Changes in technology as used by the average person have hit a bit of a plateau. Take music for example. Vinyl records for home use, then 8 track tapes for a short period, cassette tapes for cars and Walkman, then compact discs, then finally digital music on your iPod. And since then it is mostly on your smart phone. I do not see major changes in this coming soon. My old car still has a 12 CD disc player in the trunk but newer cars don’t even come with a CD player any longer, there are various USB ports and other ways to get your music played. And I think it will stay this way for awhile.
I am actually surprised that the DVD/Blue Ray format for selling movies still exists. Why has this not be replaced by smaller digital storage methods, I don’t know, but eventually our DVD movie collection will be headed into storage along side the VCR collection. Land line phones have been mostly replaced by cell phones, and now smart phones but what is next to define a decade or period? Smart phones will get smarter, have more features, etc. but they will not be replaced any time soon. So the things that may define a decade are coming slower and slower.
What I am getting at is that there have been several stages where major changes occur and the stages are no longer so apparent. What once may have defined a period or decade no longer happens on such a drastic level, we are in more of a period of refinement.
Exapno Mapcase, I certainly should have started with major events that influenced the different decades both before and during the baby boom generation, but the majority of the decades that Stuntman Mike talked about were during the baby boom years.
Let me re-cap major events that would have affected American culture:
1895: First commercial movie
1914: start of WWI
1917: U.S. enters WWI
1918: WWI ends
1919: Start of Prohibition
1928: First “talkie”
1929: Stock Market Crash, start of Great Depression
1933: End of prohibition
1939: Invasion of Poland by Germany
1941: Pearl Harbor, official US entry into WWII
1945: WWII ends
1954: approximate start of Civil Rights movement/Brown vs. the Board of Education
1956: Start of the Interstate Highway system
1957: Launch of Sputnik
1963: JFK assassination
1969: First moon landing
1972: Watergate
1969, 1972, 1979: various oil shortages due to politics.
1986: Challenger explosion
2001: 9/11
Ok, I can’t think of any really major events between 1972 and 2001. Surely there were some, maybe they didn’t seem that large because I lived through them, but I can’t think of anything that people go “Hey, where were you when this happened”
Certainly the producers of pop culture were born before the baby boomer generation. But it’s not the producers that drive pop culture, but consumers. If there weren’t people buying Beatles records, then no one would have ever heard of the Beatles.
But the first problem is defining who the baby boomers are. The census bureau defines the group as people born between 1946 to 1964 - but if you look at this graph, the birth rate was already declining dramatically in 1959. I would say that the real drivers were those born between 1948-1955. By the time you get to the end of the 50s, everyone being born were either younger siblings or had parents who were too young to be in WWII.
I know I was born in 1962, but don’t really think I belonged in the baby boomer generation. Some people agree with me, and consider this to be “Generation Jones” Generation Jones - Wikipedia
Examples of baby boomer impact on pop culture
1950s - Howdy Doody, Davy Crockett TV shows (three shows aired in 1954 and 1955), hula hoops, the Disney series, Disneyland, and Mickey Mouse club all were aimed at and produced fads specifically for children.
1960s - “My Generation” was released when the first of the boomers were in their late teens, “Don’t trust anyone over 35”, Rock and Roll in general, “The Graduate”. “Star Trek” was an good example of the idealism that often occurs when people are just old enough to know they can have an impact on the world, and aren’t as tired as someone who has been fighting for 10+ years. Also see - the Civil Rights movement,
The first of the baby boomers reached eligible age for the draft in 1965, just in time for LBJ to escalate the Vietnam war.
1970s was about either being poor - Chico and The Man, “Knock Three times”, “Welcome Back Kotter” - or about environmentalism - John Denver, “Jonathon Livingston Seagull”, and the earth tones of fashion and furniture - or about being single - “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”, “Annie Hall”, Woody Allen, etc
Finally, the 80s was about having your own kids and being relatively well off to - “thirtysomething”, yuppies, and while Dallas started at the tail end of the 70s, it was the beginning of the evening soap opera trend of lives of the rich.
