cool". All throughout the play, he does this, which mirrors, almost exactly, what a typical boomer would do in a situation where the person they are talking to clearly knows more about the subject than they do but they don't want to admit it and so only make bigger fools of themselves by using incorrect facts and then it backfiring on them massively. One particular example of this is when Mr and Mrs Birling were wanting to have the father of Eva's child punished for not taking good care of Eva and for also stealing money, for them only to learn that the person they are talking about it their own son. Eric Birling. Which brings me nicely onto my next point.