Blogger Phil Sandifer has noted that the 1990's are exempt from nostalgia in a way that previous eras aren't.
My own theory? Think of much of the twentieth century - the second half, you could say - as a party. Modestly wild and for the most part the kind of the occasion where you say "a good time was had by all."
What were the nineties like? Well, most of the hit TV shows, at least in this country, were on the broadcast networks, and they tended toward three-camera sitcoms and ensemble workplace dramas. The music charts were still determined by people going to the store to buy physical records - although the fact that these records were basically computer software would lead to the system's downfall - and those charts had a lot of what could broadly be called rock 'n' roll. Disney movies had lush, two-dimensional adaptation drawn by hand and could get away with sincere musical numbers.
If you'll notice, none of these things are unique markers. They're different from the way things are now, but not all that different from what had come before, immediately before. So if we return to the metaphor of the latter twentieth century as a party, the nineties were the last hour. The host and hostess are reluctantly refilling drinks and loudly saying "Is it really that late?" The guy who brought his guitar is still playing, but now he's ignoring everyone else and noodling away like he would at home. There's an ominous sound of morning birds chirping in the air.
No, this stage of the party will not make many people say, "Wow, can you believe that?"
Say “the 1970s” and you’re suddenly transplanted to disco, bell bottoms, and the mysterious fascination with the color orange. Say “the 1980s” and you have primitive obsession with the electronic and bad hair. Heck, do a Google image search on “I love the n0s” where n is between 6 and 9. For the 70s and 80s, of course, you’ll get the logos for the delightfully awful VH1 series of those names (VH1 - purveyors of the finest terrible television to watch at 3am on American cable). For the 60s, which VH1 never covered, you’ll still get homebrew logos that are instantly recognizable as “the 1960s,” albeit the scarequoted version of that more than the actual one.
But “I love the 90s?” You’ll get the VH1 logos, sure, but there’s nothing like the instant dating of the aesthetic. Google “80s night” for about 350,000 hits. Try “90s night” and you’ll get 75k. The 1990s, unlike the three, and really four decades immediately prior, simply don’t register as a coherent system of nostalgia. The number of consensus touchstones is minimal. Musically you’ve got little more than the wave of alternative rock at the start of the decade. In film and television you’ve got a few more. But there’s no iconic and easy to encapsulate image of the 1990s.Sandifer has a somewhat different viewpoint on this since he's a little younger than me. For me the 1990's weren't the time of my childhood or adolescence, but rather the time when I technically became an adult. (And how did that work out for me, you ask? Let's just say the jury's still out.) His blog is also focused on Doctor Who, which had its own travails at the end of the century. That is to say, the TV show had been canceled in 1989 and the attempt to revive it in America in 1996 was not a success. Nonetheless, I'd recommend his whole essay.
My own theory? Think of much of the twentieth century - the second half, you could say - as a party. Modestly wild and for the most part the kind of the occasion where you say "a good time was had by all."
What were the nineties like? Well, most of the hit TV shows, at least in this country, were on the broadcast networks, and they tended toward three-camera sitcoms and ensemble workplace dramas. The music charts were still determined by people going to the store to buy physical records - although the fact that these records were basically computer software would lead to the system's downfall - and those charts had a lot of what could broadly be called rock 'n' roll. Disney movies had lush, two-dimensional adaptation drawn by hand and could get away with sincere musical numbers.
If you'll notice, none of these things are unique markers. They're different from the way things are now, but not all that different from what had come before, immediately before. So if we return to the metaphor of the latter twentieth century as a party, the nineties were the last hour. The host and hostess are reluctantly refilling drinks and loudly saying "Is it really that late?" The guy who brought his guitar is still playing, but now he's ignoring everyone else and noodling away like he would at home. There's an ominous sound of morning birds chirping in the air.
No, this stage of the party will not make many people say, "Wow, can you believe that?"
2 comments:
As far as popular culture goes I think you're correct in describing the 90s as the last hour of the party that made up the latter part of the 20th century and it doesn't take long to come up with some examples of the festivity collapsing in on itself. Terrorism of the domestic kind was on the ascendent - Columbine, Oklahoma City, and the first World Trade Center bombing, never mind the incidents at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Welfare reform, the telecommunications act, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the WTO and NAFTA. Things were getting more serious on the home front and of course, wars, always more of them despite the fact that the USSR had collapsed - Bosnia, for instance. I can't help but think this period was the beginning of the end of the traditional Democratic Party.
I really don't remember watching much on tv besides baseball, but the web appeared from the relative obscurity of the early internet and I also remember grunge and raves becoming quite the thing. I was too old for the latter and Nirvana, NIN and U2 never held much appeal for me - way too dark and serious and I'm not even going to talk about death metal etc. Then there was Prince to keep partying until 1999 - the last toast before closing time and that infamous date right around the corner that changed everything.
Yes, your image of the hosts wishing the guests would leave is a wonderful metaphor for the decade. Let's hope things start cheering up as this century matures - without holding our breath, that is.
There's a tendency in human nature to find an enemy. And there are advantages to having a common enemy. After World War II communism became the common enemy for Americans. In some ways this was for the best because the USSR had nuclear arms, therefore mutual assured destruction. It would have been impractical to have a hot war, which kept things under control. When the Berlin Wall fell all of that changed. The unfortunate thing is that you go from having an outward enemy to Americans seeing enemies within. Not too much of a surprise that domestic terrorism of all kinds picked up.
I can see the appeal of rave culture but I think I was born too old for it. Had some friends who were into it, though. And I'm not sure that grunge ever translated outside of Seattle, in terms of what it meant to people. As far as commercial success for something that was by consensus called "grunge" that's a different story.
We've all seen that stage of the party, haven't we?
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