Do decades still have defining stereotypes/characteristics?

Cafe Society
21

But to a certain extent , how we listen also determines what we listen to. I’m going to use myself as an example although I don’t know how representative I am. In 1999 and earlier, although I could have carried cassette tapes in my car, I didn’t really do that except on a long trip. For day to day driving, I listened to the radio. And everyone in the car was listening to the same thing - so if I tuned into the the top-40 station that my kids listened to , I was hearing current hits. And even if I was listening to a “classic rock” station, they also played newer releases by the format’s core performers.

But now- between Sirius and the ability to play music from my phone over the car’s speakers, I rarely hear any current music so I don’t really know how much music has changed since 1999. I probably wouldn’t recognize a single song on the list of the top 100 songs of 2021 except “All I Want For Christmas Is You”* unless there happened to be a remake of an older song. Which OK, I’m an old person, so that’s not so surprising. But just like I heard new music when I tuned to the top forty station for my kids, when I was a kid the top-40 stations played a variety of different types of music - so that although I was never one of those “at a disco in the late 1970s.”* I was familiar with the disco music that made it to the top 40 and disco fans would have been familiar with a Queen song that made the top-40. But I suspect that doesn’t happen nearly as much in a world where everyone can pretty much always listen to their own personal selection of music

* Which I am sure makes the list every year.

** And therefore, late '70s me would have looked out of place in a disco. There are some styles are very associated with a particular time period - but others not so much. I can’t find it now, but in a previous similar thread I linked a photo of Jerry Garcia in the '70s wearing Levis, a black T shirt and boots. That outfit wouldn’t have looked out-of-place at any point in my lifetime although it also wasn’t the height of fashion at any point in my lifetime.

22

Decades don’t always line with the perceptions of them. I’m not sure when the 50s era started, but I think it was in the chronological 40s with the rise of bobbysoxers, they were teenage girls with more phone access than ever before. And whatever interests teenaged girls will get the attention of teenaged boys. The 50s era continued on into the chronological 60s until suddenly JFK was killed and shortly after the Beatles invaded in late 1963. The 60s era continued from there until Nixon left office. But that was really coincidence, the war in Vietnam was over and the great changes in the 60s had run their course. This gave us the polyester decade that was the 70s, and luckily it was short-lived. Reagan brought in the 80s era with and weird clothes and hair, conspicuous consumption, and greed beginning in the early chronological 80s. The 80s era didn’t have a clear end point, maybe Clinton being elected, I’m not sure but I think technology was beginning to have a major impact on society even in it’s natal stages. The sound of dial up modems were recognizable and the world was getting on-line. Was that the start of the 90s era? Did it ever end, was there any real changed after that or was there just a steady evolution of technology and communications?

23

I think slang has a lot to do with how unique a decade seems. The 50’s were “swell,” the 60’s were “groovy,” the 80’s were “gnarly” or “awesome.” But I’m not sure if the problem is now slang doesn’t change that much between decades, or if it changes too quickly and there’s no defining “catch phrase” within a decade.

24

Yes, we’ve done this several times before, but it’s a fun topic. Here’s a key article about this that came out in 2012:

Another form the discussion has taken is this: The character Marty McFly went back 30 years in the movie Back to the Future, from 1985 to 1955. To him (and to us in the audience), it was a big deal. Would going back from 2022 to 1992 be as big a deal? Some argue yes, but I think the general consensus is that it would not. (Even though the difference in technology in the latter case would be arguably greater; it was the social and stylistic changes in the former that make it a bigger deal.)

I agree with FlikTheBlue that styles used to change even more rapidly that people today might remember (who were there) or suspect (who were not). I saw a clip of Tom Snyder from the late 1970s in which he was looking at an earlier clip of himself and a guest from just a few years prior in which he was wearing a leisure suit, and he was making fun of himself for that (in the later clip). And that was the span of just 3-4 years! If you compare JC Penney or Sears Christmas catalogs (which you can find online to view) from 1977 and 1979, they are quite different in terms of style.

