With the year 2000 just around the corner, and I, being the nostalgic fool that I am(I loved The Wedding Singer), I find myself wondering, What trends/fashions/music styles/catch phrases, etc. the past 9 years will be remembered for. Gen-X, Spice Girls, and the Taco Bell chihuahua come to mind…Any ideas?
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos
Oh god, something tells me these obnoxious little butterfly barettes all the little girls are wearing now are going to come back and haunt us. I think the 90’s will be remembered as the decade of the internet coming onto the scene in a big way. The deaths of Mother Theresa and Princess Di will be remembered, I think, as well as the OJ trial, although hopefully not nostalgicly.
Al Gore doing the Macarena curved my spine in 1996.
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
I think the 90s will be remembered for the decade when humor turned on typical things.
Our humor has a huge element of making fun of set stereotypical things. It makes fun of itself. It’s purposefully stupid and stereotypical.
Think of the Austin Powers movies. (I’ve only seen the first one, so that’s the one I’ll give as an example)
Austin is captured by Dr. Evil, and is put in an “elaborate death involving an unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism”
The son says “why don’t you just shoot him…” “You just don’t get it, son.”
Then Dr. Evil closes the door. The son says “You’re not even going to watch??! But they could escape!”
Dr. Evil: No, I’m just going to assume it all went to plan.
This is all making fun of stereotypical action movies.
The 90s brought about Jerry Seinfeld, who specializes in observational humor: telling it like it is.
We in the 90s love that. We laugh at how it is. Seinfeld will say things that everyone notices but doesn’t think anyone else notices: “I hate taking showers in other people’s houses. There’s always that one hair on the wall. It’s up high. You don’t know how it got there. And you try to aim the shower head at it, but it doesn’t reach. So you cup your hand and throw water at it…”
We love this stuff. Some have taken it to the extreme. Jenneane Garafalo, case in point… “So I have my period right now. I’m having a lot of cramps, and diarrhea on top of that.”
She says this just as one would say “so I’m thinking about having a hamburger.”
It’s as if there’s no such thing as too personal.
I don’t know who first said “everyone’s a critic,” but I think it’s a really stupid saying.
I think the 90s will be remembered as the decade where we first started to recycle old decades.
Tim
“My hovercraft is full of eels.”
It was a decade in search of an identity, so it stole from others.
It was also a decade filled with war and mass murders.
It was the decade of the Macarena, the Spice Girls, Ricky Martin, and Kurt Cobain. Holy crap, that’s a mixture.
It was the decade of the Trashy Talk Show, the Wacky SitCom, the Crappy Music Video, and the return of originality in Movie-making.
“Waheeey! ‘Duck!’ Get it?”
“Errr… No…”
“Duck! Sounds almost exactly like fu-”
Were sitcoms in the 90s really that much “wackier” than, say, a typical episode of “I Love Lucy” or “Soap”?
Also, I don’t think the 90s has a monopoly on recycling old decades. Nostalgia was pretty big in the 70s (“Grease”, “Happy Days”, “The Waltons”… and you could hardly turn around Sunday afternoons without tripping over an Abbott and Costello movie or a Three Stooges festival).
I think cultural recycling has happened in almost every decade this centry. For instance, those 50’s style bathing suits were popular in the 30’s (or 40’s i am forgetting :)). I think maybe the 90’s will be remembered mostly for:
-Crappy music: AKA the resurgence of NKOTB styled bands
-Latin music finally being recognized
-When electronic Music was finally recognized by the mainstream
-Resurgence of decent TV shows (IMNSHO)
-Movies that actually are good
Time was I stood where thou dost now
And view’d the dead as thou dost me
Ere long you’ll lie as low as I
And others stand and gaze at thee
I think the 90’s will be remembered as a very non-serious time. The only thing the president will be remembered for will be getting blown by an intern, there are no heavily divisive political issues, the economy is roaring along and the deficit is gone, the Democrats and Republicans differ only in the tiniest of details…
Compare this to the 80’s, which started with the cold war going full-blast, when ‘green’ politics lead to marches and all kinds of civil unrest, when every western country was running massive deficits and all suffered recessions at one time or another… It was a divisive, fairly tough time.
Now, we’re all so bored we watch crap like Jerry Springer, and our big political issues have more to do with which politician smoked less dope. It’s not exactly the roarin’ 20’s, but close.