Thursday, December 15, 2011

Stasis

I've said this myself, and nobody seems to agree with me. '80s nostalgia began not half way through the '90s. The first decade of the 2000s is over, and I have no idea what looks quaint or kitchy about the '90s--not enough has changed. Watch "The Wedding Singer," and then think about what the version of that about the '90s would be. Impossible.

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201

UPDATE: The sketch comedy show "Portlandia" puts forward the proposition that Portland, OR is stuck in the '90s. Since I spent most of the previous decade in Portland and other parts of Oregon, maybe the world has moved on and I didn't notice.

1 comment:

  1. Yo chris have you read this yet:

    https://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/the-vision-goals-much-vaunted-blueprint-the-politically-illiterate-blob-of-the-self-appointed-anarchoid-vanguard-of-ows-an-annotated-guide/

    ReplyDelete