With the 90s, the baby boomers were fading as pop culture consumers, with the gen-xers and the proto-millenials starting to take over the majority of pop culture consumption.
One final thing though - we tend to round off, especially nostalgia shows going for the easy “50s”, “70s”, etc.
I’m really resistant to thinking that technology defines a decade - style defines a decade. What are the 2000’s styles? The 2010’s?
(Oh, and off-topic, but I’m the dude they sell DVDs/Blue Rays to. I’m also the dude with the landline. Guess I live in the past.)
Even your example of music doesn’t show a plateau or stagnation. Vinyl was the dominant form of music distribution for like 80 years. Cassettes and CDs each for a few decades. Digital files for maybe a decade, and now streaming is dominant. Changes are coming faster and faster!
And it’s even less true for non-music.
A few days ago Google showed a video of an illiterate Indian (Pakistani?) woman who is able to get around because her phone can now read text aloud to her through her camera.
Cars are on the cusp of being able to drive themselves without human input.
Technology use by people is accelerating not stagnating.
There’s a lot of value in form-factor compatibility. A CD/DVD/Bluray/HDR-Bluray-sized disk is already pretty small. Having every future device that plays optical media easily play all the old stuff and also build on the manufacturing processes that already make all the parts the right size.
They could make smaller Bluray disks, but storage space for optical disks isn’t a major problem for most people.
And of course it kinda already has been replaced. I haven’t bought media on disk for a while. I just stream it all.
I think the reason that it feels like new decades don’t have as obvious a “feel” to them isn’t that style has stagnated, it’s that it’s stratified. Where there was once a mass-media driven monoculture, now there are umpteen subcultures. Style in all sorts of things are evolving rapidly in subcultures, but the mass culture is a sort of lowest common denominator.
Game of Thrones is very popular right now, but it has ~18 million viewers for recent episodes and might get ~30 million for the series finale (I’m guessing here). Friends had 50 million. MASH had 100 million. We’re probably not going to see a television show that so affects popular culture that a bunch of people run out to get their hair cut like one of the characters, which makes those markers of culture harder to notice.
I agree that in terms of style things have stagnated since the late 1990s. I was watching an episode of Friends last week. When I compare Friends to say, Three’s Company and Big Bang Theory, it’s obvious that a whole lot more changed between 1979 and 1999 than between 1999 and 2019. The same goes for music. Ariana Grande, Drake, Bruno Mars, Ed Shearen, etc. as representatives of 2019 are not noticeably different compared to Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, "N Sync, etc. as representatives of 1999. But compare the 1999 group to a group of musicians representative of 1979 such as the Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, The Village People, etc. and the difference is a lot more obvious. I think clothing and hairstyles can probably be said to be about the same as well. the 1999 version of me would have had no trouble coming up with ideas with what to wear to a 1970s themed costume party. If you asked me today what I would wear to a late 1990s themed party, my answer is that I would wear my regular everyday clothes and keep my same hairstyle that I currently have.
I dunno, Stuntman Mike, I tried to contemplate your op without politics, but I just can’t. Politics is too much a part of the differences that make each decade unique. It’s like you’re trying to look at something with one eye covered.
