I miss the uniqueness of the 19XX decades

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The 1940s, 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, hell even the 90s… each decade had its own very distinguishable personality in terms of pop culture, music, fashion, technology, cars, etc.

The most recent two decades, though??? Not so much. By now the 2000s and 2010s should each have its own personality, but I just don’t see it. It’s all just been kinda the same since the millenium.

For perspective, even in the 1980s I could look back 10 years to the 70s and see a crystal clear difference. In the 90s I could look back to the 80s and see the difference. And even in the 2000s I could look back on the 90s and see the difference.

I look back on the 2000s today and see yesterday. Everything has become so homogeneous.

Just my opinion, curious if anyone agrees.

(BTW, in an intentional effort to not start any fights, I purposefully omitted references to the varying political climates across the decades. That’s just my preference, but I’m not the boss, so say whatever the hell you want to.)

2

Easy, technology-wise. The 2000s were the decade of the phone / PDA, the Blackbery, the Palm Pilot, and their ilk; the 2010s were the decade of the iPhone and its ilk with capacitive touchscreen and an explosion of computing power. The 2010s are the start of the shift to electric vehicles.

World-wide the shift of economic power to China became obvious in the 2000s.

3

What about aspects of culture, like music or clothing fashion? The 70s, 80s, and 90s were pretty easily distinguishable on both of those counts. Before the 90s were over, The Wedding Singer had nailed the 80s in a comedic way. Could you envision a movie like that about the 2000s or 2010s? Or even about the 1990s, really?

4

That’s exactly my point.

Quartz also has a good point about technology. Technology changes so fast we almost make intra-decade distinctions. Example, first half of the 90s, very few had cell phones or home internet… but by the back half they were both commonplace.

5

For the 2000s, how about hoodies and NEDs? In the 2000s we dressed down; in the 2010s we dressed up. And Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney character was just as appropriate for the UK in the 2000s as the late 1980s.

For a film about the 2000s, how about Avatar? It works on so many levels.

For the 2010s let me suggest two cultural icons: Game of Thrones and the Marvel series of super-hero movies.

6

The “1960’s” in a cultural sense, at least in the USA, really ran more from about 1963 (Beatles’ first album) to about 1975 (end of Vietnam war.)

The early 1960’s were extremely like the 1950’s.

7

I tend to agree when it comes to culture. There is a distinct feel to film and music from the 70s vs 80s vs 90s.

But I don’t know if there is for the aughts or the teens.

I disagree about technology though. The teens is when smartphones, streaming, and apps really caught on.

8

It’s not hard to understand why we don’t see the last two decades as having an “identity” yet. Not enough time has passed to enable seeing those decades in a comprehensive historical view.

9

After WWII to sometime in the 90s, the personalities of the decades were heavily influenced by the age of the baby boomers -

50s - the boomers were children, and their parents were enjoying the post-war affluence
60s - boomers were in their teens with the idealism that is characteristic for that age.
70s - boomers were in their twenties, and starting to take responsibility for their life, taking jobs and finding life partners. The idealism of the late teens/early twenties age was still present.
80s - boomers were getting well settled into their life, and starting to have children of their own.

After the 80s, boomers lives weren’t changing significantly from their 30s, and the decades started to blur after that.

Note, not all people who were born in the baby boom went through the same experiences at the same time but the baby boom generation was such a huge bubble of people sharing the same limited age range and same rites of passage that if only half or even a quarter of those people have the same experience at the same time, it is like a rock dropped in the pop culture pond.

Technology was going through similar growing pains in the period that Stuntman Mike refers to. Movie technology (except for special effects) had mostly matured by the 70s, but the special effects were still maturing into the 90s and 2000s.
TV technology started in the 50s, and evolved through color TV, cable TV and onward.
Music technology developed starting with electrified instruments and production tools, and evolved until the synthesizers and drum kits of the 80s allowed people to sound like a full band with one or two actual performers. Grunge evolved as a rebellion against the heavily synthesized and produced music of the 80s.
Each change in technology was picked up by some artists, used to express their message, and other artists picked up and riffed on the new messages, images and sound.

Bottom line there is that a lot of the progression of pop media up until some time in the 90s/2000s was driven by changes in media technology, and when those changes flattened out, the changes stopped being tied trying the new technology, and those producing media were more about either picking up on whatever trendy or what they liked, because there is no longer a technology barrier to producing whatever you are interested in producing.

Major events also played a part in producing pop culture, starting even earlier:
WWI led to the jazz age of the 20s
The stock market crash led to the Great Depression
WWII led to the baby boom and the prosperity of the 50s.
JFK’s assassination played a role in the culture of the 60s, and the civil rights movement also played a huge part.
The oil embargo and shortages of the early 70s probably contributed to the Green movement.
I can’t think of any event from the 80s - unless it was the election of Ronald Reagan! - or the 90s of significant effect. The next major event was 9/11, and I can’t think of any major event after that.