My guess is that, with some distinct exceptions, the pop culture of 2001-ish to the present (and beyond?) will largely be forgotten in the future, while that of 1920-2001 will continue to be studied, remembered, and celebrated. (I choose 2001 because 9/11 is a pretty good demarcation point. But maybe there will be a Nu-Metal revival in the future, and that will take us a bit further into the 2000s?! I jest…)

Decades have disappeared on us before. Who remembers styles and pop culture in the US from the years 1900-1919? It’s a blank to us now, even though there were nation-rocking songs like I Love My Wife, But Oh! You Kid! from 1908 (which is pretty good–and quite racy for its time).

Now you might say that 1900-1919 isn’t special, since the time before that is forgotten in terms of pop culture too. Well… we actually have the terms “Gay '90s” and “Roaring '20s” bookending the period. Nope, pretty much all that is remembered from those years is the Black Sox scandal and WWI.

In terms of fashion, I think there are two things that keep us in a seemingly permanent equilibrium:

  1. We’ve settled on some basics of fashion that don’t change much. E.g., both men and women wear jeans today, I suspect we’ll be wearing denim still in 2050, and we’re not going to go back to togas or hoop skirts, and nothing that different is going to come along.

  2. There is such a variety within the basics that nothing in particular stands out. E.g., in the late 70s, Calvin Klein and Jordache jeans looked significantly different from Levis/Wrangler/Lee jeans, but there were not many competitors in that “fashion jeans” category, so those styles stuck out. Today, there are literally hundreds of denim brands offering hundreds of different micro-styles, so nothing in particular dominates the age.

That’s my take for today!

25

The events don’t corespond exactly, but these are the ones I use as rough guidelines. The 50s went from Eisenhower’s election through 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. The 60s from Kennedy’s death through the end of the Vietnam war. The 70s from the end of the Vietnam war to MTV coming on air / Reagan being elected. The 80s from Reagan being elected until the end of the Cold War. The 90s from the end of the Cold War until 9/11 (even though the stagnation in pop culture seems to have started in 1999 by my reckoning).

ETA. I think the 90s can also be subdivided into before and after the internet became available to the average person in 1995. At least that’s the year that I recall that happening.

26

Yeah, there was a huge difference between say…late 70s disco, early 80s New Wave and poppy-rock, and late 80s hair bands/pop/metal, and the associated fashions. And the late 80s/early 90s were significantly different than the mid-90s grunge/metal era. And the late 90s were… not all that different than now really. Fusion bands/collaborations seemed to be the thing, and there was a lot of hip-hop showing up in popular music about then.

There have been bands/performers who have come and gone, but there haven’t really been trends like there used to be. If I was to try and describe one that would have happened 80s-style, it would have been when Kid Rock became popular, we’d have had 3-4 more white trash rock/rap bands, and stuff like wife beaters and dressing like Kid Rock would have become really popular among some youth.

That didn’t happen. He came and mostly went, and that was the extent of it.

27

That aligns a lot with my outline. Not being around I can’t be sure when the 50s started but Eisenhower’s election was a sort of game changer as The Man Who Won WWII becomes the President. I’m not sure about 9/11 exactly, but it’s certainly the big event to remember for that time period. The turn of the century I waited my entirely life for up that point was a flop. I had better new years on ordinary years that weren’t special at all.

28

I’d actually date it a few years later- probably somewhere between 1998-2000, as the point when the internet became widely adopted by the general public. It happened sometime in my first job out of college- I recall there being all sorts of middle-aged people who wanted to get involved with the Internet without having any idea what it was, or what you did. (I worked in IT, so everyone in my family and friends called me about it at the time).

That’s right about the same time when politics started to change as well, because the 24-hour news cycle as popularized by CNN became something else with the advent of the Internet and the fact that ANYONE could publish dirt, comments, etc… There was another inflection point of sorts in the 2008-2010 era when smartphones became ubiquitous as well.

29

That could very well be. My perception is likely affected by the fact that the fall of 1995 is when I went off to college, and all of a sudden there was the internet, and everyone in the dorm I lived in was using it.

