Maybe you felt I was emphasizing stuff Boomers like. I really am not focused on that. I think pop culture from throughout the 20th century will seem foundational, from Buster Keaton movies to 90s grunge music. Some 21st century TV and movies will surely also make the cut as well. And I think the age of VR, hard-core amazing VR, will eventually revolutionize art, or at least entertainment, and what is created early in that genre will seem foundational to the future as well. Plus things we can’t even imagine yet. What I don’t think is that, for example, pop music will continue to be entered into the canon in a linear fashion. I think the future will focus heavily on the 20th century canon, just as for classical music we focus on the 18th-19th century canon.
For popular music I think I would put the transition as having occurred between 1998 and 1999. The way I remember it from 1996-1999 the popular style was what I call “whiny” music by artists like Alanís Morissette, Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, etc. Suddenly in 1999 people were once again listening to generic ordinary pop like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, NSYNC, etc. While the names of the musicians have changed, the music hasn’t really changed since then as far as I can tell*.
- I’m discussing typical pop music, not other genres such as metal, rap, country, etc. I haven’t kept up as much with the changes in other genres.
Pop culture:
- It’s the Golden Age of Television
- It’s the rise of the** Marvel Comics Universe**. Look at how geeks loving actual comic books have taken over our culture. You are telling me that the MCU’s world dominance won’t cast a huge shadow for decades?
- It’s the Swede-Pop/Girls Pop dominance era - Taylor, Katy, Adele, Beyonce, Pink, etc. - stands out as a Thing that can be discussed as part of a larger dialogue of gender balancing taking place now.
- It’s the emergence of Social Media - what will a retro look at current FB, Twitter, YouTube, Insta-Snap, etc., look like? What will a later generation find quaint? Find comforting compared to what they are experiencing then?
- It’s the rise of Gaming as a viable economic sector.
- It’s the true Internationalization of sports beyond the Olympics - particularly Soccer/Football and Basketball.
I think there is ALWAYS stuff going on that will be noteworthy. Every era gets its quota of stuff. The question is whether the folks in that era can see it.
ETA: shouldn’t this be in Cafe Society?
Mmm, you’re aware of the fact that a lot of Contemporary Classical has moved away from Serialism since the 1970s at least. Serialism exerted a huge influence in the decades immediately following WWII but Minimalism (Glass, Reich), Spectralism (Murail, Grisey) and the “Neo-Spiritual” composers (Pärt, Gubaidulina, Tavener), not to mention the "independent (Ligeti, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski) have only a passing link with Serialism or even none at all. There’s a lot of relatively accessible stuff out there, it’s not all shrieks and bangs.
I’d add Star Wars to that. Growing up, Lucas said there’d be no more Star Wars movies. Then came the prequels, for better or worse. But then that was it. Now, after Disney, we’re getting new movie episodes, side stories, back stories, cartoons, comics, novels…all canon! And good stuff too! As a kid, I never would’ve dreamed the Star Wars universe would be so active. I just wanted new episodes, now I’ve got that and stuff I never could’ve imagined.
I haven’t read the whole thread yet, but this jumped out at me for being glaringly wrong.
It’s definitely cool that we’re getting more 70’s and 80’s culture.
I liked what they did on Babylon 5. They established some contemporary human comedians as being so funny that all other races loved them, but we never got more than a couple of soundbites so we couldn’t judge. When we actually got to see them in a later episode, they were spectacularly unfunny. Every character however found them hilarious apart from one, who acted as an audience surrogate.
By the way, the one thing that I expect to refute the OP completely is The Great Reckoning, with Women in Business and the Arts and Sports asserting themselves, and People of Color and Gender Differences asserting their voices.
If you don’t think this will be looked at an Inflection Point that will define this era up to 2020, i think you’re kidding yourself. I call it the Great Re-Balancing. Every aspect of style and pop culture is beginning to see big change, with more to come.
A better title for this thread might be “Resolved: Middle aged people are out-of-touch and clueless about recent trends in fashion and pop culture.”