My mental image of the 60s (I was born in 70) is everything is beige, free love, civil rights, the beatles, alla that, it has a bland beige feel to it for me. The 70s, man I was a free range kid who roamed all day for miles and miles. That was when I became politically aware, when Carter was elected, and the foundations for who I am politicallyl were laid. That decade is Burnt Orange. The 80s, man, the 80s were cool, I entered adolescence, I had found heavy metal, hard rock and Dungeons and Dragons ( and later Warhammer), we got our first Commodore 64 and I played Bard’s Tale. Soon after we got our first IBM clone PC at home and I played Hack.exe, discovered pot, I discovered LSD and magic mushrooms, wine coolers were a yummy sweet way to get drunk, I was coming into my power as a person and Reagan was President and had “Freed the Hostages in Tehran” (I was a kid ok?). The 80s are a slightly darker than Royal shade of blue. The 90s I got married, started a business, bought a house, sold the business, quit my job, joined the army then got divoreced and during all that I had two kids. 90s are the decade of Bush and Billary Clinton and war. the 90s are light purple, almost lavender edged in red. The 00s, I was just 6 months shy of separating from the Army and transitioning to Nat’l Guard on Sept 11. We had just finished a PT Test and were doing a weigh in when it came across whatever show was on the telly at that time about the WTC. Oddly, the 00s are, to me, a time of guarded optimism and “defiance” of terrorist organizations world wide following 9/11, tinged with paranoia. This decade saw the establishment of the [del]Gestapo[/del] [del]Secret Police[/del] Homeland Security. Our Democracy was starting to weaken. There was the widespread acceptance and legalizaton of homosexuality, and the beginning of the end for the prohibition of hemp and marijuana. The 00s ended with an economic disaster for most and the election of the US’s first President who wasn’t old and white. To me the 00s are a transparent Grey color. The teens, the teens are a sort of muddy poop brown and yellow mix, not blended, just mixed, sort of swirled and marbled and really kind of gross looking. Democracy has further weakened, the cultural and political divide in the US has been widened by those in power, and we are starting to discover what has really happened to us in the 00s.
The decades are distinct, culturally, fashionwise, etc. But you just can’t exclude politics, or you leave out so so much.
I would say the fall of the Berlin Wall was the most major event for me as a GenXer growing up.Challenger was perhaps more of a “flashbulb” memory than the fall of the wall – which was kind of led up to over time, but that was the major geopolitical event of my lifetime until 9/11, I’d think.
Honestly, I mean this in the nicest way…that’s because you’re old. You haven’t bought a new T shirt since the Bush administration. And by President Bush, I don’t mean the one from the history book, I mean the one from living memory.
JNCO, Vans, Crocs and the Converse All Star high tops? Wallet chains, studded bracelets, and the resurgence of the puka shell necklace?
Music, huh? Contemporary R&B artists dominating the alternative rock scene of the 90s? When Korn and Filter and Fuel and 3 Doors Down failed to outsell Usher, Beyonce, and Rihanna? One word: Autotune.
How about when TV was all game shows, all the time, where The Weakest Link battled for viewers with Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? And when that wasn’t on, it was reality competitions like Survivor, Big Brother, the Amazing Race, and the Mole, who couldn’t hold a candle to American Idol?
I’m not even going to bring up the technology giants like Facebook and a revitalized Apple.
So I guess I gotta ask…what the hell are you talking about?
Are you kidding me? You don’t remember the AOL “You’ve got mail” noise or the squelch of a 56k modem? The acid wash jeans, the flannel, the bowl cuts, the grunge rock scene, the boy band mania, and the first cell phones?
You’re not seriously suggesting the 90s wasn’t distinctive, are you?
FliktheBlue said it perfectly, IMHO (post 25). Technology has changed since the 1990s — ubiquity of the internet, then smartphones, including how we consume music — but style? (clothing, music, even popular speech patterns…). Not much.
Some interesting reasons for this have been proposed by previous posters, e.g. that these two things are related: technologies allow us to experience almost anything almost any time, so we’re no longer moving or being together with others in a single “time.”
And, the baby boomer “life decades” sequence noted by a previous poster is also a factor, I think: just as being 55 doesn’t feel as distinct from being 35 as being 35 feels distinct from being 15…
Also, with music at least, I think we’ve simply run out of ideas (broadly speaking). There are only so many easy-for-untrained-humans-to-digest chord sequences and melodies to choose from, and once the globally expected set of popular music sound palette was set in place, it’s unlikely many people will learn to love radically different sounds (e.g., of traditional instruments in non-Western cultures; or, avant-garde serious art music). Yes, there is an “out there” electronic style that started more or less with Radiohead and Bjork (etc. — A Tribe Called Quest…) and is now quite popular (threading through R and B and hip-hop — Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monae…), so the masses CAN get used to new sounds, but I still think we’re stuck in a rut (unavoidably) when it comes to pop song chord sequences, and probably melodies too.
The first link didn’t really make me think 1990s. IMHO the guy in the video wouldn’t look out of time today. The second like does seem like it’s from a previous era, but without the big 9 at the top my guess would have been 1980s. I think the things they showed in that link were mostly from the early 1990s, which was the last distinctive era that in my mind at least kind of blends into the late 1980s. Take the first picture that’s titled SoCal Surfware. At first glance I thought it was a screenshot from Saved by the Bell. L to R at first glance looks like Zack, Jessie, Screech, Slater, and Kelly :D.
Either way, IMHO at least, the first guy doesn’t look out of place for today. The second link ireminds me of the early 90s which to me is part of the same era as the late 80s rather than the current era we’re in that started in the late 90s.
When I was in high school (2000-2004) you couldn’t listen to the radio without hearing metal/hard rock acts like Disturbed, Linkin Park, and Godsmack. Or pop-punk acts Blink 182 or Offspring. Or rappers like DMX, Eminem, or Ja Rule. Then there were the boy bands and pop-starlets.
In the last few years pop has been dominated by starlets with a more electronic-dancey sounds and pretty-boy R’n’B acts, rap has been overtaken by mumble rappers and the only rock that gets any play is stuff like Maroon 5 and Portugal the Man. On the other hand anyone can now listen to niche stuff like folk metal from Switzerland (Eluveitie) and Rap-Metal from India (Bloodywood).
As for big, historical events we’ve seen the election of the first black president of the goddamn United States in 2008. Seriously, how am I the first one to point this out? That had a cultural impact that might have been hard to see, but there were a lot more black people on TV after January 2009 from leading roles to actors in ads. Then there was the election of Trump. Try watching any late-night show from his nomination until today and not hearing his name.
And that’s not even taking into account social media and everybody thinking that their opinions are worth hearing.
ETA: wrt to hair and clothes, what rules are there left to be broken?
Yeah, when I listen to the current batch of songs on “alternative/indie” radio, the playlists have gotten really … well … “wimpy”? I mean, all seem to hear is mellowed-out rock like the Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, The Head and the Heart, Strumbellas, etc.
2000s indie/alternative I remember as having a bit more edge, like the Strokes, White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys.
To me the 2010s are a much mellower decade in mainstream alternative (I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but I hope you can understand what I mean) rock music than the 2000s were.
Well, yeah, everyone having their face in their phone is definitely a 10’s thing.
I think one of the reason fashion is difficult to pin down, is there is a HUGE amount of choice when it comes to clothes now, and that is being fully taken advantage of.
In the 80’s, at least when I went to school, you almost had “uniforms” people wore that represented their cliques. I think that has largely faded away since the 90’s. To me, the “look” in fashion seems to be as casual as possible. T-shirts and shorts, someplaces even in the workplace, are ubiquitous. “Rich” people don’t care about “looking rich” anymore, at least when it comes to clothes. Tech industry played a big part in that.
Starting in the mid 00’s at least in pop, an 80’s electronic sound definitely made a comeback and never really went away. More recently some more instrumental folk reminiscent of the 60s made a comeback.
Fashionwise, I also kind of feel like trucker hats and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, metrosexual look were more 00s and gave way to … some other kind of “hipster” look in the 2010s. More man buns, facial hair, and stuff like that. I mean, it’s a bit of a continuum. I also think of “boho chic” as more 2000s than 2010s, and I feel 2010s was more bright colors, big hipster glasses, and things like that, although there were aspects of it in the 2000s, too.
What’s weird to me is hearing Kramer, from Seinfeld, described as a “hipster” or “hipster doofus” in that 90s series. I mean, I was in high school and college in the 90s, and, looking back at it now, I don’t see how Kramer is in any way a “hipster.” I’m not sure I thought of him as a “hipster” back then, either. But that’s a common description of him.