30

The 2000s felt pretty distinct to me – 2010s, too. iPods, iPads, iPhones, digital cameras, Youtube content – everybody now with basic technology and software can create videos that would look better than 99% of everything that was created up until the mid-to-late-2000s. The whole idea of a social media “influencer.” Hell, social media. How information is disseminated. Where people get their information from. My profession (photography) has almost completely changed. Music with stuff like hyperpop, dubstep (that one has fades), trap (those beats still seem to be everywhere), vaporwave, the Western popularity of Kpop, drill, and I’m sure many others I’m not aware of. I listen to the stuff my 8-and-6-year-old find on Tiktok and am always puzzled by “what the hell is this stuff?” Tik Tok in and of itself has shaped the culture of the later 2010s and the 2020s.

There is plenty of stuff. My life now, 2022, is hella different than 2002. In many ways, I feel it is more different between now and 2002 than 2002 and 1982, though the biggest turning point was around 1995 with the beginning of the expansion of the internet to the masses. Hell, I still wrote letters by hand in 2003 (probably the last year I did so.) Writing a letter by hand now seems an ancient artform.

31

And this addresses one option from the OP:

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and even at the time, we recognized that the feel of those decades were different from the 50s and 60s, and in the 80s, we celebrated the death of the 70s; “Disco Sucks!” and all that. And the same was true of the 90s. We pretty much knew the 80s were dead, as it was happening.

32

I would say:

'00s – The “Metrosexual” era, pretty much the antithesis of grunge (and I assume a reaction to it).
'10s – Hipsters. And the era where social media really took off.

33

Agreed with all of this. We’ve done this a lot, and every time it seems like older folks seemingly are looking at things and saying things are exactly the same as 20 years ago! When it is more likely that they are exactly the same as 20 years ago.

I showed some young folk an episode of Friends and they remarked at how the males in that series looked like they were absolutely swimming in their clothes. Not to mention the muted colors. These days mens fashion is far more fitted and colorful (Heck, even the difference in men fashion from HIMYM to Friends is pronounced). I do think the 90s were somewhat an overreaction to the 80s and the 00s “metrosexual” movement was a reaction to that.

I do wonder why people say music is similar. Trap music seems to be everywhere (Hell, even Vox did a video explanation of it being everywhere) and it’s something that wasn’t even in the mainstream until the 2010s. Do people really think Kendrick sounds like Dre?

And of course 2010s was the smart phone revolution.

34

Remember the skinny jeans of the 2000s? Are they still a thing at all? I’m not a fashionista, but that was big. And, yes, I definitely remember metrosexualism of the early 2000s. Also, there was a brief period where trucker hats seemed to be in around the same time.

Color grading in movies/video is also quite something from the 2000s onward. By that, I mean the orange & teal look that seemed to subsume everything from, I dunno, around 2005 or so onward. Especially seen in anything sci-fi, suspense, but even beyond that. Still seems to be prevalent in a way it wasn’t before the 2000s.

35

Skinny jeans aren’t really that big of a thing. There was actually an anti-skinny jean trend (bootcut and bell bottoms) right before the pandemic hit.

And I’ve totally noticed the orange and teal thing. Dune was really obvious with it.

36

Yeah, I first had that pointed out to me around 2009 or 2010, and I haven’t been able to unsee it since.

37

While metrosexuals and hipsters both existed, they didn’t completely dominate the culture, and there was at-the-time reactions against both styles. They existed, but they didn’t really define the era, the way disco or MTV defined the 70s and 80s.

38

Wait… do you think that there wasn’t at the time reactions against disco?!

39

Well, culture was a bit more stratified thanks to the Internet by then, but they did certainly define much of the young 20 somethings I saw around the many bars and concerts I visited around that time.

40

Time-Life had a series of popular history books and each volume covered a decade (except for the first volume which covered several decades prior to 1900). The stopped publishing them after the volume for 1960. Too bad, it would be interesting to see how they would define the decades after 1969.

I thought of the 1980’s as the “decade of DOS”, when PC users struggled with a black screen that showed just “C:”, or if you were lucky your IT department gave you a front-end with “Press F1 for word processing, Press F2 for a spreadsheet…”