To no one in particular:
If you want to demonstrate that the world of today looks different from the world of the early 90s, just peer through the window of any cafe. What you will see is an image no one would mistake for the early 90s. But, yes, this involves computers, which have been ruled out. If you rule out the most explosive change in people’s lives and culture which occurred in the past twenty years, then, yes, the amount of change in the past twenty years does not seem very high.
The fundamental flaw here, I think, is that the author assumes that culture will not only change at the same rate, but in the same ways.
I contend that the way culture changes has changed, and it was brought about largely by the advent of the internet. For the last generation, we’ve had an ever-growing collective memory, and a rapidly accelerating ability to access it–and each other. “The Internet never forgets.” Anyone connected to it can access things from decades ago as readily as the latest release. I believe that culture has become less cyclical as a result. Instead, it accretes, as people pick and choose the things that appeal to them from past and present and synthesize their own culture.
If you want to look at the changes, you have to look at things that didn’t happen–and generally, couldn’t have happened–twenty years ago. Flash mobs and Improv Everywhere. Omnipresent personal cameras and photo sharing/captioning. The Brony phenomenon. Child’s Play. Kickstarter.
Andersen is looking in the wrong places for “new” culture. He’s looking, for the most part, at products and cataloging superficial similarities. It’s like looking at a 2012 car and saying, “It’s still egg-shaped”, without noticing that it has an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine.
Indeed. Just us talking here right now about this article is an amazing cultural change, a phenomenon which is alien to the world of 20 years ago.
I went to high school in Wisconsin (class of '99), and teenaged girls were wearing tank tops with visible bra straps (often in a contrasting color) then. Maybe they weren’t in 1992, but they were by about five years later.
This has been a mystery to me for years. Sagging pants were a dress code issue by the time I was in middle school – 1992 – and I wasn’t exactly living in a fashion-forward metropolis. So this was a pretty mainstream youth trend 20 years ago, and has inexplicably never completely gone out.
It’s a Greatest Hits culture. We look back and pick those cultural things we like and use them. We are nostalgic for all the different periods so we dabble in them all.
There might be some profound truth here^
I’m 28 years old and make full use of the internet for movies and music and yes I don’t care about the age of things, I watch and listen to stuff of all ages. Hell when it comes to music I find my favorite period is right before my birth, the late 70s-early 80s post-punk and new wave explosion.
Most of the serious music fans and DJs my age and younger are the same, they use music blogs which post links to full albums in mp3 format. Its free so they explore freely in genres and time periods, there are also MASSIVE torrents for stuff like Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time, or Pitchfork’s top 1000 albums of the 70s. Copyright infringement makes all this possible for better or worse.
In fact I have noticed that some artists who were very distinctive in style that had no copycats in their own time are being lifted from generously now, Brian Eno’s sound circa Warm Jets is one I have thought about many times when listening to new music.
Same deal for movies, a lot of older people are disbelieving that I watch so many old films. They don’t seem to get that its all the same to me, its just random selections from a giant library.
I’d argue that culture has changed enormously just since 2005 or so, with the huge explosion of social networking and the proliferation of smartphones and similar devices. Watch any current TV and see how long you can make it without some reference to Facebook or Twitter, or an iPhone commercial.
Heck, a friend and I were just talking to each other about how weird it feels now that we used to have to make sure we were sitting in front of the TV when our favorite shows came on, since you never knew when you’d be able to catch a rerun. Now more often than not I have no clue when my favorite shows actually air; I have about half a dozen options for watching them whenever I want on any number of devices.
What about video games? In 1992 the Super Nintendo was in its infancy, and between that and PC games you had a gaming audience mostly of kids and adult nerds. In 2012, it is more likely than not that a person will carry a device in her pocket capable of graphics leagues beyond anything even arcades were offering in 1992, and try finding someone who hasn’t played Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja.
And concentrating just on the way music sounds is being way too narrow. Think about the concept of an album in 1992, on CD or, more likely, cassette, vs. how we think of albums in 2012, when most listeners are going to cherry pick tracks on iTunes. What’s more, iPods and smartphones give us access to our entire music collection no matter where we are.
