But most of that is still around in some form.
The Steve Jobs biopic that came out this summer is partly set in the 1990s, as is the upcoming movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Perhaps someone will do a film about the dotcom era, which straddled the 1990s and the decade that followed.
I was a teenager through the 90s, and while there’s plenty of individual things that I miss, as others have pointed out, I’m not sure there’s anything all that specific about the 90s as a whole that sticks out. We have a definitive image when we think 60s, 70s, 80s, but the only real image we get with the 90s is grunge, which is only a small portion of it.
To me, what defines the 90s isn’t so much the cultural aspects that people get nostalgic for. Part of what makes the 80s interesting isn’t just the music and style, but the historic context of it all, like Reagan/Bush Sr and the Cold War. Similarly with laste decade, it’s defining moment that separates it from the 90s is 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghan wars and the mainstream internet.
So, looking back, it really seems much more to me like the 90s are more like a transition between the 80s and a more modern time. Culturally, it’s a hodge-podge of things like grunge, rap-metal, the Matrix, very early interent. How do we tie that all together? While the internet was around, it wasn’t really part of the culture in any meaningful way until really the earliest with the whole Napster thing. The only real 90s part of it would be stuff like AOL. What sort of historical stuff sets out the 90s? The economy was good, the biggest political news was the Lewinsky scandal. It was good times, but compared to the Cold War and the War on Terror… it’s just not very interesting.
So, sadly, I’m not really sure we’ll see very many period pieces in the 90s unless they’re just about somewhat isolated parts, grunge being the most likely, I think. Otherwise, I think the decade will probably be largely skipped over and we’ll probably be seeing the 2000s as a sort of 60s part 2 in another 10-15 years.
Yeah. 90s nostalgia doesn’t really work, because the 90s are still going. While the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s all look like they took place in their own separate universes, everything since the Pixies still feel pretty much contemporary. And it doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon, either.
I think I may have something (other than grunge and minor fashions.) Nostalgia was bigger then than it is now. Sure, there is still as much nostalgia, but since everything is much more readily available than in the 90s, it is both more ubiquitous but also seems like less of a big deal.
So a show focussing on the 90s could have characters totally dressing like hippies or disco people. Whereas today you’d just have the songs on your music player of choice.
Somebody could do a gritty, realistic, behind-the-scenes story about the people who created Barney and Friends, or beanie babies. How about a Mary Kate & Ashley biopic? That’d be awesome. Or, they could just make more Wayne’s World movies.
I think it’s because the Boomers are just better at waxing poetic about their own awesomeness than Xers are. 
Ha! That’s a pretty good description.
Kurt Andersen explored this question in a 2012 article.
Quote:
…try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference—and Jay-Z and Wilco are still Jay-Z and Wilco. Except for certain details (no Google searches, no e-mail, no cell phones), ambitious fiction from 20 years ago (Doug Coupland’s Generation X, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow) is in no way dated, and the sensibility and style of Joan Didion’s books from even 20 years before that seem plausibly circa-2012.
Nitpick: Wilco was formed in 1994. Their first album was released in 1995.
One thing that’s different between now and the early 90s is that cities were, well, grungier then. At least mine was, and I’m sure that’s true of a lot of cities, given all the gentrification that went on during the housing boom.
Very interesting thread, and all true. But let’s not forget that all this “20 years of stasis” talk is specific to Westrrn (especially US) culture. If you were transported from 2013 Malaysia (to give just one example along dozens of countries) to 1993 Malaysia, in many parts of that country you’d find yourself on a different planet. No superhighways! No modern shopping malls! It would be like going from some mid-sized US city in 2013 back to that same city in, say, 1913.
As for things like music styles, that’s been generally rather static throughout the world, that’s true. We had a good thread on this about a year ago. The consensus was that it’s due mainly to technology – many (most?) people can access pretty much any song, film, etc. now, pretty much instantly, so there’s less “mass movement” in one direction or another (a fact already mentioned in this thread). The exceptions to this cultural stasis would be countries that have changed politically in recent decades, where opening up to the world has given people options. But those options have tended to be toward McDonalds, Hollywood blockbusters, and hip-hop, so from OUR perspective, it looks like just more of the same.
Also, there is really no reason why culture *should *have a complete shift in fashions, music and aesthetics that neatly fit in with each numbered decade, just because the bulk of the 20th century happens to look that way (and the distinctness of each decade of course looks a lot more clearer in hindsight than if you were living through that time and experiencing the messy everythingness of everything). 20 years and counting of relative stasis isn’t somehow a flaw or something that needs explaining. It’s not like it’s unheard of in history before now.
Yeah, realty bites.
Not if you’re a Malaysian real estate agent! 
But here’s the thing: our nostalgic vision of the 50s only vaguely resembles the actual 50s. Same for our idea of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. They are really just cartoon visions of those decades. So where is our cartoon vision of the 90s?
I really don’t buy the idea that it was so much the same that it’s incapable of being caricatured. Grunge fashion, heroin chic, dot com mania, President Horndog, laptop computers as an exotic luxury. There’s material there.
The militia movement! I forgot about the militia movement. There’s another stock character for you: someone droning on about black helicopters and jack-booted thugs.
One difference in nostalgia past-and-present is the addition of DVDs, DVRs, Netflix, YouTube, etc. Back in the 1970’s remembering the 1950’s? Put on a record, maybe catch an old movie rerun on TV. Today, remembering the 1990’s? Bingewatch your favorite show or see your favorite date movie on Hulu. Media accessibility means there’s less call for a romanticized reenactment.
How is that 90’s nostalgia? You just described half of my families Facebook posts from the last 24 hours. All you are missing is Obama/monkey/Socialist references.
I’m waiting for the TV commercial to tell me what number to call so that I can order my copy of Remember the 90s on two long-playing records or 8-track tapes.