I mean, I’m no longer young or hip myself, to the limited extent that I ever was hip, but I am embarrassed on behalf of the OP and a few other posters here.
The reason you can’t see the last two decades as being distinctive is because you remember them too well. Let them fade out of focus, to the point you only remember a few key items and trends, and they’ll be as distinctive as the 1980s or 1940s.
Partially, you can’t see the forest for the tress; mostly, you don’t know which specific trees will be selected retroactively to represent the entirety of the forest.
Except…these aren’t clothes these kids picked out for themselves. They were dressed up like this by some guy the NBA hired. Yeah, the 2003 suits all have the same look, and the 2017 suits have a different look. That’s not because suits look different, it’s because the guy they hired in 2003 dressed up his barbies according to his particular preferences, and the guy the hired in 2017 dressed up his barbies according to different preferences.
You can’t look at the 2003 picture and say, Oh my god, that iconic early 2000’s fashion! It wasn’t like everyone, or all the cool kids, were dressing the same way in 2003 and now in 2017 nobody would ever dress that way.
Is that really the case? I didn’t think the NBA hired people to dress new draftees. Interesting if true. Even so, it demonstrates what professional stylists think of the current state of fashion.
In my experience, while suits are no longer everyday wear, the pictures are representative. Casual clothes were much baggier, longer and dull colored in 2003, and brighter, tighter and shorter in 2017. Also, bow ties have made a pretty big comeback, too. You’re right though that in neither era do all the cool kids dress the same way. You can find people in 2017 who dress in 1940s styles, weird futuristic spacesuits, or even like Beau Brummel. But trends are still trends.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
But I still think that hollywood is riding the nostalgia train so hard that they’re not contributing much of anything to pop culture that is detached from the products of previous decades.
That’s a trend, though. It’s a lousy trend, but an identifiable one.
Just off the top of my head, I can think of a few notable trends in Hollywood since about 2000 that I don’t believe have been mentioned in this thread yet. (Sorry if I skimmed over someone’s post.) Thinking just of sitcoms, since 2000 there have been a few related trends: the comeback of the single camera sitcom (last popular in the 1960s), sitcoms without laugh tracks or live studio audiences (almost unheard of before 2000), and sitcoms shot in a documentary or reality show style (a trend that I think is mostly over now).
More surprisingly, within the past decade there have been several mainstream musical television series, like Glee, Smash, Nashville, Empire, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. IIRC no one had even attempted to do a primetime musical series since Cop Rock and Hull High both flopped in 1990.
Thinking of musicals, the musical film is a genre that has cycled in and out of popularity since movies first had sound, but for about half my life they were out of favor in Hollywood. With the notable exception of Disney animated movies, the musical was considered a dated and essentially dead genre through most of the '80s and '90s. But they came back into fashion in the early 2000s with movies like O Brother Where Art Thou, Moulin Rouge! and Chicago and continue to be reasonably popular.
Another thing that I think is endemic to the 2000’s is the explosion of reality television - Survivor, Big Brother, The Apprentice, American Idol, The Amazing Race, etc. all launched in the 2000-2004 range and experienced peak popularity in that decade. Reality TV still exists now but is no longer premier entertainment like it used to be in the pre-Netflix streaming era.
Exactly. Several guys there are wearing a bow tie. In 2003, Bow tie, were worn with tuxedos. Or by clowns. When Doctor Who madd the 11th Doctor wear one it was to show he was kooky. I watched some episodes with my 12 year old nephew, who wondered why such a big fuss was being made, lots of guys wear them.
I remember in the 80s you would sometimes hear a man say “I’m an 80s kind of guy” meaning that he was progressive, cultured etc. I don’t recall that being repeated in subsequent decades.
I remember this happening in the '90s, and I actually have evidence: the song “Sensitive Guys Don’t Go Home Alone” has the refrain “I’m a sensitive Seattle '90s guy.”
I just don’t think anyone is paying attention. I’m into classical, and I sure haven’t been. I’ve been listening to Haydn string quartets.