And even talking about the way music sounds, the article makes the mistake I notice a lot of people make in assuming that “pop music” operates the same now as it did before the internet. It doesn’t. Now that “indie” music is just as easy to come by as anything else, the reliance on the radio that used to exist for music enthusiasts just doesn’t exist anymore. The music world is simply much less limited than it used to be, which means that niche acts have less incentive to make their work palatable to the mainstream, and pop radio becomes more bland as a result.
Aside from hand-waving away technology not being fair, I’d say that the fashion thing specifically is kind of misleading. We’re right in the middle of a period where a lot of late 80’s and early 90’s fashions are back in style, so it isn’t surprising that you can find older photos with clothes that don’t look ridiculous in them. Compare today’s fashions to a picture from, say, 1997, though, and the difference will likely be huge, because that’s when a lot of 60’s and 70’s stuff was coming back around. Hell, Banana Republic does entire collections based on Mad Men, so you can probably find photos from the early 60’s that look modern.
That applies to music, too, by the way. We’ve been seeing a lot of 80’s and 90’s dance revival stuff the past few years, so it isn’t surprising it sounds familiar. But, again, compare today’s radio to 1996 and there’d be a huge difference. Hip Hop sounds completely different, grunge is dead, and the more singer-songwriter-y stuff you’d see on MTV and VH1 in the 90’s is now the kind of stuff that winds up on Pitchfork.
TL;DR: I reject the premise.
I don’t know about sneakers — or for that matter, the material of jeans (which is pretty useless for a lot of things, and around here plays second fiddle to things like khaki and what have you), but I do think the general shape of pants and the entirety of the t-shirt are going to last about as long as our current clothing technology does. There’s just not much further to develop either of them — you can make them a tighter or looser fit, but that’s about it.
This is what you would see, in case you’re wondering.
Everyone’s playing with their smartphone instead of talking to each other.
I wish that this was true! There are still plenty of smokers and substance abusers in my world.
There do seem to be a whole lot more really huge people walking around nowadays.
Car culture is rapidly changing. In the future you will be able to date movies and pictures from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s by all the big hulking SUVs and monster trucks.
I think we are kind of talking past each other.
I like the Back to the Future example in that when Marty goes back to 1955, he feels that he has been dropped into another world. I don’t think a 2015 movie could pull off that same sense of “other worldly” feel if they went back to 1985.
Think about when BTTF proposed 2015, they postulated flying cars, fusion, etc. They attempted to project 30 years based upon the advances of the last 30 years and they came to a place that is still far ahead of us.
They did no such thing. Zemeckis filled 2015 with all the crazy shit he hoped to see in 30 years. Not stuff he actually expected to see.
And again, a 2015 Marty McFly dropped in 1985 would have a rude awakening when his cell phone didn’t work, his TV weighed 300 pounds, and the Internet as we know it was still a decade away from even beginning.
They attempted to project 30 years based upon what would look cool in a movie. That’s it.
ETA: Damn this flaky Internet! Beaten to the punch.
Yes, imagine poor Marty confronted with a phone book, or forced to go to the library to obtain obscure information.
You make a lot of calls while running from Biff by shouting into your phone book?
And speaking as a librarian, the way we can find information in the Internet age is way, way, WAY different from finding it in the pre-Internet age.
I don’t know. In Life on Mars a man goes from 2005 or so to 1973. You can tell his feelings from the title of the series. If you went back to 1985, no cell phones worth speaking of, the normal person did not have access to the Internet and those of us who did couldn’t shop on it, and you’d have to get used to a 1985 vintage PC probably running DOS.
Um…I was agreeing with you.
Sorry. My sarcasm meter must be calibrated to 1985.
Back in 1992 you could actually maybe get a punk-ass teenager to give you their attention for a minute or so. Now with their cellphones welded to their hands you can’t get jack from the little fuckers. Makes work ever so much fun.