Now, this is a very U.S.-centric maundering, but it should be remembered that the U.S. has been a big producer of pop culture since the 50s.

One more thing that has contributed to the lack of obvious pop-culture trends starting in the 90s is the advent and growth of the internet. This has allowed pop-culture to fragment, as people are able to find their tribe, their music and sometimes their preferred movies, TV, and other visual media, rather than only having what is physically distributed to the area they live in.

Finally, it’s hard to see the trends until you’re distanced from them. I remember watching videos and movies in the 80s where people seem perfectly normally dressed and coiffed, and now I watch those same videos and movies and go “OMG, look at that hairstyle”

10

I miss the uniqueness of the 1XXX centuries, up to the 19th. Each century had its own very distinguishable personality in terms of pop culture, music, fashion, technology, vehicles, discoveries, etc.

The most recent centuries, though??? Not so much. Just a mishmash of ever changing, planet destroying “progress”.

11

So how has the style of ‘the kids’ changed from the 90’s to the 00’s to the 10’s?

12

Not at all. The boomers had no influence on the “pop culture, music, fashion, technology, cars, etc.” in the 1950s. 1960s culture was also produced almost entirely by people too old to be boomers. Really, the same was true for the 1970s for most things except music and maybe fashion.

What really sinks the argument is that culture changed wildly from decade to decade throughout the 20th century before the boomers were born. The 1900s were different from the 1910s which were different from the 1920s which were different from the 1930s which were different from the 1940s which were different from the 1950s.

The lack of visible cultural distinction between decades is one of the oddest features of the future to this boomer. It’s beyond weird. Nobody in the past could have imagined this happening.

13

It’s nitpicky to say Robert Downey Jr spent weeks at #1 as IRON MAN in the ‘00s, but maybe less so to note that it was after Christian Bale played a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist in BATMAN BEGINS before a billion-dollar DARK KNIGHT in the ‘00s, and that the X-MEN franchise had already gone 1-2-3 to spin off a solo effort from Hugh Jackman as WOLVERINE in the ‘00s — after Tobey Maguire generated, what, a good $2.5 billion as SPIDER-MAN back when? The ‘10s took it to new levels, but pop culture was already ready for blockbuster superhero sequels.

14

:dubious:

The Wedding Singer hit theatres in 1998, just 8 years after the 80s had ended, and that movie was a fantastic showcase of the music, hairstyles, clothing fashions, and other cultural aspects that are highly (and uniquely) representative of the 80s.

It’s 2019 now, so we should be able to make a movie that clearly showcases the music/ hairstyles, clothing fashions, and other aspects that uniquely define the 2000s - but I can’t imagine anyone doing that, because the 2000s, viewed from 2019, don’t seem nearly as distinctive as the 80s seemed when viewed from 1998.

Likewise, the zeitgeist of the 90s should be as distinctive right now (in 2019) as the 1970s were in Y2K, but I don’t think it is.

15

Changes are happening more frequently and in smaller increments.

I remember the day after the Beatles were first on Sullivan. Guys started combing their hair down over the foreheads, etc. The teachers got upset with that. And on and on. Styles, music, etc. all changed within a short period of time. Elvis also caused a major change. Both nicely spaced out. Going back to depressions, wars, etc. similar idea.

But now it’s not such big, noticeable things every X years. It’s little things several times a year.

As to war, we are now in perpetual war mode with a small percentage of the population doing all the nasty stuff. It doesn’t suddenly ripple across society.

Secondly, change is more “diverse”. There are so many subcultures with their own music and style that the shifts going on in one world don’t cross over much into others. Thanks to the Internet, people scattered around interested in one area can connect and do their thing apart from their physical neighbors. So fads just don’t work the way they used to. There’s just not going to be another “Nehru shirt” craze where one day you don’t see them and the next day they’re all over the mall.

16

What are NEDs? UK specific?

17

The 1960’s changed faster and more than any culture ever, and without any one defining reason. They just did.

I know I’m old, but I feel sorry for people who did not experience the 1960’s. There is no way to describe what happened and how much the world changed from 193 to 1968.

18

Weren’t the 1900s and 1910s kind of a boring mishmash too, like the present 20-year span? Things didn’t really get crackin’ in culture until the 1920s.

19

I think the infinite capacity of the Internet has flattened modern Nostalgia. You don’t have to remember things because they are always there. You can’t miss what never goes away. This causes a resistance tow hat is new because there are less gaps for new things to wedge themselves into which creates the feeling that things are stagnant even when things are actually changing.

20

I’m old, too, but I’m not *that *old. :smiley: